The influence of passengers’ perceived social responsibility efforts on their satisfaction in public-private-partnership urban rail transit projects

With the rapid development of public-private-partnership (PPP) urban rail transit (URT) projects in China, their social responsibility (SR) is considered to provide a useful way of guaranteeing passengers’ rights and to help urban sustainable development. However, what remains largely unknown is how passengers’ perceptions of the SR effort of such projects’ influences their satisfaction. To bridge this knowledge gap, the current study first proposes a conceptual model based on social responsibility and satisfaction theories. Hypotheses are then tested through bootstrapping analysis based on data drawn from a questionnaire survey of 436 residents from three typical PPP URT projects. The results show that the relationship between the passengers’ perceived SR effort and their satisfaction with PPP URT projects is sequentially and doubly mediated by perceived quality and perceived value. The findings contribute to the current body of knowledge in social responsibility and user satisfaction by introducing passenger-perceived SR effort as an antecedent factor, and offer valuable practical and managerial implications for the projects’ operation management to help promote urban sustainability. </p

Atrial Fibrillation Beat Identification Using the Combination of Modified Frequency Slice Wavelet Transform and Convolution Neural Networks

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a serious cardiovascular disease with the phenomenon of beating irregularly. It is the major cause of variety of heart diseases, such as myocardial infarction. Automatic AF beat detection is still a challenging task which needs further exploration. A new framework, which combines modified frequency slice wavelet transform (MFSWT) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs), was proposed for automatic AF beat identification. MFSWT was used to transform 1-s electrocardiogram (ECG) segments to time-frequency images, then the images were fed into a 12-layer CNN for feature extraction and AF/non-AF beat classification. The results on the MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation database showed that a mean accuracy (Acc) of 81.07% from 5-fold cross validation is achieved for the test data. The corresponding sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp) and the area under ROC curve (AUC) results are 74.96%, 86.41% and 0.88. When excluding an extreme poor signal quality ECG recording in the test data, a mean Acc of 84.85% is achieved, with the corresponding Se, Sp and AUC values of 79.05%, 89.99% and 0.92. This study indicates that it is possible to accurately identify AF or non-AF ECGs from a short-term signal episode

Early-onset pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms: A distinct disease with improved survival compared with old individuals

BackgroundThe incidence, clinicopathologic characteristics, treatment patterns, and survival of early-onset pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (EOPanNENs) have not been well explored.MethodsPatients diagnosed with PanNENs were identified from the SEER database between 2000 and 2018. EOPanNENs were defined as diagnosis in patients aged less than 50 years, while the remaining were defined as later-onset pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (LOPanNENs). Incidence, clinical features, management, and prognosis were analyzed in our study. Multivariable analyses were performed to identify factors associated with overall survival (OS) in EOPanNENs and LOPanNENs, respectively.ResultsA total of 5172 patients with PanNENs were included: 1267 (24.5%) in the EOPanNENs cohort and 3905 (75.5%) in the LOPanNENs cohort. The age-adjusted incidence rate significantly increased among later-onset cases, while it remained relatively stable in early-onset cases. EOPanNENs were more frequently to be female, unmarried, and with better tumor differentiation compared with LOPanNENs. Of note, early-onset patients presented with a higher rate of lymph node involvement, and they were more likely to receive surgical treatment. For local-regional disease at presentation, surgery alone was the most frequently used regimen over the last two decades. With regard to distant stage, a combination of surgery and chemotherapy was more often utilized. Risk factors for PanNENs survival were more correlated with LOPanNENs compared with EOPanNENs. The OS and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were significantly better in the EOPanNENs group. Further analyses showed that EOPanNENs ≤ 2cm were associated with more favorable survival outcomes than EOPanNENs&gt;2cm.ConclusionEOPanNENs are a clinically rare and distinct entity from LOPanNENs. The advantages in survival for the EOPanNENs cohort over time were largely driven by the indolent clinical courses including better tumor differentiation and intensified surgical treatment. Further investigations are warranted to better understand the characteristics of this disease subgroup

