The images that are captured in sand storms often suffer from low contrast and serious color cast that are caused by sand dust, and these issues will have significant negative effects on the ...performance of an outdoor computer vision system. To address these problems, a method based on halo-reduced dark channel prior (DCP) dehazing for sand dust image enhancement is proposed in this paper. It includes three components in sequence: color correction in the LAB color space based on gray world theory, dust removal using a halo-reduced DCP dehazing method, and contrast stretching in the LAB color space using a Gamma function improved contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), in which a guided filter is used to improve the artifacts of the histogram equalization. Experiments on a large number of real sand dust images demonstrate that the proposed method can well remove the overall yellowing tone and dust haze effect and obtain normal visual colors and a detailed clear image.
•COVID-19 vaccines may reduce hospitalization risks from several disorders.•Risk reduction was seen for stroke, heart failure, non-COVID-19 pneumonia, and dementia.•Moderate evidence of protection ...seen for coronary artery disease/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/diabetes.•Benefits of COVID-19 vaccines extend beyond reducing infection risk/severity per se.
To explore whether COVID-19 vaccination protects against hospital admission by preventing infections and severe disease.
We leveraged the UK Biobank and studied associations of COVID-19 vaccination (BioNTech-BNT162b2 or Oxford-AstraZeneca-ChAdOx1) with hospitalizations from cardiovascular and other selected diseases (N = 393,544; median follow-up = 54 days among vaccinated individuals). Multivariable Cox, Poisson regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability treatment weighting analyses were performed. We also performed adjustment using prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio.
We observed that COVID-19 vaccination (at least one dose), compared with no vaccination, was associated with reduced short-term risks of hospitalizations from stroke (hazard ratio HR = 0.178, 95% confidence interval CI: 0.127-0.250, P = 1.50e-23), venous thromboembolism (HR = 0.426, CI: 0.270-0.673, P = 2.51e-4), dementia (HR = 0.114, CI: 0.060-0.216; P = 2.24e-11), non-COVID-19 pneumonia (HR = 0.108, CI: 0.080-0.145; P = 2.20e-49), coronary artery disease (HR = 0.563, CI: 0.416-0.762; P = 2.05e-4), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (HR = 0.212, CI: 0.126-0.357; P = 4.92e-9), type 2 diabetes (HR = 0.216, CI: 0.096-0.486, P = 2.12e-4), heart failure (HR = 0.174, CI: 0.118-0.256, P = 1.34e-18), and renal failure (HR = 0.415, CI: 0.255-0.677, P = 4.19e-4), based on standard Cox regression models. Among the previously mentioned results, reduced hospitalizations for stroke, heart failure, non-COVID-19 pneumonia, and dementia were consistently observed across regression, propensity score matching/inverse probability treatment weighting, prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio. The results for two-dose vaccination were similar.
Taken together, this study provides further support to the safety and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, and such benefits may extend beyond reduction of infection risk or severity per se. However, causal relationship cannot be concluded and further studies are required.
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•AR (78%) is the gene with the highest mutation frequency among cervical cancer patients in our cohort.•TMB level has significantly difference between HPV+ and HPV- cervical cancer.•Prognostic ...predictive indicators related to CESC patients, including BMI, BARD1, CEP290, and SLX4 mutation genes.•MATH may be an important indicator for gauging treatment response in cervical cancer.
This study aimed to investigate the genomic alteration profiles of cervical cancer patients, examine the correlation between mutation patterns and clinical and immune attributes, and discover novel targets for treatment of individuals with cervical cancer.
We performed targeted next-generation sequencing of tumor tissues and blood samples obtained from 45 cervical cancer patients to analyze somatic alterations, mutation patterns, and HLA alleles comprehensively. Additionally, we used flow cytometry to assess expression levels of immune checkpoint genes.
Notably, genes such as AR (78%), KMT2D (76%), and NOTCH1 (62%) exhibited higher mutation frequencies. Moreover, the tumor mutation burden (TMB) was significantly greater in HPV-positive cervical cancer patients than in HPV-negative patients (P=0.029). BMI (P=0.047) and mutations in BARD1 (P=0.034), CEP290 (P=4E-04), and SLX4 (P=0.0128) were identified as predictors of shorter overall survival in cervical cancer patients. Furthermore, the present study revealed significant upregulation of PD-1 (P=0.027) and Tim-3 (P=0.048) in the high mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity (MATH) cohort. In the elderly cervical cancer patient population, HLA-A03:01 emerged as a high-risk allele (OR=3.2, P<0.0001); HLA-C07:02 (OR=0.073, P=0.02) and HLA-B*07:02 (OR=0.257, P=0.037) were associated with a reduced risk among patients with low TMB.
This study offers insights into the mutation characteristics of cervical cancer patients and identifies potential therapeutic.
In rainy conditions, especially at night with low illumination, the visual of images obtained by outdoor computer vision systems is degraded significantly, leading to a significant negative effect on ...the work of the outdoor computer vision system. In this paper, we develop a new rainy image model to describe rain scenes at night with low illumination. From this model, we propose a joint deep neural network-based method for single nighttime rainy image enhancement. First, a decom-net based on Retinex theory is employed for image decomposition, and the purpose of this sub-net is to extract the reflection image and the illumination image from the input image. Then, an enhancement net is proposed for illumination adjustment. The goal of this sub-net is to remove the negative effect (low visual) caused by low illumination. Finally, a symmetric sub-net termed multi-stream network-based contextual autoencoder is developed, where rain features are directly learned from the enhanced nighttime rainy images in a recurrent way. The goal of this sub-net is to effectively remove rain streaks from the illumination-enhanced image. The experimental results show the advantage and effectiveness of the proposed method, and evident improvements over existing state-of-the-art methods are obtained with the proposed method.
Composites with damping–absorption performances and storage-loss behaviors were fabricated based on NCB (nano-carbon black), BWZT Ba (W
1/2
Cu
1/2
)O
3
–Pb
0.98
Sr
0.02
(Mg
1/3
Nb
2/3
)
0.275
(Ni
1/3
...Nb
2/3
)
0.10
(Zr
0.25
Ti
0.375
)O
3
and RTV (room temperature vulcanizing silicone rubber) employing three steps methods of ball-milling, three-roller milling and pressing. The effects of NCB on storage, loss and damping properties of composites were investigated by the method of DMTA and, absorption and mechanical performances are measured by the methods of standing wave tube and TG separately. The micro, chemical and phase structures of composites are characterized by SEM, XRD and IR. The results indicated that both doping of NCB and the combination of BWZT and RTV can be proposed to improve greatly the comprehensive performance of RTV matrixes and, there would be more excellent comprehensive properties in NCB/BWZT/RTV(NBR) with amount of 4–6 wt.% for NCB as
d
33
of 81 pC/N, storage modulus of 25003 MPa, loss modulus of 398 MPa, damping coefficient of 0.07–0.12, and absorption coefficients of 0.45–0.55 with the difference of frequency in the range of 400–1600 Hz. Lattice growth of BWZT is found showing strong dependences on contents of NCB, the absorption–damping performance.
The combination of agonistic antibodies with immune checkpoint inhibitors presents a promising avenue for cancer immunotherapy. Our objective is to explore the co-expression of 4-1BB, ICOS, CD28, ...with PD-1 on CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood and tumor tissue of cervical cancer(CC) patients, with a specific focus on the association between the co-expression levels of 4-1BB with PD-1 and clinical features, prognosis as well as immunotherapy response. The goal is to offer valuable insights into cervical cancer immunotherapy.
In this study, 50 treatment-naive patients diagnosed with CC were enrolled. Flow cytometry was used to detect PD-1/4-1BB, PD-1/ICOS and PD-1/CD28 co-expression on CD8+ T cells. Subsequent analysis aimed to investigate the differential co-expression between peripheral blood and cancer tissue, and also the correlation between co-expression and clinical features in these patients. Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort, The IMvigor210 cohort, The BMS038cohort and Immunophenoscores were utilized to investigate the correlation between PD-1/4-1BB and the immune microenvironment, prognosis, immunotherapy, and drug sensitivity in cervical cancer.
