Feature Fusion and Detection in Alzheimer’s Disease Using a Novel Genetic Multi-Kernel SVM Based on MRI Imaging and Gene Data

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Voxel-based morphometry provides an opportunity to study Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at a subtle level. Therefore, identifying the important brain voxels that can classify AD, early mild cognitive impairment (EMCI) and healthy control (HC) and studying the role of these voxels in AD will be crucial to improve our understanding of the neurobiological mechanism of AD. Combining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging and gene information, we proposed a novel feature construction method and a novel genetic multi-kernel support vector machine (SVM) method to mine important features for AD detection. Specifically, to amplify the differences among AD, EMCI and HC groups, we used the eigenvalues of the top 24 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in a p-value matrix of 24 genes associated with AD for feature construction. Furthermore, a genetic multi-kernel SVM was established with the resulting features. The genetic algorithm was used to detect the optimal weights of 3 kernels and the multi-kernel SVM was used after training to explore the significant features. By analyzing the significance of the features, we identified some brain regions affected by AD, such as the right superior frontal gyrus, right inferior temporal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus. The findings proved the good performance and generalization of the proposed model. Particularly, significant susceptibility genes associated with AD were identified, such as CSMD1, RBFOX1, PTPRD, CDH13 and WWOX. Some significant pathways were further explored, such as the calcium signaling pathway (corrected p-value = 1.35 × 10−6) and cell adhesion molecules (corrected p-value = 5.44 × 10−4). The findings offer new candidate abnormal brain features and demonstrate the contribution of these features to AD.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Combined effects of cyclic load and temperature fluctuation on the mechanical behavior of porous sandstones

Rocks in cold regions tend to experience exacerbated degradation under the combined effects of environmental and anthropogenic factors, which may arise from, for example, temperature fluctuation, mechanical excavation, and blasting. Activities related to rock support or open-pit slope optimization in cold regions require a complete understanding of the failure mechanisms of rock under the complex conditions. This paper quantitatively documents the impact of combined cyclic mechanical load and freeze-thaw cycles (i.e., the effect of stress “history”) on the microstructural evolution and mechanical degradation of three porous sandstones with distinct porosity values (from 3.9 to 14.1%). The three sandstone samples were collected from different geological regions in China. The microstructural evolution of the tested samples was quantitatively analyzed using the low-field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) technique. To investigate sample degradation arising from the impact of the stress “history”, the cyclic-loaded and freeze-thaw cycled samples were eventually compressed to failure, during which an acoustic emission system was used to monitor microseismic activities. The results of the study show that the porosity of all tested sandstone samples was increased after cyclic load, with a much more rapid and further increase in porosity observed for samples being subsequently treated under the freeze-thaw cycles. More interestingly, the Chuxiong sandstone with relatively small porosity values were much more sensitive to the impact of cyclic load compared with the Linyi sandstone, exhibiting a somewhat larger increase rate in porosity. However, the Linyi sandstone with larger initial porosity values exhibited a relatively large increase rate in porosity under the multiple freeze-thaw treatments. The multiple freeze-thaw treatments mainly resulted in the development of relatively large pores. The results of the uniaxial compression tests show that the strength reduction of the samples being solely treated by freeze-thaw cycles was within the range of 5–10%, whereas it was within the range of 20–40% for those samples subjected to the combined cyclic load and freeze-thaw cycles

Global research trends in penile cancer: Bibliometric and visualized analysis

BackgroundPenile cancer is a malignant tumor of the genitourinary system that mostly occurs in middle-aged and elderly men aged 50–70 years, which can seriously affect physical, psychological, and sexual health. Hundreds of original articles and reviews on penile cancer are published each year. However, a bibliometric analysis of these publications has not been performed.ObjectiveThis study aimed to systematically analyze and visualize penile cancer-related publications through bibliometrics and reveal identified topics, hotspots, and knowledge gaps in related fields.MethodsBased on the Web of Science core collection database, we first analyzed the quantity and quality of publications in the field of penile cancer. Second, we profiled the publishing groups in terms of country, institution, author’s publication, and cooperation network. Then, we systematized and summarized the hot topics of research.ResultsThis bibliometric analysis was conducted from 2001 to 2022. The analysis identified 1,687 articles and reviews, which were published in 432 journals. The number of publications and citations on penile cancer-related research has steadily increased over the last two decades. Furthermore, academic institutions in Europe and the United States play a leading role in penile cancer research. The country, institution, journal, and author with the most publications were the United States (507), H Lee Moffitt Cancer Research Center (96), Journal of Urology (83), and Spiess P (87), respectively. The most frequently used keywords were penile cancer (743), squamous-cell carcinoma (717), cancer (380), carcinoma (232), lymphadenectomy (229). 16 keyword clustering information was obtained, including #0 male circumcision, #1 lichen sclerosus, #2 chemotherapy, #3 penile neoplasms, #4 targeted therapy, #5 resection margin, #6 cervical cancer, #7 lymph node dissection, #8 prognostic factor, #9 prostate cancer, #10 inguinal lymph node dissection, #11 human papillomavirus DNA, #12 gene, #13 penile intraepithelial neoplasia, #14 male sexual function, and #15 penile cancer.ConclusionMore and more scholars are devoted to the research on penile cancer. This bibliometric analysis revealed that the main research topics and hotspots in penile cancer included risk factors and surgical treatment plans

