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AbstractGanmaoling Granule (GMLG) is one of the most effective Chinese Patent Medicines (CPMs) which is applied to relieve the uncomfortable symptoms caused by the common cold. In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) combined with chemometric analyses and multi-component content determination were performed to preliminary investigate the effect of ozone sterilization technology on the quality of GMLG. The methodology validation and similarity analysis results showed that the analytical method was capable of complying with the demand of HPLC fingerprints, and 80 batches of GMLGs before and after ozone sterilization in four process stages had a high degree of similarity based on the values of similarity analysis (SA) was greater than 0.98. The results of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the GMLGs before and after ozone sterilization were divided into two categories, and the same batch of GMLGs was clustered into the same group. Meanwhile, the contents of linarin, caffeine, chlorpheniramine maleate and acetaminophen between 24 batches of GMLGs before and after ozone sterilization had no statistically significant differences (P > 0.05), which met the requirements of “Drug Standard of the People’s Republic of China”. In conclusion, the ozone sterilization technology had no obvious influence on the quality of GMLGs in four process stages, which provided a reference for the quality control of GMLG and other Chinese-western medicine compound preparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topological structure of a recursive interconnection network can be modeled by an n -dimensional graph G n. A faulty vertex set (resp. edge set) of G n is called a t -embedded vertex (resp. edge) cut if the remaining network is disconnected and each vertex in the residual network is in a copy of fault-free t -dimensional graph G t. The t -embedded vertex connectivity ζ t (G n) (resp. the t -embedded edge connectivity η t (G n)) is defined as the minimum cardinality over all t -embedded vertex (resp. edge) cuts of G n. The m -ary n -dimensional hypercube G (n , m) has an elegant recursive structure and is also a generalized variant of the classical hypercube. This paper studies the reliability of the G (n , m) and generalizes some known results in ternary n -cubes. Specifically, we prove that ζ t (G (n , m)) = (m − 1) (n − t) m t for t ≤ n − 2 and η t (G (n , m)) = (m − 1) (n − t) m t for t ≤ n − 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to develop low-sodium curing agents for dry-cured meat products. Four low-sodium formulations (SPMA, SPM, SP, and SM) were used for dry-curing meat. The physicochemical properties and flavor of the dry-cured meat were investigated. The presence of Mg2+ ions hindered the penetration of Na+ into the meat. The weight loss, moisture content, and pH of all low-sodium salt groups were lower than those of S. Mg2+ addition increased the water activity (Aw) of SPMA, SPM, and SM. Dry-curing meat with low-sodium salts promoted the production of volatile flavor compounds, with Mg2+ playing a more prominent role. Furthermore, low-sodium salts also promoted protein degradation and increased the content of free amino acids in dry-cured meat, especially in SM. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the low-sodium salts containing Mg2+ were conducive to improving the quality of dry-cured meat products. Therefore, low-sodium salts enriched with Mg2+ become a desirable low-sodium curing agent for achieving salt reduction in dry-cured meat products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational: Pogejiuxin decoction (PGJXD) is one of the most important formulas for the treatment of heart failure. However, there is a great lack of research on the material basis of this formula, especially research on its compatibility laws, which restricts its clinical use. Studying the complete ingredients and compatibility rules of PGJXD has great significance for guiding clinical medication. Methods: The entire formula, the major single herbs, the drug pairs and the disassembled formula were analyzed by ultrahigh‐performance liquid chromatography with quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC/QTOFMS/MS), matching the chemical composition database and global natural product social molecular networking to explain the chemical composition as well as the combination pattern of PGJXD. Results: A total of 1048 chemical constituents were fully analyzed from the major single herbs, the drug pairs and the disassembled formula and 188 chemical constituents, including 13 potential novel compounds, were firstly identified from the whole formula. We found that the chemical compositions were reduced after the single herbs were matched to the other herbs, especially the significant reduction of highly toxic diester alkaloids after compatibility, indicating that the medicines of PGJXD were interdependent and controlled by each other. Conclusion: This study innovatively researches and compares the compositional differences between the entire formula of PGJXD, the single, paired and separated formulas, greatly extending our understanding of the chemical substance basis of these compounds, and preliminarily explores the compatibility laws of PGJXD, providing some theoretical guidance for clinical medication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a prevalent arrhythmic condition resulting in increased stroke risk and is associated with high mortality. Electrolyte imbalance can increase the risk of AF, where the relationship between AF and serum electrolytes remains unclear. Methods: A total of 15,792 individuals were included in the observational study, with incident AF ascertainment in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. The Cox regression models were applied to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for AF based on different serum electrolyte levels. Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were performed to examine the causal association. Results: In observational study, after a median 19.7 years of follow-up, a total of 2551 developed AF. After full adjustment, participants with serum potassium below the 5th percentile had a higher risk of AF relative to participants in the middle quintile. Serum magnesium was also inversely associated with the risk of AF. An increased incidence of AF was identified in individuals with higher serum phosphate percentiles. Serum calcium levels were not related to AF risk. Moreover, MR analysis indicated that genetically predicted serum electrolyte levels were not causally associated with AF risk. The odds ratio for AF were 0.999 for potassium, 1.044 for magnesium, 0.728 for phosphate, and 0.979 for calcium, respectively. Conclusions: Serum electrolyte disorders such as hypokalemia, hypomagnesemia and hyperphosphatemia were associated with an increased risk of AF and may also serve to be prognostic factors. However, the present study did not support serum electrolytes as causal mediators for AF development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Camellia oil is a high-value product with rich nutrients. Recently, the adulteration of camellia oil has become an increasingly concerning issue related to human health. In this study, electric soldering iron coupled with rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (REIMS) was employed for the identification and analysis of camellia oil without any sample preparation. REIMS technology coupled with chemometrics was applied to develop an analysis model for the authentication of camellia oil adulterated with soybean oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, and corn oil (5–40%, v/v). The results showed that different types of vegetable oils could be classified using principal component analysis-linear discriminant analysis (PCA-LDA) with a correct classification of 93.8% in leave-20%-out cross-validation and 100% correctly identified in real-time recognition. The established prediction models were found to be particularly sensitive when the camellia oil samples were adulterated with 5–40% of other oils, indicating that REIMS could be a powerful tool for the authentication and adulteration analysis of camellia oil, particularly for cases where the adulteration levels are relatively high. In conclusion, the results provide valuable insights into the potential of REIMS for the rapid, accurate, and real-time authentication and adulteration analysis of camellia oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractOne new rare carbon-bridged citrinin dimer quinocitrindimer C (1) as a pair of epimers, two new polyketide penicilliodes D (3) and E (4) together with nine known citrinin derivatives, were isolated from the fermentation broth of starfish-derived symbiotic fungus Penicillium sp. GGF16-1-2. Their structures and configurations were elucidated by comprehensively spectroscopic data analysis and electronic circular dichroism calculations. Eleven citrinin derivatives were tested by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, and compound 2 played a significant antifungal activity against Colletotrichum gloeosporioides with LC50 value of 0.27 μg/ml. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: To investigate the impact of prognostic nutritional index (PNI) on short- and long-term outcomes of patients who underwent curative-intent resection for gastro-entero-pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs). Methods: Patients with GET-NETs who underwent curative-intent resection were identified from a multi-center database. The prognostic impact of clinicopathological factors including PNI on post-operative outcomes were evaluated. A novel nomogram was developed and externally validated. Results: A total of 2,099 patients with GEP-NETs were included in the training cohort; 255 patients were in the external validation cohort. Median PNI (n = 973) was 47.4 (IQR 43.1–52.4). At the time of presentation, 1,299 (61.9%) patients presented with some type of clinical symptom. Low-PNI (≤42.2) was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, as well as nodal metastasis and distant metastasis (all p < 0.05). Patients with a low PNI had a higher incidence of severe (≥Clavien-Dindo grade IIIa: low PNI 24.9% vs. high PNI 15.4%, p = 0.001) and multiple (≥3 types of complications: low PNI 14.5% vs. high PNI 9.2%, p = 0.024) complications, as well as a worse overall survival (OS)(5-year OS, low PNI 73.7% vs. high PNI 88.5%, p < 0.001), and RFS (5-year RFS, low PNI 68.5% vs. high PNI 79.8%, p = 0.008) versus patients with high PNI (>42.2). A nomogram based on PNI, tumor grade and metastatic disease demonstrated excellent discrimination and calibration to predict OS in both the training (C-index 0.748) and two external validation (C-index 0.827, 0.745) cohorts. Conclusions: Low PNI was common and associated with worse short- and long-term outcomes among patients with GEP-NETs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault-tolerance is an important indicator to measure the stability of the interconnection network. The connectivity can reflect the reliability of a network. The g -extra connectivity κ g (G) of a network G is a generalization of the connectivity. The enhanced hypercube Q n , k is an important variant of hypercube Q n which has been received many attentions in recent years. The g -extra connectivity of the enhanced hypercube was investigated for some special g and k in the literature. We fill the gap of k and determine κ g (Q n , k) for the remaining cases of k when g ≤ 3. In summary, we show that κ g (Q n , 3) = (g + 1) n − 4 (g − 1) and κ g (Q n , 4) = (g + 1) n − g (g − 1) where n ≥ 8 and 1 ≤ g ≤ 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Change detection is a crucial task in remote sensing that finds broad application in land resource planning, forest resource monitoring, natural disaster monitoring, and evaluation. In this paper, we propose a change detection model for cross-domain recognition, which we call CrossCDNet. Our model significantly improves the modeling ability of the change detection on one dataset and demonstrates good generalization on another dataset without any additional operations. To achieve this, we employ a Siamese neural network for change detection and design an IBNM (Instance Normalization and Batch Normalization Module) that utilizes instance normalization and batch normalization in order to serve as the encoder backbone in the Siamese neural network. The IBNM extracts feature maps for each layer, and the Siamese neural network fuses the feature maps of the two branches using a unique operation. Finally, a simple MLP decoder is used for end-to-end change detection. We train our model on the LEVIR-CD dataset and achieve competitive performance on the test set. In cross-domain dataset testing, CrossCDNet outperforms all the other compared models. Specifically, our model achieves an F1-score of 91.69% on the LEVIR-CD dataset and an F1-score of 77.09% on the WHU-CD dataset, where the training set was LEVIR-CD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To investigate the association and dose-response relationship between triglyceride glucose (TyG) index, triglyceride/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (TG/HDL-C) ratio and hyperuricemia, in order to provide reference for the prevention of hyperuricemia in the population. Methods A total of 3 918 subjects without hyperuricemia at baseline and with complete 4-year physical examination follow-up records from the Health Management Center of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2020 were retrospectively selected. Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to analyze the risk of hyperuricemia in subjects with different TyG index and TG/ HDL-C ratio levels in different genders. Restricted cubic spline regression model was used to analyze the dose-response relationship of TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio with hyperuricemia, and receiver operating characteristic curve was used to evaluate the predictive value of these two indexes for hyperuricemia. Results Cox regression analysis showed that after adjusting for all confounding factors, the risk of hyperuricemia in men in Q4 group of TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio was increased by 73% (HR = 1.730, 95% CI: 1.294 -2.312) and 90. 8% (HR = 1.908, 95% CI: 1.908) compared with Q1 group, respectively. 1. 477 -2. 463). In females, the risk of hyperuricemia in Q4 group increased by 98. 7% (HR = 1. 987, 95% CI: 1.706 -3.936) and 162% (HR =2.620,95% CI: 1.721 -3.989), respectively. The restricted cubic spline plots showed that TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio had nonlinear dose-response relationships with the risk of hyperuricemia in different genders. The ROC curve showed that the area under the curve of TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio in females were 0. 626 (95% CI: 0. 586-0. 666, P < 0. 05 ) and 0. 640 (95% CI: 0. 601-0. 679, P <0.05), respectively, which were higher than those in males. Conclusions High TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio are closely related to the occurrence of hyperuricemia, and this correlation is more significant in women. TyG index and TG/HDL-C ratio have good predictive value for the incidence of hyperuricemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly investigates the catalytic mechanism and activity source of nickel-based phosphide hydrogen precipitation reaction, introduces the hydrogen precipitation reaction mechanism in different electrolyte environments and the relationship between Tazel slope and kinetics of the reaction process, and describes the introduction of P atoms and the degree of phosphorylation on the nickel-based phosphide active sites and adsorption energy; generalizes the nickel-based phosphide common synthesis methods and phosphorus sources, and discusses different modification methods, such as morphological, doping, and interfacial engineering, are discussed. The reasons for the good hydrogen precipitation per¬formance of nickel-based phosphides after modification are analyzed in depth, and the development direc¬tion is proposed according to the current problems of nickel-based phosphides in hydrogen precipitation reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic detection of forest change is the fundamental method of monitoring forest resources and an essential means of preserving the accuracy and timeliness of forest land resource data. This study focuses on a deep learning-based method for dynamic forest change detection using Sentinel-2 satellite data, especially within mountainous areas. First, the performance of various deep learning models (U-Net++, U-Net, LinkNet, DeepLabV3+, and STANet) and various loss functions (CrossEntropyLoss(CELoss), DiceLoss, FocalLoss, and their combinations) are compared on a self-made dataset. Next, the best model and loss function is used to predict the annual forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021, and