The co-expression levels of PD-1/4-1BB, PD-1/ICOS, and PD-1/CD28 on CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) were significantly higher in cervical cancer patients compared to those in peripheral blood. Clinical feature analysis reveals that on CD8+ TILs, the co-expression of PD-1/4-1BB is more closely correlated with clinical characteristics compared to PD-1/ICOS, PD-1/CD28, PD-1, and 4-1BB. Pseudo-time analysis and cell communication profiling reveal close associations between the subgroups harboring 4-1BB and PD-1. The prognosis, tumor mutation burden, immune landscape, and immunotherapy response exhibit statistically significant variations between the high and low co-expression groups of PD-1/4-1BB. The high co-expression group of PD-1/4-1BB is more likely to benefit from immunotherapy.
PD-1/4-1BB, PD-1/ICOS, and PD-1/CD28 exhibit elevated co-expression on CD8+TILs of cervical cancer, while demonstrating lower expression in circulating T cells. The co-expression patterns of PD-1/4-1BB significantly contributed to the prediction of immune cell infiltration characteristics, prognosis, and tailored immunotherapy tactics. PD-1/4-1BB exhibits potential as a target for combination immunotherapy in cervical cancer.
Auxin is the earliest discovered plant hormone, which plays important roles in each aspect of plant growth and development. There are two main pathways for auxin to be transported from the synthetic ...site (such as young leaves and terminal buds) to the active site. First, auxin is transported over long distances through phloem in an unfixed direction throughout the whole plant. Second, short-distance polar transport between cells requires the participation of auxin carriers, including unidirectional transport from stem tip to root and local unidirectional transport between tissues. Polar transport is critical to the establishment and maintenance of the auxin concentration gradient, which specifically regulates plant growth and development and responds to environmental changes. In this article, we reviewed the research progress of auxin transporters AUX1/LAX, PIN, and ABCB families, and some potential auxin transporters in rice growth and development, which provide information for the interpretation of biological functions of polar auxin transport families and lay a foundation for the genetic improvement of important agronomic traits in rice.
It is critical to understand the airflow structures in the respiratory system toward increasing the drug delivery efficiency via inhalation. A whole-lung airway model is created by connecting a ...three-dimensional cast-based mouth–throat model and a one-dimensional conduit describing the other lung airways according to the literature. Constant displacement of the bottom surface in the geometrical model is used to simulate the respiratory process. Large eddy simulation with the dynamic structure sub-grid scale model is used to model the turbulent flow via a commercial computational fluid dynamics software, Converge
TM
. The innovative findings are as follows: (1) shear layer as well as vortical flow is observed in the lower airway at the inspiration phase; (2) the main airflow structures in the upper airway of this model are close to the case using the mouth–throat model; (3) the airflow structures, in particular the reversed laryngeal jet, are highly unsteady during the expiration phase. It is shown that this whole-lung airway model is suitable to analyze the airflow field in the upper airway but not in the lower airway, although it has been used a lot by a few researchers. More investigations should be carried out to study the dynamics of airflow structures during the expiration phase toward understanding airflow properties of human respiratory process.
To investigate the impacts of upper airway deformation on the airflow structures, the airflow fields in the trachea are simulated using three geometrical models considering three different levels of ...airway deformations. Structured grids are used to create the high-quality grids. Large eddy simulation with the Smagorinsky sub-grid model is adopted to solve the three-dimensional in-compressible Navier–Stokes equations using the solver pisoFoam in the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM. The numerical results demonstrate that the airway deformation influences the main airflow structures depending on the deformation level. Particularly, it slightly impacts on the laryngeal jet such as the profile and the strength of laryngeal jet. The strength of the laryngeal jet increases slightly for the heavy deformation. In contrast, it impacts on the recirculation zone, secondary vortices, and turbulent kinetic energy more obviously. The increasing airway deformation will produce stronger secondary flow, smaller recirculation zone, and weaker turbulent kinetic energy. The turbulence intensity distribution varies as well. The obviously impacted flow region is mainly within the region of one to six tracheal diameters downstream the glottis.
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