Oscillation in neutral partial functional differential equations and inequalities

We derive some sufficient conditions for certain classes of ordinary differential inequalities of neutral type with distributed delay not to have eventually positive or negative solutions. These, together with the technique of spatial average, the Green's Theorem and Jensen's inequality, yield some sufficient conditions for all solutions of a class of neutral partial functional differential equations to be oscillatory. An example is given to illustrate the result

A Dynamic Simulation of Annular Multiphase Flow during Deep-water Horizontal Well Drilling and the Analysis of Influential Factors

A gas kick simulation model for deep-water horizontal well with diesel-based drilling fluid is presented in this paper. This model is mainly based on the mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations. The unique aspect of this model is the fluid-gas coupling and the change of mud properties after the gas influx from the formation. The simulation results show that the gas in an annulus dissolves first and it then escapes from the drilling fluid due to the gas solution in diesel. Therefore, it is possible to avoid existing gas hydrate by using oil-based drilling fluids. When gas kick occurred, it will be more dangerous, if the well has a longer horizontal section, a greater gas influx from the formation, and smaller displacement. The occurrence and development of overflow will be very quick in the condition of pumping; it will also be more dangerous, when diesel-based drilling fluid is used in the deep-water horizontal wells

Comparative Evaluation on the Coupled Fracture Characteristics for Longmaxi Anisotropic Shale

AbstractThe shale fracture characteristics are important for realizing the complex hydraulic fracture network, predicting wellbore fracture pressure, and optimizing wellbore trajectory and the rock fragmentation efficiency. Through a three-point bending test of notched semicircular specimens of Longmaxi shale, the coupled relationship of mode-I fracture toughness (Kic), peak fracture force (Pmax), energy release rate (GI), applied work (W), and loading rate was studied by using kernel density analysis method. The results showed that the dynamic characteristics of force-displacement curve exhibited obvious loading angle dependence, including two types of the “deformation accumulation-brittleness” and “deformation accumulation-brittleness-plasticity.” The Kic and GI increased linearly with Pmax increasing. With the increasing of the loading angle, the dispersion degree of Pmax, Kic, GI, and W all increased. The GI increased nonlinearly with the increasing of Kic. With the increasing of the loading rate, the Kic basically increased linearly. The dynamic Kic under static and quasistatic conditions had strong anisotropy. At the high loading rate, the anisotropy index gradually decreased as the loading rate increasing. The results have significant implications for the design of hydraulic fracturing and the exact fracture control of Longmaxi shale

Uncertainty-inspired Open Set Learning for Retinal Anomaly Identification

Failure to recognize samples from the classes unseen during training is a major limit of artificial intelligence (AI) in real-world implementation of retinal anomaly classification. To resolve this obstacle, we propose an uncertainty-inspired open-set (UIOS) model which was trained with fundus images of 9 common retinal conditions. Besides the probability of each category, UIOS also calculates an uncertainty score to express its confidence. Our UIOS model with thresholding strategy achieved an F1 score of 99.55%, 97.01% and 91.91% for the internal testing set, external testing set and non-typical testing set, respectively, compared to the F1 score of 92.20%, 80.69% and 64.74% by the standard AI model. Furthermore, UIOS correctly predicted high uncertainty scores, which prompted the need for a manual check, in the datasets of rare retinal diseases, low-quality fundus images, and non-fundus images. This work provides a robust method for real-world screening of retinal anomalies

Coordinated Silencing of MYC-Mediated miR-29 by HDAC3 and EZH2 as a Therapeutic Target of Histone Modification in Aggressive B-Cell Lymphomas

We investigated the transcriptional and epigenetic repression of miR-29 by MYC, HDAC3, and EZH2 in mantle cell lymphoma and other MYC-associated lymphomas. We demonstrate that miR-29 is repressed by MYC through a corepressor complex with HDAC3 and EZH2. MYC contributes to EZH2 upregulation via repression of the EZH2 targeting miR-26a, and EZH2 induces MYC via inhibition of the MYC targeting miR-494 to create positive feedback. Combined inhibition of HDAC3 and EZH2 cooperatively disrupted the MYC-EZH2-miR-29 axis, resulting in restoration of miR-29 expression, downregulation of miR-29-targeted genes, and lymphoma growth suppression in vitro and in vivo. These findings define a MYC-mediated miRNA repression mechanism, shed light on MYC lymphomagenesis mechanisms, and reveal promising therapeutic targets for aggressive B-cell malignancies

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat