A Natural Hand Gesture System for People with Brachial Plexus Injuries

This paper focuses on a design case study of a natural hand gesture system for users with intact motion control of the metacarpophalangeal joint and thumb basal joint of the hand after brachial plexus injuries. The lexicon of hand gestures had eight entries and was demonstrated to be natural and ergonomic with the limited hand motions. A cooperative multi-cue system was proposed for the key hand posture recognition of the proposed hand gestures. We utilized the designed system into a remote smart car control and electric wheelchair control. Experimental a results demonstrated the robustness and potential feasibility of the system in human-computer interaction for the proposed users

Trip energy consumption estimation for electric buses

This study aims to develop a trip energy consumption (TEC) estimation model for the electric bus (EB) fleet planning, operation, and life-cycle assessment. Leveraging the vast variations of temperature in Jilin Province, China, real-world data of 31 ​EBs operating in 14 months were collected with temperatures fluctuating from −27.0 ​to 35.0 ​\ub0C. TEC of an EB was divided into two parts, which are the energy required by the traction and battery thermal management system, and the energy required by the air conditioner (AC) system operation, respectively. The former was regressed by a logarithmic linear model with ambient temperature, curb weight, travel distance, and trip travel time as contributing factors. The optimum working temperature and regression parameters were obtained by combining Fibonacci and Weighted Least Square. The latter was estimated by the operation time of the AC system in cooling mode or heating mode. Model evaluation and sensitivity analysis were conducted. The results show that: (i) the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the proposed model is 12.108%; (ii) the estimation accuracy of the model has a probability of 99.7814% meeting the requirements of EB fleet scheduling; (iii) the MAPE has a 1.746% reduction if considering passengers’ boarding and alighting

A Dual-Fluorescent Composite of Graphene Oxide and Poly(3-Hexylthiophene) Enables the Ratiometric Detection of Amines

A composite prepared by grafting a conjugated polymer, poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), to the surface of graphene oxide was shown to result in a dual-fluorescent material with tunable photoluminescent properties. Capitalizing on these unique features, a new class of graphene-based sensors that enables the ratiometric fluorescence detection of amine-based pollutants was developed. Moreover, through a detailed spectroscopic study, the origin of the optical properties of the aforementioned composite was studied and was found to be due to electronic decoupling of the conjugated polymer from the GO. The methodology described herein effectively overcomes a long-standing challenge that has prevented graphene based composites from finding utility in sensing and related applications.Meng, Dongli, Shaojun Yang, Dianming Sun, Yi Zeng, Jinhua Sun, Yi Li, Shouke Yan, Yong Huang, Christopher W. Bielawski, and Jianxin Geng. "A dual-fluorescent composite of graphene oxide and poly (3-hexylthiophene) enables the ratiometric detection of amines." Chemical Science 5, no. 8 (Apr., 2014): 3130-3134.Chemistr

WindGP: Efficient Graph Partitioning on Heterogenous Machines

Graph Partitioning is widely used in many real-world applications such as fraud detection and social network analysis, in order to enable the distributed graph computing on large graphs. However, existing works fail to balance the computation cost and communication cost on machines with different power (including computing capability, network bandwidth and memory size), as they only consider replication factor and neglect the difference of machines in realistic data centers. In this paper, we propose a general graph partitioning algorithm WindGP, which can support fast and high-quality edge partitioning on heterogeneous machines. WindGP designs novel preprocessing techniques to simplify the metric and balance the computation cost according to the characteristics of graphs and machines. Also, best-first search is proposed instead of BFS and DFS, in order to generate clusters with high cohesion. Furthermore, WindGP adaptively tunes the partition results by sophisticated local search methods. Extensive experiments show that WindGP outperforms all state-of-the-art partition methods by 1.35 - 27 times on both dense and sparse distributed graph algorithms, and has good scalability with graph size and machine number.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, 18 table

