The origin of neurodegenerative diseases is linked to the abnormal folding of disease-associated proteins. The traditional amyloid hypothesis has been a focal point of research, but recent findings suggest a more complex picture. This review explores the role of physiological conformation of aggregation-prone domain (also known as prion-like low complexity domain) and multiple co-misfolded proteins in neurodegenerative diseases. We highlight the importance of targeting multi-heterotypic misfolded proteins for effective treatments and emphasize the irreversible neurodegeneration stemming from the loss of physiological folding in prion-like disease-causing proteins underscores the criticality of refolding. Additionally, we introduce the concept of ReproFold Therapeutics, a novel approach aimed at restoring the cellular prion-like folding of disease-causing proteins to rebuild normal cross-β interactomes and mitigate neurodegeneration. Baicalein, a potential drug candidate for this approach, shows promise in vitro and in animal models. Moreover, prion-like low complexity domains implicated in neurodegeneration are also associated with other disorders such as diabetes, cancers, and mental illnesses. Understanding the core pathology of neurodegenerative diseases and the broader implications of prion-like LC domains could revolutionize healthcare approaches and policies worldwide.

The twisted Wang transform distribution family, defined as the composition of parameter shifted inverse CDF function with an original CDF function, is found to be most suitable for matching low shape factor distributions, characterizing hard to fit or to simulate reinsurance portfolio losses for some perils from our previous study. Among them, the best form for matching a hard-to-fit empirical loss distribution for a specific peril, is the Exponential Fractional Extra Power 0 Distribution in (0,1) with CDF:.The simplest yet still a good form of this family is the Transformed Hyperbolic Tangent Distribution with CDF:,which has analytical formulas for the moments. The twisted Wang transform distribution family is compared and confirmed to be superior to all other well-known distribution families through extensive numerical optimization practice, distribution forms guesses, and computer-aided exploration experiments.

Video capsule endoscopy (VCE) is increasingly used to decrease the discomfort among patients owing to its small size. However, VCE has a major drawback of not having narrow band imaging (NBI) functionality. The current VCE has the traditional white light imaging (WLI) only, which has poor performance in the computer-aided detection (CAD) of different types of cancer compared with NBI. Specific cancers, such as esophageal cancer (EC), do not exhibit any early biomarkers, making their early detection difficult. In most cases, the symptoms are unnoticeable, and EC is diagnosed only in later stages, making its 5-year survival rate below 20% on an average. NBI filters provide particular wavelengths that increase the contrast and enhance certain features of the mucosa, thereby enabling early identification of EC. However, VCE does not have a slot for NBI functionality because its size cannot be increased. Hence, NBI image conversion from WLI can be achieved only in post-processing at present. In this study, a complete arithmetic assessment of the decorrelated color space was conducted to generate NBI images from WLI images for VCE of the esophagus. Three parameters, namely, structural similarity index metric (SSIM), entropy, and peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), were used to asses the simulated NBI images. Results show the good performance of the NBI image reproduction method, with SSIM, entropy difference, and PSNR values of 93.215%, 4.360, and 28.064 dB, respectively.

Currently, data regarding optimal treatment modality, response, and outcome specifically for N3 head and neck cancer are lacking. This study aimed to compare the treatment outcomes between definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) to the neck and upfront neck dissection followed by adjuvant CCRT. 93 N3 squamous cell carcinoma head and neck cancer patients were included. Primary tumor treatment was divided to definitive CCRT (CCRT group) or curative surgery followed by adjuvant CCRT (surgery group). Neck treatment was also classified into two treatment modalities: definitive CCRT to the neck (CCRT group) or curative neck dissection followed by adjuvant CCRT (neck dissection group). Overall, the 2-year overall survival (OS), local recurrence-free survival (LRFS), regional recurrence-free survival (RRFS), and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) were 51.8%, 47.3%, 45.6%, and 43.6%, respectively. In both oropharyngeal cancer and nonoropharyngeal cancer patients, in terms of OS, LRFS, RRFS or DMFS no difference was noted regarding primary tumor treatment (CCRT vs. surgery) or neck treatment (CCRT vs. neck dissection). In summary, N3 neck patients treated with definitive CCRT can achieve similar outcomes to those treated with upfront neck dissection followed by adjuvant CCRT. Cautions should be made to avoid overtreatment for this group of patients.

Mulberry is an economically significant crop for the sericulture industry worldwide. Stresses such as drought exposure have a significant influence on plant survival. Metabolome directly reflects plant physiological status; thus, a way to assess this impact is to perform a global metabolomic analysis. This study investigated the effect of drought stress on mulberry Yu-711 metabolic balance using a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based on an untargeted metabolomic approach. For this objective, Yu-711 leaves were subjected to two weeks of drought stress treatment and control without drought stress. Multivariate and univariate statistical analyses highlighted numerous differentially-accumulated metabolic elements as a function of time and treatment. Drought stress led to a more differentiated metabolites response than the control. We found that the levels of total lipids and galactolipids, and phospholipids (PC, PA, PE) were significantly altered, producing 48% of the total differentially expressed metabolites. Fatty acyls were the most abundant lipids expressed and decreased considerably by 73.6%. Prenol lipids class of lipids increased in drought leaves. Other classes of metabolites, including polyphenols( flavonoids and cinnamic acid), organic acid (amino acids), carbohydrates, benzenoids, and organoheterocyclic, all had a dynamic trend in response to the drought stress. However, their levels under drought stress generally decreased significantly compared to the control. These results provide an overview of the metabolic profile of the mulberry plant through differentially-accumulated compounds and provide a better understanding of global plant metabolic changes in defense mechanisms.

Colonoscopy, essential for diagnosing and treating colorectal cancer, relies on effective bowel preparation to inspect the colonic mucosa fully. Traditional education methods include printed instructions and verbal explanations, but these may not ensure clear patient understanding. Poor bowel preparation can obscure mucosal visibility, delaying cancer diagnosis and treatment. Using the outpatient’s Android mobile device, the mobile health care model is provided as a nursing guide to assist in bowel preparation for colonoscopy. This single-blinded, randomized trial en-rolled patients for colonoscopy at a Northern Taiwan gastroenterology center. Eligible patients were physically and mentally healthy and could communicate in Chinese. The study tested the ColonClean app during bowel preparation. After the procedure, endoscopists rated the prepara-tion quality using the Aronchick Scale. Data analysis with SPSS software (version 25.0) evaluated if the app significantly improved bowel preparation compared to those who did not use it. Forty patients were recruited for both the control (conventional method) and experimental (conven-tional method plus ColonClean app) groups. In the experimental group, endoscopists assessed bowel preparation quality; all achieved at least "Fair," with 75% receiving "Excellent" or "Good" ratings. The ColonClean App enhanced bowel preparation quality more effectively than tradi-tional nursing guidance.

This paper aims to present a smart high speed battery charger, powered by a photovoltaic module array, for a LiFePO4 battery as a solar energy storage device. With a battery charging strategy, the presented battery charger involves a Buck converter as the core equipped with a simple maximum power point (MPP) tracker. Considering complexity reduction and easy hardware implementation, a constant voltage MPP tracking approach is adopted such that the maximum amount of output power can be delivered to the load in response to an arbitrary change in the solar radiation. A smart two-stage charging strategy, with a constant current mode followed by a constant voltage mode, is employed in such a way that the battery charge process can be accelerated largely, while the damage caused by overcharging can be prevented. In the end, the performance of this proposal is validated experimentally.

Keywords: gut microbiota; small intestinal bacteria overgrowth; SIBO; diet, dysbiosis; microbial ecology.

Background and Objectives: Treatment for antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis (AAV) must deal with immunosuppression as well as infections associated with compromised immune system, such as tuberculosis (TB). Our aim was to overcome the gap in the literature concerning the risk of incidental TB after diagnosis of AAV. Materials and Methods: This retrospective population-based cohort study was based on the data from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. We used a novel algorithm to identify patients with newly diagnosed granulomatous polyangiitis (GPA) or microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2012. The primary outcome was risk of incidental TB. Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the association between AAV and incidental TB. Results: A total of 2,257 patients with AAV and a propensity-score matched cohort of 9,028 patients were studied. Overall, patients with AAV were at a 1.48x higher risk of contracting incidental TB than were patients in the matched cohort (adjusted HR 1.48; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-2.15). Note that the highest risk of contracting incidental TB was in the first two years following a diagnosis of AAV, with a nearly 1-fold increase in risk (adjusted HR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.01-3.60). Female AAV patients were 3.24x more likely than females without AAV to develop TB (adjusted HR 3.24; 95%CI, 1.85-5.67). Conclusion: Patients with AAV face an elevated risk of contracting incidental TB, particularly within the first two years after AAV diagnosis. The risk of contracting TB is higher among female AAV patients than among females without AAV.

In this study, we examine microscale waterflooding in a randomly close-packed porous medium. Three different porosities are prepared in a microfluidic platform and saturated with silicone oil. Optical video fluorescence microscopy is used to track the water front as it flows through the porous packed bed. The degree of water saturation is compared to water containing two different types of chemical modifiers, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), with water in the absence of a surfactant used as a control. Image analysis of our video data yield saturation curves and calculate fractal dimension, which we use to identify how morphology changes the way an invading water phase moves through the porous media. An inverse analysis based on the implicit pressure explicit saturation (IMPES) simulation technique uses mobility ratio as an adjustable parameter to fit our experimental saturation curves. The results from our inverse analysis combined with our image analysis show that this platform can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of surfactants or polymers as additives for enhancing the transport of water through an oil-saturated porous medium.

This research uses ARM-based FPGA to implement the computation of a virtual-real fusion hardware system. It also evaluates the acceleration effect of virtual-real fusion execution speed after connecting related hardware acceleration and provides a reference for real-time information fusion system design. The hardware uses Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU102 Evaluation Kit. It also obtains color and depth images with Intel® RealsenseTM D435i depth cameras. This system receives image data through the Linux system built on the ARM and fed to the FPGA for object detection using CNN models. In addition, it develops a module for rapidly performing registration between the color images and the depth images. It can calculate the size and position of the display information on the transparent display according to the pixel coordinates and depth values of the human eye and the object. The fusion took about 47ms on a personal computer with a GPU RTX2060 and 25ms on the ZCU102. The acceleration is nearly 168%. Finally, the results were successfully transplanted into the retail display system for demonstration.

Background: Most drug-resistant Escherichia coli isolates in dogs come from diseased dogs. Prior to this study, the prevalence and risk factors of fecal carriage drug-resistant E. coli and epidemic clone sequence type (ST) 131 (including subtypes) isolates in dogs were unknown. Methods: Rectal swabs were used for E. coli isolation from 299 dogs in a veterinary teaching hospital in Taiwan. Antibiotic resistance and multiplex PCR analyses of E. coli for major STs were performed. Result: There were 43.1% cefazolin-resistant, 22.1% fluoroquinolone-resistant, and 9.4% extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing E. coli in our cohort. In the phylogenetic study, B2 was the predominant group (30.1%). The cefazolin-resistant group and ciprofloxacin-resistant group had greater antibiotic exposure in the last 14 days (P < 0.05). The age, sex, and dietary habits of the antibiotic-resistant and -susceptible groups were similar. In the seven isolates of ST131 in fecal colonization, the most predominant subtypes were FimH41 and FimH22. Conclusion: Recent antibiotic exposure was related to the fecal carriage of antibiotic-resistant E. coli isolates. Three major subtypes (FimH41, H22, and H30) of ST131 can thus be found in fecal carriage in dogs in Taiwan.

This study presents a novel approach to analyzing the present value of total profit for non-participating and participating insurance policies in order to determine the optimal profitability of non-participating and participating insurance policies based on applying the approach used in operations research to the field of finance. As such, a comprehensive insurance product evaluation model was developed using both mathematical models and numerical analysis to evaluate the demand for non-participating and participating life insurance policies in response to changes in interest rates. The findings indicate that non-participating life insurance policies offer greater solvency for insurance companies compared to participating policies. The study also highlights the significance of spontaneous and induced demand in determining the total profit of both types of policies. The study concludes that life insurance companies should focus on generating spontaneous consumer demand, reducing induced demand, and implementing the optimal pricing strategy to achieve maximum profits.

Antibiotic-loaded bone cement (ALBC) plays a pivotal role in infection prevention and treatment related to musculoskeletal surgery. The release efficacy of antibiotics from ALBC is closely tied to its surface area, yet little is known about the effective release depth. To investigate the relationship between surface area, volume, and antibiotic elution, spheric ALBC specimens with consistent outer diameters but different internal metal sphere diameters were prepared. Two vancomycin doses were utilized in ALBC specimens with an outer diameter of 35 mm: high (4 g) and low (1 g). Each dosage group included five specimens containing embedded metal spheres with diameters of 15, 25, 29, 32, or 33 mm. The resulting shell-like ALBC specimens had thicknesses of 10 mm, 5 mm, 3 mm, 1.5 mm, or 1 mm, respectively. The specimens were immersed in sterile phosphate buffer solution, and antibiotic elution was measured at designated sampling times (1, 3, 6, 10, 24, 48, 72, and 168 hours). Methylene blue was employed to visualize penetration depth. Vancomycin elution did not display statistically significant differences between high- and low-dose groups. In both groups, specimens with 1 mm thickness exhibited a higher vancomycin release efficiency (high-dose group: 18560±5474 μg, 6.7%; low-dose group: 2017±419 μg, 2.6%), decreasing sharply in thicker ALBC specimens. Methylene blue penetration depth showed no apparent difference between high-dose and low-dose groups. ALBC thickness does not significantly impact antibiotic elution, while surface area and antibiotic dose exert notable effects. These in vitro findings offer potential applications in clinical treatments for musculoskeletal infections.

