Most patients including health care workers (HCWs) survived the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), however, knowledge about the sequelae of COVID-19 after discharge remains limited.
A prospectively ...observational 3-month follow-up study evaluated symptoms, dynamic changes of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) IgG and IgM, lung function, and high resolution computed tomography (HRCT) of survivors of COVID-19 after discharge at Wuhan Union Hospital, China.
Seventy-six survivors (55 females) with a mean age of 41.3 ± 13.8 years were enrolled, and 65 (86%) were HCWs. A total of 69 (91%) patients had returned to their original work at 3-months after discharge. Most of the survivors had symptoms including fever, sputum production, fatigue, diarrhea, dyspnea, cough, chest tightness on exertion and palpitations in the three months after discharge. The serum troponin-I levels during the acute illness showed high correlation with the symptom of fatigue after hospital discharge (
= 0.782;
= 0.008) and lymphopenia was correlated with the symptoms of chest tightness and palpitations on exertion of patients after hospital discharge (
= -.285,
= 0.027;
= -.363,
= 0.004, respectively). The mean values of forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), FEV1/FVC, total lung capacity and diffusion capacity were all normal (> 80% predicted) and lung HRCTs returned to normal in most of the patients (82%), however, 42% of survivors had mild pulmonary function abnormalities at 3-months after discharge. SARS-CoV-2 IgG turned negative in 11% (6 of 57 patients), 8% (4 of 52 patients) and 13% (7 of 55 patients), and SARS-CoV-2 IgM turned negative in 72% (41 of 57 patients), 85% (44 of 52 patients) and 87% (48 of 55 patients) at 1-month, 2-months and 3-months after discharge, respectively.
Infection by SARS-CoV-2 caused some mild impairments of survivors within the first three months of their discharge and the duration of SARS-CoV-2 antibody was limited, which indicates the necessity of long-term follow-up of survivors of COVID-19.
Recent researches have provided evidence that stimulus-driven attentional bias for threats can be modulated by top-down goals. However, it is highlight essential to indicate whether and to what ...extent the top-down goals can affect the early stage of attention processing and its early neural mechanism. In this study, we collected electroencephalographic data from 28 healthy volunteers with a modified spatial cueing task. The results revealed that in the irrelevant task, there was no significant difference between the reaction time (RT) of the fearful and neutral faces. In the relevant task, we found that RT of fearful faces was faster than that of neutral faces in the valid cue condition, whereas the RT of fearful faces was slower than that of neutral faces in the invalid cue condition. The N170 component in our study showed a similar result compared with RT. Specifically, we noted that in the relevant task, fearful faces in the cue position of the target evoked a larger N170 amplitude than neutral faces, whereas this effect was suppressed in the irrelevant task. These results suggest that the irrelevant task may inhibit the early attention allocation to the fearful faces. Furthermore, the top-down goals can modulate the early attentional bias for threatening facial expressions.
Sensor fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) has great significance for ensuring the energy saving and normal operation of the air conditioning system. Chiller systems serving as an important part of ...central air conditioning systems are the major energy consumer in commercial and industrial buildings. In order to ensure the normal operation of the chiller system, virtual sensors have been proposed to detect and diagnose sensor faults. However, the performance of virtual sensors could be easily impacted by abnormal data. To solve this problem, virtual sensors combined with the maximal information coefficient (MIC) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network is proposed for chiller sensor fault diagnosis. Firstly, MIC, which has the ability to quantify the degree of relevance in a data set, is applied to examine all potentially interesting relationships between sensors. Subsequently, sensors with high correlation are divided into several groups by the grouping thresholds. Two virtual sensors, which are constructed in each group by LSTM with different input sensors and corresponding to the same physical sensor, could have the ability to predict the value of physical sensors. High correlation sensors in each group improve the fitting effect of virtual sensors. Finally, sensor faults can be diagnosed by the absolute deviation which is generated by comparing the virtual sensors' output with the actual value measured from the air-cooled chiller. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by using a real data set. Experimental results indicate that virtual sensors can be well constructed and the proposed method achieves a significant performance along with a low false alarm rate.
Wooden columns, as an important load-bearing wooden component of traditional wooden structures, determine the safety of an entire building. With the increase in material deterioration, the overall ...health and life of ancient buildings is affected. In this study, the deterioration of wooden columns of ancient buildings in the central axis of the Nanyang Fuya Museum was detected through a combination of macroscopic visual inspection and moisture content testing. The result was that the deterioration degrees and MCs of wooden columns located in the south direction, with good ventilation effect or with oil paint protection were lower than those of wooden columns located in the north direction, with poor ventilation effect or without oil paint protection. The deterioration degree increased with the increase of MC. The results of this research provide the basis for the analysis of the causes and risks of material deterioration.
Functional carbon materials have been developed and applied in various sewage treatment applications in recent years. This article reports the fabrication, characterization, and application of a new ...kind of poly (allylthiourea-co-acrylic acid) (PAT⁻PAC) hydrogel-based carbon monolith. The results indicated that the poly acrylic acid component can endow the PAT⁻PAC hydrogel with an increased swelling ratio and enhanced thermal stability. During the carbonization process, O⁻H, N⁻H, C=N, and ⁻COO⁻ groups, etc. were found to be partly decomposed, leading to the conjugated C=C double bonds produced and the clear red shift of C=O bonds. Particularly, it was found that this shift was accelerated under higher carbonization temperature, which ultimately resulted in the complex conjugated C=C network with oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur atoms doped in-situ. The as-obtained carbon monoliths showed good removal capacity for Ni(II) ions, organic solvents, and dyes, respectively. Further analysis indicated that the Ni(II) ion adsorption process could be well described by pseudo-second-order and Freundlich models under our experimental conditions, respectively. The adsorption capacity for Ni(II) ions and paraffin oil was as high as 557 mg/g and 1.75 g/g, respectively. More importantly, the as-obtained carbon monoliths can be recycled and reused for Ni(II) ions, acetone, and paraffin oil removal. In conclusion, the proposed PAT⁻PAC-based carbonaceous monoliths are superior adsorbents for wastewater treatment.
This article investigates the security issue for multiagent systems (MASs). Due to the effect of physical faults and cyberattacks, MASs are prone to anomalies. To meet these challenges, an ...observer-based distributed attack detection and fault diagnosis scheme is proposed. First, to reduce unnecessary communication loss, an event-triggered mechanism is designed for each agent to determine whether to transmit the current measurement to its own state estimator and its neighbors. Then, based on the information received from neighbors, each agent designs a bank of attack detectors based on unknown input observer for the neighbors to detect whether there are attacks in the communication with the neighbor agents. In addition, for each agent, according to the local measurement and the estimated states of adjacent agents, a fault diagnoser based on the Luenberger observer is designed, which can be combined with the attack detectors to make the distributed fault diagnosis for each agent. Finally, the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed scheme are verified by applying it to two smart grids with multiple generators.
Secreted phosphoprotein-1 (SPP1) has been reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of breast cancer (BRC), but the influence of SPP1 single nucleotide polymorphisms on the BRC susceptibility has ...been rarely reported. In this study, we explored the association between rs11730582, rs2853750, and rs35893069 in the SPP1 gene and the BRC susceptibility. We used Snapshot assay to detect SPP1 single nucleotide polymorphisms in 471 BRC patients and 471 controls. The plasma SPP1 level was measured by ELISA. We found that the CC genotype and C allele of rs11730582 were associated with a significantly decreased BRC risk compared with the TT genotype and T allele, respectively CC vs. TT: odds ratio (OR) = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.37-0.94,
= 0.026; C vs. T: OR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.65-0.96,
= 0.022. In addition, BRC patients and controls with the rs11730582 CC genotype had a lower plasma SPP1 level than did BRC patients and controls with TT genotype (
= 0.007 and
= 0.011, respectively). Moreover, the proportions of rs11730582 CC genotype and C allele were decreased in BRC patients with clinical stages I-III compared with those with clinical stage IV (
= 0.012 and
= 0.003, respectively). Besides, the C-G-T haplotype was associated with a significantly decreased BRC risk compared with the T-A-T haplotype (OR = 0.69, 95% CI = 0.52-0.93,
= 0.015). However, there was no significant association between rs2853750 or rs35893069 and the BRC risk. In summary, our study found the association between rs11730582 and the risk of BRC and suggested that rs11730582 may promote the occurrence and development of BRC by regulating SPP1 expression.
LaB6 nanoparticles were synthesised at 1200 C via a solid-state reaction. The synthesis was carried out under vacuum conditions, with LaCl3 and NaBH4 as the reactants. XRD patterns indicated the ...formation of LaB6. Result from FESEM showed that the products were mostly composed of cubic particles with sizes ranging from 20 to 100 nm. HRTEM images confirmed the formation of nanocrystalline LaB6 with dominant (100) planes. The effects of different processing parameters during the reaction were investigated.
Although sodium alginate possesses excellent biocompatibility, moisture retention and easy availability, it cannot be directly applied for infected wound treatment. Herein, a solid phase synthesis ...strategy was proposed to fabricate oxidized sodium alginate-tobramycin conjugate (OSA-TOB) for anti-infection dressing development. 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectra indicated that the oxidization process does not change the ratio of β-D-mannuronic acid (M) / α-L-guluronic acid (G) in OSA and the oxidization reaction shows no stereoselectivity. Elemental analysis disclosed that the graft ratio of tobramycin in OSA-TOB is 13.8 %. Antibacterial test indicated that OSA-TOB can effectively inhibit four prevalent pathogenic bacterial S.epidermidis, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus and E. coli via a different antibacterial mechanism compared to the original TOB. Hemolysis and cytotoxicity assays shown that OSA-TOB have superior hemocompatibility and cytocompatibility. Infected wound healing assay shown that the healing rate of OSA-TOB is the highest. Further analysis indicated that OSA-TOB can reduce the local inflammatory response, accelerate the form of epithelium and collagen deposition. In conclusions, OSA-TOB synthesized in solid phase can be potentially applied as a promising anti-infection wound dressing.
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•Oxidized sodium alginate-tobramycin conjugate (OSA-TOB) was synthesized via solid phase synthesis.•OSA-TOB can effectively inhibit four pathogenic bacteria in wounds.•OSA-TOB shows superior hemocompatibility and cytocompatibility.•OSA-TOB cannot only inhibit inflammation but also promote re-epithelialization and collagen deposition in infected wounds.
In this paper, we propose a novel event-triggered distributed privacy preserving consensus scheme for linear continuous-time multi-agent systems, which can be divided into three phases. First, for ...each agent, an event-triggered mechanism is designed to determine whether the current state is transmitted to the corresponding neighbor agents. Then, to protect the privacy of initial states from disclosure, the edge-based mutually independent standard white noise is added to each communication channel. Further, to attenuate the effect of noise on consensus control, we propose a stochastic approximation type protocol for each agent. Based on stochastic analysis and graph theory, we analyze the asymptotic property and convergence accuracy of the consensus error, the privacy of the privacy preserving scheme and the Zeno behavior of the event-triggered mechanism. Finally, a numerical simulation is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
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