the detection results are evaluated in 12 sample areas. Finally, forest changes are detected in Sentinel-2 images for each quarter of 2017–2021. In addition, a dynamic detection map of forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021 is drawn. The results reveal that the U-Net++ model and the CELoss performed the best on the self-made dataset, with a Precision of 0.795, a Recall of 0.748, and an F1-score of 0.771. The results of annual and quarterly forest change detection were consistent with the changes in the Sentinel-2 images with accurate boundaries. This result demonstrates the high practicality and generalizability of the method used in this paper. This paper achieves a rapid and accurate extraction of multi-temporal Sentinel-2 image forest change areas based on the U-Net++ model, which can be used as a benchmark for future large territorial areas monitoring and management of forest resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid ZnCo 2 O 4 @CoMoO 4 heterogeneous structure deposited onto nickel foam was synthesized via a two-step hydrothermal process. The results demonstrate that the hybrid architecture exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, including the specific capacitance of 1040C g−1 at 1 A g−1 for hybrid structures, high energy density of 87.3 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 2700 W kg−1 for an as-assembled supercapacitor and excellent cycle stability with a capacity retention of 99% undergoing 8000 charge-discharge for the device. Moreover, it also shows favorable electrocatalytic activity with low overpotentials of 237 mV at 20 mA cm−2 for oxygen evolution reaction and 114 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for hydrogen evolution reaction, and low cell voltage of 1.54 V at 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting. In addition, the stability maintains well for the long-term use of 13 h. We believe that this hybrid ZnCo 2 O 4 @CoMoO 4 heterogeneous structure could be a promising candidate for future energy storage and conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute aortic dissection (AAD) is a serious disease characterized by high mortality. However, there are no accurate indicators to predict in-hospital mortality. The objective of this study was to identify the potential value of ischemia modified albumin (IMA) in prediction of in-hospital mortality of AAD patients. This was a single-center, prospective study involved 314 patients undergoing AAD, including 197 males and 117 females, aged 26–87 (57.14 ± 21.71) years old, 116 cases of TAAD and 198 cases of TBAD (37 cases of complicated, 114 cases of high risk, and 47 cases of uncomplicated), 228 cases were underwent surgery/intervention treatment (77 cases of TAAD,151 cases of TBAD) and 86 cases were underwent conservative therapy (39 cases of TAAD, 47 cases of TBAD). The basic data, on-admission IMA level, and the all-cause in-hospital mortality was recorded. IMA in the non-survivor group and TAAD group was found to be significantly higher than that in the survivor group and TBAD group (P < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis results revealed that age (OR = 1.923, 95%CI: 1.102–4.481, P = 0.020), conservative therapy (OR = 17.892, 95%CI: 7.641–24.748, P < 0.001), D-dimer level (OR = 3.517, 95%CI: 1.874–7.667, P = 0.011) and IMA level (OR = 5.406, 95%CI: 2.951–10.395, P = 0.004) served as independent risk factors for in-hospital mortality of TAAD patients. And D-dimer level (OR = 2.241, 95%CI: 1.475–5.663, P = 0.018), IMA level (OR = 3.115, 95%CI: 1.792–6.925, P = 0.009) also served as independent risk factors for in-hospital mortality of TBAD patients, whereas surgery (OR = 0.110, 95%CI: 0.075–0.269, P < 0.001) was the protective factor of in-hospital mortality of TAAD patients. After IMA prediction, the AUC, optimal cut-off value, sensitivity, and the specificity of in-hospital mortality of AAD patients were observed to be 0.801 (95%CI: 0.744–0.858), 86.55 U/mL, 79.1%, and 73.2%, respectively. In addition, it was found that AUC was 0.799 (95%CI: 0.719–0.880) in TAAD and 0.753 (95% CI: 0.641–0.866) in TBAD. Overall, it was concluded that on-admission IMA level acted as an independent prediction index for in-hospital mortality of AAD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To characterize the prognostic implication of jaundice and preoperative biliary drainage on postoperative outcomes among patients with gallbladder cancer (GBC) undergoing surgical resection.Methods: Patients who underwent surgical resection of GBC identified from a multicenter database between January 2000 and December 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. Data on clinical and pathological details, as well as short- and long-term overall survival (OS), were obtained and compared among patients with and without preoperative jaundice and biliary drainage.Results: Among 449 patients with GBC, median and 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS were 17.4 months, 63.7%, 28.4%, and 22.1%, respectively. Patients who presented with preoperative jaundice (n = 100, 22.3%) were more likely to have advanced disease, a lower incidence of R0 resection (29.0% vs. 69.1%, p < 0.001), as well as a higher incidence of postoperative liver failure (4% vs. 0, p = 0.002), and worse long-term survival versus patients without jaundice (median OS, 10.4 vs. 27.1 months, p < 0.001). Preoperative biliary drainage was performed for the majority of jaundiced patients (77.0%) and was associated with decreased risk of postoperative liver failure (1.3% vs. 13.0%, p = 0.041); preoperative biliary drainage failed to improve long-term survival (median OS, 10.2 months vs. 12.0 months, p = 0.679). On multivariable analysis, R0 resection (17.5 vs. 7.6 months, p < 0.001) and adjuvant therapy (15.6 vs. 6.6 months, p = 0.027) were associated with improved long-term survival among jaundiced patients.Conclusions: While preoperative biliary drainage of jaundiced GBC patients decreased the risk of postoperative liver failure, it did not impact long-term outcomes. Rather, preoperative jaundice was associated with a lower chance at R0 resection and worse long-term survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cucurbitaceous fruits and vegetables are important crops. Viral and bacterial diseases cause substantial economic losses to cucurbit crops globally. For rapid detection of these pathogens and improved disease control, a one-step multiplex reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (mRT-PCR) system was created. This method allowed for the concurrent detection of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV), Watermelon mosaic virus (WMV), Cucumber green mottle mosaic virus (CGMMV), Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), and Acidovorax citrulli. Five pairs of specific primers were created according to the conserved regions around the coat protein (CP) genes of each virus, and one pair was based on the A. citrulli internal transcribed spacer (ITS). To limit false negatives, one pair of primers, created based on the Transcriptional elongation factor 1-α (EF1-α) from the major cucurbitaceous crop species, was put into the mRT-PCR reaction system. Primer concentrations, annealing temperature, extension time, and amplification cycles were optimized. Anticipated fragments of 152 bp (TMV), 205 bp (ZYMV), 318 bp (WMV), 419 bp (CGMMV), 529 bp (CMV), 662 bp (A. citrulli), and 821 bp (EF1-α) were amplified by the multiplex RT-PCR system, and their origin was established via DNA sequencing. This method was successfully used to examine field-collected seed samples of cucurbitaceous crops from China. The results demonstrated that the one-step mRT-PCR technique is a quick, efficient, and sensitive assay for the concurrent detection of six pathogens of cucurbits. It provides a method for monitoring and preventing these diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Colorectal cancer is the third most common cause of death among cancers in the world. Although improvements in various treatments have greatly improved the survival time of colorectal cancer patients, since colorectal cancer is often at an advanced stage when diagnosed, the prognosis of patients is still very poor. Since the ceRNA regulatory network was proposed in 2011, it has greatly promoted the study of the molecular mechanism of colorectal cancer occurrence and development.Objective: Exploring the new molecular mechanism of colorectal cancer occurrence and development and providing new