A Method for Pose and Type Verification of Resistor

AbstractThis paper proposes a method for verifying the pose and the type of different resistors mounted on a PCB. First, the pose of the resistor on the PCB is determined and missing resistors are detected by shape_based template matching. Then, the type of the resistor is extracted and compared to the known reference type by edge_based template matching. Finally, six types of resistors have been verified on 120 resistor images. Experiments have shown that the shape_based template can be used to determine the pose of the resistor even if it appears rotated and scaled. The proposed method can achieve the accuracy of 100% and average recognition time of 0.15s

Genetic and clinical assessment of 2009 pandemic influenza in southern China

Introduction: South China has a proven role in the global epidemiology of previous influenza outbreaks due to its dual seasonal pattern. We present the virologic, genetic and clinical characterization of pandemic H1N1 influenza infection (pH1N1) in Shantou and Nanchang, cities in southern China, during the second wave of the 2009-2010 pandemic. Methodology: Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 165 individuals with influenza-like illness (ILI) who presented to the hospitals in Shantou and Nanchang. Laboratory diagnosis and characterization was performed by real-time PCR, virus isolation in embryonated chicken eggs, and sequencing. Results: pH1N1 activity was sustained in three different temporal patterns throughout the study period. The overall positivity rate of pH1N1 was 50% with major distribution among young adults between the ages of 13 and 30 years. High fever, cough, expectoration, chest pain, myalgia, nasal discharge and efficient viral replication were observed as major clinical markers whereas a substantial number of afebrile cases (17%) was also observed. Rate of hospitalization and disease severity (39%) and recovery (100%) were also high within the region. Furthermore, severe complications were likely to develop in young adults upon pH1N1 infection. Genetic characterization of the HA and NA genes of pH1N1 strains exhibited homogenous spread of pH1N1 strains with 99% identity with prototypic strains; however, minor unique mutations were also observed in the HA gene. Conclusion: The study illustrates the detailed characteristics of 2009 influenza pandemic in southern parts of China that might help to strategize preparedness for future pandemics and subsequent influenza seasons.</br

Effect of Dietary Phytase Transgenic Corn on Physiological Characteristics and the Fate of Recombinant Plant DNA in Laying Hens

The study aimed to evaluate the potential effects of feeding with phytase transgenic corn (PTC) on organ weight, serum biochemical parameters and nutrient digestibility, and to determine the fate of the transgenic DNA in laying hens. A total of 144 50-week-old laying hens were grouped randomly into 2 treatments, with 8 replicates per treatment and 9 hens per replicate. Each treatment group of hens was fed with diets containing 62.4% non-transgenic conventional corn (CC) or PTC for 16 weeks. The phytase activity for CC was 37 FTU/kg of DM, whereas the phytase activity for PTC was 8,980 FTU/kg of DM. We observed that feeding PTC to laying hens had no adverse effect on organ weight or serum biochemical parameters (p>0.05). A fragment of a poultry-specific ovalbumin gene (ov) was amplified from all tissues of hens showing that the DNA preparations were amenable to PCR amplification. Neither the corn-specific invertase gene (ivr) nor the transgenic phyA2 gene was detected in the breast muscle, leg muscle, ovary, oviduct and eggs. The digestibility data revealed no significant differences between the hens that received the CC- and PTC-based diets in the digestibility of DM, energy, nitrogen and calcium (p>0.05). Phosphorus digestibility of hens fed the PTC-based diet was greater than that of hens fed the CC-based diet (58.03% vs 47.42%, p<0.01). Based on these results, it was concluded that the PTC had no deleterious effects on the organ weight or serum biochemical parameters of the laying hens. No recombinant phyA2 gene was detected in muscle tissues and reproductive organs of laying hens. The novel plant phytase was efficacious in improving the phosphorus digestibility of laying hens

Protective Effect of a Combined Glutamine and Curcumin Formulation on Alcoholic Gastric Mucosal Damage

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the protective effect and underlying mechanism of a combined glutamine and curcumin formulation on ethanol-induced gastric mucosal damage in rats. Method: A total of fifty SPF-grade healthy SD male rats were randomly partitioned into five groups: A normal group, a model control group, a cimetidine group, a high-dose treatment group, and a low-dose treatment group. After a period of 30 days marked by oral gavage administration, all groups, with the exception of the normal group, were euthanized post anhydrous ethanol-induced modeling. The histopathological alterations in the gastric mucosa were observed via hematoxylin & eosin (H&E) staining. Furthermore, serum levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), nitric oxide (NO), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) were ascertained using a specific reagent kit. Concurrently, the concentration of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) within the tissue and the expression levels of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), NADPH quinone oxidoreductase (NQO1), the antioxidant-related nuclear factor-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) gene, and glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) were evaluated. Results: In the cimetidine and high-dose treatment groups, the incidence of gastric mucosal bleeding and other forms of injury were noticeably mitigated (P<0.05) compared to the model control group, with the high-dose treatment group demonstrating a more pronounced effect. Moreover, the model control group exhibited a significant elevation in MDA content and GSH-PX activity and a concurrent decline in NO and PGE2 levels (P<0.05). The expression of antioxidant-related genes, namely, HO-1, NQO1, and Nrf2, was significantly suppressed (P<0.05), whereas GSK-3β expression was markedly increased. In contrast, in comparison to the model control group, the cimetidine and high-dose treatment groups manifested a significant reduction in MDA content and GSH-PX activity, while NO and PGE2 levels notably increased (P<0.05). The expression of the antioxidant-related genes HO-1, NQO1, and Nrf2 was significantly returned to normal (P<0.05), and GSK-3β expression was suppressed (P<0.05). Conclusion: The combined formulation appears to exert an inhibitory effect on ethanol-induced acute gastric mucosal damage. This effect is hypothesized to be associated with the Keap1-Nrf2-ARE oxidative stress signaling pathway

