Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is the most common and critical aortic disease. Bleeding is the most serious complication from a ruptured AAA, which often results in death. Therefore, early diagnosis ...and treatment are the only effective means to reduce AAA associated mortality. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) combines functional and anatomical imaging. The expanded application of PET/CT in the medical field could have benefits for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with AAA. This review explores the efficiency of PET/CT in the diagnosis of AAA based on our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms of AAA development.Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is the most common and critical aortic disease. Bleeding is the most serious complication from a ruptured AAA, which often results in death. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment are the only effective means to reduce AAA associated mortality. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) combines functional and anatomical imaging. The expanded application of PET/CT in the medical field could have benefits for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with AAA. This review explores the efficiency of PET/CT in the diagnosis of AAA based on our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms of AAA development.
Nematodes are the most abundant and diverse metazoans on Earth, and are known to significantly affect ecosystem functioning. A better understanding of their biology and ecology, including potential ...adaptations to diverse habitats and lifestyles, is key to understanding their response to global change scenarios. Mitochondrial genomes offer high species level characterization, low cost of sequencing, and an ease of data handling that can provide insights into nematode evolutionary pressures. Generally, nematode mitochondrial genomes exhibited similar structural characteristics (e.g., gene size and GC content), but displayed remarkable variability around these general patterns. Compositional strand biases showed strong codon position specific G skews and relationships with nematode life traits (especially parasitic feeding habits) equal to or greater than with predicted phylogeny. On average, nematode mitochondrial genomes showed low non-synonymous substitution rates, but also high clade specific deviations from these means. Despite the presence of significant mutational saturation, non-synonymous (dN) and synonymous (dS) substitution rates could still be significantly explained by feeding habit and/or habitat. Low ratios of dN:dS rates, particularly associated with the parasitic lifestyles, suggested the presence of strong purifying selection. Nematode mitochondrial genomes demonstrated a capacity to accumulate diversity in composition, structure, and content while still maintaining functional genes. Moreover, they demonstrated a capacity for rapid evolutionary change pointing to a potential interaction between multi-level selection pressures and rapid evolution. In conclusion, this study helps establish a background for our understanding of the potential evolutionary pressures shaping nematode mitochondrial genomes, while outlining likely routes of future inquiry.
Based on a large number of research data at home and abroad, this paper designed an experiment to complete the research on the mechanical properties and durability of magnesium phosphate cement by ...the ratio of magnesium phosphorus, fly ash content and pH value. On this basis, the effects of curing methods and different concentrations of hydrochloric acid on hydration products of magnesium phosphate cement were studied, and the mechanism of action was analyzed. Finally, when the M/P ratio was 4, with the increase of curing time, the strength of MPC increases gradually. When M/P is greater than 4, the flexural strength of MPC all shows a certain degree of shrinkage. In addition, fly ash can reduce the shrinkage of magnesium phosphate cement-based materials; The content of K-type struvite (KM
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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has the sixth-highest new incidence and fourth-highest mortality worldwide. Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is one of the primary treatment strategies for ...unresectable HCC. However, the therapeutic effect is still unsatisfactory due to the insufficient distribution of antineoplastic drugs in tumor tissues and the worsened post-embolization tumor microenvironment (TME, e.g., hypoxia and reduced pH). Recently, using nanomaterials as a drug delivery platform for TACE therapy of HCC has been a research hotspot. With the development of nanotechnology, multifunctional nanoplatforms have been developed to embolize the tumor vasculature, creating conditions for improving the distribution and bioavailability of drugs in tumor tissues. Currently, the researchers are focusing on functionalizing nanomaterials to achieve high drug loading efficacy, thorough vascular embolization, tumor targeting, controlled sustained release of drugs, and real-time imaging in the TACE process to facilitate precise embolization and enable therapeutic procedures follow-up imaging of tumor lesions. Herein, we summarized the recent advances and applications of functionalized nanomaterials based on TACE against HCC, believing that developing these functionalized nanoplatforms may be a promising approach for improving the TACE therapeutic effect of HCC.
Sparse learning is an efficient technique for feature selection and avoiding overfitting in machine learning research areas. Considering sparse learning for real-world problems with online learning ...demands in neural networks, an online sparse supervised learning of extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm is proposed based on alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM), termed OAL1-ELM. In OAL1-ELM, an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\ell _{1} </tex-math></inline-formula>-regularization penalty is added in loss function for generating a sparse solution to enhance the generalization ability. This convex combinatorial loss function is solved by using ADMM in a distributed way. Furthermore, an improved ADMM is used to reduce computational complexity and to achieve online learning. The proposed algorithm can learn data one-by-one or batch-by-batch. The convergence analysis for the fixed point of the solution is given to show the efficiency and optimality of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain a sparse solution and have strong generalization performance in a wide range of regression tasks, multiclass classification tasks, and a real-world industrial project.
