Water quality data cleaning is important for the management of water environments. A framework for water quality time series cleaning is proposed in this paper. Considering the nonlinear ...relationships among water quality indicators, support vector regression (SVR) is used to forecast water quality indicators when some indicators are missing or when they show abnormal values at a certain point in time. Considering the time series of water quality information, long short-term memory (LSTM) networks are used to forecast water quality indicators when all indicators are missing at a certain point in time. A parallel model based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and LSTM is realized based on a microservices architecture to improve the efficiency of model execution and the predictive accuracy of the LSTM networks. The performance of the model is evaluated in terms of the mean absolute error (MAE) and root-mean-square error (RMSE). Inlet water quality data from a wastewater treatment plant in Gaobeidian, Beijing, China is considered as a case study to examine the effectiveness of this approach. The experimental results reveal that this model has better predictive accuracy than other data-driven models because of smaller MAE and RMSE and has an advantage in terms of time consumption compared with standalone serial algorithms.
Supplementary education, which is different from the formal education system, is more likely to reflect the other form of inequality in educational opportunities through the process of education. In ...China, supplementary education is generally divided into two sorts: academic-oriented classes and hobby-oriented classes. Using the dataset of China Family Panel Studies 2018 and analysing with the Logit Regression models (LR), this study analyses how gender and sibling structure impact the students' supplementary education participation opportunities. Applying the "resource dilution theory" and "budget constraint theory" in Chinese modern families, siblings might have a competitive relationship with each other in obtaining limited family resources, while parents would assess the lifetime cost of raising a child when deciding the investment in supplementary education. According to the results, an increase in sibling numbers and density dilutes the family resources of supplementary education for each child on average. Females have more opportunities to participate in supplementary education than males, especially in hobby-oriented supplementary education. The "female advantage" is significant in the supplementary education opportunity of the first-born child and the "gender minority" child. This study claims that the family allocation of supplementary educational resources is influenced by economic motives. This study supports both the "resource dilution theory" and the "budget constraint theory" in supplementary education in contemporary China, while the issues of gender inequality regarding family resources allocation seem still remain.
Current studies in few-shot semantic segmentation mostly utilize meta-learning frameworks to obtain models that can be generalized to new categories. However, these models trained on base classes ...with sufficient annotated samples are biased towards these base classes, which results in semantic confusion and ambiguity between base classes and new classes. A strategy is to use an additional base learner to recognize the objects of base classes and then refine the prediction results output by the meta learner. In this way, the interaction between these two learners and the way of combining results from the two learners are important. This paper proposes a new model, namely Distilling Base and Meta (DBAM) network by using self-attention mechanism and contrastive learning to enhance the few-shot segmentation performance. First, the self-attention-based ensemble module (SEM) is proposed to produce a more accurate adjustment factor for improving the fusion of two predictions of the two learners. Second, the prototype feature optimization module (PFOM) is proposed to provide an interaction between the two learners, which enhances the ability to distinguish the base classes from the target class by introducing contrastive learning loss. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that our method improves on the PASCAL-5
i
under 1-shot and 5-shot settings, respectively.
The purpose of this study was to investigate immunological variations between a group that received the hepatitis B vaccine and a non-vaccine group. We focused on a cohort that achieved HBsAg ...seroclearance after Peg-IFNα treatment of CHB.
We enrolled twenty-eight individuals who achieved HBsAg seroclearance after Peg-IFNα treatment. They were divided into two groups: a vaccine group (n = 14) and a non-vaccine group (n = 14). We assessed lymphocyte subpopulations, B cell- and T cell-surface costimulatory/inhibitory factors, cytokines and immunoglobulin levels were detected at different time points to explore immune-function differences between both groups.
The seroconversion rate in the vaccine group at 24 weeks post-vaccination was 100%, which was significantly higher (p = 0.006) than that of the non-vaccine group (50%). Additionally, more individuals in the vaccine group exhibited anti-HBs levels exceeding 100 IUs/L and 300 IUs/L compared to the non-vaccine group (p < 0.05). The vaccine group demonstrated significantly increase total B cells and class-switched B cells at 24 weeks and plasma cells, CD80
B cells, Tfh cells, and ICOS
Tfh cell at 12 weeks, compared with baseline levels (p < 0.05). Conversely, Bregs (CD24
CD27
and CD24
CD38
) decreased significantly at 24 weeks (p < 0.05). None of the above changes were statistically significance in the non-vaccine group (p > 0.05). Total IgG increased significantly in the vaccine group, and IL-2, IL-5, and IL-6 concentrations increased significantly at week 24 (p < 0.05). Differences in various types of cytokines and immunoglobulins in the plasma of the non-vaccine group were not significant (p > 0.05). Anti-HBs titers positively correlated with Th1/Th2 cells at 24 weeks (r = 0.448 and 0.458, respectively, p = 0.022 and 0.019, respectively), and negatively with CD24
CD38
Breg cells (r = -0.402, p = 0.042).
