Underwater structural defects in hydraulic tunnels are highly concealed and difficult to be identified by conventional manual methods. Remotely operated vehicle combined with visible light cameras ...can provide a noncontact and high spatial resolution damage detection solution. However, manually extracting useful structural damage-related information from massive data is time-consuming and involves high labor cost. This article proposes an integrated pixel-level underwater structural multi-defects instance segmentation and quantification framework for hydraulic tunnels via machine vision and deep learning. Firstly, a tunnel lining underwater structural multi-defects video dataset is developed. Next, an improved You Only Look At CoefficienTs for Edge devices is used to build the detector by exploiting temporal redundancy in videos. Three backbone detectors are used to trade off the balance between detection accuracy and efficiency, and a cross-domain transfer learning strategy is introduced to reduce model training costs and data dependencies. Various complicated tunnel underwater inspection scenarios, including uneven illumination, tilt shooting, high brightness, and motion blur scenarios, are used to evaluate model generalization capability. Experimental results show that ResNet50-based YolactEdge can well trade off the balance between accuracy and speed, which achieves 92.47 bbox mAP, 92.15 mask mAP, and 39.27 FPS in the testing set. A quantification evaluation method is proposed to quantify the detection results and extract the geometric features of structural defects based on digital image processing techniques. The proposed method can accurately identify the number, size, and area of tunnel underwater structural defects, providing data support for subsequent reinforcement.
Precise transcriptional control of developmental stage-specific expression and switching of α- and β-globin genes is significantly important to understand the general principles controlling gene ...expression and the pathogenesis of thalassemia. Although transcription factors regulating β-globin genes have been identified, little is known about the microRNAs and trans-acting mechanism controlling α-globin genes transcription. Here, we show that an erythroid lineage-specific microRNA gene, miR-144, expressed at specific developmental stages during zebrafish embryogenesis, negatively regulates the embryonic α-globin, but not embryonic β-globin, gene expression, through physiologically targeting klfd, an erythroid-specific Krüppel-like transcription factor. Klfd selectively binds to the CACCC boxes in the promoters of both α-globin and miR-144 genes to activate their transcriptions, thus forming a negative feedback circuitry to fine-tune the expression of embryonic α-globin gene. The selective effect of the miR-144-Klfd pathway on globin gene regulation may thereby constitute a novel therapeutic target for improving the clinical outcome of patients with thalassemia.
Natural graphite has many excellent properties such as high thermal and electrical conductivities, high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and radiation tolerance. It is widely used in ...many fields such as thermal management, battery electrodes, and the nuclear industry. The carbon content is an important factor that limits the applications of natural graphite minerals, but the impurities are difficult to remove from high-grade graphite minerals. This review discusses the types of natural graphite and mineral resources, followed by a discussion of traditional graphite purification processes and new methods to obtain high-purity graphite. Recent research on the development of natural graphite for use in thermal management, battery electrodes and the nuclear industry are summarized and the future applications of natural graphite are discussed.
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•A highly specific monoclonal antibody against Chlorogenic acid (CGA) was produced.•An indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (icELISA) was developed based on the ...monoclonal antibody.•The proposed icELISA is a reliable, simple and cost effective system for the rapid detection of CGA in honeysuckle.
The edible flower buds of honeysuckle are traditionally used as herbal medicine or food additives in China. Chlorogenic acid (CGA) serves as the quality control marker of honeysuckle for its high content and antipyretic property. In this paper, a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb2E2) against CGA was produced. After optimization, mAb2E2-based indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (icELISA) was developed. The concentrations of CGA producing 50% inhibition and the calibration range of the icELISA were 0.39 and 0.10–1.51ng/mL, respectively. The icELISA had cross-reactivity with 3,5-Dicaffeoylquinic acid (17.53%), and the cross-reactivity levels with other analogs were all below 5%. The average recoveries obtained by standard CGA addition to honeysuckle samples were from 88.4 to 104.8%. The icELISA was applied to CGA detection in different honeysuckle samples and the results were confirmed by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. The correlation coefficient between the two assays was 0.97. The proposed icELISA provides a feasible analytical method for highly sensitive and specific, simple, fast, and high-throughput determination of CGA in honeysuckle samples.
Highlights • We investigated the dynamic changes of plasma soluble ST2 (sST2) levels during the development of type 2 diabetes. • Elevated sST2 levels were not only associated with metabolic ...characteristics of diabetes but also with a significantly increased risk of diabetes. • With the prediabetic population as a reference group, the patients with sST2 levels in the third and fourth quartiles had a higher risk of having diabetes (odds ratios= 2.31 and 4.00, respectively, P<0.001). • The increase in sST2 levels did not significantly affect the presence of atherosclerosis in the normal, prediabetic or diabetic populations.
ABSTRACTMacro- and microscopic morphological studies and multilocus phylogenetic analysis were made on larval specimens of a ghost moth collected from a pigeon pea plantation in Huánuco, Peru. DNA ...sequences from the cadaver and the fungal isolates obtained represented a monophyletic clade based on the phylogeny. All morphological characters and molecular data showed that the pathogenic fungus infecting the ghost moth larvae was an unknown cordycipitoid species, herein described as, Harposporium incensis sp. nov. based on morphological features and multilocus phylogenetic analysis on the cadaver and fungus isolated from the same specimen. The far-related and ecologically different hosts of teleomorph and anamorph of this new species display a peculiar inter-phylum host jumping between the insect Trichophassus giganteus of the phylum Arthropoda and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans of the phylum Nematoda and have biological control potential.
To identify susceptibility loci for schizophrenia, we performed a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) of schizophrenia in the Han Chinese population (GWAS: 746 individuals with ...schizophrenia and 1,599 healthy controls; validation: 4,027 individuals with schizophrenia and 5,603 healthy controls). We identified two susceptibility loci for schizophrenia at 6p21-p22.1 (rs1233710 in an intron of ZKSCAN4, P(combined) = 4.76 × 10(-11), odds ratio (OR) = 0.79; rs1635 in an exon of NKAPL, P(combined) = 6.91 × 10(-12), OR = 0.78; rs2142731 in an intron of PGBD1, P(combined) = 5.14 × 10(-10), OR = 0.79) and 11p11.2 (rs11038167 near the 5' UTR of TSPAN18, P(combined) = 1.09 × 10(-11), OR = 1.29; rs11038172, P(combined) = 7.21 × 10(-10), OR = 1.25; rs835784, P(combined) = 2.73 × 10(-11), OR = 1.27). These results add to previous evidence of susceptibility loci for schizophrenia at 6p21-p22.1 in the Han Chinese population. We found that NKAPL and ZKSCAN4 were expressed in postnatal day 0 (P0) mouse brain. These findings may lead to new insights into the pathogenesis of schizophrenia.
