Ambient air monitoring of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) was performed to investigate their concentrations, profiles, and sources near a municipal solid waste ...incinerator (MSWI) in Eastern China. The PCDD/F concentrations varied over a factor of 51.4 from 0.059 to 3.03 pg I-TEQ m−3 (or over 41.4 from 3.96 to 164 pg m−3) and fell at the higher end of the range in recorded peer investigations around the world. Almost all ambient air samples show a unique TCDF-dominant homologue pattern, characterized by decreasing concentrations with increasing levels of chlorination (except for OCDD). By contrast, the dominant congener in terms of concentration profiles shows temporal and spatial variations among the OCDD, OCDF, and 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-HpCDF. The results from a congener-specific factor analysis between ambient air and PCDD/F emission sources, as well as U.S. EPA Chemical Mass Balance (CMB8.2) and Industrial Source Complex Short Term Version 3 (ISCST3) modeling, suggest that the deterioration of air quality in the study area is primarily attributed to open burning of wastes (OB), followed by hot water boilers (HWBs), traffic, and the MSWI.
This study aimed to evaluate whether the role-play (RP) of real patients by medical students as part of interactive clinical reasoning training can improve medical students' clinical performance.
A ...total of 26 medical students volunteered to portray real patients within this program and were treated as the RP group while the other 72 students as the non-RP group. In the interactive morning meeting, the medical students practiced how to approach the RP student as if they were encountering a real patient. All students were evaluated by mini-clinical evaluation exercises (mini-CEX) before and after this training program.
We found that all students had an increased total mini-CEX score after 4-week training, especially for interviewing skills. Notably, after training, the RP students had significantly elevated total mini-CEX scores (51.23 ± 1.06 vs 53.12 ± 1.11, p = 0.028), and for counselling (7.15 ± 0.14 vs 7.54 ± 0.18, p = 0.015) and overall clinical competence (7.27 ± 0.15 vs 7.65 ± 0.16, p = 0.030). In contrast, the non-RP students had lower scores compared with the RP group, as revealed by both the pre- and post-training tests. Moreover, their mini-CEX scores were not improved after training.
Medical students who were motivated to RP real patients had better performance scores than those who did not. In addition, RP can enhance their counselling skills and clinical competences.
Soybean is one of the most widely grown oilseed crops worldwide. Several unfavorable factors, including salt and salt–alkali stress caused by soil salinization, affect soybean yield and quality. ...Therefore, exploring the molecular basis of salt tolerance in plants and developing genetic resources for genetic breeding is important. Sucrose non-fermentable protein kinase 1 (SnRK1) belongs to a class of Ser/Thr protein kinases that are evolutionarily highly conserved direct homologs of yeast SNF1 and animal AMPKs and are involved in various abiotic stresses in plants. The GmPKS4 gene was experimentally shown to be involved with salinity tolerance. First, using the yeast two-hybrid technique and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) technique, the GmSNF1 protein was shown to interact with the GmPKS4 protein. Second, the GmSNF1 gene responded positively to salt and salt–alkali stress according to qRT-PCR analysis, and the GmSNF1 protein was localized in the nucleus and cytoplasm using subcellular localization assay. The GmSNF1 gene was then heterologously expressed in yeast, and the GmSNF1 gene was tentatively identified as having salt and salt–alkali tolerance function. Finally, the salt–alkali tolerance function of the GmSNF1 gene was demonstrated by transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana, soybean hairy root complex plants overexpressing GmSNF1 and GmSNF1 gene-silenced soybean using VIGS. These results indicated that GmSNF1 might be useful in genetic engineering to improve plant salt and salt–alkali tolerance.
Due to the increasing complexity of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices, the accuracy and precision of two-dimensional microstructures of SU-8 negative thick photoresist have drawn more ...attention with the rapid development of UV lithography technology. This paper presents a high-precision lithography simulation model for thick SU-8 photoresist based on waveguide method to calculate light intensity in the photoresist and predict the profiles of developed SU-8 structures in two dimension. This method is based on rigorous electromagnetic field theory. The parameters that have significant influence on profile quality were studied. Using this model, the light intensity distribution was calculated, and the final resist morphology corresponding to the simulation results was examined. A series of simulations and experiments were conducted to verify the validity of the model. The simulation results were found to be in good agreement with the experimental results, and the simulation system demonstrated high accuracy and efficiency, with complex cases being efficiently handled.
Logo detection has a wide range of applications in the multimedia field, such as video advertising research, brand awareness monitoring and analysis, trademark infringement detection, autonomous ...driving and intelligent transportation. Compared with other types of images, logo images in the real world have greater diversity in appearance and more complex backgrounds. Therefore, identifying logos from images is a challenge. A strong baseline method Trinity‐Yolo, is proposed, which incorporates attention mechanism, stripe pooling and weighted boxes fusion (WBF) into the state‐of‐the‐art Yolov4 framework for large‐scale logo detection. The attention mechanism improves the feature extraction ability of the deep detection model, the stripe pooling expands the field of view of the model and the weighted boxes fusion enables the model to obtain excellent corrections when outputting the prediction boxes. Trinity‐Yolo can solve the problems of lack of training data, multi‐scale objects and inconsistent bounding‐box regression. On the dataset LogoDet‐3K, the average performance of Trinity‐Yolo is 3% higher than that of Yolov4. Compared with other deep detection models, the performance of Trinity‐Yolo is improved more. The experimental performance on other existing datasets verifies the effectiveness of this method.
This paper proposes a new logo detection algorithm based on the characteristics of the logo image. The algorithm has achieved excellent performance on large‐scale logo datasets.
The O-carbamoyltransferase VtdB catalyzes the carbamoylation of venturicidin B, which is essential for the biosynthesis of the antibiotic venturicidin A. Here, the crystal structures of VtdB and VtdB ...in complex with the intermediate carbamoyladenylate (VtdBCAO) were determined at resolutions of 2.99 Å and 2.90 Å, respectively. The structures resemble the conserved YrdC-like and specific Kae1-like domains. A magnesium ion and the intermediate carbamoyladenylate were also observed in the Kae1-like domain of VtdB. The structure of VtdBCAO in complex with the substrate venturicidin B was modeled by a molecular docking method to better understand the substrate binding mode, revealing a novel venturicidin B binding pocket.
•The crystal structures of VtdB and VtdB in complex with the intermediate carbamoyladenylate (VtdBCAO) are determined.•The magnesium ion binds in the Kael-like domain, which is necessary to catalyze the synthesis of venturicidin A.•The intermediate carbamoyladenylate fits tightly into a pocket of the Kae1-like domain in VtdB and VtdBCAO.•The model complex structure of the VtdBCAO−VentB predicts the binding mode of the substrate VentB.
The aim of the study is to determine whether HLA-haploidentical-related donor (HRD) transplant can achieve equivalent outcomes and have stronger GVL compared to HLA-matched sibling donor (MSD) and ...HLA-matched unrelated donor (MUD) transplants. A total of 355 consecutive patients with acute leukemia undergoing allogeneic transplant at our single institute between March 2008 and March 2014 were enrolled in this retrospective investigation. Of the 355 patients, 96 cases received HRD, 153 MSD, and 106 MUD transplants. HRD transplant was associated with higher incidences of grade II to IV aGVHD (40.6%) compared with MSD (23.5%, P = 0.002) and MUD transplants (34.0%, P = 0.049), whereas incidences of grade III to IV aGVHD (11.4%, 7.8%, 10.5%, respectively; P = 0.590) and cGVHD (29.5%, 24.0%, 29.5%, respectively; P = 0.538) did not differ among 3 groups. Five-year relapse rates were 19.2%, 26.8%, and 23.0% in 3 groups, respectively (P = 0.419). However, of 206 high-risk patients, the relapse rate in HRD transplant was lower than in MSD transplant (23.8% vs 41.9%, P = 0.026). Multivariate analysis showed that HRD had beneficial impact on relapse (for MSD: P = 0.006). Five-year transplant-related mortality was lower in MSD transplant compared with those in HRD (17.3% vs 26.4%, P = 0.041) and MUD transplants (17.3% vs 24.1%, P = 0.037). Five-year overall survival were 60.4%, 64.6%, and 61.0%, respectively, in HRD, MSD, and MUD groups (P = 0.371); 5-year disease-free survival were 59.6%, 58.8%, and 54.9%, respectively (P = 0.423). Our results suggest that HRD transplant results in outcomes equivalent to MSD and MUD transplants. HRD might carry a superior GVL effect compared to MSD for high-risk patients.
To comprehensively understand the chemical constituents of the edible mushroom Agrocybe salicacola and their biological functions, a phytochemical separation of the cultural broth of A. salicacola ...led to the isolation of four new illudane sesquiterpenoids, agrocybins H–K (1–4), along with 10 known analogues (5–14). Compounds 2–4 were racemates of which 2 and 3 were further separated into single enantiomers as 2a/2b and 3a/3b. All new structures with absolute configurations were elucidated on the basis of an extensive spectroscopic analysis and quantum chemistry calculations. Compound 1 possesses a new carbon skeleton that might be derived from the protoilludane backbone. Compounds 1, 5, 8, and 9 show a certain degree of cytotoxicity to five human cancer cell lines. Compound 1 shows a mild inhibitory effect on nitric oxide production with an IC50 value of 31.4 μM. It is concluded that A. salicacola is rich in illudin derivatives with potential bioactivity prospects, which would make A. salicacola a good material of medicine and food homology.
Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular protozoan parasite infecting almost all warm-blooded animals, including birds, with a worldwide distribution. Surveys of T. gondii infection in wild birds have ...been reported extensively in the world, but little is known of T. gondii infection in peafowls worldwide. This study was performed to determine the seroprevalence of T. gondii infection in peafowls in Yunnan Province, southwestern China.
Sera from 277 peafowls, including 272 blue peafowls (Pavo cristatus) and 5 green peafowls (Pavo muticus) originated from two geographic areas in Yunnan Province were assayed for T. gondii antibodies using the modified agglutination test (MAT).
Specific T. gondii antibodies were detected in 35 of 277 (12.64%) peafowls (MAT titer ≥ 1:5). Seropositive birds were found in both species, 33 in 272 blue peafowls and 2 in 5 green peafowls. There was no significant difference in T. gondii seroprevalence between the adolescent birds (6.74%) and the adult birds (6.67%) (P > 0.05). The geographical origins of peafowls was found to be highly associated with T. gondii infection in the present study, a statistically significant difference in T. gondii seropositivity was observed between peafowls from Kunming (31.08%) and those from Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture (5.91%) (OR = 10.956, 95% CI = 1.632-73.545, P = 0.014). Statistical analyses showed that there were no significant interactions between ages and geographical origins of peafowls (P > 0.05).
The results of the present survey indicated that infection of peafowls with T. gondii is widespread in Yunnan Province, which has significant public health concerns and implications for prevention and control of toxoplamosis in this province. To our knowledge, this is the first seroprevalence report of T. gondii infection in China's southwestern Yunnan Province.
The Ni–B, Ni–P, Ni–B/SiO
2 and Ni–P/SiO
2 amorphous alloy samples were prepared by chemical reduction with BH
4
− or H
2PO
2
−. Their amorphous structures were verified by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and ...extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to determine their morphology and particle size. XPS experiments have been carefully designed to characterize the surface electronic state of the as-prepared samples. By comparing with electron binding energies of the pure Ni, B and P, the XPS spectra demonstrated that boron donated electron to nickel in Ni–B alloy, resulting in electron-enrichment of elemental Ni, while no significant electron transfer between Ni and P in Ni–P alloy was observed. Those results seem reasonable to elucidate the different catalytic behaviors of Ni–P and Ni–B amorphous alloy catalysts, such as the hydrogenation activity and sulfur resistance ability.
PDF