Molecular epidemiology of dengue viruses in southern China from 1978 to 2006

To investigate molecular epidemiology of dengue viruses (DENV) in southern China, a total of 14 dengue isolates were collected in southern China during each epidemic year between 1978 and 2006 and their full-length genome sequences were obtained by using RT-PCR method. The E gene sequences from additional 6 dengue fever patients in Guangzhou in 2006 were also obtained by using RT-PCR method. Combined with DENVs sequences published in GenBank, phylogenetic analysis and recombination analysis were performed. One hundred and twenty-five E gene sequences and 60 complete genome sequences published in the GenBank were also involved. Phylogenetic analysis showed that there was a wide genetic diversity of DENVs isolated in southern China. DENV-1 strains exist in almost all of the clades of genotype I and IV except the Asia 1 clade of genotype I; DENV-2 stains are grouped into four of the five genotypes except American genotype. DENV-4 strains are grouped into 2 genotypes (I and II). Phylogenetic analysis also showed that all DENV-4 isolates and two DENV-2 isolates were closely related to the prior isolates from neighboring Southeast Asia countries. The DENV-1 strain isolated during the 2006 epidemic is highly homologous to the strains isolated during the 2001 epidemic

Effect of Sow Intestinal Flora on the Formation of Endometritis

Endometritis is the main cause of decreased reproductive performance of sows, while one of the most important factors in the etiology of sow endometritis is an aberration of birth canal microbiota. Therefore, people began to pay attention to the microbiota structure and composition of the birth canal of sows with endometritis. Interestingly, we found that the risk of endometritis was increased in the sows with constipation in clinical practice, which may imply that the intestinal flora is related to the occurrence of endometritis. Therefore, understanding the relationship between birth canal microbiota and intestinal microbiota of the host has become exceptionally crucial. In this study, the microbiota of birth canal secretions and fresh feces of four healthy and four endometritis sows were analyzed via sequencing the V3 + V4 region of bacterial 16S ribosomal (rDNA) gene. The results showed a significant difference between endometritis and healthy sows birth canal flora in composition and abundance. Firmicutes (74.36%) and Proteobacteria were the most dominant phyla in birth canal microbiota of healthy sows. However, the majority of beneficial bacteria that belonging to Firmicutes phylum (e.g., Lactobacillus and Enterococcus) declined in endometritis sow. The abundance of Porphyromonas, Clostridium sensu stricto 1, Streptococcus, Fusobacterium, Actinobacillus, and Bacteroides increased significantly in the birth canal microbiota of endometritis sows. Escherichia–Shigella and Bacteroides were the common genera in the birth canal and intestinal flora of endometritis sows. The abundance of Escherichia–Shigella and Bacteroides in the intestines of sows suffering from endometritis were significantly increased than the intestinal microbiota of the healthy sows. We speculated that some intestinal bacteria (such as Escherichia–Shigella and Bacteroides) might be bound up with the onset of sow endometritis based on intestinal microbiota analysis in sows with endometritis and healthy sows. The above results can supply a theoretical basis to research the pathogenesis of endometritis and help others understand the relationship with the microbiota of sow's birth canal and gut

Molecular mechanisms for the adaptive switching between the OAS/RNase L and OASL/RIG-I pathways in birds and mammals:Adaptive exchanging of the OAS/RNase L and OASL/RIG-I pathway

Host cells develop the OAS/RNase L [2′–5′–oligoadenylate synthetase (OAS)/ribonuclease L] system to degrade cellular and viral RNA, and/or the OASL/RIG-I (2′–5′–OAS like/retinoic acid inducible protein I) system to enhance RIG-I-mediated IFN induction, thus providing the first line of defense against viral infection. The 2′–5′–OAS-like (OASL) protein may activate the OAS/RNase L system using its typical OAS-like domain (OLD) or mimic the K63-linked pUb to enhance antiviral activity of the OASL/RIG-I system using its two tandem ubiquitin-like domains (UBLs). We first describe that divergent avian (duck and ostrich) OASL inhibit the replication of a broad range of RNA viruses by activating and magnifying the OAS/RNase L pathway in a UBL-dependent manner. This is in sharp contrast to mammalian enzymatic OASL, which activates and magnifies the OAS/RNase L pathway in a UBL-independent manner, similar to 2′–5′–oligoadenylate synthetase 1 (OAS1). We further show that both avian and mammalian OASL can reversibly exchange to activate and magnify the OAS/RNase L and OASL/RIG-I system by introducing only three key residues, suggesting that ancient OASL possess 2–5A [px5′A(2′p5′A)n; x = 1-3; n ≥ 2] activity and has functionally switched to the OASL/RIG-I pathway recently. Our findings indicate the molecular mechanisms involved in the switching of avian and mammalian OASL molecules to activate and enhance the OAS/RNase L and OASL/RIG-I pathways in response to infection by RNA viruses

