Experimental determination on the critical angle of seismic incidence of curved bridge

The shaking table model test mainly focuses on the study of seismic response law, aseismic performance and seismic damping and isolation effect of bridges with a single or multi-platform shaking table. Basically, the plane principal axis direction is adopted for the seismic input of structural models. Little research effort considering multi-angle seismic input has been reported in the structural model test. In this paper we designed and conducted a small-scale shaking table model test to study the seismic response law of the curved girder bridges with seismic input at different angles, and provided experimental verification for the theoretical method of the most unfavorable angle of seismic input. The experimental results show that the variation trend of component response to variation of the seismic input direction is consistent with that of the numerical analysis, which indicates that the designed device is effective

Doctor Imitator: Hand-Radiography-based Bone Age Assessment by Imitating Scoring Methods

Bone age assessment is challenging in clinical practice due to the complicated bone age assessment process. Current automatic bone age assessment methods were designed with rare consideration of the diagnostic logistics and thus may yield certain uninterpretable hidden states and outputs. Consequently, doctors can find it hard to cooperate with such models harmoniously because it is difficult to check the correctness of the model predictions. In this work, we propose a new graph-based deep learning framework for bone age assessment with hand radiographs, called Doctor Imitator (DI). The architecture of DI is designed to learn the diagnostic logistics of doctors using the scoring methods (e.g., the Tanner-Whitehouse method) for bone age assessment. Specifically, the convolutions of DI capture the local features of the anatomical regions of interest (ROIs) on hand radiographs and predict the ROI scores by our proposed Anatomy-based Group Convolution, summing up for bone age prediction. Besides, we develop a novel Dual Graph-based Attention module to compute patient-specific attention for ROI features and context attention for ROI scores. As far as we know, DI is the first automatic bone age assessment framework following the scoring methods without fully supervised hand radiographs. Experiments on hand radiographs with only bone age supervision verify that DI can achieve excellent performance with sparse parameters and provide more interpretability.Comment: Original Title: "Doctor Imitator: A Graph-based Bone Age Assessment Framework Using Hand Radiographs" @inproceedings{chen2020doctor, title={Doctor imitator: A graph-based bone age assessment framework using hand radiographs}, author={Chen, Jintai and Yu, Bohan and Lei, Biwen and Feng, Ruiwei and Chen, Danny Z and Wu, Jian}, booktitle={MICCAI}, year={2020}

Adjuvant therapy with Jianpi Huayu decoction improves overall and recurrence-free survival after hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma: a retrospective propensity score-matching study

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients experience high rates of recurrence following hepatectomy. Many herbal preparations used in traditional Chinese medicine have been shown to improve the postoperative condition of cancer patients. This retrospective study examined the efficacy and safety of Jianpi Huayu decoction (JPHYD) as adjuvant therapy for HCC following hepatectomy. HCC patients received postoperative management according to Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology recommendations, either alone (Control group) or in addition to daily JPHYD (1 week in hospital and 3 months after release). To reduce selection bias, we performed 1:1 propensity score matching between the Control and JPHYD groups. The main endpoint was recurrence-free survival (RFS), and secondary endpoints included overall survival (OS) and adverse event frequency. A total of 207 patients meeting inclusion criteria were enrolled, 127 in the Control group and 80 in the JPHYD group. Patients were then propensity score-matched, yielding each group of 80. Recurrence-free survival rate was significantly higher in the JPHYD group than in the Control group at 1 year (67.9% vs. 38.1%), 2 years (39.1% vs. 26.2%), and 3 years (31.3% vs. 26.2%) following hepatectomy (HR 0.5666 [95%CI, 0.3655 to 0.8784]; p = 0.0066). Additionally, OS was significantly higher in the JPHYD group than the Control group at 1 year (94.3% vs. 81.9%), 2 years (76.4% vs. 58.8%), and 3 years (66.3% vs. 51.4%) following hepatectomy (HR 0.5199 [95%CI, 0.2849 to 0.9490]; p = 0.027). Adverse events frequencies did not differ between the two groups. In conclusion, JPHYD can safely improve RFS and OS following hepatectomy for HCC

miR-155 Regulated Inflammation Response by the SOCS1-STAT3-PDCD4 Axis in Atherogenesis

