Quadrilateral Current Mode (QCM) Paralleling of Power MOSFETs for Zero-Voltage Switching (ZVS)

This paper proposes a generic zero-voltage switching (ZVS) scheme for parallel power MOSFETs. Uncoupled or inversely-coupled differential-mode (DM) commutation inductors are added to the midpoints (AC terminals) of parallel MOSFET half-bridges (HBs), and a time-delay-based control scheme is applied, generating a circulating current flowing through these commutation inductors. Thus, the inductor currents are reshaped as quadrilaterals, which enable all the parallel transistors to achieve ZVS. The mode of operation of the proposed paralleling technique is entitled quadrilateral current mode (QCM) due to the quadrilateral-shaped commutation inductor currents. The operating principle of the QCM-paralleling technique is detailed mathematically, yielding accurate closed-form analytical expressions for modulation parameters. Finally, simulations and experimental results of a QCM-enabled synchronous Buck dc-dc converter are presented to validate the theoretical considerations

Genetically predicted 17beta-estradiol, cognitive function and depressive symptoms in women: A Mendelian randomization in the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study

© 2016.Objective: The role of estrogen in cognitive function and depressive symptoms is controversial due to discrepancies between results from randomized controlled trials (RCT) and observational studies. Mendelian randomization analysis may provide further insights concerning the role of estrogen in these outcomes as it assesses the effect of lifelong endogenous exposure but is less vulnerable to confounding than observational studies. Method: We used separate sample instrumental variable analysis to estimate the association of log 17β estradiol with cognitive function (Delayed 10 word recall, and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE)) and depressive symptoms (Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)) in older Chinese women of the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study (GBCS, n = 3086). The estimate was derived based on the Wald estimator, the ratio of the association of genetic determinants (rs1008805 and rs2175898) of log 17β-estradiol with cognitive function and depressive symptoms in GBCS and the association of log 17β-estradiol with genetic determinants in the sample of young women in Hong Kong (n = 236). Results: Genetically predicted 17β-estradiol was not associated with delayed 10-word recall (0.42 words per log increase in 17β-estradiol (pmol/L), 95% confidence interval (CI) -. 0.49 to 1.34) MMSE (0.39 per log increase in 17β-estradiol (pmol/L), 95% CI -. 0.87 to 1.65) or GDS (0.24 per log increase in 17β-estradiol (pmol/L), 95% CI -. 0.57 to 1.05). Conclusion: These results were largely consistent with evidence from RCTs and did not show any beneficial effect of estrogen on cognitive function and depressive symptoms. However, larger Mendelian randomization analyses are needed to identify any minor effects.postprin

Accounting of value of ecosystem services in the desert: an example of the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem

Ecological products and ecosystem services are essential for human survival and development. Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) is a method to combine the value of ecosystem services and can reflect the status of ecosystem and ecological conservation and restoration performance. The conservation and restoration of desert ecosystems play an important role in expanding global cultivated land, ensuring food security, and improving human wellbeing. However, ecosystem services and the value of GEP in deserts have been neglected. Taking the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem as an example, this study evaluated the pattens, GEP value, and its change in the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem from 2000 to 2020. Our study found that 1) over the past 20 years, the areas of wetlands, forests, grasslands, and shrubs in the Kubuqi desert ecosystem had increased by 100.65%, 6.05%, 2.24%, and 2.03%, respectively, while that of desert had decreased by 10.62%; 2) the GEP of Kubuqi in 2020 was 55.48 billion CNY, among which its sandstorm prevention value was the highest (39.39%); 3) The value of ecosystem services in the Kubuqi desert ecosystem were all increased over the 20-year period and the largest increase came from sandstorm prevention (increased by 195.09%). This study emphasizes how GEP accounting can promote desert conservation and restoration, quantifies the contribution of desert ecosystems to human wellbeing, and provides future GEP accounting suggestions for desert ecosystems. This study can provide scientific information on the conservation and restoration of global desert ecosystems

Exposure to secondhand smoke and risk of peripheral arterial disease in southern Chinese non-smokers: the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study-Cardiovascular Disease Sub-cohort

Objectives: We studied the association between secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in Chinese non-smokers. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using baseline data from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study: Cardiovascular Disease Sub-cohort Study (GBCS-CVD). Guangzhou residents aged ≥ 50 years were recruited between 2003 and 2008. Baseline data included measurement of ankle brachial pressure index (ABPI) and self-reported smoking status and SHS exposure. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to analyze the association between SHS and PAD (defined as ABPI < 0.9). Results: Of the 1507 non-smokers, 24 (1.6%) had PAD. Of these, 12 were men and 12 were women. Exposure to SHS at home of ≥25 h per week was reported by 16.7% of PAD cases compared with 3.8% of those without PAD (χ2 test, p = 0.003). After adjustment for potential confounders, exposure to ≥25 h per week at home was still associated with PAD (adjusted OR 7.86, 95% CI 2.00–30.95, p = 0.003), with suggestion of a dose-response relationship. Conclusions: Our results extend the US Surgeon General’s 2006 report that SHS exposure is an independent risk factor for PAD. National smoke-free legislation is needed to protect all people from exposure

The evolution of negotiation and impasse in two-party multi-issue bargaining

Automated negotiation systems are becoming increasingly important and pervasive. Most previous research on automated negotiation has focused on understanding and formalizing “successful” negotiations, i.e., negotiations that do not become contentious to the point of impasse. This paper shifts the emphasis to negotiations that are “difficult” to resolve and can hit an impasse. It analyses a situation where two agents bargain over the division of the surplus of several distinct issues to demonstrate how a procedure to avoid impasses can be utilized in a specific negotiation setting. The procedure is based on the addition of new issues to the agenda during the course of negotiation and the exploration of the differences in the valuation of these issues to capitalize on Pareto optimal agreements. This paper also lays the foundation for performing an experiment to investigate how the evolution of negotiation contributes to the avoidance of impasses, paying particular attention to the expansion of the number of issues to be deliberated and its impact on the frequency of impasse

CLIP2^2: Contrastive Language-Image-Point Pretraining from Real-World Point Cloud Data

Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training, benefiting from large-scale unlabeled text-image pairs, has demonstrated great performance in open-world vision understanding tasks. However, due to the limited Text-3D data pairs, adapting the success of 2D Vision-Language Models (VLM) to the 3D space remains an open problem. Existing works that leverage VLM for 3D understanding generally resort to constructing intermediate 2D representations for the 3D data, but at the cost of losing 3D geometry information. To take a step toward open-world 3D vision understanding, we propose Contrastive Language-Image-Point Cloud Pretraining (CLIP$^2$) to directly learn the transferable 3D point cloud representation in realistic scenarios with a novel proxy alignment mechanism. Specifically, we exploit naturally-existed correspondences in 2D and 3D scenarios, and build well-aligned and instance-based text-image-point proxies from those complex scenarios. On top of that, we propose a cross-modal contrastive objective to learn semantic and instance-level aligned point cloud representation. Experimental results on both indoor and outdoor scenarios show that our learned 3D representation has great transfer ability in downstream tasks, including zero-shot and few-shot 3D recognition, which boosts the state-of-the-art methods by large margins. Furthermore, we provide analyses of the capability of different representations in real scenarios and present the optional ensemble scheme.Comment: To appear at CVPR 202

Age at menarche and cardiovascular risk factors using Mendelian randomization in the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study

Observational studies show earlier age at menarche associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease although these studies could be confounded by childhood obesity or childhood socioeconomic position. We tested the hypothesis that earlier age at menarche is associated with poorer cardiovascular risk factors using a Mendelian randomization design. We conducted a Mendelian randomization study in a large Southern Chinese cohort, the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study (n = 12,279), to clarify the causal role of menarche in cardiovascular disease risk factors including blood pressure, lipids, fasting glucose, adiposity and type 2 diabetes. A genetic allele score was obtained from single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with age at menarche using stepwise regression and with cross validation. Estimates of the association of age at menarche with cardiovascular disease risk factors were obtained using two stage least squares regression. Height was included as a positive control outcome. The F-statistic for the allele score (rs17268785, rs1859345, rs2090409, rs4452860 and rs4946651) was 19.9. Older age at menarche was associated with lower glucose (− 0.39 mmol/L per year older menarche, 95% confidence interval (CI) − 0.78 to − 0.001) but not clearly with any other cardiovascular risk factors. Older age at menarche was also associated with taller height. Age at menarche did not appear to affect cardiovascular disease risk factors except for glucose in an inverse manner. However, these results need to be confirmed in larger Mendelian randomization studies