Wearable assistant devices play an important role in daily life for people with disabilities. Those who are hearing impaired may face dangers while walking or driving on the road. The major danger is their inability to hear warning sounds from cars or ambulances. Thus, the goal of this study is to develop a wearable assistant device for the hearing impaired to recognize emergency vehicle sirens on the road using edge computing. An EfficientNet-based fuzzy rank-based ensemble model was proposed to classify seven audio sounds, including human vocalizations and emergency vehicle sirens. This model was embedded in an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense development board. The audio files were respectively obtained from the CREMA-D dataset and Large Scale Audio dataset of emergency vehicle sirens on the road, with a total number of 8756 files. The seven audio sounds included neutral vocalization, anger vocalization, fear vocalization, happy vocalization, car horn sound, siren sound, and ambulance siren sound. The audio signal was converted into a spectrogram by the short-time Fourier transform as the feature. When one of the car horns, sirens, or ambulance sirens was detected, the wearable assistant device presented alarms through vibration and messages on the OLED panel. The performances of the EfficientNet-based fuzzy rank-based ensemble model in offline computing achieved an accuracy of 97.1%, precision of 97.79%, sensitivity of 96.8%, and specificity of 97.04%. In edge computing, the results were an accuracy of 95.2%, precision of 93.2%, sensitivity of 95.3%, and specificity of 95.1%. Thus, the proposed wearable assistant device has the potential benefit of helping the hearing impaired avoid traffic accidents.

This article presents an automated vision-based algorithm for the die-scale inspection of wafer images captured using scanning acoustic tomography (SAT). This algorithm can find defective and abnormal die-scale patterns, and produce a wafer map to visualize the distribution of defects and anomalies on the wafer. The main procedures include standard template extraction, die detection through template matching, pattern candidate prediction through clustering, and pattern classification through deep learning. To conduct the template matching, we first introduce a two-step method to obtain a standard template from the original SAT image. Subsequently, a majority of the die patterns are detected through template matching. Thereafter, the columns and rows arranged from the detected dies are predicted using a clustering method; thus, an initial wafer map is produced. This map is composed of detected die patterns and predicted pattern candidates. In the final phase of the proposed algorithm, we implement a deep learning-based model to determine defective and abnormal patterns in the wafer map. The experimental results verified the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed algorithm. In conclusion, the proposed method performs well in identifying defective and abnormal die patterns, and produces a wafer map that presents important information for solving wafer fabrication issues.

The outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections in 2019 is in dire need of finding potential therapeutic agents. In this study, we used molecular docking to repurpose HIV protease inhibitors and nucleoside analogues for COVID-19, with evaluations based on docking scores calculated by AutoDock Vina and RosettaCommons. Our results suggest that Indinavir and Remdesivir possess the best docking scores, and comparison of the docking sites of the two drugs reveal a near perfect dock in the overlapping region of the protein pockets. After further investigation of the functional regions inferred from the proteins of SARS coronavirus, we discovered that Indinavir does not dock on any active sites of the protease, which may give rise to concern in regards to the efficacy of Indinavir. On the other hand, the docking site of Remdesivir is not compatible with any known functional regions, including template binding motifs, polymerization motifs and nucleoside triphosphate (NTP) binding motifs. However, when we tested the active form (CHEMBL2016761) of Remdesivir, the docking site revealed a perfect dock in the overlapping region of the NTP binding motif. This result suggests that Remdesivir could be a potential therapeutic agent. Clinical trials still must be done in order to confirm the curative effect of these drugs.

The standard treatment for early-stage lung cancer is complete tumor excision by limited resection of the lung. Pre-operative localization is used before video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) to improve the accuracy of pulmonary nodule excision. However, lung atelectasis and hypoxia resulting from controlling apnea during the localization procedure may affect the localization accuracy. Pre-procedural pulmonary recruitment may improve respiratory mechanics and oxygenation during localization. In this study, we investigated the potential benefits of pre-localization pulmonary recruitment prior to pulmonary ground-glass nodule localization in a hybrid operating room. We hypothesized that pre-localization pulmonary recruitment would increase localization accuracy, improve oxygenation, and prevent the need for re-inflation during the localization procedure. We retrospectively enrolled patients with multiple pulmonary nodule localizations before surgical intervention in our hybrid operating room. We compared localization accuracies between patients who had undergone pre-procedure pulmonary recruitment and patients who had not. Saturation, re-inflation rate, apnea time, procedure-related pneumothorax, and procedure time were also recorded as secondary outcomes. Patients who had undergone pre-procedure recruitment had better saturation, shorter procedure time, and higher localization accuracy. The pre-procedure pulmonary recruitment maneuver was effective in increasing regional lung ventilation, leading to improved oxygenation and localization accuracy.

Carbapenemase-producing organisms (CPOs) present a major threat to public health, demanding precise diagnostic techniques their detection. Discrepancies among CPO tests have raised concerns, partly due to limitations in detecting bacterial diversity within host/specimen. We explored the impact of unbiased colony selection on carbapenemase testing and assessed its relevance on various tests. Based on "FirstAll" for unbiased colony selection to reduce bias, we compared modified carbapenem inactivation method/EDTA-modified carbapenem inactivation method (mCIM/eCIM), Carba5, the CPO panel, and multiplex PCR (M-PCR). Initially, we compared FirstAll to conventional colony selection for mCIM. Second, we used M-PCR as a reference, to evaluate test performance across seven CPO species. The results revealed that FirstAll selection improved carbapenemase detection, revising false-negative in 10.5% of K. pneumoniae isolates. In addition, 12.4% of CPOs tested positive for multiple carbapenemase genes. Both the Carba5 test and CPO panel showed suboptimal performance (sensitivity/specificity: Carba5 75.5%/89.0%, CPO panel 78.1%/74.0%). Carba5 test provided specific carbapenemase class assignments but CPO panel failed in 20.3% of cases. Carba5 test and the CPO panel results correlated well with ceftazidime-avibactam minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs). Concordance for class A/D with MICs was 88.3% for Carba5 and 92.0% for the CPO panel; whereas for class B, it was 86.5% for Carba5 and 76.2% for the CPO panel. In conclusion, FirstAll as the unbiased colony selection impacted carbapenemase testing. With FirstAll, the diagnostic performance of either Carba5 or the CPO panel was compromised. The utilization of ceftazidime-avibactam guided by either the CPO panel or Carba5 was appropriate.

Red djulis (Chenopodium formosanum) is a native cereal plant in Taiwan; it contains abundant polyphenols, betalian and dietary fiber. The appearance of red djulis is bright red. Therefore, it is also called the “ruby of cereals”. The antioxidative activity of red djulis extract is well-understood. However, the antiaging function still remains unclear. This study examined the potential of red djulis extract for enhancing collagen secretion and preventing cutaneous aging using red djulis extracts. The red djulis extracts are comprised of an abundant active component that can effectively enhance the ability of collagen secretion of dermal fibroblasts, prevent the glycation of collagen and resist the damage of ultraviolet light exposure. After fibroblast treatment with red djulis extracts, TGM1, KRT1, KRT10 and SOD2 genes were up-regulated significantly by 2.3, 4.3, 4.4 and 27.3 times, respectively, compared to those of the control group. Additionally, it can increase COL1A2 gene expression by 43% and decrease MMP9 gene expression 33%. Therefore, it was demonstrated that red djulis extracts affect gene expressions related to the skin barrier, antioxidation and collagen. Moreover, we found positive effects on skin barrier integrity, endogenous antioxidant activity and skin collagen-preservation. The preparation of the red djulis extracts is environmental friendly and can promote the economic value of Chenopodium formosanum; thus, the proposed extract is suitable for applications in the development of food products, especially beverages, skin care and cosmetic products.

An immiscible blend of poly(hydroxy ether of bisphenol-A) (phenoxy) and poly(1,4-butylene terephthalate) (PBT) with phase separation was observed in as-blended samples. However, compatibilization of the phenoxy/PBT blends can be promoted through chemical exchange reactions of phenoxy with PBT upon annealing. In contrast to the as-blended samples, the annealed phenoxy/PBT blends had a homogeneous phase with a single T_g that could be enhanced by annealing at 260°C. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy demonstrated that phase homogenization could be promoted by annealing of the phenoxy/PBT blend, where alcoholytic exchange occurred between the dangling hydroxyl group in phenoxy and the carbonyl group in PBT in the heated blends. The alcoholysis reaction changes the aromatic linkages to aliphatic linkages in carbonyl groups, which initially led to the formation of a graft copolymer of phenoxy and PBT with an aliphatic/aliphatic carbonyl link. The progressive alcoholysis reaction resulted in the transformation of the initial homopolymers into block copolymers and finally into random copolymers, which promoted phase compatibilization in blends of phenoxy with PBT. Due to the fact that the amount of copolymers increased upon annealing, crystallization of PBT was inhibited by alcoholytic exchange in the blends.

Patients receiving hemodialysis are at risk of vascular access infections (VAIs) and particularly vulnerable to the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Hemodialysis patients were also at increased risk of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study determined the change in the molecular and antibiotic resistance profiles of S. aureus isolates from VAIs during the pandemic compared with before. 102 S. aureus isolates were collected from VAIs between November 2013 and December 2021. Before the pandemic, 69 isolates were collected, 58%, 39.1%, and 2.9% from arteriovenous grafts (AVGs), tunneled cuffed catheters (TCCs), and arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs), respectively. The prevalence of AVG and TCC isolates changed to 39.4% and 60.6%, respectively, of 33 isolates during the pandemic. Sequence type (ST)59 was the predominant clone in TCC-methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and AVG-MRSA before the pandemic, whereas the predominant clone was ST8 in AVG-MRSA during the pandemic. ST59 carrying the ermB gene was resistant to clindamycin and erythromycin. By contrast, ST8 carrying the msrA gene was exclusively resistant to erythromycin. The ST distribution for different VAIs changed from before to during the pandemic. The change in antibiotic resistance rate for different VAIs was closely related to the distribution of specific STs.

Osteoporosis is a common problem in orthopedic medicine, and it has become an important medical issue in orthopedics as Taiwan is gradually becoming an aging society. In the diagnosis of osteoporosis, the bone mineral density (BMD) derived from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the main criterion for orthopedic diagnosis of osteoporosis, but due to the high cost of this equipment and the lower penetration rate of the equipment compared to the X-ray images, the problem of osteoporosis has not been effectively solved for many people who suffer from osteoporosis, however, at present, in clinical diagnosis, doctors are not yet able to accurately interpret X-ray images for osteoporosis manually, and must rely on the data obtained from DXA. In recent years, with the continuous development of artificial intelligence, especially in machine learning and deep learning, significant progress has been made in image recognition. Therefore, it is worthwhile to revisit whether it is possible to use a convolutional neural network model to read a hip X-ray image and then predict the patient's BMD. In this study, we proposed a hip X-ray image segmentation model and a hip X-ray image recognition classification model. First, we used the U-Net model as a framework to segment the femoral neck, greater trochanter, wards triangle, and the total hip in the hip X-ray images. We then performed image matting and data augmentation. Finally, we constructed a predictive model for osteoporosis using deep learning algorithms. In the segmentation experiments, we used intersection over union (IoU) as the evaluation metric for image segmentation, and both the U-Net and U-Net++ models achieved segmentation results greater than or equal to 0.5. In the classification experiments, using the T-score as the classification basis, the total hip using the DenseNet121 model has the highest accuracy of 74%.

Traditional edible barbecue products use with lemon juice not only make the barbecue more delicious but also reduce the risk of PAHs in the barbecue products. One of the major economics crops in Taiwan, the waste from citrus fruits was very tremendous mass. However, the peelings of citrus fruits are rich in essential oil, especially, the limonene is the major. Whether the anti-carcinogenesis activities of terpene, such as limonene, in citrus fruits essential oil extraction. This study to demonstrate the PAHs content in fish skin increased markedly after being roasted at 210℃ for 20 minutes and greater mutagenicity risk of roasted fish skin was observed by Ame's test. The reduction of mutagenicity risk of roasted fish skin, which the antimutagenic abilities of substances in descending order were limonene > cold pressure oil > lemon >grapefruit. The antimutagenicity rate and ability of the three extracts were limonene: 18–23%; cold-pressed lemon oil: 18–22%; and steam distilled lemon essential oil: 8–16%. The obvious anti- mutagenicity effects against the PAHs mutagenicity of roasted fish skins can be found in citrus fruits essential oil extraction.

The author’s opinion is that the negative energy solutions of the Dirac equation mean that a particle can be of negative kinetic energy (NKE) besides positive kinetic energy (PKE). We think that NKE particles are dark ones and NKE matter is dark matter. In our previous works, the dark matter theory of the NKE version and the dark energy theory that matched dark matter theory were put forth. In this work, we investigate the topics related to the metamorphosis of objects between PKE and NKE. We first evaluate the collosions between a PKE and a NKE particles. A scenario of accelerating PKE particles is raised. We put forth the cosmic dark radiation background and gravity potential background. In the universe, negative energy is predominating. In the observable universe, substances constitute stable PKE systems. The total energy of every such system is negative. We propose a mechanism that NKE substances combine into stable PKE systems. Macroscopically, NKE objects can constitute stable PKE astrophysical systems by means of gravity between them. Microscopically, NKE particles can combine into stable PKE systems by means of attractive interactions between them, say, Coulomb attraction. Currently, people think that there are four ingrediants in the universe: photons \Omega_R0, matter \Omega_M0, dark matter \Omega_DM, and dark energy \Omega_\lambda0. We analyze the order of the appearance of the four ingredients and conclude that qualitatively, their proportions should be \Omega_\lambda0 > \Omega_DM > \Omega_M0 > \Omega_R0.

Abstract: Laryngoscopy for tracheal intubation has been developed for many decades. Among various conventional laryngoscopes, videolaryngoscopes (VL) have been applied in different patient populations, including difficult airways. The safety and effectiveness of VL have been repeatedly studied in both normal and difficult airways. The superiority of VL then has been observed and is advocated as the standard of care. In contrast to laryngoscopy, the development of video-assisted intubating stylet (VS, also named as styletubation) has been noticed two dec-ades ago. Since then, sporadic clinical experiences of use have appeared in literature. In this re-view article, we presented our vast use experiences of the styletubation (more than 55,000 pa-tients since 2016). We found this technique is swift (the time to intubate: from 3 s to 10 s), smooth (first-attempt success rate: 100%), safe (no airway complications), and easy (high subjective satis-faction and fast learning curve for the novice trainees) in both normal and difficult airway sce-narios. We therefore propose styletubation technique can be feasibly applied as universal rou-tine use for tracheal intubation.

Background: This retrospective study evaluates the survival effects of metronomic maintenance therapy with fluoropyrimidine in patients with stage III colorectal cancer (CRC) according to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression. Methods: We enrolled 197 patients with stage III CRC who had undergone radical resection and FOLFOX regimen adjuvant chemotherapy. The clinicopathological features and effects of metronomic maintenance therapy on survival according to treatment group and EGFR expression were analyzed. By conducting an in vitro cell line study and in vivo study through knockdout of EGFR gene, we analyzed the capacities of cell proliferation and migration. Results: Postoperative relapse and mortality were significantly more common in the FOLFOX group. Metronomic maintenance therapy was a significantly independent predictive factor of postoperative relapse and mortality, as well as a prognostic factor of disease-free survival and overall survival. The significant differences of survival between the two groups were only observed in patients with positive EGFR expression. Conclusions: The present study suggested EGFR expression as the prognostic factor in patients with stage III CRC receiving metronomic maintenance therapy. By analyzing EGFR expression, we can identify the potential candidates with optimal survival benefit from metronomic maintenance therapy in patients with stage III CRC.

For solving the fractional differential equations in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), it’s complicated and difficult by the Laplace and Fourier transforms. Based on the Caputo fractional derivative, the analytical solutions for unsteady unidirectional flows of a generalized Oldroyd-B fluid are deduced by the separation of variables method. Results show that the analytical solutions are given easily, and have good university. For some specific parameter values, the well-known analytical solutions for the generalized second grade fluid, the generalized Upper-Convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid as well as the ordinary Oldroyd-B fluid can be obtained.

The phenomenon of interference is a characteristic of all waves. This paper reviews the interference of classical waves and of matter waves in quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, there are two interference mechanisms between identical particles. One is that the de Broglie wavelengths of two interference waves are the same, which is called the equal wavelength interference mechanism. The other is that the wavelengths of interference waves can also be different, in which case there should be an exchange term in additional to the direction term in the wave function. There is a fixed phase difference between the two terms, which causes interference. This is called exchange effect interference mechanism. We propose an experiment, which is simpler to what has been done, to show the exchange effect interference. There is a special case where two interference waves can satisfy both the two mechanisms. We propose an experiment to discriminate that in this case which mechanism plays a role on earth.

People have long had a problem: the equations of motion that reflect the laws of physics are invariance under time inversion, while there always are irreversible processes for gases compose of microscopic particles. This article solves this problem. The point is that we should distinguish between the concepts of the equation of motion and motion. We also need to distinguish between the concepts of time-inverse motion and reverse motion. The former is anticlockwise, which is a frictional motion, while the latter is clockwise. For the single-particle motions in classical mechanics and in quantum mechanics, we present mathematical expressions for time-inversion motion and reverse motion, respectively. We demonstrate that single-particle motion is irreversible. The definition of the reversibility of two-particle collisions is given. According to the definition, the two-particle collision as a microscopic motion processes is irreversible. Consequently, for a gas consisting of a large number of particles colliding with each other, its movement should be irreversible, unless the condition of detailed balance is met. We give a physical explanation for the detailed balance, which does not concern the meaning of microscopic reversibility. The detailed balance means that after a pair of reciprocal collisions occur, the distribution function of the particles remains unchanged. Therefore, microscopic two-particle collision events are irreversible, but the statistical average of a large number of collision events makes it possible for the macroscopic process of a gas to be reversible. Conclusively, we clarify the microscopic mechanism of the irreversible process of gases.

Up to now, Schrödinger equation, Klein-Gordon equation (KGE) and Dirac equation are believed the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger equation has a defect that there is no NKE solutions. Dirac equation has positive kinetic energy (PKE) and negative kinetic energy (NKE) branches. Both branches should have low momentum, or nonrelativistic, approximations: one is Schrödinger equation and the other is NKE Schrödinger equation. KGE has two problems: it is an equation of second time derivative, and calculated density is not definitely positive. To overcome the problems, it should be revised as PKE and NKE decoupled KGEs. The fundamental equations of quantum mechanics after the modification have at least two merits. They are of unitary in that everyone contains the first time derivative and are symmetric with respect to PKE and NKE. This reflects the symmetry of the PKE and NKE matters, as well as matter and dark matter, of our universe. The problems of one-dimensional step potentials are resolved by means of the modified fundamental equations for a nonrelativistic particle.

The existences of the N→C dative bonds in the complexes between N-containing molecules and fullerenes have been verified both theoretically and experimentally. However, finding stable N→C dative bonds is still a highly challenging task. In this work, we investigated computationally the N→C dative bonds in the complexes formed by fullerene C60 with 1,2,5-chalcogenadiazoles, 2,1,3-benzochalcogenadiazoles and 1,2,4,5-chalcogenatriazoles, respectively. It was found that the N→C dative bonds are formed along with the formation of the N–Ch···C (Ch = S, Se, Te) chalcogen bonds. In the gas phase, from S-containing complexes through Se-containing complexes to Te-containing complexes, the intrinsic interaction energies become more and more negative, which indicates that the N–Ch···C chalcogen bonds can facilitate the formation of the N→C dative bonds. The intrinsic interaction energies are compensated by the large deformation energy of fullerene C60. The total interaction energies of Te-containing complexes are negative, while both of the total interaction energies of S-containing complexes and Se-containing complexes are positive. This means that the N→C dative bonds in the Te-containing complexes are more easily observed in experiments in comparison with those in the S-containing complexes and Se-containing complexes. This study provides a new theoretical perspective on the experimental observation of the N→C dative bonds in the complexes involving fullerenes. Further, the formation of stable N→C dative bonds in the complexes involving fullerenes can significantly change the properties of fullerenes, which will greatly simulate and expand the application range of fullerenes.

A perirectal abscess, while typically considered benign, has the potential to invade extraperitoneal spaces, including the space of Retzius, resulting in complications with severe systemic illness. It is postulated that there is communication within adipose tissue between the pararectal spaces and the vesical extraperitoneal space anteriorly, secondary to the termination of the umbilical-vesical fascia at the reflection of the vesical peritoneum. While occurrences of perirectal abscess ex-tending to the extraperitoneal space are infrequent, a thorough understanding of the anatomical structure, physiology, and the subsequent therapeutic approach remains crucial. For assessment, a computed tomography scan with intravenous contrast is preferred for evaluation, given the probable insidious and nonspecific nature of the clinical presentation, physical exam signs, and even laboratory studies. Primary therapeutic modalities involve immediate resuscitation, intra-venous administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and percutaneous drainage. Surgical in-tervention may become necessary in cases where there is no prompt improvement in septic progression. Additionally, the underlying comorbidities and baseline illness could be indicative of unfavorable outcomes. If fever or sepsis is not efficiently controlled, a more comprehensive workup or intervention should be contemplated, considering the associated higher risks of complications and mortality rates. In this study, we presented the case of a 68-year-old male with diffuse pain located in the lower abdomen. Fortunately, an immediate computed tomography scan played a pivotal role in iden-tifying a perirectal abscess with upward extension to the space of Retzius, which was subse-quently treated appropriately. Above all, this rare case presentation underscores the anatomic complexity within pelvic compartments and emphasizes the importance of maintaining high-index suspicions and analyzing overall differential diagnosis.

InGaN/GaN samples grown on c-plane sapphire substrate with different In concentrations by metal organic chemical vapor deposition are demonstrated. The subsequent capping GaN layer growth opens a possibility for dislocation reduction due to the lateral strain relaxation in growth geometry. We present the further growth optimization and innovative characterization of InGaN layers overgrown on different structures with varying In concentrations. The photoelectrical and optical properties of the InGaN layers with or without capping GaN layer were investigated by time-resolved picosecond transient grating and temperature dependence photoluminescence. We note a 10-fold increase in carrier lifetime in the InGaN layers when the sample structure changes from PIN to single InGaN layer.

Since sensor-based perception systems are used in autonomous vehicle applications, validating such systems is imperative to guarantee the robustness of the systems before they are being put to use. In this study, a comprehensive corruption-related simulation-based robustness verification and enhancement process for sensor-based perception systems is proposed. Firstly, we present a methodology and scenario-based corruption generation tools for creating diverse simulated test scenarios that can analogously represent real-world traffic environments, especially considering corruption types related to safety concern. Then, an effective corruption similarity filtering algorithm is proposed to remove corruption types with high similarity and identify the representative corruption types to represent all considered corruption types. As a result, we can generate efficient corruption-related robustness test scenarios with less testing time and good scenario coverage. Subsequently, we perform the vulnerability analysis of object detection models to identify model weaknesses and construct an effective training dataset for model vulnerability enhancement. This enhances the tolerance of object detection models to weather and noise-related corruptions, ultimately improving the robustness of the perception system. We employ case studies to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed robustness verification and enhancement procedures. Additionally, we explore the impact of different "similarity overlap threshold" parameter settings on scenario coverage, effectiveness, scenario complexity (size of training and testing datasets), and time costs.

Celtis sinensis is an adaptable species that is widely grown in southern China. In June 2022, a leaf blotch disease of C. sinensis was observed in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. Based on morphological characterization, three isolates were identified as Alternaria species. Phylogenetic analysis of combined ITS, GAPDH, TEF1-α, RPB2 and Alt a 1 sequences identified the three isolates we obtained as Alternaria alternata and Alternaria koreana. Koch’s postulates were fulfilled in the greenhouse, and the pathogenicity of A. alternata and A. koreana was determined by leaf inoculation tests on C. sinensis seedlings. The symptoms of indoor inoculation were consistent with those in the field. A. alternata and A. koreana can grow at 15-35 °C, with an optimal growth temperature of 25 °C. The results of fungicide sensitivity experiments indicated that A. alternata and A. koreana were the most sensitive to prochloraz, which may be a useful strategy for the future prevention and control management of A. alternata and A. koreana. This study provides the first step for further research on A. alternata and A. koreana as pathogens of C. sinensis and provides a theoretical basis for future control strategies.

With the development of organizational biology and forced from the EU Cosmetic Regulation (EU/1223/2009) with the complete ban of animal testing for cosmetic purposes, 3D skin models have been widely developed due to their similar physiological structure and metabolic function to native human tissue. 3D skin models for in vitro cosmetic evaluation are still promising alternative methods for evaluating phototoxicity, corrosivity and irritation. These models have been used for early screening and later validation of toxicity and efficacy evaluation by many well-known cosmetic companies. 3D skin models have become an important tool in cosmetic evaluation research. This article reviews the development of 3D skin models and their application in cosmetic evaluation. An outlook on the current application and future technological development directions in the cosmetic field is also presented.

This paper aims to develop a hierarchical risk assessment model using the newly-developed evidential reasoning (ER) rule, which constitutes a generic conjunctive probabilistic reasoning process. In this paper, we first provide a brief introduction to the basics of the ER rule and emphasize the strengths for representing and aggregating uncertain information from multiple experts and sources. Further, we discuss the key steps of developing the hierarchical risk assessment framework systematically, including (1) formulation of risk assessment hierarchy, (2) representation of both qualitative and quantitative information, (3) elicitation of attribute weights and information reliabilities, (4) aggregation of assessment information using the ER rule and (5) quantification and ranking of risks using utility-based transformation. The proposed hierarchical risk assessment framework can potentially be implemented to various complex and uncertain systems. A case study on the fire/explosion risk assessment of marine vessels demonstrates the applicability of the proposed risk assessment model.