An Efficient Node Localization Approach with RSSI for Randomly Deployed Wireless Sensor Networks

An efficient path planning approach in mobile beacon localization for the randomly deployed wireless sensor nodes is proposed in this paper. Firstly, in order to improve localization accuracy, the weighting function based on the distance between nodes is constructed. Moreover, an iterative multilateration algorithm is also presented to avoid decreasing the localization accuracy. Furthermore, a path planning algorithm based on grid scan which can traverse entirely in sensor field is described. At the same time, the start conditions of localization algorithm are also proposed to improve localization accuracy. To evaluate the proposed path planning algorithm, the localization results of beacon nodes randomly deployed in sensor field are also provided. The proposed approach can provide the deployment uniformly of virtual beacon nodes among the sensor fields and the lower computational complexity of path planning compared with method which utilizes only mobile beacons on the basis of a random movement. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed approach can reduce the beacon movement distance and the number of virtual mobile beacon nodes by comparison with other methods

A Novel Self-Powered Wireless Sensor Node Based on Energy Harvesting for Mechanical Vibration Monitoring

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been expected to improve the capability of capturing mechanical vibration dynamic behaviors and evaluating the current health status of equipment. While the expectation for mechanical vibration monitoring using WSNs has been high, one of the key limitations is the limited lifetime of batteries for sensor node. The energy harvesting technologies have been recently proposed. One of them shares the same main idea, that is, energy harvesting from ambient vibration can be converted into electric power. Employing the vibration energy harvesting, a novel self-powered wireless sensor node has been developed to measure mechanical vibration in this paper. The overall architecture of node is proposed. The wireless sensor node is described into four main components: the energy harvesting unit, the microprocessor unit, the radio transceiver unit, and accelerometer. Moreover, the software used to control the operation of wireless node is also suggested. At last, in order to achieve continuous self-powered for nodes, two operation modes including the charging mode and discharging mode are proposed. This design can effectively solve the problem of continuous supply power of sensor node for mechanical vibration monitoring

Thermal performance improvement of thermal energy storage systems by employing a contrastive experiment

The thermal storage system is widely used to reduce the mismatch between thermal energy supply and demand in time and space, and its thermal performance is a critical factor in the system's thermal efficiency. The thermal performance of the Sensible Thermal Energy Storage Unit (STESU), the Latent Thermal Energy Storage Unit (LTESU), and the LTESU integrated with Copper Foam Fin (CFF) were compared through comparative experiments. The experimental results showed that the thermal changing rate of STESU was higher than that of other units, and there was no apparent thermal stratification. However, LTESU had the lowest thermal changing rate with apparent thermal stratification. During the thermal charging process, the solid-liquid interface on the LTESU cross-section formed an inverted-triangle shape. The lower part of the PCM could not change its phase as a dead zone and failed to participate in the thermal charging and discharging. Even so, the thermal efficiency of LTESU was 18.7% higher than that of STESU. Integrating with CFF could increase the thermal charging capacity, the thermal discharging capacity and the thermal efficiency by 51.1%, 55.9% and 10.8%, respectively

Purification effect and microbial community structure of bio filter on rural dispersed sewage

Taking rural dispersed sewage for research objects, the treatment effect and microbial community structure characteristics of a bio filter (BF) reactor was studied. At fixed time and location, the removal efficiencies of common pollutants were investigated. By using high-throughput sequencing method, the heterogeneities of microbial community structure in fillers and plant roots were analyzed. The results showed that the average annual removal rates of CODCr, NH3–N, TN, and TP by the BF were 83.10 %, 65.67 %, 60.25 %, and 80.32 % respectively, and the effluent could reach the first grade of the water pollutant discharge standard of rural sewage treatment facility (DB51/2626-2019). During the sewage treatment process, Scindapsus could effectively establish complex and stable microbial communities, and could better degrade pollutants, especially nitrogen removal. The dominant microbial communities were more than 11 phyla and 19 classes. At the genus level, the dominant bacteria included Nitrospira, Arthrobacter, Rhodoplanes, etc

Effects of Green Liquor Pretreatment on the Chemical Composition and Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Several Lignocellulosic Biomasses

Pretreatment of biomass is an extremely important step in a commercial biorefinery. For realization of lignocellulosic biomass as an alternative fuel source to occur, a fundamental understanding and critical investigation of the chosen pretreatment are essential. In this work, green liquor (GL) pretreatment of four plant species, namely Masson pine, poplar, moso bamboo, and miscanthus, was investigated to understand its effect on the chemical composition and enzymatic hydrolysis of different lignocellulosic materials. The results indicated that herbaceous materials exhibited better delignification selectivity in GL pretreatment than woody materials according to the order: miscanthus > moso bamboo > poplar > Masson pine. The effect of GL pretreatment on the enzymatic sugar yield was rather different depending on the varieties of lignocellulosic materials. Higher lignin removal with less polysaccharide degradation during GL pretreatment improved the enzymatic sugar yield