A Mendelian randomization study of testosterone and cognition in men

Testosterone replacement for older men is increasingly common, with some observations suggesting a protective effect on cognitive function. We examined the association of endogenous testosterone with cognitive function among older men in a Mendelian randomization study using a separate-sample instrumental variable (SSIV) analysis estimator to minimize confounding and reverse causality. A genetic score predicting testosterone was developed in 289 young Chinese men from Hong Kong, based on selected testosterone-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs10046, rs1008805 and rs1256031). The association of genetically predicted testosterone with delayed 10-word recall score and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score was assessed at baseline and follow-up using generalized estimating equation among 4,212 older Chinese men from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Predicted testosterone was not associated with delayed 10-word recall score (−0.02 per nmol/L testosterone, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.06–0.02) or MMSE score (0.06, 95% CI −0.002–0.12). These estimates were similar after additional adjustment for age, education, smoking, use of alcohol, body mass index and the Framingham score. Our findings do not corroborate observed protective effects of testosterone on cognitive function among older men

FBXO5 acts as a novel prognostic biomarker for patients with cervical cancer

Background: Cervical cancer (CC) remains one of the most common and deadly malignancies in women worldwide. FBXO5, a protein-coding gene, is highly expressed in a variety of primary tumors and promotes tumor progression, however, its role and prognostic value in CC remain largely unknown.Methods: A key differential gene, FBXO5, was screened according to WGCNA based on immunohistochemical assays of clinical samples, multiple analyses of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) databases, including survival analysis, tumor mutational burden, GO, KEGG, tumor immune infiltration, and chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity, to explore the expression and prognostic value of FBXO5 in CC. The migration and invasiveness of cervical cancer cells following FBXO5 knockdown and overexpression were examined using wound healing and transwell assays, and the viability of cancer cells was assessed using CCK8 and EdU assays.Results:FBXO5 was discovered to be substantially expressed in CC tissues using data from our CC cohort and the TCGA database, and a survival analysis indicated FBXO5 as a predictive factor for poor overall survival in CC patients. In vitro, CC cells were more inclined to proliferate, migrate, and invade when FBXO5 was upregulated as opposed to when it was knocked down

Physical Activity, Adiposity, and Diabetes Risk in Middle-Aged and Older Chinese Population

OBJECTIVE: Physical activity may modify the association of adiposity with type 2 diabetes. We investigated the independent and joint association of adiposity and physical activity with fasting plasma glucose, impaired fasting glucose, and type 2 diabetes in a Chinese population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Middle-aged and older Chinese (n = 28,946, ≥50 years, 72.4%women) from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study were examined in 2003–2008. Multivariable regression was used in a cross-sectional analysis. RESULTS: BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) were positively associated with type 2 diabetes after multiple adjustment, most strongly for WHR with odds ratio (OR) of 3.99 (95% CI 3.60–4.42) for highest compared with lowest tertile. Lack of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but not walking, was associated with diabetes with an OR of 1.29 (1.17–1.41). The association of moderate-to-vigorous activity with fasting glucose varied with WHR tertiles (P = 0.01 for interaction). Within the high WHR tertile, participants who had a lack of moderate-to-vigorous activity had an OR of 3.87 (3.22–4.65) for diabetes, whereas those who were active had an OR of 2.94 (2.41–3.59). CONCLUSIONS: In this population, WHR was a better measure of adiposity-related diabetes risk than BMI or waist circumference. Higher moderate-to-vigorous activity was associated with lower diabetes risk, especially in abdominally obese individuals