Background: This retrospective study evaluate the survival effects of metronomic maintenance therapy with fluoropyrimidine in patients with stage III colorectal cancer (CRC) according to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression. Methods: We enrolled 197 patients with stage III CRC who had undergone radical resection and FOLFOX regimen adjuvant chemotherapy. The clinicopathological features and effects of metronomic maintenance therapy on survival according to treatment group and EGFR expression were analyzed. By conducting an in vitro cell line study and in vivo study through knockdout of EGFR gene, we analyzed the capacities of cell proliferation and migration. Results: Postoperative relapse and mortality were significantly more common in the FOLFOX group. Metronomic maintenance therapy was a significantly independent predictive factor of postoperative relapse and mortality, as well as a prognostic factor of disease-free survival and overall survival. We also demonstrated that EGFR-knockout Caco2 cells are more sensitive to the inhibition effect of fluoropyrimidine than the control those. Conclusions: The present study suggested EGFR expression as the prognostic factor in patients with stage III CRC receiving metronomic maintenance therapy. By analyzing EGFR expression and treatment strategies, we can identify the potential candidates with optimal survival benefit from metronomic maintenance therapy in patients with stage III CRC.

Since the development of CBCT had been utilized in dentistry, the images of the CBCT can assist the surgeon to evaluate the anatomy carefully. Despite the value of the radiology evaluation, the implant procedures may require additional consideration rather than only evaluating the anatomical factors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the predictability of using CBCT alone to plan for implant placement on the edentulous patient digitally CBCT images were analyzed by clinicians, measuring the ridge heights and widths of 4 selected implant sites in the maxillary and 2 selected implant sites in the mandibular arches for 91 patients planning for the implant-supported overdenture. (A total of 47 patients out of the 91 had completed the implant placement on the edentulous ridge, contributing to 55 upper and/or lower arches (136 dental implants). . Both predictabilities are low, implying the CBCT planning for implant placement on the edentulous ridge is not a good index and is insufficient to predict the surgical procedures as a solo method. The finding of this study indicates that digital planning by CBCT is insufficient to serve as an individual tool to predict implant procedures. Further information and evaluation must be considered for implant placement on the edentulous ridge.

Influenced by the quasi-stationary Mei-yu front and the development of mesoscale low vortices on the Mei-yu front, a torrential rain event occurred in Suzhou on July 6, 2020. The 24-hour rainfall recorded by the automatic station exceeded 200 millimeters, with the highest hourly intensity surpassing 70 millimeters, accompanied by thunderstorms and strong winds. This heavy precipitation process was characterized by suddenness, extremity, long duration, high precipitation efficiency, and backward propagation. Using various data sources such as the European ERA5 reanalysis data, ground-based automatic stations, sounding, Doppler weather radar, and wind profile radar, this paper analyzed in detail the circulation characteristics and radar echo structures of this torrential rain event, and further studied the triggering, feature evolution, and maintenance mechanisms of the heavy precipitation.The results show: (1) The continuously strengthening low-level jet stream propagates downward forming an ultra-low-level jet stream. Heavy precipitation is located on the left front side of the jet exit area, where strong convergence and lifting in the boundary layer overlap with the ascending branch of the secondary circulation above the shear line, resulting in heavy precipitation. (2) A supercell storm with intense precipitation produced this heavy rainfall event, characterized by a low centroid of strong echo; echo-free vault, bounded weak echo region, and other supercell structural features. During this event, the high reflectivity factor areas corresponded to high KDP value areas, indicating a large amount of liquid water content. Vertically, the KDP column can track the rainwater mixing ratio well, and its location corresponds to the vicinity of the short-term heavy precipitation occurrence. The high KDP value area mainly consists of numerous precipitation particles, and the vertical vortex wind field structure causes rapid growth of precipitation particles through continuous rolling. Furthermore, it can be found through correlation coefficients (CC) that there are always high-value areas for CC since they correspond to areas of intense precipitation. (3) Continuous triggering of mesoscale convective cloud clusters on the east-west ground convergence line leads to new development and forms a "train effect." Strong frontogenesis in both horizontal and vertical directions triggers and sustains this heavy precipitation event. The significant increase in liquid water and water vapor density has indicative significance for the occurrence of heavy precipitation.

The aim of this case-series report article is to provide a new topical view of the styletubation (video intubating stylet technique) in obese patients undergoing bariatric surgeries. In contrast to various conventional direct laryngoscopes (DLs), videolaryngoscopes (VLs) have been applied in such obese population with potentially difficult airway populations. The safety and effectiveness of VLs have been repeatedly studied and the superiority of VLs then has been observed and is advocated as a routine use. In this article, among our vast use experiences of the styletubation (more than 54,998 patients since 2016) for routine tracheal intubation, we present such unique experience to apply such intubating technique in obese patient undergoing bariatric surgery. Consistent with the experiences applied in other patient populations, we found the styletubation technique to be swift (the time to intubate from 5 s to 24 s), smooth (first-attempt success rate: 100%), safe (no airway complications), and easy (high subjective satisfaction). The learning curve can be steep but is easily overcome if technical pitfalls are avoided. We, therefore, propose that the styletubation technique can be feasibly applied for tracheal intubation in obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery.

With the continuous development of Artificial Intelligence technology and Internet of Things engineering, more and more driver-less vehicles have been developed and put into the industrial production. The birth of driver-less vehicles undoubtedly brings new vitality to a large amount of industries, particularly in transportation. For the mining industry, transportation is undoubtedly an extremely important link in the whole production process. If the driver-less vehicles can be applied to the underground mines, it can not only improve the production and transportation capacity of the whole mine, but also can reduce the occurrence of many mine safety accidents. ZigBee WSN technology can play a greater role in the narrow environment like underground mines according to the relevant literature, this concept paper just like a engineering project plan mainly tries to integrate the ZigBee WSN technology and the communication-based train control (CBTC) system to explore the possibility of the driver-less vehicles to be used in the underground mines, which aims to solve practical engineering problems for the engineering projects. As the mining engineers, we put forward the concept of this integrated system in this concept paper, but we need to continue to work hard for the future of the underground mines. This concept paper serves just as a guide to the Tossing out a brick to get a jade gem, has a few implications for the development of underground mine transportation.

This paper presents the experimental implementations of the mathematical models and algorithms developed in Part I. Two experiments are carried out. The first experiment aims at the determinations of the correction coefficients of the mathematical model. The dot grid target is measured and the measurement data are processed by our developed and validated algorithms introduced in Part I. The values of the coefficients are indicated and analysed. Uncertainties are evaluated with implementation of the Monte Carlo method. The second experiment measures a different area of the dot grid target. The measurement results are corrected according to the coefficients determined in the first experiment. The mean residual between the measured points and their corresponding certified values reduced 29.6% after the correction. The sum of squared errors reduced 47.7%. The methods and the algorithms for raw data processing, such as data partition, fittings of dots’ centres, K-means clustering, etc., are the same for both two experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that our method for the correction of the errors produced by the movement of lateral stage of confocal microscope is meaningful and practicable.

One of the most leading causes of death worldwide is Colorectal cancer(CRC). Polyp segmentation is the most important detected measure for preventing CRC. However, there is still a missing rate for diminutive polyps and multiple ones. In order to solve the phenomenon, we propose to introduce auxiliary attention module(AAM) that can enhance the learning of features related to multiple and diminutive polyps by focusing more on the located and detailed information. Meanwhile, we design to decrease missed rate of multiple and diminutive polyps by implementing an area adaptive loss(AAL) which adapts the weight according to the area and the number of polyps. Our proposed novel AAM and AAL concentrates on training with hard examples and localized information. To evaluate the effectiveness and generalization ability of our proposed model, We utilize three different datasets of variable sizes and a cross dataset. Our proposed method achieves the best results on the Kvasir-SEG dataset, the CVC-ClinicDB dataset and the cross dataset, particularly for the Kvasir-Sessile dataset consisting of small,flat and diminutive polyps. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed DoubleAANet surpass the performance of all existing state-of-the-art segmentation methods.

In order to make full use of the complementarity of existing navigation systems to improve the navigation and positioning accuracy, this paper investigates the visual/INS integrated navigation system based on the factor graph optimization (FGO) algorithm. In the traditional visual/INS integrated navigation system, there is often the problem of image blurring due to the rapid change of light and shadow captured by the vision sensor and the attitude change of the carrier, which leads to the decrease of the positioning accuracy of the combined navigation system. Therefore, this paper firstly introduces Retinex algorithm and BID algorithm to carry out the design of image de-blurring method; then implements the visual/INS integrated navigation algorithm based on the factor graph optimization method; finally, the experimental scheme is designed, comparative experiments are carried out, and the researched method is verified by using the public dataset. The experimental results show that the combined navigation algorithm realized in this paper has high accuracy, and its positioning accuracy is improved by 40% compared with visual positioning.

As China put forward its “carbon emissions peak and carbon neutrality” goals, how to achieve carbon reduction had become a key for China’s goal. The manufacturing industry is an important source of carbon dioxide emissions. For a manufacturing country like China, adjustments in various aspects of the industry would have a huge impact on carbon emissions. As an important reform of contemporary production mode, the process of production automation in China will inevitably affect China's carbon emissions. Therefore, the analysis of the impact of production automation on carbon dioxide emissions was an important basis for judging the future carbon reduction in China. Refer to the traditional study of carbon Kuznets curve, this paper analyzed the impact of average wage on production automation and the role of production automation in the carbon Kuznets curve(CKC). This paper proposed that production automation plays a mediating role in the process of carbon emissions, and gives a verification model of the mediating role. By analyzing the relationship between average wage and production automation process, the U-shaped curve relationship between them was verified. By examining the relationship between carbon dioxide emission data and production automation industry in China, we verified that production automation plays a partial mediating role in the change of carbon Kuznets curve. Combined with the analysis of the two parts, this paper believed that with the continuous development of China's intelligent manufacturing industry, China's carbon reduction prospects were more optimistic, and there was a good industrial foundation to achieve the “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” goals. Finally, this paper proposes policy suggestions as increase research investment in production automation, help promote the application of production automation, encourage the research and application development of low-carbon technology, especially encourage modular design, so as to give full play to the role of production automation in the process of carbon neutrality in China.

Promoting close and sustainable cooperation between schools, enterprises, and government has become an important concern in many countries. Based on evolutionary game theory, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of schools, enterprises, and government in order to analyze the stability of strategies of the different players. The results show that the main factor that influences the stability of the strategies of schools and enterprises is the reward of positive cooperation from sources other than the government, and the main factor that influences the stability of the strategy of the government is the benefit of positive cooperation strategy under the scenario where schools cooperate with enterprises. Therefore, the government should focus on implementing more effective policies, such as increasing the incentives and penalties, improving the mechanism for managing conflicts, ensuring the fairness of benefits distribution, and clarifying the responsibilities of different departments; schools should focus on providing more practical curricula and programs for students, training high-quality teachers, and perfecting talent cultivation to meet the needs of enterprises; and enterprises should focus on providing job experiences for students and transforming the results of schools’ teaching and theoretical research into practical productivity.

Elders have a higher rate of return visits to the emergency department (ED) than other patients. It is critical to understand the risk factors for return visits to the ED by elders. The aim of this study was to determine the factors associated with return visits to the ED by elders. This study retrospectively reviewed the hospital charts of elders who return visits to the ED within 72 hours after discharge. The risk factors identified in the Triage Risk Screening Tool were applied in this study. Of the elders discharged from the ED, 8.64% made a return visit to the ED within 72 hours. The highest revisit rate occurred within 24 hours after discharge. Factors associated with return ED visits within 24 hours by elders were difficulty walking and having discharge care needs. Factors associated with ED return visits within 24–48 hours were cognitive impairment and polypharmacy. Difficulty walking, having discharge care needs and hospitalization within the past 120 days were associated with return visits made within 48–72 hours following discharge. Identifying the reasons for return visits to the ED and providing a continuous review of geriatric assessment and discharge planning could reduce unnecessary revisits.

In recent years, the AHRS has become an important research area. In order to improve the orientation measurement accuracy of AHRS, this paper first expounds the algorithm principle of the AHRS. Then, aiming at the problem of poor stability of the traditional gradient descent method under high dynamics or large magnetic field interference, a gain-scheduled anti-interference AHRS orientation algorithm is designed. By using the switching architecture designed with this algorithm for gain scheduling, it can ensure stable performance while being subjected to apparent acceleration and ferromagnetic interference. Finally, experimental verification is conducted, and the experimental results show that: in the presence of interference, the roll angle error is 0.0350°, the pitch angle error is 0.0277°, and the yaw angle error is 0.9611°, thereby verifying the strong anti-interference performance of the gain-scheduled AHRS orientation algorithm proposed in this paper.

Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber has been attracting increasing attention and has been studied in recent decades because of its good efficiency, high time resolution and relatively low cost. It has become a new standard technology for the Time of Flight system in particle and high energy physics experiments. In this paper, we introduce the operation principle and structure of the MRPC detector and review the applications on the Time of Flight system in several famous experiments, such as STAR, CBM and SoLID. The performances including time resolution and particle identification are discussed in detail. Some recent advances and perspectives with regard to the future development of the next generation MRPC are also outlined.

As the leader of the largest economy, President of the United States has substantive influence on addressing the global climate change problem. However, presidential election is often dominated by issues other than energy problems. This paper focuses on the on-going 2016 presidential election, examining the energy plans proposed by the leading Democrat and Republican candidates. Our data from the Iowa caucus survey in January 2016 suggests that voters are more concerned about terrorism and economic issues than environmental relative issues. We then compare the Democratic and Republican candidate’s view of American’s energy future, and evaluate their proposed renewable energy targets. We find that the view on renewable energy is polarized between Democratic and Republican candidates, while candidates from both parties agree on the need for energy efficiency. Results from our ordinal least squares regression models suggest that Democratic candidates have moderate to ambitious goals for developing solar and other renewable energy. The Republican candidates favor fossil fuel and they neglect to provide any plan for renewable energy. In addition, this trend of polarization has grown more significant when compared with the past three presidential elections. Our observation suggests that energy issues need to be discussed more to draw broader attention to salient issues of diversifying and decarbonizing the nation’s energy system.

