AIM：To explore the value of fecal lactoferrin in predicting and monitoring the clinical severity of infectious diarrhea.METHODS：Patients with acute infectious diarrhea ranging from 3 mo to 10 years ...in age were enrolled,and one to three stool samples from each subject were collected.Certain parameters,including white blood cells /differential count,C-reactive protein,fecal mucus,fecal pus cells,duration of fever,vomiting,diarrhea and severity（indicated by Clark and Vesikari scores）,were recorded and analyzed.Fecal lactoferrin was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and compared in different pathogen and disease activity.Generalized estimating equations（GEE） were also used for analysis.RESULTS：Data included 226 evaluations for 117 individuals across three different time points.Fecal lactoferrin was higher in patients with Salmonella（11.17 μg/g ± 2.73 μg/g） or Campylobacter（10.32 μg/g ± 2.94 μg/g） infections and lower in patients with rotavirus（2.82 μg/g ± 1.27 μg/g） or norovirus（3.16 μg/g ± 1.18 μg/g） infections.Concentrations of fecal lactoferrin were significantly elevated in patients with severe（11.32 μg/g ± 3.29 μg/g） or moderate（3.77 μg/g ± 2.08 μg/g） disease activity compared with subjects with mild（1.51 μg/g ± 1.36 μg/g） disease activity（P 〈 0.05）.GEE analysis suggests that this marker could be used to monitor the severity and course of gastrointestinal infections and may provide information for disease management.CONCLUSION：Fecal lactoferrin increased during bacterial infection and with greater disease severity and may be a good marker for predicting and monitoring intestinal inflammation in children with infectious diarrhea.
AIM To determine whether capsaicin infusion could influence heartburn perception and secondary peristalsis in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease(GERD). METHODS Secondary peristalsis was ...performed with slow and rapid mid-esophageal injections of air in 10 patients with GERD. In a first protocol, saline and capsaicincontaining red pepper sauce infusions were randomly performed, whereas 2 consecutive sessions of capsaicin-containing red pepper sauce infusions were performed in a second protocol. Tested solutions including 5 m L of red pepper sauce diluted with 15 m L of saline and 20 m L of 0.9% saline were infused into the mid-esophagus via the manometric catheter at a rate of 10 mL /min with a randomized and doubleblind fashion. During each study protocol, perception of heartburn, threshold volumes and peristaltic parameters for secondary peristalsis were analyzed and compared between different stimuli.RESULTS Infusion of capsaicin significantly increased heartburn perception in patients with GERD(P < 0.001), whereas repeated capsaicin infusion significantly reduced heartburn perception(P = 0.003). Acute capsaicin infusion decreased threshold volume of secondary peristalsis(P = 0.001) and increased its frequency(P = 0.01) during rapid air injection. The prevalence of GERD patients with successive secondary peristalsis during slow air injection significantly increased after capsaicin infusion(P = 0.001). Repeated capsaicin infusion increased threshold volume of secondary peristalsis(P = 0.002) and reduced the frequency of secondary peristalsis(P = 0.02) during rapid air injection. CONCLUSION Acute esophageal exposure to capsaicin enhances heartburn sensation and promotes secondary peristalsis in gastroesophageal reflux disease, but repetitive capsaicin infusion reverses these effects.
Ozone sensitivity was investigated using CAMx simulations and photochemical indicator ratios at three sites （Pingtung City, Chao-Chou Town, and Kenting Town） in Pingtung County in southern Taiwan ...during 2003 and 2004. The CAMx simulations compared fairly well with the hourly concentrations of ozone. Simulation results also showed that Pingtung City was mainly a volatile organic compounds （VOC）-sensitive regime, while Chao-Chou Town was either a VOC-sensitive or a NOx-sensitive regime, depending on the seasons. Measurements of three photochemical indicators （H202, HNO3, and NOy） were conducted, and simulated three transition ranges of H202/HNO3 （0.5-0.8）, O3/HNO3 （10.3-16.2） and O3/NOy （5.7-10.8） were adopted to assess the ozone sensitive regime at the three sites. The results indicated that the three transition ranges yield consistent results with CAMx simulations at most times at Pingtung City. However, both VOC-sensitive and NOx-sensitive regimes were important at the rural site Chao-Chou Town. Kenting Town, a touring site at the southern end of Taiwan, was predominated by a NOx-sensitive regime in four seasons.