Combined Toxicity Evaluation of Ochratoxin A and Aflatoxin B1 on Kidney and Liver Injury, Immune Inflammation, and Gut Microbiota Alteration Through Pair-Feeding Pullet Model

Ochratoxin A (OTA) and aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) are often co-contaminated, but their synergistic toxicity in poultry is limitedly described. Furthermore, the traditional ad libitum feeding model may fail to distinguish the specific impact of mycotoxins on the biomarkers and the indirect effect of mildew on the palatability of feed. A pair-feeding model was introduced to investigate the specific effect and the indirect effect of the combined toxicity of OTA and AFB1, which were independent and dependent on feed intake, respectively. A total of 180 one-day-old pullets were randomly divided into 3 groups with 6 replicates, and each replicate contained 10 chicks. The control group (Group A) and the pair-feeding group (Group B) received the basal diet without mycotoxin contamination. Group C was administrated with OTA- and AFB1-contaminated feed (101.41 μg/kg of OTA + 20.10 μg/kg of AFB1). The scale of feeding in Group B matched with the feed intake of Group C. The trial lasted 42 days. Compared with the control group, co-contamination of OTA and AFB1 in feed could adversely affect the growth performance (average daily feed intake (ADFI), body weight (BW), average daily weight gain (ADG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), and shank length (SL)), decrease the relative weight of the spleen (p &lt; 0.01), and increase the relative weight of the kidney (p &lt; 0.01). Moreover, the reduction of feed intake could also adversely affect the growth performance (BW, ADG, and SL), but not as severely as mycotoxins do. Apart from that, OTA and AFB1 also activated the antioxidative and inflammation reactions of chicks, increasing the level of catalase (CAT), reactive oxygen species (ROS), and interleukin-8 (IL-8) while decreasing the level of IL-10 (p &lt; 0.01), which was weakly influenced by the feed intake reduction. In addition, OTA and AFB1 induced histopathological changes and apoptosis in the kidney and liver as well as stimulated the growth of pernicious bacteria to cause toxic effects. There were no histopathological changes and apoptosis in the kidney and liver of the pair-feeding group. The combined toxicity of OTA and AFB1 had more severe effects on pullets than merely reducing feed supply. However, the proper reduction of the feed intake could improve pullets’ physical health by enriching the bacteria Lactobacillus, Phascolarctobacterium, Bacteroides, Parabacteroides, and Barnesiella

FusionFormer: A Multi-sensory Fusion in Bird's-Eye-View and Temporal Consistent Transformer for 3D Objection

Multi-sensor modal fusion has demonstrated strong advantages in 3D object detection tasks. However, existing methods that fuse multi-modal features through a simple channel concatenation require transformation features into bird's eye view space and may lose the information on Z-axis thus leads to inferior performance. To this end, we propose FusionFormer, an end-to-end multi-modal fusion framework that leverages transformers to fuse multi-modal features and obtain fused BEV features. And based on the flexible adaptability of FusionFormer to the input modality representation, we propose a depth prediction branch that can be added to the framework to improve detection performance in camera-based detection tasks. In addition, we propose a plug-and-play temporal fusion module based on transformers that can fuse historical frame BEV features for more stable and reliable detection results. We evaluate our method on the nuScenes dataset and achieve 72.6% mAP and 75.1% NDS for 3D object detection tasks, outperforming state-of-the-art methods

Response to Pegylated Interferon Plus Ribavirin in Patients with Hepatitis C Virus Genotype 6a Infection from Guangdong and Guangxi Province of China

Aim. Our aim is to survey the treatment effect of PEG-IFN plus ribavirin in patients infected with HCV genotype 6a in Guangdong and Guangxi province of China and investigate best course of antiviral treatment for patients with HCV-6a infection. Methods. 515 eligible patients received subcutaneous 180 μg PEG-IFNα-2a or 1.5 μg/kg PEG-IFNα-2b once weekly plus oral ribavirin. Primary outcome was SVR by intention-to-treat analysis. Secondary outcome was RVR, cEVR, ETR, and relapse rate. Results. SVR in patients with HCV-6a infection treated for 48 weeks was comparable to that in patients with HCV-2/3 infection (80.9% versus 82.5%, p=0.812) and higher than that in patients with HCV-1b infection (80.9% versus 67.2%, p=0.014). ETR (98.9% versus 90.6%, p=0.016), virological response at month 3 of end-of- treatment (88.8% versus 76.6%, p=0.044), SVR (80.9% versus 65.6%, p=0.032), and virological response at month 12 of end-of-treatment (76.4% versus 60.9%, p=0.04) in patients with HCV-6a infection treated for 48 weeks were higher than those in patients with HCV-6a infection treated for 24 weeks. Conclusion. SVR in patients with HCV-6a treated for 48 weeks was comparable to that in patients with HCV-2/3 infection and higher than that in patients with HCV-1b infection; patients with HCV-6a infection treated for 48 weeks had a superior treatment response than patients treated for 24 weeks