Start Learning Chinese Words Fast: An Introduction

In order to cater to the needs of Chinese language lovers, 28 basic strokes of Chinese words are firstly introduced. It is pointed out that the difficulty for foreigners to learn Chinese words is their grotesque shapes written by brush (soft) pen and printed in books. The special writing method with a hard pen and 8 directions moving steps are invented and firstly shown, which is easy for foreigners to try. The size (length) of strokes will guide them to control the proportion of a word. It could be changed according to paper size and how large they want to write. Secondly, 48 common fragments derived from 28 basic strokes are listed and the writing method described. It could help foreigners to separate and re-write unknown Chinese words and even guess out the meanings. Lastly, many characteristics or regularities of Chinese words will have great attraction for foreign language learners. Some Chinese cultures or amusing stories are also exposed in fragments and example words

Clinical outcomes of closed, displaced phalangeal neck fractures in children with different types of kirschner wire fixation: A retrospective observational study

ObjectivesInappropriate treatment of Closed displaced phalangeal neck fractures (CDPNF) in children usually leads to poor outcomes.This study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of closed/open reduction, age, and different types of fracture and Kirschner wire (K-wire) fixation in the treatment of CDPNF.Materials and methodsParticipants: Sixty patients (male, 46 and female,14; right-handed, 35 and left-handed, 25; mean age, 7.9-years-old [range, 1.0–14.5 years]) who had CDPNF were included. Preoperative x-rays showed that the fractures were displaced and exhibited obvious deformities. Interventions: First, reduction (four cases of open reduction and 56 cases of closed reduction) was performed followed by percutaneous K-wire fixation (cross fixation, 24 cases; longitudinal and slanting fixation, 17 cases; homolateral fixation, four cases; and single longitudinal fixation, 15 cases,) and immobilized by cast. x-ray examination following removal of the K-wires showed that the fractures were healed; the criteria for fracture healing were callus formation and the absence of fracture lines. Clinical outcome and radiographs between groups were compared.ResultsAccording to the visual analogue scale, the pain scores were excellent. According to the Al-Qattan Grade system(AGS),all the patients presented with closed, type II phalangeal neck fractures,the results were excellent in 36 cases (36/60, 60%), good in 15 cases (15/60, 25%), fair in 5 cases (5/60, 8.3%) and poor in 4 cases (4/60, 6.7%). There were significant differences in different fracture type groups (P = 0.013*), operation age groups (P = 0.025*) and open/closed reduction groups (P = 0.042*). There was no significant difference in K-wire fixation type groups (P > 0.05).ConclusionsPatients with open reduction, the more serious fracture type, the older at the operation, were more likely to have poor AGS result. Different K-wire fixation types for CDPNF in children had the same satisfactory results

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong

Measurement of Wetting Efficiency in Trickle-Bed Reactor

Wetting efficiency in trickle-bed reactor (TBR) is defined as the fraction of outer surface area wetted by liquid phase. In this study, a model is established based on the non-steady state adsorption of extremely diluted phenol solution by highly porous activated carbon to estimate the liquid to solid mass transfer coefficient and the wetting efficiency in accordance with its original definition. Both the measured mass transfer coefficient and wetting efficiency were found in good agreement with other relevant studies

Health Education Intervention on Hearing Health Risk Behaviors in College Students

Young people, like college students, are at risk of hearing loss from prolonged and excessive exposure to loud sounds. However, behavioral interventional studies on them are inadequate. This study explored the application of a health belief model to the health education intervention on college students for improving hearing health knowledge, health belief, and hearing behaviors. From November 2017 to September 2018, a cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted, enrolling 830 college students, with 419 in the intervention group and 411 in the control group. The intervention group received a 3-month hearing health education, while the control group received no intervention. The information of hearing health knowledge, health belief, and hearing behaviors were collected using hearing health questionnaires before the intervention, after the intervention, and 3 months after the intervention cessation. The intervention significantly improved hearing health knowledge, health belief, perceived severity, and self-efficacy in female students, and effectively reduced the frequency of using headphones per day, duration of using headphones each time, and proportion of using headphones at high volume in female students, and reduced the behaviors of sleeping with headphones listening in females and males. Therefore, this study confirms the effectiveness of health belief model-based intervention for changing hearing loss-related risk behaviors

Financing Target and Resale Pricing in Reward-Based Crowdfunding

Resale is an effective tool for reward-based crowdfunding creators to make more profit after crowdfunding successfully. On the one hand, funds raised during the crowdfunding affect the resale pricing as a capital constraint; on the other hand, backers’ strategic purchasing behavior in the resale stage can also disturb the creator’s financing target decision-making through affecting resale pricing. In view of this, this paper builds a two-stage crowdfunding model to examine the interaction between the financing target and resale pricing in the presence of strategic backers. The results show that a lower financing amount leads to higher prices in the resale stage due to the rationing effect, and suppresses price volatility due to strategic purchasing behavior. In contrast, a higher financing amount enables the creator to build a large capacity, which does not restrict the resale prices and profit. Besides, in the context of high unit production cost or high backer patience level, there is no need for the creator to set a high financing target at the risk of crowdfunding failure

Transcriptomic profiling identifies differentially expressed genes associated with programmed cell death of nucellar cells in Ginkgo biloba L.

Abstract Background Previously, we demonstrated that pollen chamber formation (PCF) in G. biloba ovules was a process of programmed cell death (PCD) within the nucellar cells at the micropylar end. However, the signal triggering the cascades of the programmed events in these nucellar cells remains unexplored. Results A transcriptomic strategy was employed to unravel the mechanism underlying the nucellar PCD via the comparative profiles of RNA-seq between pre-PCF and post-PCF ovules. A total of 5599 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with significance was identified from G. biloba ovules and classified into three main categories of GO annotation, including 17 biological processes, 15 cellular components and 17 molecular functions. KEGG analysis showed that 72 DEGs were enriched in “Plant hormone signal transduction”. Furthermore, 99 DEGs were found to be associated with the PCD process, including the genes involved in ethylene signaling pathway, PCD initiation, and PCD execution. Moreover, calcium-cytochemical localization indicated that calcium could play a role in regulating PCD events within the nucellar cells during pollen chamber formation in G. biloba ovules. Conclusions A putative working model, consisting of three overlapping processes, is proposed for the nucellar PCD: at the stage of PCD preparation, ethylene signaling pathway is activated for transcriptional regulation of the downstream targets; subsequently, at the stage of PCD initiation, the upregulated expression of several transcription factors, i.e., NAC, bHLH, MADS-box, and MYB, further promotes the corresponding transcript levels of CYTOCHROME C and CALMODULINs, thereby, leads to the PCD initiation via the calcium-dependent signaling cascade; finally, at the stage of PCD execution, some proteases like metacaspases and vacuolar processing enzyme for hydrolysis, together with the process of autophagy, play roles in the clearance of cellular components. Afterwards, a pollen chamber is generated from the removal of specific nucellar cells in the developing ovule