Screening Retinopathy of Prematurity in Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants in China and the Need for Earlier Screening Times

Purpose. To convey the need for a revised screening strategy for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) for extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants in China. Design. A retrospective longitudinal study. Methods. The medical charts of infants with a birth weight (BW) of less than 1 kg were reviewed. The infants were divided into three groups: group A, without ROP; group B, with ROP but not up to type 1 prethreshold or threshold ROP; group C, with type 1 prethreshold or threshold ROP. Data collected included gender, gestational age (GA), BW, postmenstrual age (PMA), age of onset of ROP, and age at which treatment was carried out, if required. Results. A total of 77 infants were involved. Fifty-six infants developed ROP at any stage and 38 infants developed type 1 prethreshold or threshold ROP. The mean BW and GA of infants in group A were significantly different compared with groups B and C. The mean PMA of onset of ROP in infants who developed mild ROP was 37 weeks compared with 34 weeks for infants who developed severe ROP. Conclusion. ELBW infants have a higher incidence of ROP in China which highlights the need for optimizing neonatal care for these infants. In ELBW infants, ROP tends to develop more severely when it occurs earlier. It is necessary for ELBW infants, especially for those with a BW less than 800 g or a GA less than 25 weeks, to be initially screened at an earlier time

An Open Receptor-Binding Cavity of Hemagglutinin-Esterase-Fusion Glycoprotein from Newly-Identified Influenza D Virus: Basis for Its Broad Cell Tropism.

Influenza viruses cause seasonal flu each year and pandemics or epidemic sporadically, posing a major threat to public health. Recently, a new influenza D virus (IDV) was isolated from pigs and cattle. Here, we reveal that the IDV utilizes 9-O-acetylated sialic acids as its receptor for virus entry. Then, we determined the crystal structures of hemagglutinin-esterase-fusion glycoprotein (HEF) of IDV both in its free form and in complex with the receptor and enzymatic substrate analogs. The IDV HEF shows an extremely similar structural fold as the human-infecting influenza C virus (ICV) HEF. However, IDV HEF has an open receptor-binding cavity to accommodate diverse extended glycan moieties. This structural difference provides an explanation for the phenomenon that the IDV has a broad cell tropism. As IDV HEF is structurally and functionally similar to ICV HEF, our findings highlight the potential threat of the virus to public health

New Technology and Experimental Study on Snow-Melting Heated Pavement System in Tunnel Portal

In recent years, with the rapid growth of economy and sharp rise of motor vehicles in China, the pavement skid resistance in tunnel portals has become increasingly important in cold region. However, the deicing salt, snow removal with machine, and other antiskid measures adopted by highway maintenance division have many limitations. To improve the treatment effect, we proposed a new snow-melting approach employing electric heat tracing, in which heating cables are installed in the structural layer of road. Through the field experiment, laboratory experiment, and numerical investigation, structure type, heating power, and preheating time of the flexible pavement heating system in tunnel portal were systematically analyzed, and advantages of electric heat tracing technology in improving the pavement skid resistance in tunnel portal were also presented. Therefore, such new technology, which offers new snow-melting methods for tunnel portal, bridge, mountainous area, and large longitudinal slope in cold region, has promising prospect for extensive application

Accurate Distance Estimation between Things: A Self-correcting Approach

This paper suggests a method to measure the physical distance between an IoT device (a Thing) and a mobile device (also a Thing) using BLE (Bluetooth Low-Energy profile) interfaces with smaller distance errors. BLE is a well-known technology for the low-power connectivity and suitable for IoT devices as well as for the proximity with the range of several meters. Apple has already adopted the technique and enhanced it to provide subdivided proximity range levels. However, as it is also a variation of RSS-based distance estimation, Apple's iBeacon could only provide immediate, near or far status but not a real and accurate distance. To provide more accurate distance using BLE, this paper introduces additional self-correcting beacon to calibrate the reference distance and mitigate errors from environmental factors. By adopting self-correcting beacon for measuring the distance, the average distance error shows less than 10% within the range of 1.5 meters. Some considerations are presented to extend the range to be able to get more accurate distances

ANALYSIS ON CONSTRUCTION DEFORMATION AND SUPPORTING STRUCTURE OF TWO-STEP AND THREESECTION EXCAVATION METHOD FOR SUPER LARGER SPAN HIGHWAY TUNNEL

The super larger span tunnel is a common form of highway reconstruction and expansionprojects in recent years. In order to determine the stability of tunnel structure of the two-step andthree-section excavation method of the III-level surrounding rock mass of the super larger spanhighway, the field test method was adopted. Relying on the Laohushan Tunnel in Jinan, Shandong,China, the deformation and the structure performance of the super larger span tunnel in III-levelsurrounding rock mass are analyzed, and the safety of the tunnel and the support structure isevaluated on this basis. The results show that the maximum settlement of the arch section of theGrade III surrounding rock section is 12.5mm, and the maximum clearance convergence is 5.8mm.Both of them are much smaller than the design reserved deformation of 80mm. The maximumpressure of the surrounding rock is 0.091MPa, showing that the force acting on the supportingstructure by surrounding rock mass is small. The inner and outer arched parts of the steel frameare subject to large stresses, and most of them are tensile stresses. The maximum stress of thesteel frame is 283 MPa, and occurs at the inner side of right arch waist. Although the local stressexceeds the yield strength of the steel (235 MPa), it does not exceed its ultimate compressivestrength of 400 MPa, and the tensile and compressive stress values of the other inner and outerparts do not exceed the yield strength. Mainly, the maximum stress appears on the left side wall,reaching 4.83 MPa, which is far less than the ultimate compressive strength of sprayed concrete(11.9 MPa). For super larger span highway tunnels, located in III-level surrounding rock mass,constructed by two-step and three-section excavation method, the initial support effectivelycontrolled the tunnel deformation, the supporting structures were fully protected and the tunnelstructure was stable. The super larger span tunnel is a common form in the road reconstructionand expansion project in recent years. In order to determine the stability of tunnel structure of thetwo steps and three excavation method of the III-level surrounding rock mass of the super largerspan highway, the field test method was adopted. Relying on the Laohushan Tunnel, thedeformation and the structure performance of the super larger span tunnel in III-level surroundingrock mass were analyzed. The results show that the maximum settlement of arch of the III-levelsurrounding rock mass is 12.5mm in super larger span highway tunnel, and the maximumclearance convergence is 5.8mm. Both of them are smaller than the design reserved deformationof 80mm. The maximum surrounding rock mass pressure is 0.091MPa, the force acting on thesupporting structure by surrounding rock mass are small. The inner and outer arched parts of the steel frame bear larger stress, and are mostly tensile stress. The maximum stress on inner side ofthe steel frame is 283 MPa, and occurs at the right arch waist. The maximum stress on the outerside of the steel frame is184 MPa, and occurs at the vault. The steel frame plays an important rolein the initial support, however the force does not reach the yield strength of the steel. The shotcreteis subjected to pressure, the maximum stress appears on the left side wall is 4.83 MPa, which ismuch smaller than the ultimate compressive strength of shotcrete of 25 MPa. So for super largerspan highway tunnels, located in III-level surrounding rock mass, constructed by two-step andthree-excavation method, the whole structure is stable

Mass segmentation using a combined method for cancer detection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death for women all over the world and mammography is thought of as one of the main tools for early detection of breast cancer. In order to detect the breast cancer, computer aided technology has been introduced. In computer aided cancer detection, the detection and segmentation of mass are very important. The shape of mass can be used as one of the factors to determine whether the mass is malignant or benign. However, many of the current methods are semi-automatic. In this paper, we investigate fully automatic segmentation method.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper, a new mass segmentation algorithm is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, a fully automatic marker-controlled watershed transform is proposed to segment the mass region roughly, and then a level set is used to refine the segmentation. For over-segmentation caused by watershed, we also investigated different noise reduction technologies. Images from DDSM were used in the experiments and the results show that the new algorithm can improve the accuracy of mass segmentation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The new algorithm combines the advantages of both methods. The combination of the watershed based segmentation and level set method can improve the efficiency of the segmentation. Besides, the introduction of noise reduction technologies can reduce over-segmentation.</p

ESKNet-An enhanced adaptive selection kernel convolution for breast tumors segmentation

Breast cancer is one of the common cancers that endanger the health of women globally. Accurate target lesion segmentation is essential for early clinical intervention and postoperative follow-up. Recently, many convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been proposed to segment breast tumors from ultrasound images. However, the complex ultrasound pattern and the variable tumor shape and size bring challenges to the accurate segmentation of the breast lesion. Motivated by the selective kernel convolution, we introduce an enhanced selective kernel convolution for breast tumor segmentation, which integrates multiple feature map region representations and adaptively recalibrates the weights of these feature map regions from the channel and spatial dimensions. This region recalibration strategy enables the network to focus more on high-contributing region features and mitigate the perturbation of less useful regions. Finally, the enhanced selective kernel convolution is integrated into U-net with deep supervision constraints to adaptively capture the robust representation of breast tumors. Extensive experiments with twelve state-of-the-art deep learning segmentation methods on three public breast ultrasound datasets demonstrate that our method has a more competitive segmentation performance in breast ultrasound images.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure