Development of an automatic pulling mechanism of probe plug in marine eXpendable BathyThermograph launching system

Marine eXpendable Bathythermograph (XBT) launching system is used to launch detecting probes into the ocean quickly and efficiently and has been researched for many years. The probes will measure the ocean parameters of depth and temperature during droppings which make the device with the merits of real-time, fast and wide spreading. The automatic pulling mechanism of probe plug is an important part of XBT automatic launching system which improves the shortcoming of hand-held launch method of XBT probe. This development mentioned a kind of automatic extraction mechanism for probe’s plug fixed the probe. The lever is adopted here to magnify the tensile force in order to draw out the plug in limited stroke. That will make sure the full-automatic launching of expendable probes. In tests, the successful dropping rate is over 95 % and save time over 50 % more than hand-held method which prove the automatic extraction mechanism effect and reliable. The mechanism also can be used into various automatic launchers of expendable probes through a little configuration adjust. Its broad application prospect is viewed

Amelioration of Experimental Acute Pancreatitis with Dachengqi Decoction via Regulation of Necrosis-Apoptosis Switch in the Pancreatic Acinar Cell

Severity of acute pancreatitis contributes to the modality of cell death. Pervious studies have demonstrated that the herb medicine formula “Dachengqi Decoction” (DCQD) could ameliorate the severity of acute pancreatitis. However, the biological mechanisms governing its action of most remain unclear. The role of apoptosis/necrosis switch within acute pancreatitis has attracted much interest, because the induction of apoptosis within injured cells might suppress inflammation and ameliorate the disease. In this study, we used cerulein (10−8 M)-stimulated AR42J cells as an in vitro model of acute pancreatitis and retrograde perfusion into the biliopancreatic duct of 3.5% sodium taurocholate as an in vivo rat model. After the treatment of DCQD, cell viability, levels of apoptosis and necrosis, reactive oxygen species positive cells, serum amylase, concentration of nitric oxide and inducible nitric oxide syntheses, pancreatic tissue pathological score and inflammatory cell infiltration were tested. Pretreatment with DCQD increased cell viability, induced apoptosis, decreased necrosis and reduced the severity of pancreatitis tissue. Moreover, treatment with DCQD reduced the generation of reactive oxygen species in AR42J cells but increased the concentration of nitric oxide of pancreatitis tissues. Therefore, the regulation of apoptosis/necrosis switch by DCQD might contribute to ameliorating the pancreatic inflammation and pathological damage. Further, the different effect on reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide may play an important role in DCQD-regulated apoptosis/necrosis switch in acute pancreatitis

Maternal and fetal/neonatal outcomes of pregnancies complicated by pulmonary hypertension: a retrospective study of 154 patients

Objectives: To determine the main clinical and demographic outcomes related to Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) and adverse obstetric and fetal/neonatal outcomes. Methods: This study retrospectively analyzed the medical record data of 154 patients with PH who were admitted to the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University between January 2011 and December 2020. Results: According to the severity of elevated Pulmonary Artery Systolic Pressure (PASP), 82 women (53.2%) were included in the mild PH group, 34 (22.1%) were included in the moderate PH group, and 38 (24.7%) were included in the severe PH group. There were significant differences in the incidence of heart failure, premature delivery, Very-Low-Birth-Weight (VLBW) infants, and Small-for-Gestational-Age (SGA) infants among the three PH groups (p < 0.05). Five (3.2%) women died within 7-days after delivery, 7 (4.5%) fetuses died in utero, and 3 (1.9%) neonates died. The authors found that PASP was an independent risk factor for maternal mortality. After adjustment for age, gestational weeks, systolic blood pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI), mode of delivery, and anesthesia, the risk of maternal mortality in the severe PH group was 20.21 times higher than that in the mild-moderate PH group (OR = 21.21 [95% CI 1.7∼264.17]), p < 0.05. All 131 (85.1%) patients were followed up for 12 months postpartum. Conclusions: The authors found that the risk of maternal mortality in the severe PH group was significantly higher than that in the mild-moderate group, highlighting the importance of pulmonary artery pressure screening before pregnancy, early advice on contraception, and multidisciplinary care

VGOS: Voxel Grid Optimization for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) has shown great success in novel view synthesis due to its state-of-the-art quality and flexibility. However, NeRF requires dense input views (tens to hundreds) and a long training time (hours to days) for a single scene to generate high-fidelity images. Although using the voxel grids to represent the radiance field can significantly accelerate the optimization process, we observe that for sparse inputs, the voxel grids are more prone to overfitting to the training views and will have holes and floaters, which leads to artifacts. In this paper, we propose VGOS, an approach for fast (3-5 minutes) radiance field reconstruction from sparse inputs (3-10 views) to address these issues. To improve the performance of voxel-based radiance field in sparse input scenarios, we propose two methods: (a) We introduce an incremental voxel training strategy, which prevents overfitting by suppressing the optimization of peripheral voxels in the early stage of reconstruction. (b) We use several regularization techniques to smooth the voxels, which avoids degenerate solutions. Experiments demonstrate that VGOS achieves state-of-the-art performance for sparse inputs with super-fast convergence. Code will be available at https://github.com/SJoJoK/VGOS.Comment: IJCAI 2023 Accepted (Main Track

Energy efficiency performance enhancement of industrial conventional wood drying kiln by adding forced ventilation and waste heat recovery system: a comparative study

Conventional kilns dominate the wood drying industry. However, energy consumption during the process of ventilation remains a significant challenge. In this study, we designed a device to recover waste heat from exhausted wet air during kiln drying. To determine energy conservation, the device was installed in a 50 m3 kiln used for drying sawn timber in two different Chinese cities, and a traditional kiln with identical size was chosen to enable comparison. Two kinds of hardwood (Betula costata Trautv and Quercus mongolica) swan timbers were dried using conventional technology to investigate the energy saving effect of rainy seasons as well as seasonally different temperature. The results revealed that drying time and energy consumption decreased with the use of this energy-conserving device. Electrical and energy consumption were reduced by 18.9% and 38.5%, respectively. Waste heat recovery efficiencies ranged from 20.32% to 28.15%. Energy-conservation efficiency can be predicted to range from 12.23% to 22.74% annually. Equipment costs can be recovered within 3.5 years

Effect of Da-Cheng-Qi Decoction on Pancreatitis-Associated Intestinal Dysmotility in Patients and in Rat Models

The impairment of intestinal motility and related infectious complications are the predominant clinical phenomenon in patients with severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). We aimed to investigate the effects of Da-Cheng-Qi decoction (DCQD) on the gastrointestinal injury in SAP patients and the potential mechanism involved in rats. DCQD was enema administered to 70 patients for 7 days in West China Hospital. Mortality and organ failure during admission were observed and blood samples for laboratory analysis were collected. We also experimentally examined plasma inflammatory cytokines in rat serum and carried the morphometric studies of the gut. Intestinal propulsion index and serum and tissue vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) were also detected. Though DCQD did not affect the overall incidence of organ failure, it shortened the average time of paralytic intestinal obstruction and decreased the morbidity of infectious complications in patients with SAP. Compared with untreated rats, the DCQD lowered the levels of proinflammatory cytokine and decreased the mean pathological intestinal lesion scores. The VIP level in intestinal tissue or serum in DCQD group was obviously lowered and intestinal propulsion index was significantly improved. In conclusion, DCQD has good effect on pancreatitis-associated intestinal dysmotility in patients and in rat models

MicroRNA-275 and its target vitellogenin-2 are crucial in ovary development and blood digestion of Haemaphysalis longicornis

Background: The hard tick Haemaphysalis longicornis is widely distributed in eastern Asia, New Zealand and Australia and is considered the major vector of Theileria and Babesia, harmful parasites to humans and animals. Female ticks need successful blood meals to complete the life-cycle. Therefore, elucidation of the underlying molecular mechanisms of H. longicornis development and reproduction is considered important for developing control strategies against the tick and tick-borne pathogens. Methods: Luciferase assays were used to identify the targets of micro RNA miR-275 in vitro. RNAi of Vitellogenin (Vg) was used in phenotype rescue experiments of ticks with miR-275 inhibition, and these analyses were used to identify the authentic target of miR-275 in vivo. The expression of miR-275 in different tissues and developmental stages of ticks was assessed by real-time PCR. To elucidate the functions of miR-275 in female ticks, we injected a miR-275 antagomir into female ticks and observed the phenotypic changes. Statistical analyses were performed with GraphPad5 using Student’s t-test. Results: In this study, we identified Vg-2 as an authentic target of miR-275 both in vitro and in vivo by luciferase assays and phenotype rescue experiments. miR-275 plays the regulatory role in a tissue-specific manner and differentially in developmental stages. Silencing of miR-275 resulted in blood digestion problems, substantially impaired ovary development and significantly reduced egg mass (P < 0.0001). Furthermore, RNAi silencing of Vg-2 not only impacted the blood meal uptake (P < 0.05) but also the egg mass (P < 0.05). Significant rescue was observed in miR-275 knockout ticks when RNAi was applied to Vg-2. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this study is the first demonstration that miR-275 targets Vg-2 in H. longicornis and regulates the functions of blood digestion and ovary development. These findings improve the molecular understanding of tick development and reproduction