targets for the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer.Method: We analyzed the RNA-seq data of CRC from TCGA, such as differential expression analysis, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and construction of ceRNA regulatory network.Results: We constructed a ceRNA network using RNA-seq data of CRC from TCGA. In the ceRNA regulatory network, 19 hub molecules with significant prognostic effects were ultimately identified, including 8 lncRNAs, 2 mRNAs and 9 miRNAs. These hub molecules constitute the lncRNA-miRNA, miRNA-mRNA or lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA axis.Conclusion: In this article, some new ceRNA regulatory axes have been discovered, which may potentially disclose new molecular mechanisms for the occurrence and development of colorectal cancer, thereby providing an important blueprint for the treatment and prognosis assessment of CRC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many interconnection networks in large-scale parallel computing have hierarchical and recursive structures. The presence of vertex failures may disconnect the entire network, but every fault-free processor still lies in an undamaged sub-network, which is a smaller network with the same topological properties as the original one. For an n-dimensional recursive network G n , the h-embedded connectivity ζ h of G n is the minimum number of vertices whose removal disconnects G n and each vertex in the resulting network is contained in an h-dimensional undamaged sub-network. The bijective connection networks (BC networks for short) are a class of cube-based networks. They have recursive structures and contain many known networks, such as the hypercube, the Crossed cube, and the Möbius cube. This paper focuses on the structures of the Crossed cube and the Möbius cube. We prove that these two networks are generalized product graphs, using these results to determine the ζ h of them for h ≤ n - 2 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of enterprise management driven by accounting data has not only great strategic significance but also great practical value and distinctive characteristics of The Times. Although the macro evaluation of DCMM is strong, its objective operability is slightly weak. Therefore, based on the maturity model, this article establishes a three-level accounting data management (AAM) capability evaluation index system, divides the maturity level and key process domains, and constructs an AAM capability evaluation model. Through the evaluation of the accounting data management ability of the case enterprise, the evaluation value of the AAM ability is calculated, and the measurement of the AAM ability is completed, which is helpful to improve the data management ability of the enterprise scientifically and efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of "double carbon", as a traditional high energy consumption industry, the textile industry is facing the severe challenges of energy saving and emission reduction. To improve production efficiency in the textile industry, we propose the use of content-based image retrieval technology to shorten the fabric production cycle. However, fabric retrieval has high requirements for results, which makes it difficult for common retrieval methods to be directly applied to fabric retrieval. This paper presents a novel method for fabric image retrieval. Firstly, we define a fine-grained similarity to measure the similarity between two fabric images. Then, a convolutional neural network with a compact structure and cross-domain connections is designed to narrow the gap between fabric images and similarities. To overcome the problems of probabilistic missing and difficult training in classical hashing, we introduce a variational network module and structural module into the hashing model, which is called DVSH. We employ list-wise learning to perform similarity embedding. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority and efficiency of the proposed hashing model, DVSH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. The purpose was to compare the accuracy of extraprostatic extension (EPE) grade on MRI predicting EPE with Partin tables, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center nomogram (MSKCCn), and combined models and to analyze the clinical incremental value of EPE grade. Materials and Methods. 105 prostate cancer patients confirmed by pathology after radical prostatectomy in our hospital from 2017 to 2021 were selected. The clinical stage, PSA, Gleason score, number of positive biopsy cores, and percentage of positive biopsy cores were recorded. Evaluate EPE grade according to EPE grade criteria, and calculate the probability of predicting EPE with Partin tables and MSKCCn. EPE grade is combined with Partin tables and MSKCCn to construct EPE grade+Partin tables and EPE grade+MSKCCn models. Calculate the area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity of EPE grade, Partin tables, MSKCCn, EPE grade+Partin tables, and EPE grade+MSKCCn and compare their diagnostic efficacy. The clinical decision curve was used to analyze the clinical net income of each prediction scheme. Results. The AUC of EPE grade was 0.79, Partin tables was 0.50, MSKCCn was 0.78, the EPE grade+Partin table model was 0.79, and the EPE grade+MSKCCn model was 0.83. After EPE grade was combined with Partin tables and MSKCCn, the diagnostic efficiency of clinical model was significantly improved (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the diagnostic efficacy of the combined model compared with the single EPE grade (P > 0.05). The calibration curve of the combined model shows that it has a good calibration degree for EPE. In the analysis of the decision curve, the net income of the EPE grade is higher than that of Partin tables and MSKCCn and is equal to the EPE grade+Partin tables and is slightly lower than that of EPE grade+MSKCCn. The clinical net income of the combined model is obviously higher than that of individual clinical models. Conclusion. The accuracy of EPE classification in predicting prostate cancer EPE is high, and combined with the clinical model, it can significantly improve the diagnostic efficiency of the clinical model and increase the clinical benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The repeated trial‐weaving and proofing process are traditionally conducted to exhibit the ever‐changing appearance of the colored spun yarn fabric knitted by different colored spun yarns. In this paper, a novel method of appearance generation for colored spun yarn fabric was proposed based on conditional image‐to‐image translation. The generated image is required to have the same color and the fabric style simultaneously as the color card and the assigned style. The common pix2pix model was modified by adding the category label to the image channel to involve the style constraint. To improve the generation performance, the U‐Net architecture was replaced by the residual block architecture. Four commonly used style fabrics and different color cards were adopted to build the image pairs for experiments. The visual inspection and category similarity were used as the evaluation metrics. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method can transfer different color cards to the designated style fabrics based on the constraints, being effective and superior for image generation of colored spun yarns. The proposed scheme can provide references for the designer by presenting the image perception, saving labor, and material resources in the proofing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An all-electron calculation on Be n Si (n = 1–12) clusters has been performed by using density functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation at the PW91 level. The results reveal that the lowest energy geometries of Be n Si (n = 1–12) clusters may be generated by substituting a Si atom for one Be atom of the Be n +1 clusters. In addition, Si atom tends to occupy external locations of main Be n clusters and bonds with multiple Be atoms in the Be n Si (n > 2) clusters. The average binding energy of Be n Si clusters is higher than that of pure Be n +1 clusters, indicating that the doped of the Si atom enhances the cluster's binding force. Compared with pure Be n +1 clusters, the HOMO-LUMO GAP of Be 7 Si, Be 8 Si, and Be 10 Si clusters increase while the HLG of other Be n Si clusters(n = 1–3,5,9,11,12) decreas. The vertical ionization potential and vertical electron affinities curves of clusters have