Macroscopical Entangled Coherent State Generator in V configuration atom system

In this paper, we propose a scheme to produce pure and macroscopical entangled coherent state. When a three-level ''V'' configuration atom interacts with a doubly reasonant cavity, under the strong classical driven condition, entangled coherent state can be generated from vacuum fields. An analytical solution for this system under the presence of cavity losses is also given

PPDCP-ABE: Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Cipher-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption

Cipher-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is a more efficient and flexible encryption system as the encryptor can control the access structure when encrypting a message. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving decentralized CP-ABE (PPDCP-ABE) scheme where the central authority is not required, namely each authority can work independently without the cooperation to initialize the system. Meanwhile, a user can obtain secret keys from multiple authorities without releasing his global identifier (GID) and attributes to them. This is contrasted to the previous privacy-preserving multi-authority ABE (PPMA-ABE) schemes where a user can obtain secret keys from multiple authorities with them knowing his attributes and a central authority is required. However, some sensitive attributes can also release the user’s identity information. Hence, contemporary PPMA-ABE schemes cannot fully protect users’ privacy as multiple authorities can cooperate to identifier a user by collecting and analyzing his attributes. Therefore, it remains a challenging and important work to construct a PPMA-ABE scheme where the central authority is not required and both the identifiers and the attributes are considere

Prevalence of Clonorchis sinensis infection in dogs and cats in subtropical southern China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Clonorchiasis, caused by <it>Clonorchis sinensis</it>, is one of the major parasitic zoonoses in China, particularly in China's southern Guangdong province where the prevalence of <it>C. sinensis </it>infection in humans is high. However, little is known of the prevalence of <it>C. sinensis </it>infection in its reservoir hosts dogs and cats. Hence, the prevalence of <it>C. sinensis </it>infection in dogs and cats was investigated in Guangdong province, China between October 2006 and March 2008.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 503 dogs and 194 cats from 13 administrative regions in Guangdong province were examined by post-mortem examination. The worms were examined, counted, and identified to species according to existing keys and descriptions. The average prevalences of <it>C. sinensis </it>infection in dogs and cats were 20.5% and 41.8%, respectively. The infection intensities in dogs were usually light, but in cats the infection intensities were more serious. The prevalences were higher in some of the cities located in the Pearl River Delta region which is the most important endemic area in Guangdong province, but the prevalences were relatively lower in seaside cities.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present investigation revealed a high prevalence of <it>C. sinensis </it>infection in its reservoir hosts dogs and cats in China's subtropical Guangdong province, which provides relevant "base-line" data for conducting control strategies and measures against clonorchiasis in this region.</p

Poly[bis­[μ-1,3-bis­(diphenyl­phosphan­yl)propane-κ2 P:P′]-di-μ-thio­cyanato-κ2 S:N;κ2 N:S-disilver(I)]

In the title coordination polymer, [Ag2(NCS)2(C27H26P2)2]n, two centrosymmetrically related Ag+ cations are linked by two thio­cyanate anions into binuclear eight-membered macrocycles. The Ag⋯Ag separation within the macrocycle is 5.4400 (6) Å. The distorted tetra­hedral coordination about each metal atom is completed by the P atoms of two bridging 1,3-bis­(diphenyl­phosphan­yl)propane ligands, forming polymeric ribbons parallel to the a axis

Realization of exceptional points along a synthetic orbital angular momentum dimension

Exceptional points (EPs), at which more than one eigenvalue and eigenvector coalesce, are unique spectral features of Non-Hermiticity (NH) systems. They exist widely in open systems with complex energy spectra. We experimentally demonstrate the appearance of paired EPs in a periodical driven degenerate optical cavity along the synthetic orbital angular momentum (OAM) dimension with a tunable parameter. The complex-energy band structures and the key features of EPs, i.e. their Fermi arcs, parity-time symmetry breaking transition, energy swapping, and half-integer band windings are directly observed by detecting the cavity's transmission spectrum. Our results advance the fundamental understanding of NH physics and demonstrate the flexibility of using the photonic synthetic dimensions to implement NH systems

The effect of the interaction of sleep onset latency and age on ischemic stroke severity via inflammatory chemokines