All-wheel-independent-drive electric vehicles (AWID-EVs) have considerable advantages in terms of energy optimization, drivability and driving safety due to the remarkable actuation flexibility of ...electric motors. However, in their current implementations, various real-time data in the vehicle control system are exchanged via a controller area network (CAN), which causes network congestion and network-induced delays. These problems could lead to systemic instability and make the system integration difficult. The goal of this paper is to provide a design methodology that can cope with all these challenges for the lateral motion control of AWID-EVs. Firstly, a continuous-time model of an AWID-EV is derived. Then an expression for determining upper and lower bounds on the delays caused by CAN is presented and with which a discrete-time model of the closed-loop CAN system is derived. An expression on the bandwidth utilization is introduced as well. Thirdly, a co-design based scheme combining a period-dependent linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and a dynamic period scheduler is designed for the resulting model and the stability criterion is also derived. The results of simulations and hard-in-loop (HIL) experiments show that the proposed methodology can effectively guarantee the stability of the vehicle lateral motion control while obviously declining the network congestion.
This paper deals with the speed synchronization control of integrated motor–transmission (IMT) powertrain systems in pure electric vehicles (EVs) over a controller area network (CAN) subject to both ...network-induced delays and network congestion. A CAN has advantages over point-to-point communication; however, it imposes network-induced delays and network congestion into the control system, which can deteriorate the shifting quality and make system integration difficult. This paper presents a co-design scheme combining active period scheduling and discrete-time slip mode control (SMC) to deal with both network-induced delays and network congestion of the CAN, which improves the speed synchronization control for high shifting quality and prevents network congestion for the system’s integration. The results of simulations and hardware-in-loop experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which can ensure satisfactory speed synchronization performance while significantly reducing the network’s utilization.
This paper deals with the speed synchronization controller design for networked integrated motor-transmission (IMT) powertrains via controller area network (CAN). It is well known that, in current ...implementations, CAN has been widely used in the control system design of automotive powertrains. However, on the other hand, the application of CAN would not only lead to network-induced delays but also bring about protocol constrains, e.g., data package capability and utilization ratio limitation, which would deteriorate the system and make the controller design a challenging problem. This paper is to provide a co-design methodology that can cope with all these problems and ensure satisfactory control effect for the speed synchronization control of IMT powertrain systems. First, a networked IMT powertrain system using CAN as underlying network is presented and the dynamic model for the speed synchronization control is derived. Second, the network-induced delay model is introduced and improved considering data packet capability and utilization ratio limitation. The control-orient discrete-time model is also derived based on the improved delay model. Third, a co-design methodology using sliding mode controller and offline priority scheduling based on Lyapunov stability criterion is proposed. The results of simulations and tests show the effectiveness of the proposed co-design methodology.
The study of Li-ion battery based on laboratory tests was presented and analysed taking into consideration various aspects. The tests with different charging and discharging currents were carried ...out. Moreover, some additional tests with the use of temperature chamber were applied. The results derived from laboratory tests allowed to obtain the characteristics of the electromotive force of two types of Li-ion cylindrical cell batteries. Subsequently, the influence of temperature on battery useful capacity was analysed. Therefore, the characteristics of internal resistance for studied batteries were determined based on obtained results and according to battery non-linear modelling 1, 2. Finally, the possibilities for further development of the presented research have been considered.
This paper deals with the integration of lane keeping assistance (LKA) and direct yaw-moment control (DYC) for smart four-wheel-independent-drive electric vehicles (FWID-EVs) using a new ...central-zonal electronic and electrical (E/E) architecture with multi-path asynchronization (MPA) loop delays. The central-zonal E/E architecture with grouped components by their physical positions in the vehicle results significant improvement of computing power, data transmission and harness simplification. However, the MPA loop delays in the central-zonal E/E architecture may degrade or even deteriorate the stability of the system. Firstly, a new analysis model on the MPA loop delays is constructed to describe the network-induced delays. A mathematical upper-bound equation is derived to determine the worst-case loop delays. Secondly, in order to deal with the MPA loop delays and simplify the robust controller design, a novel co-design method of control and scheduling is proposed, in which a time-sensitive networking (TSN) with flexible time-triggered scheduling (FTTS) scheme is developed for improving the communication effectiveness, and a model predictive control (MPC) is adopted to make decisions instantly for improving the control accuracy. Furthermore, a Lyapunov-based pole assignment theory is applied to verify the system stability. Finally, the results of the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) experiment validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
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