the same general trend. The VIP of the cluster decreases gradually while the VEA increases gradually. The doping of the Si atom greatly influences the stability of pure Be n clusters, and the analysis of energy and electronic properties of Be n Si clusters reveals that the Be 3 Si cluster is the magic number structure in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion characteristics of three different granular materials in moving beds with different pipe arrangements are studied and compared. Diffusivities of glass beads are always the highest and coarse sands the lowest in all the zones in the beds with aligned pipes. The main flow diffusivity is 1.13 × 10−6, 5.49 × 10−7 and 1.78 × 10−7 m2/s for glass beads, corundum beads and coarse sands. In contrast, the main flow diffusivities of coarse sands and corundum beads are significantly enhanced in the beds with staggered pipes, but the change of glass beads is slight. The diffusivity of coarse sands is up to 5.95 × 10−6 m2/s. In addition, low diffusivity always remains in the region above pipes. Further studies of the dimensionless diffusivities for different materials show that the granular diffusion in aligned beds could be explained by the shear–induced diffusion theory. While the diffusion mechanisms are diversified in the staggered beds. [Display omitted] • The flow fields of three granular materials in two different beds are measured. • The granular diffusivities of different materials in different beds are studied. • The order of diffusivity is in accordance with flowability in the aligned bed. • The staggered pipes greatly affect the diffusion of granules with low flowability. • The dimensionless diffusivities are further calculated and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional manual defect detection method has low efficiency and is time-consuming and laborious. To address this issue, this paper proposed an automatic detection framework for fabric defect detection, which consists of a hardware system and detection algorithm. For the efficient and high-quality acquisition of fabric images, an image acquisition assembly equipped with three sets of lights sources, eight cameras, and a mirror was developed. The image acquisition speed of the developed device is up to 65 m per minute of fabric. This study treats the problem of fabric defect detection as an object detection task in machine vision. Considering the real-time and precision requirements of detection, we improved some components of CenterNet to achieve efficient fabric defect detection, including the introduction of deformable convolution to adapt to different defect shapes and the introduction of i-FPN to adapt to defects of different sizes. Ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed improvements. The comparative experimental results show that our method achieves a satisfactory balance of accuracy and speed, which demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method. The maximum detection speed of the developed system can reach 37.3 m per minute, which can meet the real-time requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliability analysis is important to the design of large multiprocessor systems. The extra connectivity is an important parameter for the reliability evaluation of interconnection networks. The h -extra connectivity κ h (G) is the minimum number of vertices whose deletion disconnects the network G and every remaining component has more than h vertices. In this paper, for n ≥ 4 and 2 ≤ h ≤ 5 , we determine the h -extra connectivity of the star graph S n. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a great deal of research has examined determinants of military spending, few studies have systematically investigated how legislators vote on defense expenditures. This study fills this important gap. Based on a sample of roll-call data on defense spending from the 112th U.S. House, we estimate legislators' ideal points through an item response model. Several interesting findings emerge. First, Republicans are more likely to favor military spending, a finding that is both statistically and substantively significant throughout our analysis. In addition, interest group campaign contributions play an important role by increasing the probability a legislator supports defense spending. Third, when a congressional district has a larger number of veterans or a lower rate of unemployment, its elected legislator is likely to favor military spending. Finally, the effect of public opinion disappears after the district demographics are controlled for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the turbulent convection model, we propose new energy named turbulent thermal energy to explain the observed mass loss, and correspondingly propose a modified criterion on mass loss. We obtain the mass-loss rates and make a test of the proposal for the RGB and EAGB stars. The results coincide with the observational data, and also agree with the results of some other semi-empirical formulae based on the fundamental stellar parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NiMoO4 is an excellent candidate for supercapacitor electrodes, but poor cycle life, low electrical conductivity, and small practical capacitance limit its further development. Therefore, in this paper, we fabricate NiMoO4@MnCo2O4 composites based on a two-step hydrothermal method. As a supercapacitor electrode, the sample can reach 3000 mF/cm2 at 1 mA/cm2. The asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC), NiMoO4@MnCo2O4//AC, can be constructed with activated carbon (AC) as the negative electrode, the device can reach a maximum energy density of 90.89 mWh/cm3 at a power density of 3726.7 mW/cm3 and the capacitance retention can achieve 78.4% after 10,000 cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustical materials are usually used for architectural design, ambient noise, and traffic noise to absorb sound. The sound absorption coefficient (SAC) is often used as the performance index of acoustical materials. It is measured using the reverberation room method (RRM) and the impedance tube method (ITM). The sound source of the RRM is a random incidence in various directions, whereas that of the ITM is a normal incident. The SAC measured by the RRM is more extensive, practical, and costly than ITM. Usually, the SAC measured by RRM is used as the commercially available acoustical materials index. However, RRM requires large-area test samples for measurement and a special sound field of reverberation room for test experiments. Therefore, this study aims to use the ITM to measure SAC. The measured SAC, frequency, thickness, and material density were employed as independent variables and substituted in the obtained multiple regression model to predict SAC obtained by RRM. In addition, the measurement characteristics of impedance tubes provide varisized calibers for different frequency ranges to measure a relatively accurate SAC. Based on the abovementioned characteristics, this study proposed a dual-model for estimating the SAC of the reverberation room method to achieve the best-estimated result. After experimental validation, the dual-model estimated result was compared with SAC from the reverberation room method. It was observed that the maximum absolute value of all errors did not exceed 0.16. Most of the absolute errors were below 0.1, proving the accuracy of this method. Therefore, the method proposed in this study can shorten the acoustical material development schedule for manufacturers and save the cost of the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artemisinin and its derivatives (ARTs), due to their potent antimalarial activities, are widely used as frontline antimalarials across the world. Although the large-scale deployment of ARTs has significantly contributed to a substantial decline in malaria deaths, the global malaria burden is still high. New antimalarial treatments need to be developed to manage the growing artemisinin resistance. Understanding the status of ART development is crucial for developing strategies for new alternatives and identifying opportunities to develop ART-based treatments. This study sampled ART clinical trials from the past two decades to gain an overview of the global ART-development landscape. A total of 768 trials were collected to analyze the disease focuses, activity trends, development status, geographic distribution, and combination treatment profiles of ART trials. The findings highlighted the constant focus of ARTs on malaria, the