ObjectiveProlonged sleep onset latency (PSOL) and age have been linked to ischemic stroke (IS) severity and the production of chemokines and inflammation, both of which contribute to IS development. This study aimed to explore the relationship between chemokines, inflammation, and the interplay between sleep onset latency (SOL) and age in influencing stroke severity.MethodsA cohort of 281 participants with mild to moderate IS was enrolled. Stroke severity was assessed using the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), and SOL was recorded. Serum levels of macrophage inflammatory protein-1alpha (MIP-1α), macrophage inflammatory protein-1beta (MIP-1β), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) were measured.ResultsNIHSS scores of middle-aged participants with PSOL were significantly higher than those with normal sleep onset latency (NSOL) (p = 0.046). This difference was also observed when compared to both the elderly with NSOL (p = 0.022), and PSOL (p &lt; 0.001). Among middle-aged adults with PSOL, MIP-1β exhibited a protective effect on NIHSS scores (β = −0.01, t = −2.11, p = 0.039, R2 = 0.13). MIP-1α demonstrated a protective effect on NIHSS scores in the elderly with NSOL (β = −0.03, t = −2.27, p = 0.027, R2 = 0.12).ConclusionThis study reveals a hitherto undocumented association between PSOL and IS severity, along with the potential protective effects of MIP-1β in mitigating stroke severity, especially among middle-aged patients

Region Proposal Rectification Towards Robust Instance Segmentation of Biological Images

Top-down instance segmentation framework has shown its superiority in object detection compared to the bottom-up framework. While it is efficient in addressing over-segmentation, top-down instance segmentation suffers from over-crop problem. However, a complete segmentation mask is crucial for biological image analysis as it delivers important morphological properties such as shapes and volumes. In this paper, we propose a region proposal rectification (RPR) module to address this challenging incomplete segmentation problem. In particular, we offer a progressive ROIAlign module to introduce neighbor information into a series of ROIs gradually. The ROI features are fed into an attentive feed-forward network (FFN) for proposal box regression. With additional neighbor information, the proposed RPR module shows significant improvement in correction of region proposal locations and thereby exhibits favorable instance segmentation performances on three biological image datasets compared to state-of-the-art baseline methods. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RPR module is effective in both anchor-based and anchor-free top-down instance segmentation approaches, suggesting the proposed method can be applied to general top-down instance segmentation of biological images. Code is available

Dietary Intake of Fatty Acids, Total Cholesterol, and Stomach Cancer in a Chinese Population.

To investigate the associations between dietary fatty acids and cholesterol consumption and stomach cancer (SC), we analyzed data from a population-based case-control study with a total of 1900 SC cases and 6532 controls. Dietary data and other risk or protective factors were collected by face-to-face interviews in Jiangsu Province, China, from 2003 to 2010. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using multiple unconditional logistic regression models and an energy-adjusted method. The joint associations between dietary factors and known risk factors on SC were examined. We observed positive associations between dietary saturated fatty acids (SFAs), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), and total cholesterol and the development of SC, comparing the highest versus lowest quarters. Increased intakes of dietary SFAs (p-trend = 0.005; aOR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.01-1.22 with a 7 g/day increase as a continuous variable) and total cholesterol (p-trend &lt; 0.001; aOR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.06-1.22 with a 250 mg/day increase as a continuous variable) were monotonically associated with elevated odds of developing SC. Our results indicate that dietary SFAs, MUFAs, and total cholesterol are associated with stomach cancer, which might provide a potential dietary intervention for stomach cancer prevention

Raw Garlic Consumption and Risk of Liver Cancer: A Population-Based Case-Control Study in Eastern China.

Although the major risk factors for liver cancer have been established, preventive factors for liver cancer have not been fully explored. We evaluated the association between raw garlic consumption and liver cancer in a large population-based case-control study in Eastern China. The study was conducted in Jiangsu, China, from 2003 to 2010. A total of 2011 incident liver cancer cases and 7933 randomly selected population-controls were interviewed. Epidemiological data including raw garlic intake and other exposures were collected, and serum markers of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were assayed. Overall, eating raw garlic twice or more per week was inversely associated with liver cancer, with an adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of 0.77 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.62-0.96) compared to those ingesting no raw garlic or less than twice per week. In stratified analyses, high intake of raw garlic was inversely associated with liver cancer among Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) negative individuals, frequent alcohol drinkers, those having history of eating mold-contaminated food or drinking raw water, and those without family history of liver cancer. Marginal interactions on an additive scale were observed between low raw garlic intake and HBsAg positivity (attributable proportion due to interaction (AP) = 0.31, 95% CI: -0.01-0.62) and heavy alcohol drinking (AP = 0.28, 95% CI: 0.00-0.57). Raw garlic consumption is inversely associated with liver cancer. Such an association shed some light on the potential etiologic role of garlic intake on liver cancer, which in turn might provide a possible dietary intervention to reduce liver cancer in Chinese population