Abstract
Background
Recent studies have focused on initial clinical and epidemiological characteristics of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is the mainly revealing situation in Wuhan, ...Hubei.
Aim
This study aims to reveal more data on the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients outside of Wuhan, Zhejiang, China.
Design
This study was a retrospective case series.
Methods
Eighty-eight cases of laboratory-confirmed and three cases of clinically confirmed COVID-19 were admitted to five hospitals in Zhejiang province, China. Data were collected from 20 January 2020 to 11 February 2020.
Results and discussion
Of all 91 patients, 88 (96.70%) were laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 with throat swab samples that tested positive for SARS-Cov-2, three (3.30%) cases were clinically diagnosed. The median age of the patients was 50 (36.5–57) years, and female accounted for 59.34%. In this sample, 40 (43.96%) patients had contracted the disease from local cases, 31 (34.07%) patients had been to Wuhan/Hubei, eight (8.79%) patients had contacted with people from Wuhan, and 11 (12.09%) patients were diagnosed after having flown together in the same flight with no passenger that could later be identified as the source of infection. In particular within the city of Ningbo, 60.52% cases can be traced back to an event held in a temple. The most common symptoms were fever (71.43%), cough (60.44%) and fatigue (43.96%). The median of incubation period was 6 (interquartile range 3–8) days and the median time from the first visit to a doctor to the confirmed diagnosis was 1 (1–2) days. According to the chest computed tomography scans, 67.03% cases had bilateral pneumonia.
Conclusions
Social activity cluster, family cluster and flying alongside with persons already infected with COVID-19 were how people got infected with COVID-19 in Zhejiang.
Accurate and robust pathological image analysis for colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnosis is time-consuming and knowledge-intensive, but is essential for CRC patients' treatment. The current heavy ...workload of pathologists in clinics/hospitals may easily lead to unconscious misdiagnosis of CRC based on daily image analyses.
Based on a state-of-the-art transfer-learned deep convolutional neural network in artificial intelligence (AI), we proposed a novel patch aggregation strategy for clinic CRC diagnosis using weakly labeled pathological whole-slide image (WSI) patches. This approach was trained and validated using an unprecedented and enormously large number of 170,099 patches, > 14,680 WSIs, from > 9631 subjects that covered diverse and representative clinical cases from multi-independent-sources across China, the USA, and Germany.
Our innovative AI tool consistently and nearly perfectly agreed with (average Kappa statistic 0.896) and even often better than most of the experienced expert pathologists when tested in diagnosing CRC WSIs from multicenters. The average area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) of AI was greater than that of the pathologists (0.988 vs 0.970) and achieved the best performance among the application of other AI methods to CRC diagnosis. Our AI-generated heatmap highlights the image regions of cancer tissue/cells.
This first-ever generalizable AI system can handle large amounts of WSIs consistently and robustly without potential bias due to fatigue commonly experienced by clinical pathologists. It will drastically alleviate the heavy clinical burden of daily pathology diagnosis and improve the treatment for CRC patients. This tool is generalizable to other cancer diagnosis based on image recognition.
This study further evaluated the
and
anti-
activities and potential underlying mechanism of patchouli alcohol (PA), a tricyclic sesquiterpene. In the
assay, the capacities of PA to inhibit and kill
...were tested on three standard strains at different pH values and on 12 clinical isolates. The effects of PA on
adhesion (and its
,
, and
genes), motility (and its
and
genes), ultrastructure, and flagellation were investigated. Moreover, the
resistance to and postantibiotic effect (PAE) of PA were determined. Furthermore, the
effects of PA on
eradication and gastritis were examined. Results showed that MICs of PA against three standard strains (pH 5.3 to 9) and 12 clinical isolates were 25 to 75 and 12.5 to 50 μg/ml, respectively. The killing kinetics of PA were time and concentration dependent, and its minimal bactericidal concentrations (MBCs) were 25 to 75 μg/ml. In addition,
adhesion, motility, ultrastructure, and flagellation were significantly suppressed. PA also remarkably inhibited the expression of adhesion genes (
and
) and motility genes (
and
). Furthermore, PA treatment caused a longer PAE and less bacterial resistance than clarithromycin and metronidazole. The
study showed that PA can effectively eradicate
, inhibit gastritis, and suppress the expression of inflammatory mediators (COX-2, interleukin 1β, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and inducible nitric oxide synthase iNOS). In conclusion, PA can efficiently kill
, interfere with its infection process, and attenuate gastritis with less bacterial resistance, making it a potential candidate for new drug development.
•Aramid fiber surface was modified by PIVPGP of AA to improve wettability, adhesion.•Surface modification effect by PIVPGP of AA increased and then decreased with time.•Surface modification effect ...increased and then stayed unaltered with output power.•Ar plasma was the most effective in PIVPGP of AA on aramid fiber surface.•In studied range, optimum technology of PIVPGP of AA: Ar plasma, 15min, 300W.
Plasma induced vapor phase graft polymerization (PIVPGP) method was applied to modify aramid fiber surface. In this study, aramid fibers were pretreated under various plasma conditions such as different treatment times, output powers and working gases to see how these plasma processing parameters influenced the PIVPGP of acrylic acid (AA) on aramid fiber surface and its surface structure and properties. The analysis results of atomic force microscope (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscope (XPS) showed the increase of surface roughness and the introduction of OCOH, which confirmed that the PIVPGP of AA on aramid fiber surface was achieved. The contact angle and interfacial shear strength (IFSS) of the aramid fibers modified by PIVPGP of AA prominently decreased and increased, respectively, indicating the obvious improvements of surface wettability and adhesion between aramid fiber and matrix. The surface modification effects of aramid fiber by PIVPGP of AA firstly increased and then after 15min slightly decreased with the increasing plasma treatment time, and but firstly increased and then after 300W nearly remained unchanged with the increasing output power, respectively. Among different working gases, Ar plasma occupied first place, O2 plasma and N2 plasma came second and third in the aspect of PIVPGP of AA on aramid fiber surface, respectively. It could be concluded that the PIVPGP of AA on aramid fiber surface could effectively improve surface wettability and adhesion. Plasma conditions had signally influence on the efficiency of PIVPGP of AA on aramid fiber surface and its surface structure and properties with the primary sequence of plasma treatment time, output power and working gas. Therefore adequate plasma processing parameters should be carefully selected for the optimum surface modification of aramid fiber by PIVPGP of AA.
Voltage‐gated potassium channels (Kv) are important regulators of neuronal excitability for its role of regulating resting membrane potential and repolarization. Recent studies show that Kv channels ...participate in neuropathic pain, but the detailed underlying mechanisms are far from being clear. In this study, we used siRNA, miR‐137 agomir, and antagomir to regulate the expression of Kv1.2 in spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of naïve and chronic constriction injury (CCI) rats. Kv currents and neuron excitability in DRG neurons were examined by patch‐clamp whole‐cell recording to verify the change in Kv1.2 function. The results showed that Kv1.2 was down‐regulated in DRG and spinal dorsal horn (SDH) by CCI. Knockdown of Kv1.2 by intrathecally injecting Kcna2 siRNA induced significant mechanical and thermal hypersensitivity in naïve rats. Concomitant with the down‐regulation of Kv1.2 was an increase in the expression of the miR‐137. The targeting and regulating of miR‐137 on Kcna2 was verified by dual‐luciferase reporter system and intrathecal injecting miR‐137 agomir. Furthermore, rescuing the expression of Kv1.2 in CCI rats, achieved through inhibiting miR‐137, restored the abnormal Kv currents and excitability in DRG neurons, and alleviated mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia. These results indicate that the miR‐137‐mediated Kv1.2 impairment is a crucial etiopathogenesis for the nerve injury‐induced neuropathic pain and can be a novel potential therapeutic target for neuropathic pain management.
Nerve injury impairs miR‐137 expression, which impairs Kv1.2 expression, in spinal dorsal horn and dorsal root ganglion (DRG) of Sprague–Dawley rats. It causes a decline in Kv currents in primary nociceptors, resulting in DRG neuronal hyperexcitability and pain hypersensitivity. Simulating the CCI‐induced miR‐137 and Kv1.2 change by miR‐137 agomir and si‐Kcna2 verified the critical role of miR‐137/Kv1.2 pathway in pain development. On the contrary, inhibiting miR‐137 by its antagomir rescued Kv1.2 expression in CCI rats, restored the abnormal Kv currents and neuronal excitability, and alleviated pain‐like behavior.
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•The deposited Ti-6Al-4V parts after heat treatment have higher LCF lives than those of other AM Ti-6Al-4V in literature.•Cyclic softening behaviors of the parts are found at various ...strain amplitudes (from 0.65% to 1.7%).•Small surface defect (<60 μm) slightly decreases the LCF lives of the parts even at a high (∼1.1%) strain amplitude.•The fatigue life prediction obtained by multistage fatigue model shows good agreement with our experimental data.
The low cycle fatigue (LCF) properties of Ti-6Al-4V parts fabricated by high-power laser directed energy deposition were investigated. The results show that the parts after solution treatment and aging exhibit superior LCF lives to those of other reported AM Ti-6Al-4V parts, as well as are comparable to those of the wrought counterparts at intermediate strain amplitudes (from 0.8% to 1.1%). Cyclic softening behaviors were found at various strain amplitudes (from 0.65% to 1.7%). In addition, a microstructure-based multistage fatigue model was used to predict their LCF lives and shows good agreement with the experimental data.
We describe a novel probabilistic framework for real-time tracking of multiple objects from combined depth-colour imagery. Object shape is represented implicitly using 3D signed distance functions. ...Probabilistic generative models based on these functions are developed to account for the observed RGB-D imagery, and tracking is posed as a maximum a posteriori problem. We present first a method suited to tracking a single rigid 3D object, and then generalise this to multiple objects by combining distance functions into a shape union in the frame of the camera. This second model accounts for similarity and proximity between objects, and leads to robust real-time tracking without recourse to bolt-on or ad-hoc collision detection.
Bending a photonic wire into a ring Gotfredsen, Henrik; Deng, Jie-Ren; Van Raden, Jeff M ...
Nature chemistry,
12/2022, Letnik:
14, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Natural light-harvesting systems absorb sunlight and transfer its energy to the reaction centre, where it is used for photosynthesis. Synthetic chromophore arrays provide useful models for ...understanding energy migration in these systems. Research has focused on mimicking rings of chlorophyll molecules found in purple bacteria, known as 'light-harvesting system 2'. Linear meso-meso linked porphyrin chains mediate rapid energy migration, but until now it has not been possible to bend them into rings. Here we show that oligo-pyridyl templates can be used to bend these rod-like photonic wires to create covalent nanorings that consist of 24 porphyrin units and a single butadiyne link. Their elliptical conformations have been probed by scanning tunnelling microscopy. This system exhibits two excited state energy transfer processes: one from a bound template to the peripheral porphyrins and one, in the template-free ring, from the exciton-coupled porphyrin array to the π-conjugated butadiyne-linked porphyrin dimer segment.
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