Queue dissipation has been extensively studied about traffic signalization, work zone operations, and ramp metering. Various methods for estimating the intersection's queue length and dissipation ...time have been reported in the literature, including the use of car-following models with simulation, vehicle trajectories from GPS, shock-wave theory, statistical estimation from traffic flow patterns, and artificial neural networks (ANN). However, most of such methods cannot account for the impacts of interactions between different vehicle types and their spatial distributions in the queue length on the initial discharge time and the resulting total dissipation duration. As such, this study presents a system, named TrafficTalk, that applies a deep learning-based method to reliably capture the queue characteristics of mixed traffic flows, and produce a robust estimate of the dissipating duration for the design of the optimal signal plan. The proposed TrafficTalk, featuring the effectiveness in transforming video-imaged traffic conditions into vehicle density maps, has proved its performance under extensive field evaluations. For instance, compared with the benchmark model, XGBoost in the literature, it has reduced the MAPE from 25.8% to 10.4%., and from 31.3% to 10.4% if the queue discharging stream comprises motorcycles.
Background
This study examines the predictive value of a novel systemic immune‐inflammation index (SII, platelet × neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio) in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients.
Methods
A ...total of 5602 CAD patients who had undergone a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were enrolled. They were divided into two groups by baseline SII score (high SII vs low SII) to analyse the relationship between SII groups and the long‐term outcome. The primary outcomes were major cardiovascular events (MACE) which includes nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI), nonfatal stroke and cardiac death. Secondary outcomes included a composite of MACE and hospitalization for congestive heart failure.
Results
An optimal SII cut‐off point of 694.3 × 109 was identified for MACE in the CAD training cohort (n = 373) and then verified in the second larger CAD cohort (n = 5602). Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that a higher SII score (≥694.3) was independently associated with increased risk of developing cardiac death (HR: 2.02; 95% CI: 1.43‐2.86), nonfatal MI (HR: 1.42; 95% CI: 1.09‐1.85), nonfatal stroke (HR: 1.96; 95% CI: 1.28‐2.99), MACE (HR: 1.65; 95% CI: 1.36‐2.01) and total major events (HR: 1.53; 95% CI: 1.32‐1.77). In addition, the SII significantly improved risk stratification of MI, cardiac death, heart failure, MACE and total major events than conventional risk factors in CAD patients by the significant increase in the C‐index (P < .001) and reclassification risk categories by significant NRI (P < .05) and IDI (P < .05).
Conclusions
SII had a better prediction of major cardiovascular events than traditional risk factors in CAD patients after coronary intervention.
Future mobile communication networks require an Aerial Base Station (ABS) with fast mobility and long-term hovering capabilities. At present, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones do not have long ...flight times and are mainly used for monitoring, surveillance, and image post-processing. On the other hand, the traditional airship is too large and not easy to take off and land. Therefore, we propose to develop an "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Drone-Cruiser" base station that can help 5G mobile communication systems and beyond quickly recover the network after a disaster and handle the instant communications by the flash crowd. The drone-cruiser base station can overcome the communications problem for three types of flash crowds, such as in stadiums, parades, and large plaza so that an appropriate number of aerial base stations can be accurately deployed to meet large and dynamic traffic demands. Artificial intelligence can solve these problems by analyzing the collected data, and then adjust the system parameters in the framework of Self-Organizing Network (SON) to achieve the goals of self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing. With the help of AI technologies, 5G networks can become more intelligent. This paper aims to provide a new type of service, On-Demand Aerial Base Station as a Service. This work needs to overcome the following five technical challenges: innovative design of drone-cruisers for the long-time hovering, crowd estimation and prediction, rapid 3D wireless channel learning and modeling, 3D placement of aerial base stations and the integration of WiFi front-haul and millimeter wave/WiGig back-haul networks.
Self-assembly metal/semiconductor heterostructured Cu-Ge alloy nanowires were successfully synthesized by using the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template-assisted vacuum casting process for the first ...time, analyzed their interface microstructures and fabricated single nanowire into device. AAO, a membrane with a controllable microstructure of nano-channel array, was utilized to synthesize nanowires of the identical stoichiometry to bulk materials, combining with solid-liquid-solid transformation process. Through choosing a suitable hypoeutectic or hypereutectic composition ratio the size effect will force the phases of nanowires to solidify alternatively along axial direction. Thus, self-assembly nanowires with an alternative metal/semiconductor heterostructure can be obtained. Furthermore, a single nanowire device was synthesized to investigate the relative electrical properties for semiconductor applications. This results are useful in developing metal/semiconductor heterostructured nanowires for advanced FET devices.
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