After achieving HBsAg seroclearance through Peg-IFNα treatment for CHB, administering the hepatitis B vaccine significantly increased anti-HBs-seroconversion rates and antibody levels. We also observed significant immunological differences between the vaccine and non-vaccine groups. Specifically, the vaccine group exhibited significant increases in B cells, plasma cells, and Tfh cells, while Breg levels was significantly lower. These immunological changes are likely conducive to the production of anti-HBs antibodies. However, in the non-vaccine group, the observed changes were not significantlly significant.
Candida albicans
is a pathogenic yeast that causes candidiasis in immunocompromised patients. The overuse of antifungal drugs has led to the development of resistance to such drugs by this fungus, ...which is a major challenge in antifungal chemotherapy. One approach to this problem involves the utilization of new natural products as an alternative source of antifungals. Curcumin, one such natural product, has been widely studied as a drug candidate and is reported to exhibit antifungal activity against
C. albicans
. Although studies of the mechanism of curcumin against human cancer cells have shown that it inhibits heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), little is known about its function against
C. albicans
. In this paper, using a doxycycline-mediated
HSP90
strain and an
HSP90
-overexpressing strain of
C. albicans
, we demonstrated that the curcumin triggered a decrease in Hsp90 by affecting it at the post-transcriptional level. This also led to the downregulation of
HOG1
and
CDR1
, resulting in a reduction of the stress response and efflux pump activity of
C. albicans
. However, the inhibition of
HSP90
by curcumin was not due to the inhibition of transcription factors
HSF1
or
AHR1
. We also found that curcumin can not only decrease the transcriptional expression of
CDR1
, but also inhibit the efflux pump activity of Cdr1. Hence, we conclude that disruption of
HSP90
by curcumin could impair cell growth, stress responses and efflux pump activity of
C. albicans
.
To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of aspartate aminotransferase(AST)/ alanine transaminase (ALT), AST to platelet ratio index (APRI), fibrosis-4 score (FIB-4) and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase to ...platelet count ratio (GPR) for hepatic fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB).
A total of 1210 CHB patients who underwent liver biopsy were divided into two groups: patients with no significant fibrosis (control group) and patients with significant fibrosis, and routine laboratory tests were retrospectively included. Logistic regression models were used for the prediction, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) was used to assess the diagnostic accuracy.
A total of 631 (52.1%) and 275 (22.7%) patients had significant fibrosis (≥ S2) and advanced fibrosis (≥ S3), respectively. The GPR showed significantly higher diagnostic accuracy than that of APRI, FiB-4, and AST/ALT to predict ≥ S2(significant fibrosis) and ≥ S3 fibrosis(advanced fibrosis), with an AUROC was 0.69 (95%CI: 0.66-0.71) and 0.72 (0.69-0.75), respectively. After stratified by the status of HBeAg ( positive or negative), GPR, APRI, and FiB-4 showed improved predicting performance for significant fibrosis and advanced fibrosis in HBeAg positive patients, with the most significant improvement was shown for GPR in predicting significant fibrosis (AUROC = 0.74, 95%CI: 0.70-0.78).
Among the four noninvasive models, GPR has the best performance in the diagnosis of hepatic fibrosis in CHB patients and is more valuable in HBeAg-positive patients.