Effect of Aged Wuyi Rock Tea on Relieving Dextran Sulfate Sodium-Induced Colitis and Regulating the Gut Microbiota in Mice

This research was performed in order to investigate the alleviative effect of aged Wuyi rock tea on dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis in mice. Fifty C57BL/6JGpt female mice were randomly and equally divided into five groups: control, DSS, DSS + infusion of 20-year-old Wuyi rock tea (DSS + OT01), DSS + infusion of 10-year-old Wuyi rock tea (DSS + OT11) and DSS + infusion of fresh Wuyi rock tea (DSS + OT20). The physiological and histopathological conditions of mice after Wuyi rock tea interventions, and the changes of serum inflammatory factors and cecal microbiota were analyzed. The results showed that aged Wuyi rock tea could significantly alleviate the symptoms of body mass loss, diarrhea, bloody stool, and colon length shortening, reduce inflammatory cell infiltration, and significantly inhibit the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. In addition, aged Wuyi rock tea could alleviate the disorder of the gut microbiota, significantly down-regulate the relative abundance of Proteobacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and Escherichia, and up-regulate the relative abundance of Verrucomicrobia and Akkermansia. In summary, aged Wuyi rock tea can alleviate DSS-induced colitis in mice, and the tea produced in 2011 is more effective than that produced in 2001, which may be due to proper oxidation of catechins such as epigallocatechin gallate to produce thearubigins, with better anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. In addition, aged Wuyi rock tea is able to maintain intestinal homeostasis by regulating the relative abundance of Escherichia and Akkermansia in the intestine, which in turn alleviates the symptoms of DSS-induced colitis in mice such as body mass loss, diarrhea, bloody stool, colon length shortening, mucosal and crypt damage, inflammatory cell infiltration, and serum inflammatory factor overexpression

Spatiotemporal Genotype Replacement of H5N8 Avian Influenza Viruses Contributed to H5N1 Emergence in 2021/2022 Panzootic

Since 2020, clade 2.3.4.4b highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N8 and H5N1 viruses have swept through continents, posing serious threats to the world. Through comprehensive analyses of epidemiological, genetic, and bird migration data, we found that the dominant genotype replacement of the H5N8 viruses in 2020 contributed to the H5N1 outbreak in the 2021/2022 wave. The 2020 outbreak of the H5N8 G1 genotype instead of the G0 genotype produced reassortment opportunities and led to the emergence of a new H5N1 virus with G1's HA and MP genes. Despite extensive reassortments in the 2021/2022 wave, the H5N1 virus retained the HA and MP genes, causing a significant outbreak in Europe and North America. Furtherly, through the wild bird migration flyways investigation, we found that the temporal-spatial coincidence between the outbreak of the H5N8 G1 virus and the bird autumn migration may have expanded the H5 viral spread, which may be one of the main drivers of the emergence of the 2020-2022 H5 panzootic.IMPORTANCESince 2020, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 subtype variants of clade 2.3.4.4b have spread across continents, posing unprecedented threats globally. However, the factors promoting the genesis and spread of H5 HPAI viruses remain unclear. Here, we found that the spatiotemporal genotype replacement of H5N8 HPAI viruses contributed to the emergence of the H5N1 variant that caused the 2021/2022 panzootic, and the viral evolution in poultry of Egypt and surrounding area and autumn bird migration from the Russia-Kazakhstan region to Europe are important drivers of the emergence of the 2020-2022 H5 panzootic. These findings provide important targets for early warning and could help control the current and future HPAI epidemics.</p