Hyperuricemia (HC) was one of the important risk factors for gout, arteriosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease. Animal studies have shown that Lactobacillus plantarum can improve the microbiota, immune regulation, and inhibit the uric acid production. However, it was not clear whether L. plantarum can improve HC and intestinal microbiota. We used potassium oxonate (PO) to induce HC in male SD rats, and then treated L. plantarum TCI227 in a dose dependent (HC+LD, HC+MD, HC+HD) for 4 weeks, and examined weight organs, biochemical examination of blood and urine, and analyzed the intestinal microbiota in feces by 16s rDNA sequence analysis. In this study, TCI227 improved body weight, decreased creatinine, serum uric acid, and increased urine uric acid compared to the HC group. Furthermore, TCI227 increased short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). In fecal microbiota (family), TCI227 increased the level of Lactobacillaceae, and then decreased the level of Deferribacteres and Prevotellaceae compared to the HC group. Finally, in fecal microbiota (genus), TCI227 decreased the level of Prevotella, and then increased the level of Lactobacillus and Ruminococcus compared to the HC group. This study suggested that TCI227 can improve HC and change the compositions of the intestinal microbiota in PO induced male HC SD rats.

Background: During pregnancy, major physiological changes occur in every system. Understanding the hemodynamic changes in different stages of pregnancy can help to identify abnormal states during pregnancy. Harmonic analysis could be a useful tool in monitoring the state of the ventricular-arterial system during pregnancy. The aim of this study was to investigate the specific statistical relationships between changes in harmonic indices during different stages of pregnancy. Methods: A Total of 380 women (190 pregnant women and 190 age-matched non-pregnant women), with ages ranging from 20 to 45, were enrolled in the study. The visit measured the subject’s hemodynamic parameters including heart rate, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and photoplethysmography (PPG). SBP and DBP were evaluated by an automatic blood pressure monitor. PPG signal were continuously recorded for 12-seconds using a PPG sensor. Spectrum analysis of the PPG signal was performed to evaluate the first five harmonic components (C1 – C5) and harmonic phases (P1 – P5). Result: A comparison between pregnant women and non-pregnant women showed that the non-pregnant women had lower DBP, C3, C5 and P5 (p<0.05). Waist Circumference, Heart rate, C2, C4 and P2 were higher in pregnant women. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the associations between pregnancy and harmonics indices. C2, C4 and P3 were positively and P1 and P4 were negatively associated with pregnancy after controlling age, BMI, waist circumference, heart rate, SBP and DBP. Conclusion: The results of this study provide information on the changes in the harmonic frequency components during various stages of pregnancy. The harmonic components of the PPG signal have independent predictive value for changes in a woman's physiology during pregnancy. Since non-invasive PPG measurements can be performed frequently and easily, in the future, it is possible that the hemodynamic changes from some pregnancy-related disorders could be studied by harmonic analysis.

In this paper, an extendable fuzzy robust speed controller suitable for induction motor drive system was proposed. Firstly, the two-degrees-of-freedom (2DOF) robust control technology with feedforward control and disturbance elimination method was adopted. Upon parameter variation and load disturbance, the motor drive system could utilize a robust controller to generate compensation signals and reduce the impact on controlling performance of the motor drive system. The magnitude of the compensation signal was adjusted via the weighting factor. However, should a fixed weighting factor be adopted, system instability might be generated easily when time delay and saturation of control force occur. Based on the above, the smart method of extendable fuzzy theory (EFT) was adopted in this paper to adjust adequate weighting factors, where the controlling performance of the induction motor drive system could be improved accordingly. The method divided the speed difference between motor speed command and actual speed of the induction motor, and the variation rate for such speed difference into 20 regional categories. The correlation degree between the speed difference of actual feedback, variation rate for speed difference and each regional category was then calculated, where more suitable weighting factor was selected. Therefore, the proposed extendable fuzzy robust 2DOF controller with variable weighting factor designed will allow better performance for response in speed tracking and load regulation. Lastly, the simulation software Matlab/Simulink was applied to simulate the utilization of the controlling method proposed for the induction motor drive system. For both the response in speed tracking and load regulation, the simulation results proved that the extendable fuzzy robust speed controller proposed provided better controlling performance than the conventional robust controller.

Using co-precipitation to synthesize (CeO2)0.95(Y2O3)0.05 (YDC) and solid reaction method to synthesize (CeO2)0.75(ZrO2)0.25 (ZDC), and the characterization for both crystal structure and micro-structure of the two materials was conducted with X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) methods. Prepare the YDC and ZDC based limited current O2 sensor by employing platinum pasting bonding method. Sensing characteristics of the sensor were obtained at different conditions and study on the impact of temperature, O2 concentration as well as water vapor pressure on the sensing characteristics had been conducted. XRD results show that the phase structure of both YDC and ZDC is cubic phase. SEM results show that both YDC and ZDC layers are dense layers, which are then qualified to be the composition materials of the sensor. This limited current O2 sensor shows good sensing performance and conforms to the Knudsen model. Log(IL•T) depends linearly on 1000/T with R2 of 0.9904, IL depends linearly on x(O2) with R2 of 0.9726 and sensing characteristics are not affected by p(H2O).

New antimicrobial approaches are essential to counter antimicrobial resistance. The drug development pipeline is exhausted with emergence of resistance resulting in unsuccessful trials. The lack of an effective drug developed from the conventional drug portfolio has mandated the introspection into the list of potentially effective unconventional alternate antimicrobial molecules. Alternate therapies, that are clinically explicable forms include monoclonal antibodies, antimicrobial peptides, aptamers and phages. Clinical diagnostics optimizes the drug delivery. In the era of diagnostic-based applications, it is logical to draw diagnostic based treatment for infectious diseases. Selection criteria of alternate therapeutics in infectious disease include detection, monitoring of response and resistance mechanism identification. Integrating these diagnostic applications is disruptive to the traditional therapeutic development. The challenges and mitigation methods need to be noted. Applying the goals of clinical pharmacokinetics that include enhancing efficacy and decreasing toxicity of drug therapy this review analyses the strong correlation of alternate antimicrobial therapeutics in infectious diseases. The relationship between drug concentration and the resulting effect defined by the pharmacodynamic parameters are also analyzed. This review analyzes the perspectives of aligning diagnostic initiatives into the use of alternate therapeutics with a particular focus on companion diagnostic applications in infectious diseases.

Wearable technology has been proposed as a potential tool to change the way of human life, such as the smart bracelet and the Google Glass. In the wearable technology, the inertial sensor has great significance in tracking the object movements. The paper focused on detecting the movements of user’s finger based on the inertial sensor to give the control signals. Firstly, the attitude matrix, which represented the transformation relation of carrier coordinate system and the navigation coordinate system, was obtained. Secondly, the attitude matrix was expressed based on the quaternions. Thirdly, the finger gesture was processed by the attitude matrix to get the attitude angle. Finally, the robot was controlled by attitude angle to make the moving action. The experimental results showed the detection of the finger movement is effective.

Ammonia-oxidizing microorganism communities are abundant and functionally efficacious in nitrification. However, ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) groups complicate this process in subtropical streams. This study investigates the abundance of ammonia-oxidizing communities south of the Dabie Mountains, China, using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Clone libraries were utilized to analyze the abundance and microbial structures of AOA and AOB in sediments. Such analysis may provide strong evidence reflecting the links within the environment. The results show that AOB had a lower abundance of copies of the ammonia-oxidizing gene (amoA) than AOA. Interestingly, the AOA and AOB community compositions were correlated with ecological characteristics. The dissolved oxygen (DO) and oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) had significant positive correlations, whereas the phosphorus within the structure had a negative correlation with the abundance of both groups. Our study shows that it might adopt some species related to Nitrosotalea clusters that can resist comparably higher pH (toward pH 6.5). Together, these results imply that the physiological adaptation of microbial guilds to environmental pressures in ammonia-oxidizing archaea might allow them to have a more substantial function of ammonia-oxidizing communities in natural habitats.

To prepare an edible coating with a good preservative effect on sweet cherries, carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS) and gelatin (GL) were selected as the film-forming matrix in this experiment, and CaCl2 and ascorbic acid (AA) were added as crosslinking agents and antioxidants, respectively. First, the film was prepared by the casting method, and the film formula with better mechanical and barrier performance was filtered out by one-factor and response surface optimization test, and the differences in the preservation effect of different film formulations (CMCS-GL, CaCl2- CMCS-GL, AA -CaCl2- CMCS-GL) on sweet cherries were compared. and then the different film formulations were compared. The difference in film formulation on the preservation effect of sweet cherries was investigated. The results showed that the optimal formulation for an edible film based on CMCS-GL with good performance was CMCS: GL (w:w)=2:1, with the additional amount of 1% glycerol, 2% CaCl2, 0.1% Tween-20, 2% AA, the tensile strength, elongation at break, oxygen permeability and water vapor permeability of the film obtained with this formula were: 16.28 MPa, 71.46%, 1.39×10-12 g- cm/(cm2-s-Pa), 5.10×10-11 cm3-cm/(m2-s-Pa), respectively. In the preservation of sweet cherries, all three film formulations effectively reduced the rotting rate and weight loss during storage while preserving the high hardness and skin color of the fruit. Among them, the formulation AA -CaCl2- CMCS-GL showed the best preservation effect and can be used as a new method for postharvest preservation of sweet cherries.

Climate change and food security are the most relevant issues to be considered in sustainable agricultural development. The FAO’s initiative of climate-smart agriculture has attracted international attention. Since then, the smart agriculture (SA) has been recognized as the most influential trends in contributing to agricultural development. Therefore, encouraging farmers to adopt digital technologies and mobile devices into farming practices becomes a policy priority worldwide. However, there is limited literature available on psychologic factors that drive farmers’ intentions to adopt SA technologies. The purpose of this study is to investigate how farmer’s knowledge and attitude toward SA affects their adoption of smart technologies in Taiwan. A total of 321 farmers participated in the project’s survey in 2017 and 2018, from which the data was used to perform an OLS regression model of SA adoption. This study contributes to a preliminary understanding of relationship between innovation and adoption of SA technologies in a small-scale farming economic context. The findings suggest that the policy makers and R&D institutes need to concentrate on improving market access for well-known and high important SA technologies.

In recent decades, as eutrophication in inland and coastal waters (ICWs) has increased due to anthropogenic activities and global warming, so has the need for timely monitoring. Compared with traditional sampling and laboratory analysis methods, satellite remote sensing technology can provide macro-scale, low-cost, and near real-time water quality monitoring services. The Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), integrated onboard the Communication Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) from the Republic of Korea, was the first geostationary ocean color observation satellite and was operational from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2021. Over ten years, GOCI has observed oceans, coastal waters, and inland waters within its 2,500 km×2,500 km target area centered on the Korean Peninsula. The most attractive feature of GOCI, compared with other commonly used watercolor sensors, was its high temporal resolution (1h, eight times daily from 0 UTC to 7 UTC), providing the opportunity to monitor the quality of ICWs, where optical properties can change rapidly throughout the day. This systematic review aims to comprehensively review GOCI features and applications in ICWs, analyzing progress in atmospheric correction algorithms and water quality monitoring. Analyzing 123 articles from the Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) through a bibliometric quantitative approach, we examined GOCI’s strength and performance with different processing methods. These articles reveal that GOCI played an essential role in monitoring the ecological health of ICWs in its observation area in East Asia. GOCI has led the way to a new era of geostationary ocean satellites, providing new technical means for monitoring water quality in oceans, coastal zones, and inland lakes. We also discuss the challenges encountered by geostationary satellites in monitoring water quality and provide suggestions for improvements.

Radiotherapy is a crucial treatment for head and neck malignancies, but it usually leads to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Changes in the immune microenvironment and sensorial neuroepithelium of the inner ear after radiation exposure remain poorly understood. This study investigated cochlear morphology and macrophages in the inner ear after high-dose irradiation. The heads of 8-week-old Cx3cr1GFP/+ heterozygous male mice were irradiated with 30Gy X-rays and biological samples were taken on the 1st, 7th, and 10th days after irradiation. Auditory brainstem responses were used to assess auditory function in mice. The changes of basal membrane hair cells, spiral ganglion (SGN), and inner ear macrophages were observed using hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining and immunofluorescence staining. The expression of inflammatory mediators in the inner ear was detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in cochlear tissue. As a result, there was no significant hair cell loss after high doses of radiation, but the mice developed full-frequency hearing loss on day 10 when HE staining revealed SGN atrophy and immunofluorescence revealed decreased neurofilament expression. The number of macrophages in the inner ear decreased over time. RT-PCR showed that cochlear inflammatory factors and chemokines were briefly up-regulated on the first day after irradiation and then decreased over time. In summary, high-dose irradiation causes acute SNHL that does not involve hair cell loss and may be associated with SGN changes. Radiation-induced SNHL is accompanied by a reduction in cochlear macrophages and changes in the immune microenvironment, but the relationship between the two has yet to be explored.