Plantaricin BM-1, a class IIa bacteriocin produced by
Lactobacillus plantarum
BM-1, shows obvious antibacterial activity against
Escherichia coli
. However, the mechanism underlying the action of ...class IIa bacteriocins against gram-negative bacteria remains to be explored. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of YbfA, a DUF2517 domain-containing protein, in the response of
Escherichia coli
K12 to plantaricin BM-1. The growth curve experiment and MIC experiment showed that the sensitivity of
E. coli
to plantaricin BM-1 was decreased by a
ybfA
null mutation. Electron microscopy showed that the
ybfA
null mutation reduced the surface rupture and contraction caused by plantaricin BM-1, and mitigated the effect of plantaricin BM-1 on the morphology of the
E. coli
cell membrane. Proteomics analysis showed that 323 proteins were differentially expressed in
E. coli
lacking the
ybfA
gene (
P
< 0.05); 118 proteins were downregulated, and 205 proteins were upregulated. The metabolic pathways containing the upregulated proteins mainly included outer membrane proteins, integral components of the plasma membrane, regulation of cell motility, and regulation of locomotion. The metabolic pathways involving the downregulated proteins mainly included outer membrane protein glycine betaine transport, amino-acid betaine transport, and transmembrane signaling receptor activity. The results of the proteomics analysis showed that the protein expression of the BasS/BasR two-component system was significantly increased (
P
< 0.05). Moreover, the expression levels of downstream proteins regulated by this two-component system were also significantly increased, including DgkA, FliC, and MlaE, which are involved in cell membrane structure and function, and RT-qPCR also confirmed this result. The growth curve showed that the sensitivity of
E. coli
to plantaricin BM-1 was significantly increased due to deletion of the BasS/BasR two-component system. Thus, deletion of
ybfA
in
E. coli
can increase the expression of the BasS/BasR two-component system and positively regulate the structure and function of the cell membrane to reduce the sensitivity to plantaricin BM-1. This will help to explore the mechanism of action of class IIa bacteriocins against gram-negative bacteria.
In recent years, malignant breast cancer metastasis has caused a great increase in mortality. Research on the genetic and molecular mechanisms of malignant breast cancer has continued to deepen, and ...targeted therapy has become the general trend. Among them, competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA)-related molecules have received much attention. Homeobox transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) has been reported to function extensively as a ceRNA in breast cancer. Notably, miR-203 and Caveolin 1 (CAV1) have also been found to play a role in breast cancer. However, the relationship between the three remains unclear. In this study, we present a new mechanic through bioinformatics tool and basic experiments: the HOTAIR/miR-203/CAV1 axis, which complemented the role network of HOTAIR as a ceRNA, thus, it will provide a novel potential idea for breast cancer research and therapy.
Pharmacological therapy is currently the main treatment method for patients with Wilson disease (WD). We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the common treatment regimens in these patients.
...We conducted a systemic review and meta-analysis by searching multiple databases for studies from inception to October 2021. Outcomes of interest were the improved rate and safety of d-penicillamine and zinc salts treatment in WD patients. Two independent reviewers performed the study selection and data extraction.
Sixteen studies were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled improved rate for all included symptomatic WD patients was 78.0% (95% CI: 70.8%-85.2%). In symptomatic hepatic WD patients, there is no difference in the treatment efficiency of d-penicillamine and zinc salts (RR: 0.98, 95% CI: 0.86%-1.12%;
= 0.765). In neurological WD patients, the pooled improved rate of those who received d-penicillamine and zinc salts was 56.3% (95% CI: 37.5%-75.1%) and 80.2% (95% CI: 67.2%-93.2%), respectively. The incidence of adverse effects (RR: 2.42, 95% CI: 1.20%-4.88%;
= 0.014) and neurological deterioration (RR: 1.96, 95% CI: 1.31%-2.93%;
= 0.001) in all symptomatic WD patients treated with d-penicillamine was both higher than that of patients treated with zinc salts.
Our analysis suggests that symptomatic WD patients treated with d-penicillamine have higher incidence of adverse effects and neurological deterioration than that of zinc salts. The therapeutic effectiveness of these two regimens does not seem to be significantly different, and these results must be interpreted with caution.
: PROSPERO registration, identifier CRD 42021287126.
•All-dielectric metasurface composed of a silicon elliptical disk and a silicon elliptical ring has been proposed.•Four sharp Fano resonances can be observed in the transmission spectrum. The maximum ...quality factor reached 7421.•The contributions of the electromagnetic fields and multipoles of the four modes have been analyzed.•The sensitivity and the figure of merit could reach up to 392 nm/RIU and 3001, respectively. We believe that the proposed structure exhibits broad application prospects in refractive index sensors.
In this study, an all-dielectric metasurface is proposed, whose unit cell is composed of a silicon elliptical disk and a silicon elliptical ring. The transmission of the structure were analyzed by using three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. In the wavelength range of 800 to 1200 nm, four sharp Fano resonances appeared in the transmission spectrum. The maximum quality factor reached 7421. Furthermore, we analyzed the electromagnetic field distributions corresponding to the four peaks, and evaluated the contributions of multipoles in forming the resonant responses. Besides, we investigated the influence of different structural parameters, including the length of the semi-major axis, the height of the elliptical disk and ring, and the period length, on the four resonance peaks. Finally, based on the high quality factor, we studied the refractive index sensing characteristics of the structure. By optimizing the structural parameters, the sensitivity and the figure of merit could reach up to 392 nm/RIU and 3001, respectively. Therefore, we believe that the proposed structure exhibits broad application prospects in refractive index sensors.
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