Inflammation response plays a critical role in all phases of atherosclerosis (AS). Increased evidence has demonstrated that miR-155 mediates inflammatory mediators in macrophages to promote plaque formation and rupture. However, the precise mechanism of miR-155 remains unclear in AS. Here, we also found that miR-155 and PDCD4 were elevated in the aortic tissue of atherosclerotic mice and ox-LDL treated RAW264.7 cells. Further studies showed that miR-155 not only directly inhibited SOCS1 expression, but also increased the expression of p-STAT and PDCD4, as well as the production of proinflammation mediators IL-6 and TNF-α. Downregulation of miR-155 and PDCD4 and upregulation of SOCS1 obviously decreased the IL-6 and TNF-α expression. In addition, inhibition of miR-155 levels in atherosclerotic mice could notably reduce the IL-6 and TNF-α level in plasma and aortic tissue, accompanied with increased p-STAT3 and PDCD4 and decreased SOCS1. Thus, miR-155 might mediate the inflammation in AS via the SOCS1-STAT3-PDCD4 axis. These results provide a rationale for intervention of intracellular miR-155 as possible antiatherosclerotic targets

Prevalence of HIV and syphilis co-infection and associated factors among non-commercial men who have sex with men attending a sexually transmitted disease clinic in Shenzhen, China

Abstract Background Although HIV and syphilis co-infection has been frequently observed in men who have sex with men (MSM), only few studies have focused on it. Different subgroups of MSM might exhibit heterogeneous HIV and syphilis risk profiles, indicating that interventions for HIV and HIV-related co-infections may vary with different subgroups of MSM. However, no previous study has investigated HIV and syphilis co-infection among non-commercial MSM (ncMSM) attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the prevalence of HIV and syphilis co-infection and associated factors among ncMSM attending an STD clinic in Shenzhen, China. Methods NcMSM attending the STD clinic of Shenzhen Center for Chronic Disease Control were recruited in this cross-sectional study every Monday between March 2013 and August 2015 using a site based convenience sampling method. An anonymous questionnaire was used to collect data regarding socio-demographic characteristics, risky sexual behaviors and HIV-related knowledge. Blood samples were collected to perform HIV and syphilis tests. Results Totally 533 participants were enrolled in this study and the prevalence of HIV and syphilis co-infection among them was 13.13%. Multivariable analyses indicated that having lived in Shenzhen for less than one year (aOR\u2009=\u20092.80, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.30\u20136.05), having first anal sexual intercourse before the age of 18 (aOR\u2009=\u20092.78, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.29\u20135.89), having 3 to 5 anal sexual partners in the past six months (aOR\u2009=\u20092.54, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.19\u20135.40), playing exclusively receptive (aOR\u2009=\u20096.87, 95% CI\u2009=\u20093.02\u201315.61) or both insertive and receptive (aOR\u2009=\u20093.65, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.64\u20138.09) roles in anal sexual intercourse and not always using condom in anal sexual intercourse (aOR\u2009=\u20092.13, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.08\u20134.19) were associated risk factors for HIV and syphilis co-infection, relative to the non-infected ncMSM. Compared with the mono-infected ncMSM, associated risk factors for the co-infection were being unmarried (aOR\u2009=\u20092.47, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.03\u20135.89) and playing exclusively receptive role (aOR\u2009=\u20092.44, 95% CI\u2009=\u20091.04\u20135.73) in anal sexual ..

Early Sexual Debut and HIV Infection among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Shenzhen, China

Studies investigating the association between early sexual debut and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection have mainly focused on Africans or females but rarely on men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. This study, therefore, mainly aimed at exploring the association between early sexual debut and HIV infection among MSM in Shenzhen, China. A total of 533 MSM were enrolled in this study using a convenience sampling method. Information about sociodemographic characteristics and risky sexual behaviors was collected. It was found that the prevalence of HIV infection was 24.2% among this study population and 66.4% of the MSM reported having had vaginal sexual intercourse with females. The mean ages at first vaginal sexual intercourse, first anal sexual intercourse, and first sexual intercourse were 21.38, 22.43, and 19.87 years, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analyses showed that the MSM who experienced early anal sexual debut were more likely to be infected with HIV than those who did not. The results indicate that HIV infection is quite prevalent among MSM in Shenzhen. Early and efficient intervention strategies should be taken, and the MSM experiencing early anal sexual debut should be given special attention

Mesoporous Zirconium Phosphonate Hybrid Material as Adsorbent to Heavy Metal Ions

A new kind of inorganic–organic hybrid zirconium phosphonate material (NTAZP) with mesoporous structure was synthesized using nitrilotris­(methylene)-triphosphonic acid (ATMP) and zirconium dichloride oxide octahydrate. The sample possesses a spherical morphology, and the spheres are composed of lobular lamellae. The lobular lamellae have the structure of a worm-like mesoporous (about 2.7 nm) framework and a high surface area (about 160.4 m²/g), which were characterized by SEM, TEM, N₂ sorption, XRD, TG-DTA, elemental analysis, TOC (total organic carbon), XPS, and FT-IR spectroscopy techniques. The as-prepared NTAZP was used as adsorbent for the efficient removal of heavy metal ions (e.g., Pb²⁺, Cu²⁺, and Cd²⁺). Our results indicate that the material has good prospects for application as an adsorbent in wastewater processing