For screening excellent lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains to inhibit Escherichia (E.) coli (ETEC) K88, inhibitory activities of more than 1100 LAB strains isolated from different materials and kept in the lab were evaluated in this study. Nine strains with inhibition zone at least 22.00 mm (including that of hole puncher 10.00 mm) and good physiological and biochemical characteristics identified by 16S DNA gene sequencing and recA gene multiple detection, were assigned to Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum subsp. plantarum (5), L. fermentum (1), L. reuteri (1), W. cibaria (1) and E. faecalis (1), respectively. As investigated for their tolerance abilities and safety, only strain ZA3 possessed high hydrophobicity and auto-aggregation abilities, had high survival rate in low pH, bile salt environment and GI fluids, sensitive to ampicillin, resistant to norfloxacin and amikacin, without hemolytic activity and didn’t carry antibiotic resistance genes, exhibited broad spectrum activity against a wide range of microorganisms, and antibacterial substance may attribute to organic acids, especially lactic acid and acetic acid. The results indicated that the selected strain L. plantarum subsp. plantarum ZA3 could be considered a potential probiotic to inhibit ETEC K88 for further research.

The Cav3.2 T-type calcium channel is implicated in various pathological conditions, including cardiac hypertrophy, epilepsy, autism, and chronic pain. Phosphorylation of Cav3.2 by multiple kinases plays a pivotal role in regulating its calcium channel function. The calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine/threonine phosphatase, calcineurin, interacts physically with Cav3.2 and modulates its activity. However, it remains unclear whether calcineurin dephosphorylates Cav3.2, the specific spatial regions on Cav3.2 involved, and the extent of the quantitative impact. In this study, we elucidated the serine/threonine residues on Cav3.2 targeted by calcineurin using quantitative mass spectrometry. We identified six serine residues in the N-terminus, II-III loop, and C-terminus of Cav3.2 that were dephosphorylated by calcineurin. Notably, a higher level of dephosphorylation was observed in the Cav3.2 C-terminus, where calcineurin binds to this channel. Additionally, a previously known CaMKII-phosphorylated site, S1198, was found to be dephosphorylated by calcineurin. Furthermore, we also discovered that a novel CaMKII-phosphorylated site, S2137, underwent dephosphorylation by calcineurin. In CAD cells, a mouse central nervous system cell line, membrane depolarization led to an increase in the phosphorylation of endogenous Cav3.2 at S2137. Mutation of S2137 affected the calcium channel function of Cav3.2. Our findings advance the understanding of Cav3.2 regulation not only through kinase phosphorylation but also via calcineurin phosphatase dephosphorylation.

Background: Wheat root rot disease due to soil-borne fungal pathogens leads to tremendous yield losses worth billions of dollars worldwide every year. It is very important to study the relationship between rhizosphere fungal diversity and wheat roots to understand the occurrence and development of wheat root rot disease. Results: A significant difference in fungal diversity was observed between the diseased and healthy groups in the heading stage, but the trend was the opposite in the filling stage. The abundance of most genera with high richness decreased significantly from the heading to the filling stage in the diseased groups; the richness of approximately one-third of all genera remained unchanged, and only a few low-richness genera, such as Fusarium and Ceratobasidium, had a very significant increase from the heading to the filling stage. In the healthy groups, the abundance of most genera increased significantly from the heading to the filling stage; the abundance of some genera did not change markedly, or the abundance of very few genera increased significantly. Physical and chemical soil indicators showed that low soil pH and density, increases in ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and total nitrogen contributed to the occurrence of wheat root rot disease. Conclusions: Our results revealed that in the early stages of disease, highly diverse rhizosphere fungi and a complex community structure can easily cause wheat root rot disease. The existence of pathogenic fungi is a necessary condition for wheat root rot disease, but the richness of pathogenic fungi is not necessarily important. The increases in ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and total nitrogen contributed to the occurrence of wheat root rot disease. Low soil pH and soil density are beneficial to the occurrence of wheat root rot disease.

Monocarboxylate transporter 8 (MCT8) and organic anion-transporting polypeptide 1C1 (OATP1C1) are thyroid hormones (TH) transmembrane transporters relevant for the availability of TH in neural cells, crucial for their proper development and function. Mutations in MCT8 or OATP1C1 result in severe disorders with dramatic movement disability related to alterations in basal ganglia motor circuits. Mapping the expression of MCT8/OATP1C1 in those circuits is necessary to explain their involvement in motor control. We studied the distribution of both transporters in the neuronal subpopulations that configure the direct and indirect basal ganglia motor circuits using immunohistochemistry and double/multiple labeling immunofluorescence for TH transporters and neuronal biomarkers. We found their expression in the medium-sized spiny neurons of the striatum (the receptor neurons of the corticostriatal pathway), and in various types of its local microcircuitry interneurons, including the cholinergic. We also demonstrate the presence of both transporters in projection neurons of intrinsic and output nuclei of the basal ganglia, motor thalamus and nucleus basalis of Meynert, suggesting an important role of MCT8/OATP1C1 for modulating the motor system. Our findings suggest that a lack of function of these transporters in the basal ganglia circuits would significantly impact motor system modulation, leading to clinically severe movement impairment.

Currently, active and intelligent packaging have been developed to solve the spoilage problem for rich protein foods during storage, especially by adding anthocyanin extracts. In such film system, the antioxidant and antibacterial properties were dramatically increased by adding anthocyanins. The physicochemical properties were enhanced through interactions between active groups in anthocyanins and reactive groups in polymer chains. Additionally, active and intelligent film could monitor the spoilage of rich protein foods in response to pH change. Therefore, this film could monitor the sensory acceptance, and extending the shelf life of rich protein foods simultaneously. In this paper, the structure and functional properties of anthocyanins, the composite actions of anthocyanin extracts and biomass materials, and their reinforced properties of active and intelligent film were discussed. Also, the applications of this film in quality maintenance, shelf-life extension and quality monitoring for fresh meat, aquatic product and milk were summarized. The film that achieves high stability and continuous release of anthocyanins on demand will become an underlying trend in packaging applications for rich protein foods.

Prosocial behavior is vital for positive social development among adolescents, contributing to improved peer relationships, emotional well-being, and social competence. Gratitude, a positive emotion arising from recognizing and appreciating benefits received from others, has been identified as a potential contributor to adolescent prosocial behavior. This study aimed to investigate the mediating roles of social support and basic psychological needs in the relationship between gratitude and prosocial behavior among adolescents. A total of 390 middle school students participated in a longitudinal study, completing questionnaires assessing gratitude, social support, basic psychological needs, and prosocial behavior at two time points with a six-month interval. The results indicated that gratitude positively correlated with social support, basic psychological needs, and prosocial behavior. Structural equation modeling revealed that social support and basic psychological needs partially mediated the relationship between gratitude and adolescent prosocial behavior. Moreover, a chain-like mediation effect was observed, wherein social support influenced basic psychological needs, which in turn predicted prosocial behavior. These findings emphasize the importance of gratitude in fostering prosocial behavior among adolescents and highlight the mediating roles of social support and basic psychological needs in this relationship.

The regulation of intracellular pH in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cells is critical for cell function and viability. In yeast, protons (H+) can be excreted from cell by the plasma membrane ATPase Pma1 and pumped into vacuoles by the vacuolar H+-ATPase. Because Pma1 is critical to the survival of yeast cells, it is unknown whether other compensatory components are involved in the pH homeostasis in the absence of Pma1. To elucidate how intracellular pH is regulated independently of Pma1, we employed a screening approach by exposing the yeast haploid deletion mutant library (ver 4.0) to the selective plant plasma membrane H+-ATPase inhibitor PS-1, which we previously reported. After repeated screenings and verification, we identified two proteins, ALY1 and ALY2, that play a role in the regulation of intracellular pH when Pma1 is deficient. Our research uncovers a new perspective on the regulation of intracellular pH related to Pma1 and also preliminarily reveals a role for ALY1 and ALY2 in the regulation of intracellular pH.

This study mainly explores the effect of policy formalism, equipment insufficiency, covid-19 fear and job insecurity on construction workers’ insomnia during the epidemic. The main contribution of this article is to introduce policy formalism into the exploration of the causes of insomnia among construction site workers during the epidemic. This study collected 733 valid samples of construction site workers. We tested the established hypotheses using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The research results found that equipment insufficiency positively affects Covid-19 fear. Policy formalism and Covid-19 fear positively affect job burnout. Social support negatively affects job burnout. Job burnout and job insecurity positively affect insomnia.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors shape the structure and composition of gut microbiota in a host. The disorder of gut microbiota may trigger various host diseases. Here, we collected fecal samples from wild-caught Japanese geckos (Gekko japonicus) and captive conspecifics fed with mealworms (mealworm-fed geckos) and fruit flies (fly-fed geckos), aiming to examine dietary and sexual correlates of gut microbiota. We used the 16S rRNA gene sequencing technology to determine the composition of gut microbiota. The dominant phyla with a mean relative abundance higher than 10% were Verrucomicrobiota, Bacteroidota and Firmicutes. Gut microbial community richness was higher in mealworm-fed geckos than in fly-fed and wild geckos, and community diversity was higher in mealworm-fed geckos than in wild geckos. Neither alpha nor beta diversity of gut microbiota differed among wild, mealworm-fed and fly-fed geckos. The beta rather than alpha diversity of gut microbiota was sex-dependent. Based on the relative abundance of gut bacteria and its gene functions, we concluded that gut microbiota contributed more significantly to the host’s metabolic and immune functions. Higher diversity of gut microbiota in mealworm-fed geckos could result from higher chitin contents of insects of the order Coleoptera. This study not only provides basic information about the gut microbiota of G. japonicus, but also shows that gut microbiota correlates with dietary habit and sex in the species.

Background: This study aimed to identify the association between occupational stress and depression-well-being by proposing a comprehensive and flexible job burden-capital model with its corresponding hypotheses. Methods: For this research, 1618 valid samples were gathered from the electronic manufacturing service industry in Hunan Province, China; self-rated questionnaires were administered to participants for data collection after obtaining their written consent. The proposed model was fitted and tested through structural equation model analysis. Results: Single-factor correlation analysis results indicated that coefficients between all items and dimensions had statistical significance. The final model demonstrated satisfactory global goodness of fit (CMIN/DF=5.37, AGFI=0.915, NNFI=0.945, IFI=0.952, RMSEA=0.052). Both the measurement and structural models showed acceptable path loadings. Job burden and capital were directly associated with depression and well-being or indirectly related to them through personality. Multi-group structural equation model analyses indicated general applicability of the proposed model to basic features of such a population. Gender, marriage and education led to differences in the relation between occupational stress and health outcomes. Conclusions: The job burden-capital model of occupational stress-depression and well-being was found to be more systematic and comprehensive than previous models.

This paper explores the use of different deep learning models for predicting precipitation in 56 meteorological stations in Jilin Province, China. The models used include Stacked-LSTM, Transformer, and SVR, and Gaussian noise is added to the data to improve their robustness. Results show that the Stacked-LSTM model performs the best, achieving high prediction accuracy and stability. The study also conducts variable attribution analysis using LightGBM and finds that temperature, dew point, precipitation in previous days, and air pressure are the most important factors affecting precipitation prediction, which is consistent with traditional meteorological theory. The paper provides detailed information on the data processing, model training, and parameter settings, which can serve as a reference for future precipitation prediction tasks. The findings suggest that adding Gaussian noise to the dataset can improve the model's generalization ability, especially for predicting days with zero precipitation. Overall, this study provides useful insights into the application of deep learning models in precipitation prediction and can contribute to the development of meteorological forecasting and applications.

Intelligent systems are increasingly present in various areas of society, gaining special relevance in healthcare environments. In this work, grounded on previous developments proposed by the authors, the evolution and improvement of a novel intelligent system focused on the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is addressed. To do this, starting from two packages of information of a heterogeneous nature, and deploying a set of Machine Learning classification algorithms, focused each of them on different levels of the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), as well as a set of cascaded expert systems, it is possible to obtain a series of risk metric pairs (Statistical Risk, Symbolic Risk) for each AHI level, understood as a warning forecast associated with the early detection of the pathology. The risk indicators of each pair are subsequently aggregated by means of a symbolic inference system, whose knowledge base was determined using the automatic rule generation approach proposed by Wang and Mendel. At the output of each inference system, a risk indicator is obtained for each AHI level, the Apnea Risk, whose interpretation makes it possible to discriminate between patients who could suffer OSA and those who do not, as well as to generate the appropriate recommendations. For the initial tests of the system, the design and development of a specific software artifact was carried out using data from 4,400 patients from the Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital in Vigo, obtaining when applied to the test set AUC values within the range 0.74–0.88, which invites optimism and points to the benefits expected from the architecture of the proposed intelligent system.

Plants of the genus Monochoria have long been utilized in food, cosmetics, and traditional herbal treatment. Thailand has the highest species diversity of this genus and a new member, Monochoria angustifolia (G. X. Wang) Boonkerd & Tungmunnithum has been recently described. This plant is called “Siam Violet Pearl” as a common name or “ไข่มุกสีม่วงแห่งสยาม” as its vernacular name in the same meaning in Thai language. Despite their importance, few researches on Monochoria species have been conducted. This study, thus, provided the results to fill in this gap by: i) determining flavonoids phytochemical profiles of 25 natural populations of M. angustifolia covering the whole floristic regions in Thailand, and ii) determining antioxidant activity using various antioxidant assays to investigate the probable mechanism. The results revealed that M. angustifolia presented a higher flavonoid content than the outgroup, M. hastata. Our results also revealed that flavonoids might be used to investigate Monochoria evolutionary connections and for botanical authentication. The various antioxidant assays revealed that M. angustifolia extracts preferentially act through a hydrogen atom transfer antioxidant mechanism. Pearson correlation analysis indicated significant correlations emphasizing that the antioxidant capacity is most probably the result of a complex phytochemical combinations rather than of a single molecule. Altogether, these results showed that this new species provide an attractive alternative starting material with phytochemical variety and antioxidant potential for the phytopharmaceutical industry.

