There may be an association between obesity and periodontitis, yet no studies have investigated the correlation between the new obesity indicator, the weight-adjusted-waist Index (WWI), and ...periodontitis.
This study aims to investigate the association between the novel obesity index, weight-adjusted-waist index, and periodontitis.
WWI was utilized to assess obesity, through measuring waist circumference (WC) and body weight. We analyzed cross-sectional NHANES data from 2009 to 2014 (1) using multivariate logistic regression to explore WWI's association with moderate/severe periodontitis; (2) conducting subgroup analyses and interaction tests; and (3) fitting smoothed curves to the age-stratified logistic regression model.
The study involved 11,256 individuals, with 48.55% having moderate/severe periodontitis. Upon adjusting for all relevant variables, a significant correlation between WWI and moderate/severe periodontitis was observed (OR = 1.08, 95% CI: 1.01-1.17). Compared to the lowest quartile of WWI, there was a significant increase in the likelihood of moderate/severe periodontitis in Quartile 2 (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.06-1.39) and Quartile 3 (OR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.07-1.42). Subgroup analyses for gender, age, education, smoking, and diabetes highlighted a positive association between WWI and moderate/severe periodontitis in all subgroups, except for the diabetic population and individuals aged 65 years and older.
The analysis revealed a positive correlation between WWI, a novel obesity index, and moderate/severe periodontitis prevalence through diverse modeling approaches.
Gender is an important cue in social activities. In this correspondence, we present a study and analysis of gender classification based on human gait. Psychological experiments were carried out. ...These experiments showed that humans can recognize gender based on gait information, and that contributions of different body components vary. The prior knowledge extracted from the psychological experiments can be combined with an automatic method to further improve classification accuracy. The proposed method which combines human knowledge achieves higher performance than some other methods, and is even more accurate than human observers. We also present a numerical analysis of the contributions of different human components, which shows that head and hair, back, chest and thigh are more discriminative than other components. We also did challenging cross-race experiments that used Asian gait data to classify the gender of Europeans, and vice versa. Encouraging results were obtained. All the above prove that gait-based gender classification is feasible in controlled environments. In real applications, it still suffers from many difficulties, such as view variation, clothing and shoes changes, or carrying objects. We analyze the difficulties and suggest some possible solutions.
Traditional nitrogen removal relies on the autotrophic nitrification and anaerobic denitrification process. In the system, autotrophic microorganisms achieve nitrification under aerobic condition and ...heterotrophic microorganisms complete the denitrification in anaerobic condition. As the two types of microorganisms have different tolerance on oxygen concentration, nitrification and denitrification are normally set in two compartments for high nitrogen removal. Therefore, large land occupying is required. In fact, there is a special type of microorganism called heterotrophic nitrification & aerobic denitrification microorganisms (HNADMs) which can oxidize ammonium nitrogen, and perform denitrification in the presence of oxygen. HNADMs have been reported in many environments. It was found that HNADMs could simultaneously achieve nitrification and denitrification. In addition, some HNADMs not only have the ability to remove nitrogen, but also have the ability to remove phosphorus. It suggests that HNADMs have great potential for pollution removal from wastewater. So far, individual work on single strain was carried out. Comprehensive summary of the HNADMs would provide a better picture for understanding and directing its application. In this paper, the studies related on HNADMs were reviewed. The nitrogen metabolism pathway of HNADMs was summarized. The impact of pH, DO, carbon source, and C/N on HNADMs growth and metabolism were discussed. In addition, the extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) production, quorum sensing (QS) secretion and P removal by HNADMs were displayed.
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•Heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification microorganism is reviewed.•Cultivation condition impact on the microorganism is discussed.•Nitrogen and phosphorus metabolism mechanism of the microorganism is proposed.•The EPS and QS of the microorganism are summarized.
Magnetically actuated microswimmers have attracted researchers to investigate their swimming characteristics and controlled actuation. Although plenty of studies on actuating helical microswimmers ...have been carried out, robust closed-loop controls should be still explored for practical applications. In this paper, we proposed a data-driven model-free method using Image-Based Visual Servoing (IBVS), which uses features directly extracted in the image space as feedbacks. The IBVS method can eliminate camera calibration errors. We have demonstrated with experiments that the proposed IBVS method can enable velocity-independent path following of an arbitrarily given path on the plane, which permits a better experience of user interaction. The proposed control method is successfully applied to obstacle avoidance tasks and has the potential for the application in complex circumstances. This approach is promising for biomedical applications.
As the controller parameter adjustment process is simplified significantly by using learning algorithms, the studies about learning-based control attract a lot of interest in recent years. This ...article focuses on the intelligent servo control problem using learning from desired demonstrations. Compared with the previous studies about the learning-based servo control, a control policy using the broad learning system (BLS) is developed and first applied to a microrobotic system, since the advantages of the BLS, such as simple structure and no-requirement for retraining when new demos' data is provided. Then, the Lyapunov theory is skillfully combined with the complex learning algorithm to derive the controller parameters' constraints. Thus, the final control policy not only can obtain the movement skills of the desired demonstrations but also have the strong ability of generalization and error convergence. Finally, simulation and experimental examples verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy using MATLAB and a microswimmer trajectory tracking system.
