In order to reveal the factors affecting farmer's willingness to participate in forestry carbon sequestration, this paper took Feng qing and Zhen kang County in Yunnan as examples, 106 and 100 random ...samples were selected in the project areas and non-project areas, the investigation result showed that the farmers' participating willingness were not very high. Continuous survey data of household and regression model of binary logistic were used to analyze the factors which can affect the farmer's participating willingness of forestry carbon sequestration. The analysis results revealed that: education, household income, farmers' environmental awareness, future economic expectation of forestry carbon sequestration had significant effects on the farmer's desire. The reasons why farmers do not want to participate in forestry carbon sequestration were further analyzed. Finally corresponding countermeasures were put forward to encourage the farmers to participate in forestry carbon sequestration.
Recently, mobile devices such as iPhone X start to be equipped with depth cameras, and more applications based on captured depth maps are emerging. Among many depth cameras on the market, Intel ...RealSense has the ability to capture depth information and is expected to be widely used in mobile devices and laptops. However, depth maps captured by RealSense always suffer from severe holes and noises, which make it hard to be used in real applications. In this paper, we propose a method to fill holes and remove noises in depth maps captured by RealSense. This method includes two parts: human depth prediction and human depth optimization. Firstly, we propose a two-stage stacked hourglass network to predict human part-segmentation and human depth simultaneously based on RGB image. Then we use GradientFMM method to optimize captured depth maps with the guidance of the above human depth prediction. The RGB image and depth maps mentioned above are captured by the same RealSense device. Furthermore, in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed method, we register and measure human 3D models based on optimized depth maps. The experimental results show that our method can restore depth maps for human using RealSense effectively.
The performance of dishwashers in removing live viruses is an important informative value in practical applications. Since foodborne viruses are present in contaminated food surfaces and water ...environments. Insufficient washing of dishes typically makes a carrier of foodborne viruses. Dishwashers have shown excellent performance in removing bacterial pathogens, but very limited reports related to eliminate foodborne viruses on contaminated dish surfaces. Here, murine norovirus 1 (MNV-1), hepatitis A virus (HAV), and human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E) were experimentally inoculated on the dish surfaces (plate, rice bowl, and soup bowl). Plaque assay, 50% tissue culture infectious dose (TCID
50
), and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) were conducted to determine their removal efficiency of them through the general wash program of household dishwashers. Using titration assay, MNV-1 and HAV were reduced by 7.44 and 6.57 log10 PFU/dish, and HCoV-229E was reduced by 6.43 log10 TCID
50
/dish through the general wash program, achieving a ≥ 99.999% reduction, respectively. Additionally, RT-qPCR results revealed that viral RNA of MNV-1 and HCoV-229E reduced 5.02 and 4.54 log10 genome copies/dish; in contrast, HAV was not detected on any dish surfaces. This study confirmed the performance of household dishwashers in removing pathogenic live viruses through the general wash program. However, residual viral RNA was not sufficiently removed. Further studies are needed to determine whether the viral RNA can be sufficiently removed using combination programs in household dishwashers.
Graphical Abstract
A novel fluorescent probe, which has an amphiphilic structure and can selectively detect and distinguish trivalent metal cations, was synthesized. The probe has a hydrophobic quinoline head and a ...hydrophilic pyridinium tail. This amphiphilic molecular structure makes the molecule exhibit ideal solubility and sensitivity in three kinds of solvents, including EtOH, CH sub(3)CN and H sub(2)O. The ideal cross-reactivity of this probe in different solvents provided it with the ability to distinguish Fe super(3+), Cr super(3+), Al super(3+), Ru super(3+) and Au super(3+) through the PCA method. The detection limits of the probe for trivalent metal cations reach the micromolar range.
This study applied grassland related multi-index and assessed the effects of climate change by investigating grassland responses to drought. This process was performed to study grassland vegetation ...dynamic accurately and evaluate the effect of drought in the Mongolian Plateau (MP). The spatial-temporal characteristics of grassland dynamic in terms of coverage (F
), surface bareness (F
), and net primary production (NPP) from 2000 to 2013 were explored. We implemented the maximum Pearson correlation to analyze the grassland vegetation in response to drought by using self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI). Results show that F
and NPP present an increasing trend (0.18 vs. 0.43). F
showed a decreasing trend with a value of -0.16. The grassland F
and NPP positively correlated with scPDSI, with a value of 0.12 and 0.85, respectively, and F
was -0.08. The positive correlation between F
and NPP accounted for 84.08%, and the positive correlation between F
and scPDSI accounted for 93.88%. On the contrary, the area with a negative correlation between F
and scPDSI was 57.43%. The grassland in the MP showed a recovery tendency. The increase in grassland caused by positive reaction was mainly distributed in the middle of Mongolia (MG), whereas that caused by counter response was mainly distributed in the east and west MG and northeast Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China (IM). The relevant results may provide useful information for policymakers about mitigation strategies against the inverse effects of drought on grassland and help to ease the losses caused by drought.
To compare the value of two dynamic contrast-enhanced Magnetic Resonance Images (DCE-MRI) reconstruction approaches, namely golden-angle radial sparse parallel (GRASP) and view-sharing with ...golden-angle radial profile (VS-GR) reconstruction, and evaluate their values in assessing response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nCT) in patients with esophageal cancer (EC).
EC patients receiving nCT before surgery were enrolled prospectively. DCE-MRI scanning was performed after nCT and within 1 week before surgery. Tumor Regression Grade (TRG) was used for chemotherapy response evaluation, and patients were stratified into a responsive group (TRG1 + 2) and a non-responsive group (TRG3 + 4 + 5). Wilcoxon test was utilized for comparing GRASP and VS-GR reconstruction, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney test was performed for each parameter to assess response, and Spearman test was performed for analyzing correlation between parameters and TRGs, as well as responder and non-responder. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) was utilized for each significant parameter to assess its accuracy between responders and non-responders.
Among the 64 patients included in this cohort (52 male, 12 female; average age of 59.1 ± 7.9 years), 4 patients showed TRG1, 4 patients were TRG2, 7 patients were TRG3, 11 patients were TRG4, and 38 patients were TRG5. They were stratified into 8 responders and 56 non-responders. A total of 15 parameters were calculated from each tumor. With VS-GR, 10/15 parameters significantly correlated with TRG and response groups. Of these, only AUCmax showed moderate correlation with TRG, 7 showed low correlation and 2 showed negligible correlation with TRG. 8 showed low correlation and 2 showed negligible correlation with response groups. With GRASP, 13/15 parameters significantly correlated with TRG and response groups. Of these, 10 showed low correlation and 3 showed negligible correlation with TRG. 11 showed low correlation and 2 showed negligible correlation with TRG. Seven parameters (AUC
> 0.70, P < 0.05) showed good performance in response groups.
In patients with esophageal cancer on neoadjuvant chemotherapy, several parameters can differentiate responders from non-responders, using both GRASP and VS-GR techniques. GRASP may be able to better differentiate these two groups compared to VS-GR. Trial registration for this prospective study: ChiCTR, ChiCTR-DOD-14005308. Registered 2 October 2014.
Abstract
Background
Patients with esophageal cancer (EC) undergo endoscopic ultrasound and CT based cancer staging. Recent technical developments allow improved MRI quality with diminished motion ...artifact that may allow MRI to compare favorable to CT for noninvasive staging. Hence the purpose of the study was to assess image quality and diagnostic accuracy of 3 T MRI versus CT and EUS for preoperative T-staging of potentially resectable esophageal cancer.
Methods
Between October-2014 and December-2017, esophageal cancer patients with T-staging by EUS were enrolled in this prospective study. Post-operative histopathologic T-staging was the reference standard. All participants underwent MRI T2- multi-shot turbo spin echo sequence (msTSE), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and 3D gradient-echo based sequence (3D-GRE) and CT non-contrast and multiphase contrast-enhanced CT scanning 5.6 + 3.6 days after endoscopy. Surgery was performed within 3.6 + 3.5 days after imaging. Two blinded endoscopists (reader 1 and 2) and radiologists (reader 3 and 4) independently evaluated EUS and CT/MRI, respectively. Considering the clinical relevance, patients were dichotomized into early (T1 and T2) vs late (T3 and T4) stage cancer before assessment. For statistical purpose, the binary decision was defined as the ability of the imaging technique to diagnose early stage/not early stage esophageal cancer. Diagnostic performance of EUS, MRI and CT was compared using McNemar’s test with Bonferroni correction; kappa values were assessed for reader performance.