evolving combination research focus, the distinctions between ART development preferences across global regions, the urgent demands for treatments for artemisinin-resistant malaria, and the unavoidable need to consider ART combinations in the development of new antimalarials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problems of crowd distribution, scale feature, and crowd feature extraction difficulties in exhibition centers, this paper proposes a crowd density estimation method using deep learning for passenger flow detection systems in exhibition centers. Firstly, based on the pixel difference symbol feature, the difference amplitude feature and gray feature of the central pixel are extracted to form the CLBP feature to obtain more crowd group description information. Secondly, use the LR activation function to add nonlinear factors to the convolution neural network (CNN) and use dense blocks derived from crowd density estimation to train the LR-CNN crowd density estimation model. Finally, experimental results show that the mean absolute error (MAE) and mean square error (MSE) of the proposed method in the UCF_CC_50 dataset are 325.6 and 369.4, respectively. Besides, MAE and MSE in part_A of the Shanghai Tech dataset are 213.5 and 247.1, respectively, and they in part_B are 85.3 and 99.7, respectively. The proposed method effectively improves the accuracy of crowd density estimation in exhibition centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The g -restricted edge connectivity is an important measurement to assess the reliability of networks. The g -restricted edge connectivity of a connected graph G is the minimum size of a set of edges in G , if it exists, whose deletion separates G and leaves every vertex in the remaining components with at least g neighbors. The k -ary n -cube is an extension of the hypercube network and has many desirable properties. It has been used to build the architecture of the Supercomputer Fugaku. This paper establishes that for g ≤ n , the g -restricted edge connectivity of 3-ary n -cubes is 3 ⌊ g / 2 ⌋ (1 + (g mod 2)) (2 n − g) , and the g -restricted edge connectivity of k -ary n -cubes with k ≥ 4 is 2 g (2 n − g). These results imply that in Q n 3 with at most 3 ⌊ g / 2 ⌋ (1 + (g mod 2)) (2 n − g) − 1 faulty edges, or Q n k (k ≥ 4) with at most 2 g (2 n − g) − 1 faulty edges, if each vertex is incident with at least g fault-free edges, then the remaining network is connected. • We study a generalized edge reliability of k -ary n -cubes. • We concentrate on an edge fault-tolerant ability, the g -restricted edge connectivity λ g of the k -ary n -cube Q n k. • For g ≤ n and k ≥ 3 , we determine the values of λ g (Q n k). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, aramid nanoparticles (ANPs) were prepared in dimethyl formamide (DMF) solution containing high impact polystyrene (HIPS) via a bottom-up approach. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed that the obtained ANPs were evenly distributed in the HIPS matrix without any agglomeration. Chemical composition of the ANPs, i.e., poly(p-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine) (PPTA), was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffractometer (XRD). The ANP/HIPS composites, obtained after ethanol precipitation, were added to neat HIPS as fillers to fabricate ANP/HIPS composite sheets. The surface roughness and the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the sheets were characterized by atomic force microscope (AFM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), respectively. Compared with neat HIPS, the mechanical properties of the composite sheet were significantly improved, and the Young’s modulus increased from 246.55 MPa to 2025.12 MPa, the tensile strength increased from 3.07 MPa to 29.76 MPa, and the toughness increased from 0.32 N/mm2 to 3.92 N/mm2, with an increase rate of 721%, 869% and 1125%, respectively. Moreover, the thermal stability of the composites improved with the increase in ANP content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early repolarization syndrome (ERS) is defined as occurring in patients with early repolarization pattern who have survived idiopathic ventricular fibrillation with clinical evaluation unrevealing for other explanations. The pathophysiologic basis of the ERS is currently uncertain. The objective of the present study was to examine the electrophysiological mechanism of ERS utilizing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing. Whole genome sequencing was used to identify the DPP6 (c.2561T > C/p.L854P) variant in four families with sudden cardiac arrest induced by ERS. Cardiomyocytes were generated from iPSCs from a 14-year-old boy in the four families with ERS and an unrelated healthy control subject. Patch clamp recordings revealed more significant prolongation of the action potential duration (APD) and increased transient outward potassium current (I to) (103.97 ± 18.73 pA/pF vs 44.36 ± 16.54 pA/pF at +70 mV, P < 0.05) in ERS cardiomyocytes compared with control cardiomyocytes. Of note, the selective correction of the causal variant in iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing normalized the I to , whereas prolongation of the APD remained unchanged. ERS cardiomyocytes carrying DPP6 mutation increased I to and lengthen APD, which maybe lay the electrophysiological foundation of ERS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In large-scale multiprocessor systems, it is significant to estimate the reliability of the interconnection networks. The κ k and λ k are two generalized measurements of reliability for networks. The κ k (λ k) of G is the minimum cardinality of a set of vertices (edges) of G , if any, whose deletion disconnects G , and every remaining component has minimum degree at least k. For the modified bubble-sort networks M B n , this paper proves κ k (M B n) = λ k (M B n) = 2 k (n − k) for k ≤ n / 2. The conclusions extend some known results in the literature, imply that to make a modified bubble-sort network M B n disconnected with all remaining vertices have at least k neighbors, at least 2 k (n − k) vertices or edges have to be faulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comprehensive Eulerian model based on μ (I) rheology theory is established to describe the granular flow inside moving bed heat exchangers (MBHEs). The established model is validated, and the rheological parameters involved in μ (I) model are determined using the experimental results of velocity distributions for three kinds of typical granular materials in a thin silo. Detailed results regarding the particle velocity, solid volume fraction, particle intergranular shear stress, resistance, and energy dissipation of three different granular flows in a staggered-arranged MBHE and an aligned-arranged MBHE are revealed and discussed. The relationship among dimensionless dissipation, velocity, and pressure in the transition zone is analyzed to demonstrate the influences of granular properties and pipe arrangement on granular flow. [Display omitted] • A Eulerian model based on μ (I) theory is established for granular flows in MBHEs. • The rheological parameters are determined by the measured particle velocities. • Granular flows in SMBHE are more uniform than those in AMBHE. • The resistances of pipes increase with particle friction coefficient and density. • The high dissipative regions occur above the first pipes and in transition zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine-texture Image Retrieval, a special case in Content Based Image Retrieval, has high potential application value in many fields. However, there are very few researches focus on this special case. Due to the difference between fine-texture images and common images, general retrieval methods for common images are difficult to apply to fine-texture image retrieval. It is also a challenging issue with several obstacles: variety and complexity of appearance, as well as high requirements for retrieval accuracy. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel approach, called deep multi-view hashing (DMVH), to learn enhanced hash codes for efficient fine-texture image retrieval. We propose to use the first few layers of a deep convolutional neural network for fine-texture image presentation. To avoid overfitting, we employ L0Linear layer instead of the commonly used Linear layer in all the fully connected layers. Then we introduce a pairwise quantified similarity computed on the semantic labels. And the learning process of the model is guided by multiple labels of images. This study takes fabric as an example, and builds a dataset called MFT-fabric-v1, to validate the effectiveness of the DMVH method. On this data set, the proposed model achieved a performance with a mAP value of o.8735. The area under the pr curve is larger than other comparison methods. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art on the MFT-fabric-v1 dataset. [Display omitted] • A method for image retrieval with fine texture is proposed. • The proposed method describes the image from multiple views and uses it for retrieval. • An efficient end-to-end hashing method is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study attempted to explore the mechanism underlying the role of LuxR family transcriptional regulator abaR in biofilm formation by Acinetobacter baumannii. The abaR gene was knocked out in ATCC 17978 strain using homologous recombination method. The growth curve and biofilm formation were measured in the wild type and abaR gene knockdown strains. Transcriptome sequencing was performed in the wild type and abaR gene knockdown strains following 8 h of culture. The growth curve in the abaR gene knockdown strain was similar to that of the wild-type strain. Biofilm formation significantly declined in the abaR gene knockdown strain at 8 and 48 h after culture. A total of 137 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained including 20 downregulated DEGs and 117 upregulated DEGs. Genes with differential expression were closely related to viral procapsid maturation (GO:0046797), acetoin catabolism (GO:0045150), carbon metabolism (ko01200), and the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis (ko00010)-related pathways. The results of the eight verified expression DEGs were consistent with the results predicted by bioinformatics. AbaR gene knockdown significantly affected biofilm formation by A. baumannii ATCC 17978 strain. The glycolysis/gluconeogenesis pathways were significantly dysregulated and induced by abaR gene knockdown in A. baumannii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to identify the differences in clinical characteristics, puncture efficacy, antibiotic use, treatment duration, breastfeeding post-illness, and recurrence of patients with breast abscesses caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) infection during lactation. Methods: The clinical data of patients with breast abscesses during lactation who were treated from January 2014 to February 2017 at Haidian Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Beijing, were reviewed. According to bacterial culture results, they were divided into MRSA (n = 260) and MSSA (n = 962) groups. Hospitalization (whether or not the patients were hospitalized), postpartum period, maternal age, location of abscess cavities, number of abscess cavities, amount of pus, frequency of needle aspiration, failure of needle aspiration, antibiotic use, treatment duration, cessation of breastfeeding and recurrence were compared between the two groups using a t-test and a chi-squared test. Results: We noted that only the cessation of breastfeeding was statistically significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.018). Hospitalization, postpartum period, maternal age, location of abscess cavities, number of abscess cavities, amount of pus, number of needle aspiration, failure of needle aspiration, antibiotic use, treatment duration and recurrence showed no statistically significant differences (P = 0.488, P = 0.328, P = 0.494, P = 0.218, P = 0.088, P = 0.102, P = 0.712, P = 0.336, P = 0.512, P = 0.386 and P = 0.359, respectively). Conclusions: There was no difference in clinical characteristics between breast abscesses infected by MRSA and those infected by MSSA. Ultrasound-guided needle aspiration could be the first choice for MRSA-infected breast abscess treatment. There is no need to increase antibiotic use because of MRSA infection, unless it is necessary. The reason why more patients with MRSA infected breast abscesses terminated breastfeeding is unclear from this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the potential values in many areas such as e-commerce and inventory management, fabric image retrieval, which is a special case in Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR), has recently become a research hotspot. It is also a challenging issue with serval obstacles: variety and complexity of fabric appearance, high requirements for retrieval accuracy. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel approach for fabric image retrieval based on multi-task learning and deep hashing. According to the cognitive system of fabric, a multi-classification-task learning model with uncertainty loss and constraint is presented to learn fabric image representation. Then we adopt an unsupervised deep network to encode the extracted features into 128-bits hashing codes. Further, the hashing codes are regarded as the index of fabrics image for image retrieval. To evaluate the proposed approach, we expanded and upgraded the dataset WFID, which was built in our previous research specifically for fabric image retrieval. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamics of exchange within vitrimer networks are influenced by mobility of the chemical species involved in the exchange reaction, then it can be affected by the crystalline phase when boronic ester bond is introduced into the thermoplastic elastomers with crystalline phase as physical cross-links. In this work, the dynamic dioxaborolane cross-links were introduced into commercial poly(ethylene-α-octene) (POE) with crystalline phases as physical cross-links to prepare POE vitrimers. The results of stress relaxation show that relaxation time (τ) follows an Arrhenius law with the temperature at the melting range for not only POE vitrimers and thermally treated POE vitrimers with dynamic cross-links, but also neat POE with purely physical cross-links. The liquid-to-solid transition temperature can raise to 35.3 °C for POE vitrimers from -42.9 °C of the thermally treated one, due to the constrained mobility by residual crystalline phases. The resulted POE vitrimers maintain a stress at break of higher than 27.5 MPa and an elongation at break of higher than 800% at room temperature. With the temperature increasing, the crystal melting induced weakening of the physical cross-linking in POE decreases the strength, but the storage modulus and the stress at 300% and 500% elongation of POE vitrimers are improved. The properties of POE vitrimers can almost keep unchanged after recycling or healing. All these results show that the introduction of reversible boronic ester bonds is a promising strategy to improve the performances and recyclability of physically cross-linked POE materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To assess the clinical outcomes of using a bipedicle advancement flap to cover the skin defects after digital mucous cyst (DMC) excision. Methods: Data for 15 patients (18 fingers) with DMC, admitted to the Department of Orthopaedics and Surgery of the Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University from January 2016 to January 2018, were analyzed retrospectively. This study included 4 men and 11 women, with a mean age of 64 ± 7.8 years (range, 47–77 years). A total of 5 cases involved the thumb, 4 involved the index finger, 5 involved ithe middle finger, and 4 involved the ring finger. Among a total of 18 digital mucous cysts, 7 cases were in the left hand and 11 were in the right hand. Approximately 77.8% of cases had osteophytes. The cysts ranged in size from 0.5–1.0 cm to 0.7–1.2 cm. All patients underwent cyst and osteophyte excision and a bipedicle advancement flap to cover the resultant defect. The same surgical procedure was applied to all patients. Postoperative flap survival, healing, and infection were evaluated. The preoperative and postoperative ranges of motion (ROM) of the distal interphalangeal (DIP) and thumb interphalangeal joints (TIPJ) were recorded. Postoperative patient satisfaction was assessed by the visual analog scale (VAS, 0–10) during follow‐up visits. The Shapiro–Wilk test was used to determine whether the data for the difference between the preoperative and postoperative ROM of the DIP/TIPJ were normally distributed or not. The homogeneity of variance was expressed as mean ± standard deviation. A paired t‐test was used to compare the preoperative and postoperative ROM of the DIP/TIPJ. Results: The patients were followed up for 20 ± 6.0 