The event camera generates an event stream based on changes in brightness, retaining only the characteristics of moving objects, addresses the high power consumption associated with using high-frame-rate cameras for high-speed eye tracking tasks. However, the asynchronous incremental nature of event camera output has not been fully utilized, and there are also issues related to missing event datasets. Combining the temporal information encoding and state-preserving properties of spiking neural network (SNN) with event camera, a near-range eye tracking algorithm is proposed as well as a novel event-based dataset for validation and evaluation. According to experimental results, the proposed solution outperforms artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms, while computational time remains only 12.5\% of that of traditional SNN algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm allows for self-adjustment of time resolution, with a maximum achievable resolution of 0.081ms, enhancing tracking stability while maintaining accuracy.

L-Theanine, a unique non-protein amino acid, is an important bioactive component of green tea. Previous studies have shown that L-theanine has many potent health benefits, such as anti-anxiety effect, regulation of immune response, relaxing neural tension, reducing oxidative damage. However, little is known concerning whether L-theanine can improve the clearance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage in organisms. Here, we reported that L-theanine treatment increased ATP production and improved mitochondrial morphology to extend the lifespan of UVC-exposed nematodes. Mechanistic investigations showed that L-theanine treatment enhanced the removal of mtDNA damage and extended lifespan by activating autophagy, mitophagy, mitochondrial dynamics, and mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) in UVC-exposed nematodes. In addition, L-theanine treatment also up-regulated the expression of genes related to mitochondrial energy metabolism in UVC-exposed nematodes. Our study provided a theoretical basis for the possibility that tea drinking may prevent mitochondrial related diseases.

The endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) is an essential molecular machinery in eukaryotic cells that facilitates the invagination of endosomal membranes, leading to the formation of multivesicular bodies (MVBs). It participates in various cellular processes, including lipid bilayer remodeling, cytoplasmic separation, autophagy, membrane fission and remodeling, plasma membrane repair, as well as the invasion, budding, and release of certain enveloped viruses. The ESCRT complex consists of five complexes, ESCRT-0 to ESCRT-III and VPS4, along with several accessory proteins. ESCRT-0 to ESCRT-II form soluble complexes that shuttle between the cytoplasm and membranes, mainly responsible for recruiting and transporting membrane proteins and viral particles, as well as recruiting ESCRT-III for membrane neck scission. ESCRT-III, a soluble monomer, directly participates in vesicle scission and release, while VPS4 hydrolyzes ATP to provide energy for ESCRT-III complex disassembly, enabling recycling. Studies have confirmed the hijacking of ESCRT complexes by enveloped viruses to facilitate their entry, replication, and budding. Recent research has focused on the interaction between various components of the ESCRT complex and different viruses. In this review, we discuss how different viruses hijack specific ESCRT regulatory proteins to impact the viral life cycle, aiming to explore commonalities in the interaction between viruses and the ESCRT system.

Under the development mode of deep blending of emerging technologies, major projects are important for enhancing China's comprehensive national strength and independent innovation capability. Based on the social benefits of major projects, and considering the influence of reputation factors, an evolutionary game model composed of a general contractor and subcontractor of major projects is established. This paper studies the influence of various factors including the income distribution coefficient of collaborative innovation, and MATLAB simulation software is analyzed the influence of factors on an evolutionary path. The results show that a reasonable income distribution coefficient can promote the game behavior of both parties to the direction of active collaborative innovation; The reduction of innovation cost and the improvement of spillover technology absorption capacity can make innovation subjects tend to choose active collaborative innovation strategies. In addition, reputation loss above a specific threshold can effectively inhibit free-riding behavior and encourage innovation subjects to choose active collaborative innovation strategies. The research results provide reference for promoting major projects' technology innovation.

Logistics plays an important role in globalized companies and contributes to the development of foreign trade. A large number of external conditions, such as recession and inflation, affect logistics. Therefore, managers should find ways to improve operational performance, enabling them to increase efficiency while considering environmental sustainability due to the industry’s large scale of energy consumption. Based on data collected from the financial reports of top global logistics companies, this study uses a DEA model to calculate corporate efficiency by implementing a Grey forecasting approach to forecast future sustainability values. Consequently, the study addresses the problem of how to enhance operational performance while accounting for the impact of external conditions. This research can help logistics companies develop operation strategies in the future that will enhance their competitiveness vis-à-vis rivals in a time of global economic volatility.

Biomimetic design has recently received widespread attention. Inspired by the Terebridae structure, this paper provides a structural form for suppressing vortex-induced vibration (VIV) response. Four different structural forms are shown, including the traditional smooth cylinder (P0), the Terebridae-inspired cylinder with a helical angle of 30° (P30), the Terebridae-inspired cylinder with a helical angle of 60° (P60), and the Terebridae-inspired cylinder with a helical angle of 90° (P90). And computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is adopted to solve the flow pass the Terebridae-inspired structures, and the vibration equation is solved using the Newmark-β method. The results show that the VIV responses are effectively controlled in the lock-in region for P30, P60, and P90, and P60 shows the best VIV suppression performance. The transverse amplitude and the downstream amplitude can be reduced by 82.67% and 91.43% respectively for P60 compared with that for P0, and the peak of the mean-drag coefficient is suppressed by 53.33%. The Q-criterion vortices of P30, P60, and P90 are destroyed, with irregular vortices shedding. It is also found that the boundary layer separation is located on the Terebridae-inspired ribs. The twisted ribs cause the separation point to constantly change along the spanwise direction, resulting in the development of the boundary layer separation being completely destroyed. The strength of the wake flow is significantly weakened for the Terebridae-inspired cylinder. In the lock-in region, the motion trajectory presents a typical 8-shaped for P0, while the motion trajectory of the Terebridae-inspired cylinder tends to be a flat 1-shaped.

Fifteen new diterpenoids, namely xishaklyanes A-O (1-15), along with three known related ones (16-18), were isolated from the soft coral Klyxum molle collected from Xisha Islands, South China Sea. The stereochemistry of the new compounds were elucidated by a combination of detailed spectroscopic analyses, chemical syntheses, quantum chemical calculations and comparison with the reported data. The absolute configuration of compound 18 was established by the modified Mosher's method for the first time. In bioassay, some of these compounds exhibited considerable antibacterial activities on fish pathogenic bacteria, and compound 4 showed the most effective activity with MIC of 0.225 g/mL against Lactococcus garvieae.

When using meta-heuristic optimization approaches for optimization, a large number of samples are required. In particular, when generating subgeneration, the utilization of existing samples is low and the number of individuals is high. Therefore, surrogate-based optimization has been developed, which greatly reduces the number of individuals in the subgeneration and the cost of optimization. In complex air supply scenarios, single-objective optimization results may not be comprehensive; therefore, this paper developed a double-objective air supply optimization method based on the Kriging surrogate model and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithms-II. And proposed the infill criteria based on clustering to advance the Pareto Frontier. The method was validated by an inverse prediction case, and in particular, the problems when based on 3D steady-state simulations were analyzed. The results showed that the method can quickly achieve an approximate prediction of the boundary conditions (when prediction were made based on experimental data, the number of simulations was 82 and the average error was 6.8%). Finally, the method was used to optimize the air supply parameters of a dual-aisle, single-row cabin. The Pareto set suggested that an airflow organization with dual circulation may be optimal.

Standard Ethernet (IEEE 802.3 and the TCP/IP protocol suite) is gradually applied in industrial control system (ICS) with the development of information technology. It breaks the natural isolation of ICS, but contains no security mechanism. A modified intrusion detection system (IDS), which is strongly correlated to specific industrial scenario, is necessary for modern ICS. On the one hand, this paper outlines attack models, including infiltration attacks and our creative forging attack. On the other hand, we proposes a hierarchical IDS, which contains a traffic prediction model and an anomaly detection model. The traffic prediction model, which is based on autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), can forecast the traffic of ICS network in the short term and precisely detect the infiltration attacks according to abnormal changes in traffic pattern. The anomaly detection model using one-class support vector machine (OCSVM) is able to detect malicious control instructions by analyzing the key field in EtherNet/IP packets. The experimental results show that the hierarchical IDS has an outstanding performance in detecting infiltration attacks and forging attack compared with other two innovative IDSs.

Strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora is one of the main diseases of strawberry and significantly impacts the yield and quality of strawberry fruit. There are now no effective control techniques available except for fungicide sprays, which may directly impact consumers. Biological control is becoming an alternative method for the control of plant diseases to replace or decrease the application of traditional synthetic chemical fungicides. Trichoderma is widely used as a biological agent for controlling strawberry root rot. In order to provide resources for screening the highly effective biocontrol fungus for controlling strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora, the biocontrol mechanism,the control effects of Trichoderma asperellum CMT10 against strawberry root rot and growth-promoting effects on strawberry seedlings were investigated by plate culture, microscopy observation and root drenching methods.The results showed that CMT10 had obvious competitive, antibiotic and hyperparasitism effects on Neopestalotiopsis clavispora CMGF3. The CMT10 could quickly occupy nutritional space, and the inhibition rates of CMT10 against CMGF3 in confrontation culture on 7 d was 65.49%. The inhibition rates of volatile metabolite and fermentation metabolite produced by CMT10 against CMGF3 were 79.67% and 69.84%, respectively. The mycelium of strain CMT10 can act as hyperparasites by making contacting, winding and penetrating hyphae of CMGF3. Pot experiment showed that the biocontrol efficacy of CMT10 on strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora was 63.00%. CMT10 had obvious promotion effect on strawberry growth, the plant height, root length, total fresh weight, root fresh weight, stem fresh weight and root dry weight, with the promotion rates were 20.09%, 22.39%, 87.11%, 101.58%, 79.82% and 72.33%, respectively. Overall, this study showed the ability of Trichoderma asperellum CMT10 to control strawberry root rot and their potential to develop as novel biocontrol agents to replace chemical fungicides for eco-friendly, sustainable agriculture.

Dual specificity phosphatase 2 (DUSP2) regulates the activation of members in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family, which is involved in a variety of cellular processes like cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and migration. DUSP2 also regulates the expression of inflammatory mediators in macrophages, however, it remains unknown whether DUSP2 participates in macrophage migration. Here, using the tail fin injury model in zebrafish larvae, we found that deletion of DUSP2 inhibited expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and macrophage chemokines. Moreover, live imaging results showed that migration of macrophages to the injury site was inhibited after DUSP2 deletion. This inhibitory effect was mediated through reduced activation of extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERK) in DUSP2 knockout zebrafish.

Background: Numerous investigations have shed light on the intriguing interplay between gut microbiota(GM) and psoriasis (Ps) as well as psoriatic arthritis (PsA). However, the precise nature of the causal relationship between them remains an area of active investigation. Methods: For the purpose of our investigation, we meticulously curated a collection of genetic variants (P < 1 × 10−5) associated with GM (n = 18,340) derived from the MiBioGen study. To explore the intricate relationship between GM and Ps as well as PsA, we harnessed the comprehensive resources of the FinnGen database, encompassing a vast cohort of individuals, including 4,510 Ps cases and 212,242 controls, and 1,637 PsA cases and 212,242 controls. Even complementary MR methods were implemented, including an inverse variance weighting method, followed by a sensitivity analysis to verify the robustness of the results. Results: In this study, we found that certain bacterial taxa, such as Lactococcus, Ruminiclostridium 5, and Eubacterium fissicatena, were identified as risk factors. Conversely, Alloprevotella and Odoribacter demonstrated a protective effect against Ps. In the case of PsA, our results revealed a distinct set of risk factors and protective factors among the gut bacterial taxa. Lactococcus, Verrucomicrobiales, Akkermansia, Coprococcus 1, Lachnospiraceae, and Verrucomicrobiaceae were identified as risk factors for PsA. On the other hand, Odoribacter, Rikenellaceae, Clostridium innocuum, and Marvinbryantia exhibited a protective effect against the development of PsA. Conclusion: Our findings shed light on the distinctive disease characteristics and onset features between Ps and PsA. Notably, certain intestinal flora were implicated in the pathogenesis of PsA, suggesting their potential role as early diagnostic indicators. Furthermore, we identified several bacterial flora that exhibit a potential protective effect against the occurrence of Ps and PsA. These discoveries lay a solid foundation for future endeavors in the prevention and treatment of these conditions.

