Large Misalignment between Stellar Bar and Dust Pattern in NGC 3488 Revealed by Spitzer and SDSS

A large position angle misalignment between the stellar bar and the distribution of dust in the late-type barred spiral NGC 3488 was discovered, using mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The angle between the bar and dust patterns was measured to be 25+-2deg, larger than most of the misalignments found previously in barred systems based on Ha or HI/CO observations. The stellar bar is bright at optical and 3.6um, while the dust pattern is more prominent in the 8um band but also shows up in the SDSS u and g-band images, suggesting a rich interstellar medium environment harboring ongoing star formation. This angular misalignment is unlikely to have been caused by spontaneous bar formation. We suggest that the stellar bar and the dust pattern may have different formation histories, and that the large misalignment was triggered by a tidal interaction with a small companion. A statistical analysis of a large sample of nearby galaxies with archival Spitzer data indicates that bar structure such as that seen in NGC 3488 is quite rare in the local Universe.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in New Astronom

Body Dissatisfaction and Body Change Behaviors among Indonesian and Chinese College Students

Being in transition period between adolescent and adulthood, college students are still affected by physical, psychological, and socio-emotional changes. The physical changes during adolescence give rise to great concern about body shape and size until they enter adulthood, so they tend to feel dissatisfied and try some efforts to change their body shape and size. The dissatisfaction toward one's body or specific body parts is called body dissatisfaction,whereas efforts to change one's body shape or size refers to body change behavior The aim of this studywas to investigate the correlation between body dissatisfaction and body change behavior among Indonesian and Chinese college students. Subjects are both female and male college students from University of Surabaya (N=50) and Zhejiang University of Technology (N=50), aged 17-25 years. This is a quantitative study and data are collected using questionnaires. The results showed that: (I) there was a significant correlation behveen body dissatisfaction and body change behavior (to lose weight) among Indonesian college students (r= .407, sig.= .003 (< .01)), whereas there was no significant correlation among Chinese (r= ,158, sig.=.272 (> .05)); (2) there was no significant correlation between body dissatisfaction and body change behavior (to increase muscle bulk) either among Indonesian (r=,086, sig.=.552 (>.05)) or Chinese college students (r= ,054, sig.=707 (>.05)). The results will be discussed later

CDFI: Cross Domain Feature Interaction for Robust Bronchi Lumen Detection

Endobronchial intervention is increasingly used as a minimally invasive means for the treatment of pulmonary diseases. In order to reduce the difficulty of manipulation in complex airway networks, robust lumen detection is essential for intraoperative guidance. However, these methods are sensitive to visual artifacts which are inevitable during the surgery. In this work, a cross domain feature interaction (CDFI) network is proposed to extract the structural features of lumens, as well as to provide artifact cues to characterize the visual features. To effectively extract the structural and artifact features, the Quadruple Feature Constraints (QFC) module is designed to constrain the intrinsic connections of samples with various imaging-quality. Furthermore, we design a Guided Feature Fusion (GFF) module to supervise the model for adaptive feature fusion based on different types of artifacts. Results show that the features extracted by the proposed method can preserve the structural information of lumen in the presence of large visual variations, bringing much-improved lumen detection accuracy.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

NCKAP1 is a Prognostic Biomarker for Inhibition of Cell Growth in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Background: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most frequent type of kidney cancer. Nck-associated protein 1 (NCKAP1) is associated with poor prognosis and tumor progression in several cancer types, but the function and prognostic value of NCKAP1 in ccRCC remain poorly understood.Methods: Using the Ualcan database, we evaluated the correlation between NCKAP1 expression and clinical features of ccRCC. These data were validated by immunohistochemical staining for NCKAP1 in a cohort of ccRCC patients. We assessed the prognostic value of NCKAP1 using GEPIA2 survival analysis. NCKAP1 function was characterized in vitro and in vivo using NCKAP1-overexpression ACHN cell lines. The LinkedOmics and GSCALite databases were used to investigate identify potential NCKAP1-targeted medicines that may play a role in the treatment of ccRCC. The impact of NCKAP1 expression on immune infiltration was also evaluated.Results: NCKAP1 was significantly downregulated in ccRCC and correlated with advanced clinicopathological features and poor prognosis. Overexpression of NCKAP1 in ACHN cells reduced proliferation, invasion and migration capacity in vitro and inhibited tumor growth in vivo. According to the LinkedOmics, GSCALite and TIMER databases, NCKAP1 and related genes function primarily in ribosomal signaling, oxidative phosphorylation, TGF-β, and EMT-related signaling pathways. NCKAP1 was also shown to positively correlate with immune cell types, biomarkers, and immune checkpoints in ccRCCs.Conclusions: NCKAP1 may play a vital tumor-suppressive role in ccRCC and is potentially a useful prognostic biomarker

Risk Behaviors among Indonesian and Chinese College Students

College students are still in a period of building self-identity. In search of their identity, college students tend to spend more time with their peers than families. The influence of peers will increase their predisposition to get involved in risk behaviors, which can be divided into exploratory and health risk behavior (Skaar,2009). Exploratory risk behaviors refer to behaviors which promote the increasing of positive health and educational outcomes, such as making friends and trying new sport. On the contrary, health risk behaviors refer to behaviors which increase the emergence of negative health and educational outcomes, such as using substance and skipping school. The aim of this study is to evaluate the differences in risk behaviors among Indonesian and Chinese college students. Subjects are both female and male college students from University of Surabaya (N=50) and Zhejiang University of Technology (N=50), aged 17-25 years. This is a quantitative study and data are collected using questionnaires. The results show that there is no difference either in exploratory risk behaviors (z= - .311, sig.= .755 (> .05)) or health risk behaviors (z=- .380, sig.=.704 (> .05)) between Indonesian and Chinese college students. The results will be discussed later