Toward a density Corr\'{a}di--Hajnal theorem for degenerate hypergraphs

Given an $r$-graph $F$ with $r \ge 2$, let $\mathrm{ex}(n, (t+1) F)$ denote the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $r$-graph with at most $t$ pairwise vertex-disjoint copies of $F$. Extending several old results and complementing prior work [J. Hou, H. Li, X. Liu, L.-T. Yuan, and Y. Zhang. A step towards a general density Corr\'{a}di--Hajnal theorem. arXiv:2302.09849, 2023.] on nondegenerate hypergraphs, we initiate a systematic study on $\mathrm{ex}(n, (t+1) F)$ for degenerate hypergraphs $F$. For a broad class of degenerate hypergraphs $F$, we present near-optimal upper bounds for $\mathrm{ex}(n, (t+1) F)$ when $n$ is sufficiently large and $t$ lies in intervals $\left[0, \frac{\varepsilon \cdot \mathrm{ex}(n,F)}{n^{r-1}}\right]$, $\left[\frac{\mathrm{ex}(n,F)}{\varepsilon n^{r-1}}, \varepsilon n \right]$, and $\left[ (1-\varepsilon)\frac{n}{v(F)}, \frac{n}{v(F)} \right]$, where $\varepsilon > 0$ is a constant depending only on $F$. Our results reveal very different structures for extremal constructions across the three intervals, and we provide characterizations of extremal constructions within the first interval. Additionally, for graphs, we offer a characterization of extremal constructions within the second interval. Our proof for the first interval also applies to a special class of nondegenerate hypergraphs, including those with undetermined Tur\'{a}n densities, partially improving a result in [J. Hou, H. Li, X. Liu, L.-T. Yuan, and Y. Zhang. A step towards a general density Corr\'{a}di--Hajnal theorem. arXiv:2302.09849, 2023.]Comment: 37 pages, 4 figures, comments are welcom

Dual Defense: Adversarial, Traceable, and Invisible Robust Watermarking against Face Swapping

The malicious applications of deep forgery, represented by face swapping, have introduced security threats such as misinformation dissemination and identity fraud. While some research has proposed the use of robust watermarking methods to trace the copyright of facial images for post-event traceability, these methods cannot effectively prevent the generation of forgeries at the source and curb their dissemination. To address this problem, we propose a novel comprehensive active defense mechanism that combines traceability and adversariality, called Dual Defense. Dual Defense invisibly embeds a single robust watermark within the target face to actively respond to sudden cases of malicious face swapping. It disrupts the output of the face swapping model while maintaining the integrity of watermark information throughout the entire dissemination process. This allows for watermark extraction at any stage of image tracking for traceability. Specifically, we introduce a watermark embedding network based on original-domain feature impersonation attack. This network learns robust adversarial features of target facial images and embeds watermarks, seeking a well-balanced trade-off between watermark invisibility, adversariality, and traceability through perceptual adversarial encoding strategies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Dual Defense achieves optimal overall defense success rates and exhibits promising universality in anti-face swapping tasks and dataset generalization ability. It maintains impressive adversariality and traceability in both original and robust settings, surpassing current forgery defense methods that possess only one of these capabilities, including CMUA-Watermark, Anti-Forgery, FakeTagger, or PGD methods

Mycoplasma hyorhinis infection in gastric carcinoma and its effects on the malignant phenotypes of gastric cancer cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Mycoplasma hyorhinis </it>infection has been postulated to play a role in the development of several types of cancer, but the direct evidence and mechanism remained to be determined.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Immunohistochemistry assay and nested polymerase-chain reaction (PCR) were performed to examine the <it>mycoplasma hyorhinis </it>infection in gastric cancer tissues. Statistical analysis was used to check the association between mycoplasma infection and clinicopathologic parameters. Transwell chamber assay and metastasis assay were used to evaluate <it>mycoplasma hyorhinis</it>' effects on metastasis in vitro and in vivo. <it>Mycoplasma hyorhinis</it>-induced extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activation were investigated by Western blot.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>My<it>coplasma hyorhinis </it>infection in gastric cancer tissues was revealed and statistical analysis indicated a significant association between mycoplasma infections and lymph node metastasis, Lauren's Classification, TNM stage, and age of the patients. <it>Mycoplasma hyorhinis </it>promoted tumor cell migration, invasion and metastasis <it>in vitro </it>and <it>in vivo</it>, which was possibly associated with the enhanced phosphorylation of EGFR and ERK1/2. The antibody against p37 protein of <it>Mycoplasma hyorhinis </it>could inhibit the migration of the infected cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The infection of <it>m</it>y<it>coplasma hyorhinis </it>may contribute to the development of gastric cancer and <it>Mycoplasma hyorhinis</it>-induced malignant phenotypes were possibly mediated by p37.</p