Shear dynamics simulation under extreme pressure was used to optimise the composition of ester-based lubricant base oil and extreme pressure additives. As a result, the ester-based lubricant in the weak-gel drilling fluid achieves reduction and increases the efficiency in drilling construction, and the field operation efficiency improves. The results of base oil lubrication simulation show that three base oils, namely, methyl oleate, ethyl oleate and butyl oleate, can be stably adsorbed on the surface layer of the shear surface. Methyl oleate has the lowest system temperature after shear stabilisation and has a high load-bearing capacity. The shear stress of methyl oleate decreases by changing the initial shear temperature and speed. It increases by 6.36 MPa when the speed increases from 10 m/s to 30 m/s. At this time, the shear stress of butyl oleate increases by 10.11 MPa. The results of the four-ball friction experiments show that the radius of the abrasion spot of methyl oleate is 179.83 μm, which is smaller than that of the other two base oils. Moreover, the friction coefficient of methyl oleate is 0.0018, which is approximately 1/3 of that of butyl oleate. Methyl oleate has better lubrication efficiency. The shear simulation results are consistent with the experimental results. The simulation can be used for the molecular design of lubricant materials. The oleic acid amide–containing amine group and the glyceride oleic–containing hydroxyl group were selected as the extreme pressure functional components for shear simulation. Results show that the shear stress of oleic acid amide is much lower than that of oleic acid glyceride when the initial shear temperature and speed change. The extreme pressure lubrication component–containing amine group is better than the extreme pressure lubrication material–containing hydroxyl group. The effects of different oleamide contents in the two-component mixtures on the lubricating properties were investigated through shear simulation, with methyl oleate as the base oil and oleamide as the extreme pressure functional component. The simulation results show that the lubricant has the optimal shear stress when 10% oleamide is added to the lubricant. The base properties of the lubricant were tested using a mixture of 90% methyl oleate and 10% oleamide, formulated as a lubricant. Results show that the friction coefficient can be reduced to 0.03 when 0.5% of the lubricant is added to the base mud. Moreover, the lubricant film formed shows high strength. Then, 1% lubricant was added to the weak-gel drilling fluid to evaluate the effect of the lubricant on the gel structure of the drilling fluid. Results show that adding lubricant does not affect the rheological properties of the drilling fluid. The gel structure of the system also remains stable even after 7 days of continuous ageing. The results of the field experiments in Hua3-01 well show that adding 1% ester-based lubricant to the field drilling fluid reduces the drilling friction by 33%. Thus, the efficiency of directional side drilling can be effectively improved, complicated accidents, such as poor starting and stopping of drilling and stuck jamming, can be avoided, and the goals of reducing quantity and increasing efficiency can be completed.

With the depletion of shallow surface resources, the future mining work will develop towards the deep surface, and the objective conditions such as the mining environment will be more complex and dangerous than now, and the requirements for personnel and equipment will be higher and higher. The efficient exploitation of deep space cannot be separated from such mobile and flexible production and transportation equipment as scraper. In the new era, intelligence is the development trend of the LHD, and path tracking control technology is the key to the intelligent LHD, and it is also an urgent problem to be solved for its unmanned driving. This paper describes the realization of the automatic operation function of articulated LHD from two aspects of mathematical model and trajectory tracking control method, and focuses on the research of the path tracking control scheme in the field of unmanned driving, that is, LQR controller. On this basis, the parameters of the LQR controller are optimized by combining different intelligent cluster algorithms to find the optimal solution of the LQR controller.

Urban spatial perception critically influences human behavior and emotional reactions, emphasizing the necessity of aligning urban spaces with human needs for enhanced urban living. However, functionality-based categorization of urban architecture is prone to biases, stemming from disparities between objective mapping and subjective perception. These biases can result in urban planning and designs that fail to cater adequately to the needs and preferences of city residents, negatively impacting their quality of life and the city's overall functionality. In this study, we apply machine learning to elucidate these biases within urban spatial perception research, utilizing a three-step methodology: objective mapping, subjective perception analysis, and perception deviation assessment. Our findings reveal that machine learning can expose hidden patterns within this research field, bearing substantial implications for urban planning and design. Of particular note, the study revealed significant discrepancies in the distribution centroids between commercial buildings and residential or public buildings. This result illuminates the spatial organization characteristics of urban architectural functions, serving as a valuable reference for urban planning and development. Moreover, it uncovers the advantages and disadvantages of different data sources and techniques in interpreting urban spatial perception, paving the way for a more comprehensive understanding of the subject. These findings underscore the importance of integrating both objective mapping and subjective perspectives in urban architectural functionality classification.

Abstract In order to solve the problem that it is difficult to obtain the accurate trigger signal moment when using the time difference of UAV flight acoustic signals collected by acoustic sensors arranged in advance to locate the position of UAVs when they cannot be tracked by radar and are difficult to be observed by the human eye, an acoustic source localisation method with improved empirical modal decomposition (REMD) under an adaptive frequency window is proposed. Firstly, the collected UAV flight signals are smoothed and filtered, then the robust empirical modal decomposition (REMD) is used for IMF modal decomposition and spectral analysis of the collected signals, and a panning frequency window with variable bandwidth is introduced for corresponding frequency locking and extracting the IMFs; the GWO optimisation is used and the sliding metrics are set to determine the position of the panning frequency window automatically; finally, the extracted Finally, the extracted IMF components are reconstructed according to the criterion, and the trigger signal moments in the reconstructed IMF components are resolved and recorded, and the algorithm is used to calculate the difference between the reception moments of different sensors; for the traditional sound source localisation algorithms with a small detection range, which are prone to fall into the no-solution or false-solution, i.e., unable to achieve the localisation, a weighted least-squares-based Chan-Taylor algorithm is proposed for the localisation computation, and a weighted least-squares algorithm is proposed for the localisation computation, through the Inputting the sensor delay parameter and solving the linear equation system to get the target position information; finally, this paper verifies the robustness and performance of the design method with simulated and actual signals. The results show that the maximum positioning error is no more than 5% in an area with a side length of 15m in the measurement area. With the improved accuracy of time delay estimation, the positioning simulation results meet the positioning requirements even though the positioning error is further expanded when the measurement area is further expanded.

In view of the limitations of the existing optimization method of suspender cable force, in order to improve the stress of suspender under completion state and avoid frequent adjustment of cable force and grid beam elevation during construction, a new method of cable force optimization is proposed. The article takes the longest large span arch bridge in the world, Pingnan Third Bridge, a Concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) arch bridge with a span of 575m as the engineering background combined with the finite element analysis and multi-objective optimization method. One cable force optimization method that suspender “Real-time correction during construction, in the process variable optimal and results reliable” during panel girder lifting of long span CFST arch bridges is clarified. Taking the panel girder weight and displacement during the construction as parameter variables, the displacement and unevenness of the panel girder under completion state as constraint conditions, the displacement and cable force during the hoisting construction as the objective equation, through the optimization of the objective equation, the suspender cable force and dis-placement of each hoisting section are calculated. The results show that it is feasible to introduce the optimization theory into the cable force optimization when lifting the panel girder. the segment displacement variation is minimized to meet the destination. The cable force distributed evenly under completion state of the bridge that further making sure the completion state satisfies the requirements. No repeating iteration is needed, thus avoiding cumberso me calculation, getting cable force once. With higher optimization efficiency and better effects, the method provides high value for the cable force calculation of same type bridge suspender construction and for guiding construction.

Typhoon Durian forming over the Western North Pacific Ocean and entering into the South China Sea (SCS), caused extreme and widespread damages in 2006. In this research, sensitivity analyses on different physical parameterization schemes of the Weather Research and Forecasting Atmospheric Model (WRF-ATM) have been utilized to study typhoon Durian. Model accuracy and performance testing were investigated with different initial conditions during the tropical cyclone simulation in the SCS. The initial and boundary conditions (IBCs) for all experiments were derived from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Re-Analysis Interim (ERAI), and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) with Final (FNL) analysis data compiled through the WRF-ATM model. The sensitivity analysis results indicated a major improvement for the cumulus scheme by using the Grell-Devenyi scheme along with the PBL scheme of Yonsei University, mixed-phase microphysics scheme of the WRF Single Moment 5-class and IBCs for ECMWF-ERAI of TC simulation under the context of Wind-Pressure Relationships. This predicted better track and intensity comparing with these of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The results revealed that the TC track and intensity were well simulated by the WSM5-GD combination for the WRF-ATM model with an intensity error of 1.69 hPa for minimum surface level pressure, maximum wind speed of 1.83 knots and average track error of 25 km in 72 hours. The simulations showed that the potential track and intensity error decreased with the delayed IBCs, suggesting that the model simulation is more dependable when the coast is approached by the TC.

In agriculture, soil-borne fungal pathogens, especially Fusarium oxysporum strains, are posing a serious threat to efforts to achieve global food security. In the search for safer agrochemicals, silica nanoparticles (SiO2NPs) have recently been proposed as a new tool to alleviate pathogen damage including Fusarium wilt. Hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs), a unique class of SiO2NPs, have been widely accepted as a desired pesticide carrier. However, their role in enhancing the disease resistance and the specific mechanism remain unknown. In this study, three sizes of HMSNs (19, 96 and 406 nm as HMSNs–19, HMSNs–96 and HMSNs–406, respectively) were synthesized and characterized to determine their effects on seed germination, seedling growth, and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. phaseolus (FOP) suppression in cowpea roots by foliar spray using phenotypes, fresh biomass and disease progression as indicators. The results revealed that three HMSNs exhibited no adverse impacts on seed germination and tended to improve plant growth. Also, they exert their FOP suppression with a size- and concentration-dependent manner. HMSNs–406 possessed the best control effect at a concentration of 1000 mg/L showing an upto 40.00% decline in the disease severity. The Si(OH)4 control was also effective on FOP suppression at a lower concentration of 100 mg/L, whereas its higher concentrations exhibited obviously adverse impacts on FOP control, seed germination and plant growth. Moreover, we conformed that HMSNs posed their Fusarium wilt suppression in cowpea plant by activating SA (salicylic acid)-dependent SAR (systemic acquired resistance) responses rather than directly suppressing FOP. A higher level of SA content and elevated expression of its maker genes of PR-1 and PR-5 in HMSNs–406 treated cowpea roots provided substantial evidences of this mode of action. Other resistance-related genes, as well as defense-responsive enzymes, were also involved in the HMSNs-activated SAR pathway. Overall, for the first time, our results extended a new role of HMSNs as a potent elicitor to serve as a versatile alternative for plant disease protection of low cost, highly efficiency and sustainability.

A series of novel N-n-butyl-1,8-naphthalimide derivatives were synthesized via a three-step reaction involving nucleophilic substitution and acylation. All of the compounds were characterized by IR, ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, MS, and elemental analysis, and the crystal structure of N-n-butyl-4-[N’,N’-bis(2`,4`-dichlorobenzoyl)ethylamino]-1,8-naphthalimide was determined. The π-π stacking interactions and hydrogen bonds between the two molecular core planes (naphthalimide ring) and the van der Waals forces between the flexible n-butyl groups resulted in a 3D long-chain structure. The UV-vis and fluorescence properties of the title compounds were investigated. The results indicated that the monosubstituted 1,8-naphthalimide derivatives bearing an electron-donating group on the benzene ring or a structure with a larger conjugative effect exhibited enhanced fluorescence properties.

Keywords: mHealth; peritoneal dialysis; functionality; usability

HybridAC/DC microgrids(HMG) are emerging as an attracting method for integrating the AC/DC distributed energy resources(DERs) with the features of high-performance and low-cost. In the isolated hybrid AC/DC microgrid (IHMG), the key problem is how to balance the power variation and regulate the voltage and frequency. Various energy storage systems (ESS)and interlinking converter (IC) technologies are viable for this application. The present study proposes a novel unified power flow model to evaluate and compare the abilities of the ESS with different connection topologies and ICs with different control approaches to maintain the voltage and frequency stability of the IHMG. In order to investigate the performance of the proposed scheme, five operation modes of the IHMG are defined and explained. The classification is based on the connection topologies and control modes of the ESS/IC in the IHMG. Then, a set of generic PF equations are derived. Moreover, three binary matrices are applied in the construction of the unified power equations. These matrices are used for describing the running state of the IHMG. Finally, in order to verify the proposed scheme, it is applied to several case studies of the IHMG. The operation characteristics of multi-DC subgrids IHMG in different modes, particularly when an external disturbance occurs, are investigated.

The application of Explainable AI (XAI) to improve understanding of complex non-linear SST teleconnections and gain predictive skills is at the frontier of climate research. In this study, we attempt to refine the applications of XAI advancements to ENSO prediction by including SSTA in the western North Pacific (WNP) as a precursor. Our analyses indicate that the baseline accuracy increases from the 60% threshold previously reported for ENSO to &gt;85% for moderate warm, cold, and neutral ENSO states one year in advance when WNP SSTA is included. Precision increases to over 90% for higher magnitude El Niños and La Niñas. Experiments conducted at 4-year lead times yield a strong WNP SSTA signal. A moderate SSTA signal is observed at 3-year lead time with no predictability; however, predictability spikes to over 80% when stratospheric zonal winds are included with WNP SSTA. While additional scientific work is required to make robust connections between XAI and dynamical processes, our results demonstrate a potential to improve long term predictability of ENSO through the ability of XAI in capturing SST patterns evolving at extended spatial and temporal scales.

In our long-term engineering practice, we have found that it is often not enough to use only engineering knowledge to solve the practical problems in the engineering. Therefore, we believe that in the education of engineering students, we should not only pay attention to the teaching of engineering knowledge, but also pay attention to the application of knowledge of Humanities in the engineering, for the students. In this two-part concept paper, we put forward the concept of a new discipline, that is, Engineering &amp; Humanities, which we will carry forward in future. And this concept paper serves just as a guide to the Tossing out a brick to get a jade gem with the implications for the development of the engineering education.