Results
74 study participants (60 ± 8 yrs.; 56 men) with esophageal cancer were evaluated, of whom 85%(63/74) had squamous cell carcinoma, 61%(45/74) were at early stage and 39%(29/74) were at late stage cancer, as determined by histopathology. Intra- and Inter-reader agreement for pre-operative vs post-operative T-staging was excellent for all imaging modalities. Compared to CT, MRI showed significantly higher accuracy for both the readers (reader3: 96% vs 82%,
p
= 0.0038, reader4: 95% vs 80%,
p
= 0.0076, for MRI vs CT, respectively). Further, MRI outperformed EUS with higher specificity (reader 1 vs 3: 59% vs 93%,
p
= 0.0015, reader 2 vs 4: 66% vs 93%,
p
= 0.0081, for EUS vs MRI respectively), and accuracy (reader 1 vs 3: 81% vs 96%,
p
= 0.0022, reader 2 vs 4: 85% vs 95%,
p
= 0.057, for EUS vs MRI, respectively).
Conclusion
For resectable esophageal cancer, MRI had better diagnostic performance for tumor staging compared to CT and EUS.
Trial registration
ChiCTR, ChiCTR-DOD, Registered 2nd October 2014,
http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=9620
The key obstacle to the use of consumer cameras in computer vision and computer graphics applications is the lack of synchronization hardware. We present a stroboscope based synchronization approach ...for the charge-coupled device (CCD) consumer cameras. The synchronization is realized by first aligning the frames from different video sequences based on the smear dots of the stroboscope, and then matching the sequences using a hidden Markov model. Compared with current synchronized capture equipment, the proposed approach greatly reduces the cost by using inexpensive CCD cameras and one stroboscope. The results show that our method could reach a high accuracy much better than the frame-level synchronization of traditional software methods.
Introduction
Foodborne viruses are a serious concern in public health. This study investigated the prevalence of eight foodborne viruses norovirus (NoV), adenovirus (AdV), sapovirus (SapoV), ...astrovirus, hepatitis A virus (HAV), hepatitis E virus (HEV), rotavirus, aichivirus, and influenza A virus (IAV).
Material and method
A total of 316 chicken samples were collected from three poultry processing plants to commercial markets (local and online). RT-qPCR- and PCR-positive amplicons obtained from monitoring were confirmed by sequence analysis.
Results
Foodborne viruses and IAV were not found in poultry processing plants. Of the 100 chickens purchased from the local and online markets, 19 (19.0%) AdV and 2 (2.0%) SapoV were detected. NoV, astrovirus, HAV, HEV, rotavirus, aichivirus, and IAV were not detected in the retailed chickens. Phylogenetic analysis identified 18 human AdV-41, one porcine AdV, and two SapoV-GI.1. It was the first case of the discovery of the SapoV gene in chicken. The average contamination level of detected AdV was 2.4 log DNA copies/g, but there were cases where the highest level was 5.35 log DNA copies/g.
Discussion
This study highlights the importance of chicken's contribution to the transmission of AdV with the possibility of annual variability with emerging symptoms. The prevention of AdV contamination in the food chain from slaughterhouses to retail markets should be monitored and controlled in further study.
Essential oils (EOs) have been used for centuries as flavor enhancers in foods, and owing to their antimicrobial properties, they have potential as natural food preservatives. However, their effect ...on food-borne viruses is unknown. Therefore, in this study, the virucidal effects of three EOs (cinnamon, clove, and thyme) on the infectivity of the hepatitis A virus (HAV) were investigated. Different concentrations of each EO (0.05, 0.1, 0.5, and 1%) were mixed with viral suspensions in accordance with ASTM E1052-11:2011 and incubated for 1 h at room temperature. The EOs exhibited a concentration-dependent effect in the suspension tests, and HAV titers decreased by approximately 1.60 log PFU/mL when treated with EOs at the highest concentration of 1%. The antiviral effect of EOs treated at 1% for 1 h was also evidenced in surface disinfection tests according to the OECD:2013, as approximately 2 log PFU/mL reduction on hard food-contact surfaces (stainless steel and polypropylene) and approximately 2 and 1.4 log PFU/mL reduction on low-density polyethylene and kraft (soft food-contact surfaces), respectively. Moreover, RT-qPCR results revealed that HAV genome copies were negligibly reduced until treated with a high concentration (1%) in suspension and carrier tests. Overall, our findings highlighted the potential of cinnamon, clove, and thyme EOs as natural disinfectants capable of limiting HAV (cross-) contamination conveyed by food-contact surfaces. These findings advance our knowledge of EOs as antimicrobials and their potential in the food sector as alternative natural components to reduce viral contamination and improve food safety.
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