Multi-environment QTL analysis using an updated genetic map of a widely distributed Seri × Babax spring wheat population

Seri/Babax spring wheat RIL population was developed to minimize the confounding effect of phenology in the genetic dissection of abiotic stress traits. An existing linkage map (< 500 markers) was updated with 6470 polymorphic Illumina iSelect 90K array and DArTseq SNPs to a genetic map of 5576.5 cM with 1748 non-redundant markers (1165 90K SNPs, 207 DArTseq SNPs, 183 AFLP, 111 DArT array, and 82 SSR) assigned to 31 linkage groups. We conducted QTL mapping for yield and related traits phenotyped in several major wheat growing areas in Egypt, Sudan, Iran, India, and Mexico (nine environments: heat, drought, heat plus drought, and yield potential). QTL analysis identified 39 (LOD 2.5–23.6; PVE 4.8–21.3%), 36 (LOD 2.5–15.4; PVE 2.9–21.4%), 30 (LOD 2.5–13.1; PVE 3.6–26.8%), 39 (LOD 2.7–14.4; PVE 2.6–15.9%), and 22 (LOD 2.8–4.8; PVE 6.8–12.9%) QTLs for grain yield, thousand-grain weight, grain number, days to heading, and plant height, respectively. The present study confirmed QTLs from previous studies and identified novel QTLs. QTL analysis based on high-yielding and low-yielding environmental clusters identified 11 QTLs (LOD 2.6–14.9; PVE 2.7–19.7%). The updated map thereby provides a better genome coverage (3.5-fold) especially on the D genome (4-fold), higher density (1.1-fold), and a good collinearity with the IWGSC RefSeq v1.0 genome, and increased the number of detected QTLs (5-fold) compared with the earlier map. This map serves as a useful genomic resource for genetic analyses of important traits on this wheat population that was widely distributed around the world.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Combination of thymosin α1 with conventional therapy improves APC and IL-1R1 levels in children with severe pneumonia

Purpose: To investigate the effect of a combination of thymosin α1 with  conventional regimen on APC and IL-1R1 levels in children with severe pneumonia, and to provide a reference for its clinical treatment.Methods: A total of 96 children with severe pneumonia over a period of two years were divided into control and observation groups (48 cases per  group) by random number table method. The patients consisted of 46 males and 50 females within the age range of 0.1 - 6 years (mean age = 3.0 ± 1.2 years), and mean duration of 13.4 ± 2.2 days). Their acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE II) was 20.3 ± 3.2 points. Patients in the control group were placed on conventional treatment programs, while those in the observation group, in addition to the  conventional treatments, received thymosin α1 (subcutaneous injection of thymosin α1 at a dose of 1.5 mg per injection) twice daily for the first 3 days, then once daily until the 7th day, after which the adverse reactions were observed and treated. Pulmonary function indices, and levels of APC, and IL-1R1 were also determined in the patients’ sera before and after the treatment regime.Results: The clinical efficacy of the observation group was significantly better (p &lt; 0.05) than that of control. There were no significant differences (p &gt; 0.05) in the indices of pulmonary function (maximal inspiratory and expiratory pressure, and peak expiratory flow) between the two groups before treatment. However, after treatment they were significantly higher (p &lt; 0.05) in the observation group than in control. There were no significant differences (p &gt; 0.05) in APC and IL-1R1 levels between the two groups before treatment, but after treatment, while the level of APC in the observation group was significantly increased (p &lt; 0.05), the IL-1R1 level was significantly decreased (p &lt; 0.05), when compared to the control group. Both groups showed no obvious adverse reactions during the treatmentregime.Conclusion: Combining thymosin α1 with routine treatment in the  management of children with severe pneumonia can significantly alleviate the symptoms of patients, greatly stimulate recovery of pulmonary function, improve APC and IL-1R1 levels, and prevent inflammation.Keywords: Pneumonia, Thymosin α1, Routine treatment, Inflammatory factors, Pulmonary functio