Risk Behaviors among Indonesian and Chinese College Students

College students are still in a period of building self-identityIn search of their identity, college students tend to spend more time with their peers than families. The influence of peers will increase their predisposition to get involved in risk behaviors, which can be divided into exploratory andhealth risk behavior (Skaar, 2009). Exploratory risk behaviors refer to behaviors which promote the increasing of positive health and educational outcomes, such as making friends and trying new sport. On the contrary, health risk behaviors refer to behaviors which increase the emergence of negative health and educational outcomes, such as using substance andskippingschool. The aim of this study is to evaluate the differences in risk behaviors among Indonesian and Chinese college students. Subjects are both female and male college students from University of Surabaya (N=50) and Zhejiang University of Technology (N=50), aged 17- 25 years. This is a quantitative study and data are collected using questionnaires. The results show that there is no difference either in exploratory risk behaviors(z=-,311, sig.=,755(>.05)) or health risk behaviors (z=-,380,sig.= .704 (>.05)) between Indonesian and Chinese college students. The results will be discussed late

Exploring Key Factors for Contractors in Opening Prefabrication Factories: A Chinese Case Study

Adoption of prefabrication is essential for improving the urban built environment. However, the existing prefabrication market in China is far from mature. As the stakeholder who conducts construction activities, the contractor is facing a dilemma of lacking steady prefabricated components supply. In this circumstance, a potential solution is that contractors open their own prefabrication factories to guarantee stable component supply. The aim of this research is exploring the key factors for contractors to open prefabrication factories. Firstly, a total of 28 influencing factors were identified from literature. Then, the identified factors were divided into four categories: policy environment, market environment, technological environment, and enterprise internal environment. Through interviews with experienced professionals, a total of 19 factors were selected for future analysis. Based on the 19 factors, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to the experts to rate the degree of mutual influences. The collected data were analyzed using Ucinet6.0 software, and the adjacency matrix and the visual models were established. Finally, through the analysis of node centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality, the four key influencing factors were determined including mandatory implementation policy, precast concrete component's price, market demand, and contractor's strategic objectives. The results of this study could assist contractors in making decisions of opening their own prefabrication factories toward more sustainable environment

ALMA Imaging of the CO(7-6) Line Emission in the Submillimeter Galaxy LESS 073 at redshift 4.755⋆^\star

In this paper we present our imaging observations on the CO(7-6) line and its underlying continuum emission of the young submillimeter galaxy LESS 073 at redshift 4.755, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). At the achieved resolution of $\sim$$1^{\prime\prime}.2\times0^{\prime\prime}.9$ ($8\times6$~kpc$^2$), the CO(7-6) emission is largely unresolved (with a deconvolved size of $1^{\prime\prime}.1(\pm0^{\prime\prime}.5) \times 0^{\prime\prime}.9(\pm0^{\prime\prime}.8)$), and the continuum emission is totally unresolved. The CO(7-6) line emission has an integrated flux of $0.86\pm0.08$~Jy km/s, and a line width of $343\pm40$ km/s. The continuum emission has a flux density of 0.51 mJy. By fitting the observed far-infrared (FIR) spectral energy distribution of LESS 073 with a single-temperature modified blackbody function, we obtained a dust temperature $T_{\rm dust}=57.6\pm3.5$ K, 60-to-100 $\mu$m flux density ratio $f_{60}/f_{100}=0.86\pm0.08$, and total infrared luminosity $L_{\rm IR}=(5.8\pm0.9) \times 10^{12}~L_\odot$. The SED-fit-based $f_{60}/f_{100}$ is consistent with those estimated from various line ratios as advocated by our earlier work, indicating that those proposed line-ratio-based method can be used to practically derive $f_{60}/f_{100}$ for high-$z$ sources. The total molecular gas mass of LESS 073 is $(3.3\pm1.7) \times10^{10}~M_\odot$, and the inferred gas depletion time is about 43 Myr.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Efficacy of early prone or lateral positioning in patients with severe COVID-19: a single-center prospective cohort

Abstract Background Position intervention has been shown to improve oxygenation, but its role in non-invasively ventilated patients with severe COVID-19 has not been assessed. The objective of this study was to investigate the efficacy of early position intervention on non-invasively ventilated patients with severe COVID-19. Methods This was a single-center, prospective observational study in consecutive patients with severe COVID-19 managed in a provisional ICU at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University from 31 January to 15 February 2020. Patients with chest CT showing exudation or consolidation in bilateral peripheral and posterior parts of the lungs were included. Early position intervention (prone or lateral) was commenced for &amp;gt; 4 hours daily for 10 days in these patients, while others received standard care. Results The baseline parameters were comparable between the position intervention group (n = 17) and the standard care group (n = 35). Position intervention was well-tolerated and increased cumulative adjusted mean difference of SpO2/FiO2 (409, 95% CI 86 to 733) and ROX index (26, 95% CI 9 to 43) with decreased Borg scale (−9, 95% CI −15 to −3) during the first 7 days. It also facilitated absorption of lung lesions and reduced the proportion of patients with high National Early Warning Score 2 (≥ 7) on days 7 and 14, with a trend toward faster clinical improvement. Virus shedding and length of hospital stay were comparable between the two groups. Conclusions This study provides the first evidence for improved oxygenation and lung lesion absorption using early position intervention in non-invasively ventilated patients with severe COVID-19, and warrants further randomized trials. </jats:sec