Nature provides much inspiration for developing soft millirobots. However, compared with smart and adaptations of lives in nature, these robotic systems still suffer from insufficiency of ...intelligence. Here, a new untethered soft millirobot with magnetic actuation in the head and function in the tail is presented via implementing control, actuation, and sensing directly in the materials, thereby endowing robots with multimodal locomotion and environment‐adaptive functions. Due to the soft and asymmetric structure, the millirobot not only shows robust multimodal locomotion, including controllable and transformable crawling, swinging and rolling, but also achieves an excellent capability of helical propulsion in water. Moreover, the robot also possesses outstanding obstacle‐crossing abilities, including helically propelling over obstacles (>2 body length), crawling within a 2 mm height tunnel and swinging through a 450 µm width channel. Furthermore, the robot can even squeeze its body to crawl through a tube easily via near‐infrared irradiation, which triggers the osmotic shrinking of its body. Notably, the robots also possess extraordinary environment‐adaptive functions, for example, leptocephali‐like optical camouflage in water, octopus‐like controllable delivery and variable appearance via visible color–shifting for interaction with the changing environment. These smart robotic systems would be of benefit in various fields via seamless integration of bioinspired design and smart materials.
The bioinspired hydrogel‐based millirobots not only possess excellent capabilities of controllable and transformable locomotion, but also outstanding obstacle‐crossing abilities. Furthermore, the robots even have extraordinary environment‐adaptive functions, including leptocephali‐like optical camouflage, octopus‐like controllable delivery, and variable appearance via visible color–shifting for interaction with the changing environment, which would benefit a wide range of areas such as biomedical and environmental fields.
Th17 cells are generally considered to be positive regulators of immune responses because they produce pro-inflammatory cytokines, including IL-17A, IL-17F, and IL-22. Cytokine production not only ...promotes accumulation of immune cells, such as macrophages, neutrophils and lymphocytes, at inflammatory sites but can also cause tissue pathologies. Conversely, certain Th17 cells can also negatively regulate immune responses by secreting immunosuppressive factors, such as IL-10; these cells are termed non-pathogenic Th17 cells. In this review, we summarize recent advances in the development and regulatory functions of non-pathogenic Th17 cells in autoimmune diseases.
Nanoscale resistive memory devices are expected to fuel dense integration of electronic synapses for large-scale neuromorphic systems. To realize such a brain-inspired computing chip, a compact CMOS ...spiking neuron that performs in situ learning and computing while driving a large number of resistive synapses is desired. This brief presents a novel leaky integrate-and-fire neuron design that implements the dual-mode operation of current integration and synaptic drive, with a single operational amplifier (opamp) and enables in situ learning with crossbar resistive synapses. The proposed design was implemented in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology. Measurements show neuron's ability to drive a thousand resistive synapses and demonstrate in situ associative learning. The neuron circuit occupies a small area of 0.01 mm 2 and has an energy efficiency value of 9.3 pJ/spike/synapse.
A batch of huge hydropower plants with multiple vibration zones have been developed in China. These vibration zones varying with net head, i.e., head-sensitive, seriously challenge the hydro unit ...commitment (HUC). This paper presents a MILP model for HUC with a head-sensitive reservoir and multiple vibration zones. The focus of the study is mainly on two net head related constraints, namely the unit performance curves and multiple vibration zones. These constraints are linearized through the use of binary 0-1 integer variables. The practical behavior of the MILP model is demonstrated using real-world case studies. The results demonstrate that the proposed model is computationally efficient and suitable for large hydropower plants with multiple vibration zones, showing its potential practicability and validity for solving the HUC problem.
Microrobots have great potential for multiple applications, such as targeted drug delivery and micromanipulation. Several kinds of microrobots assembled by nanoparticles have been proposed by ...researchers. However, they are difficult to adapt for complex environments, for example, traversing porous materials or climbing over obstacles. Many such environments require multimodal motion control. In this article, we proposed a needle-like microrobot assembled by ferromagnetic nanoparticles, which enables three types of locomotion, defined as axial motion, lateral motion, and rolling motion. The influence of velocities by input frequencies and the lengths of the microrobots are investigated theoretically and experimentally. Moreover, visual feedback path-following control methods are designed for each motion type, and experimentally verified. The needle-like microrobots enable traversing the nonwoven layer of a clinical mask and a seaweed silk barrier by axial motion, which showed a separation and a reaggregation during the traversing process. The needle-like microrobots with rolling motion are capable of climbing over obstacles, which expands its motion scene from 2-D to 3-D. They can overcome even higher obstacles by assembling themselves to form the longer needle-like microrobots. We further expect that with the proposed multimodal motion control of nanoparticle microrobots, they may achieve complex tasks at the microscale.
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