months (range, 12–36 months). All the flaps survived after surgery, and the incisions healed well. The sutures were removed 2 weeks postoperatively. No infections occurred and there was no cyst recurrence at follow up. After systemic physical therapy and functional exercises, the ROM of all the fingers was restored to the preoperative ROM by 1 month after surgery. The scores for patient satisfaction with surgery by means of the VAS were 8.5 ± 1.0 points, 2.8 ± 1.4 points, 2.0 ± 1.6 points, 1.5 ± 1.2 points, and 1.1 ± 1.3 points preoperatively, and 1, 3, 6, and 12 months postoperatively, respectively. The data for the difference between preoperative and postoperative VAS scores were normally distributed. There were significant differences between the preoperative and postoperative VAS scores. The preoperative DIP/TIPJ ROM was 71.7° ± 14.0°, and the postoperative ROM at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months were 69.3° ± 15.3°, 70.4° ± 12.7°, 71.5° ± 15.6°, and 71.8° ± 15.6°, respectively. The data for the difference between preoperative and postoperative ROM of the DIP/TIPJ were normally distributed. No difference was found between the preoperative and postoperative ROM. Conclusion: The bipedicle advancement flap provides a simple and effective technique for covering skin defects following DMC excision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A solvent-exchange induced hydrogen bond activation strategy for gel actuators is developed. • The gel shows abnormal swelling behavior due to glycerol releasing during water immersing. • The self-adaptive organohydrogel actuator exhibits excellent mechanical properties. • The twisted actuator shows a high actuation rate and humidity-induced actuation performance. Hydrogel actuators have aroused tremendous interests in various fields such as artificial muscles, biomedicine and wearable devices. However, hydrogel actuators face persistent challenges due to their intrinsic weak and hydrophilic networks, which result in brittle and weak mechanical properties after swelling. Here, we proposed a solvent-exchange hydrogen bond activation strategy to fabricate a highly strong and tough self-adaptive organohydrogel actuators (SOA). The glycerol releasing and water retention triggers abnormal swelling of SOA due to the cross-linking of tannic acid (TA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibrillar network. After the hydrogen bond activation between PVA and TA, SOA shows a denser and porous nanofibrillar network with high tensile strength (5.4 ± 0.2 MPa), high fracture energy (134.9 ± 7.6 kJ/m2), and high toughness (18.5 ± 0.7 MJ/m3). Owing to its good processibility, an anisotropic multi-filament twisted fiber actuator that exhibits ultra-high modulus (83.5 ± 2.6 MPa) and humidity-sensitive actuation performance was developed. The proposed solvent-exchange strategy shows great potential for the rational design and fabrication of bionic strong and tough artificial muscles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnolol, a natural extract from magnolia officinalis , has received growing interest in its bioactive properties such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial activities. Nevertheless, there is little research on Magnolol in the treatment of parasitic infections currently. Eimeria tenella ( E. tenella ) infection causes damage to epithelial cells and cecal mucosa, resulting in increased intestinal permeability, which is pretty detrimental to the balance of the intestinal microenvironment. However, at present, in the treatment of chicken coccidiosis, the abuse of antibiotics is quite serious, which has brought losses and harms to the chicken farming industry that cannot be ignored. In this study, based on the excellent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of Magnolol, we proved that it does have a desirable therapeutic potential on chicks infected with E. tenella. Actually, the results showed that the clinical symptoms of the chicks infected with E. tenella were relieved and their growth performance was restored by Magnolol treatment. Furthermore, Magnolol improved the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of chicks. Meanwhile, the Magnolol reversed the imbalance of the intestinal microbiota of sick chicks, which recovered the diversity, promoted the potential beneficial bacteria, and inhabited the potential pathogenic bacteria. Overall, Magnolol may be an alternative to chemical drugs that are effective in treating E. tenella infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a millennia, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat various diseases in China. In recent years, more and more Chinese materia medica (CMM) have been studied in scientific research projects, applied in clinical practice, and their extracts have even appeared in some health products. However, the toxicity of some CMM is often overlooked, including hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, neurotoxicity, cardiotoxicity, etc. In this review, the toxic components and their toxicological mechanisms of some toxic CMM were listed according to the chemical structure classification of toxic components. Afterwards, the traditional methods (processing and compatibility) and modern methods (structural modification, biotransformation, etc.) of attenuation of CMM were discussed. Since ancient times, it has been said that "fight fire with fire, fight poison with poison," and toxic CMM are of great significance in the treatment of difficult and severe diseases. The rational application of toxic CMM and their components in clinical practice was also exemplified in this review. While the pharmacological effects of TCMs have been emphasized, the scientific attenuation and rational application of toxic components should be concerned. We hope this review can provide a reference for future related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to solve the security of electronic transactions on limited goods, some quantum blind double signature (QBDS) protocols were proposed. In existing QBDS protocols, all participants must have specific quantum computing capabilities. Realistically, high cost of quantum devices may hinder people from using the QBDS protocol. Therefore, we propose a semi-quantum arbitrator blind double signature (SQABDS) scheme. In this scheme, the sender (signer) and the receiver both are classical participants, which can relatively reduce the dependence on quantum hardware. The introduction of blind signers can protect the privacy of electronic transactions, the introduction of semi-trusted arbitrator can relax the strong assumption about the trustworthiness of the arbitrator, for the arbitrator cannot forge the signature. In addition, the SQABDS scheme can be used to sign classical messages directly without performing any quantum swapping tests or quantum gate operations. Finally, the analysis shows that our scheme is securer and its quantum cost is relatively lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-rank representation (LRR) is a very competitive technique in various real-world applications for its powerful capability in discovering latent structure of noisy or corrupted data set. However, traditional low-rank models treat each data point and feature equally so that noisy data cannot be detected and suppressed effectively and have obvious deterioration in performance, especially in heavy noisy scenario. In this paper, to address this problem, we develop a method of feature and sample scaling for low rank representation. The importance of data points and their features in both feature and sample spaces are considered, as such, clean data points and noisy data points and their features can be distinguished. In addition, based on the observation that noisy data points are usually deviated far away from the principal projection of the data set, a cosine similarity metric between data vector and the principal projection vector is developed to measure the importance of each sample. Applying our method into two classical low rank models such as Low Rank Representation (LRR) and Bilinear Factorization (BF), we can learn better low-rank structure of clean data, while the outliers or missing data being suppressed. Extensive experimental results on ORL, COIL20 and video surveillance, demonstrate that our proposed method can outperform state-of-the-art low rank methods in image clustering tasks with various levels of corruptions, especially in a heavy noisy scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]