Bayesian detection of embryonic gene expression onset in C. elegans

To study how a zygote develops into an embryo with different tissues, large-scale 4D confocal movies of C. elegans embryos have been produced recently by experimental biologists. However, the lack of principled statistical methods for the highly noisy data has hindered the comprehensive analysis of these data sets. We introduced a probabilistic change point model on the cell lineage tree to estimate the embryonic gene expression onset time. A Bayesian approach is used to fit the 4D confocal movies data to the model. Subsequent classification methods are used to decide a model selection threshold and further refine the expression onset time from the branch level to the specific cell time level. Extensive simulations have shown the high accuracy of our method. Its application on real data yields both previously known results and new findings.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AOAS820 in the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Release Mechanism of Volatile Products from Oil Shale Pressure-Controlled Pyrolysis Induced by Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

The compactness of the oil shale reservoir and the complexity of the pore structure lead to the secondary reaction of kerogen in the process of hydrocarbon expulsion, which reduces the effective recovery of shale oil. In this paper, supercritical carbon dioxide was used as a heat carrier and a displacement medium. In a self-designed fluidized bed experimental system for pressure-controlled pyrolysis of oil shale, the experiments of oil shale pyrolysis under standard atmospheric pressure and 7.8–8.0 MPa pressure in nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmospheres were completed. The extraction efficiency of supercritical carbon dioxide at low temperature is obvious, but with the increase of temperature, the effect of extraction on pyrolysis is lower than that of temperature. Under a nitrogen atmosphere, the secondary reaction of shale oil is mainly secondary pyrolysis and aromatization. However, in a supercritical carbon dioxide atmosphere, the main reactions are secondary addition and aromatization. In addition, compared with that in the standard atmospheric pressure, it was found that the olefin synthesis reaction was obviously inhibited under a high-pressure nitrogen or supercritical carbon dioxide atmosphere.© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Based on the Integration of “Internet + Ideology and Politics”, the Practice of Online and Offline Mixed Teaching Mode of Modern Medical Courses in Traditional Chinese Medicine Majors

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to implement the online and offline mixed teaching mode in the modern medical courses of TCM specialty under the guidance of the concept of “Internet + ideological and political integration”, and to explore its practical experience and remarkable results. With the power of today’s Internet technology, we will organically integrate ideological and political education into the modern medicine course of traditional Chinese medicine, so as to effectively promote the overall cultivation of students’ comprehensive quality, and further enhance the attraction of the course and educational benefits

HOT-VAE: Learning High-Order Label Correlation for Multi-Label Classification via Attention-Based Variational Autoencoders

Understanding how environmental characteristics affect bio-diversity patterns, from individual species to communities of species, is critical for mitigating effects of global change. A central goal for conservation planning and monitoring is the ability to accurately predict the occurrence of species communities and how these communities change over space and time. This in turn leads to a challenging and long-standing problem in the field of computer science - how to perform ac-curate multi-label classification with hundreds of labels? The key challenge of this problem is its exponential-sized output space with regards to the number of labels to be predicted.Therefore, it is essential to facilitate the learning process by exploiting correlations (or dependency) among labels. Previous methods mostly focus on modelling the correlation on label pairs; however, complex relations between real-world objects often go beyond second order. In this paper, we pro-pose a novel framework for multi-label classification, High-order Tie-in Variational Autoencoder (HOT-VAE), which per-forms adaptive high-order label correlation learning. We experimentally verify that our model outperforms the existing state-of-the-art approaches on a bird distribution dataset on both conventional F1 scores and a variety of ecological metrics. To show our method is general, we also perform empirical analysis on seven other public real-world datasets in several application domains, and Hot-VAE exhibits superior performance to previous methods.Comment: accepted at AAAI'21 AIS

Gut macrobiotic and its metabolic pathways modulate cardiovascular disease

Thousands of microorganisms reside in the human gut, and extensive research has demonstrated the crucial role of the gut microbiota in overall health and maintaining homeostasis. The disruption of microbial populations, known as dysbiosis, can impair the host’s metabolism and contribute to the development of various diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). Furthermore, a growing body of evidence indicates that metabolites produced by the gut microbiota play a significant role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. These bioactive metabolites, such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), trimethylamine (TMA), trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), bile acids (BAs), and lipopolysaccharides (LPS), are implicated in conditions such as hypertension and atherosclerosis. These metabolites impact cardiovascular function through various pathways, such as altering the composition of the gut microbiota and activating specific signaling pathways. Targeting the gut microbiota and their metabolic pathways represents a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Intervention strategies, such as probiotic drug delivery and fecal transplantation, can selectively modify the composition of the gut microbiota and enhance its beneficial metabolic functions, ultimately leading to improved cardiovascular outcomes. These interventions hold the potential to reshape the gut microbial community and restore its balance, thereby promoting cardiovascular health. Harnessing the potential of these microbial metabolites through targeted interventions offers a novel avenue for tackling cardiovascular health issues. This manuscript provides an in-depth review of the recent advances in gut microbiota research and its impact on cardiovascular health and offers a promising avenue for tackling cardiovascular health issues through gut microbiome-targeted therapies

Single channel based interference-free and self-powered human-machine interactive interface using eigenfrequency-dominant mechanism

The recent development of wearable devices is revolutionizing the way of human-machine interaction (HMI). Nowadays, an interactive interface that carries more embedded information is desired to fulfil the increasing demand in era of Internet of Things. However, present approach normally relies on sensor arrays for memory expansion, which inevitably brings the concern of wiring complexity, signal differentiation, power consumption, and miniaturization. Herein, a one-channel based self-powered HMI interface, which uses the eigenfrequency of magnetized micropillar (MMP) as identification mechanism, is reported. When manually vibrated, the inherent recovery of the MMP caused a damped oscillation that generates current signals because of Faraday's Law of induction. The time-to-frequency conversion explores the MMP-related eigenfrequency, which provides a specific solution to allocate diverse commands in an interference-free behavior even with one electric channel. A cylindrical cantilever model was built to regulate the MMP eigenfrequencies via precisely designing the dimensional parameters and material properties. We show that using one device and two electrodes, high-capacity HMI interface can be realized when the MMPs with different eigenfrequencies have been integrated. This study provides the reference value to design the future HMI system especially for situations that require a more intuitive and intelligent communication experience with high-memory demand.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figure

Refractive errors in 3-6 year-old Chinese children: a very low prevalence of myopia?

PURPOSE To examine the prevalence of refractive errors in children aged 3-6 years in China. METHODS Children were recruited for a trial of a home-based amblyopia screening kit in Guangzhou preschools, during which cycloplegic refractions were measured in both eyes of 2480 children. Cycloplegic refraction (from 3 to 4 drops of 1% cyclopentolate to ensure abolition of the light reflex) was measured by both autorefraction and retinoscopy. Refractive errors were defined as followed: myopia (at least -0.50 D in the worse eye), hyperopia (at least +2.00 D in the worse eye) and astigmatism (at least 1.50 D in the worse eye). Different definitions, as specified in the text, were also used to facilitate comparison with other studies. RESULTS The mean spherical equivalent refractive error was at least +1.22 D for all ages and both genders. The prevalence of myopia for any definition at any age was at most 2.5%, and lower in most cases. In contrast, the prevalence of hyperopia was generally over 20%, and declined slightly with age. The prevalence of astigmatism was between 6% and 11%. There was very little change in refractive error with age over this age range. CONCLUSIONS Previous reports of less hyperopic mean spherical equivalent refractive error, and more myopia and less hyperopia in children of this age may be due to problems with achieving adequate cycloplegia in children with dark irises. Using up to 4 drops of 1% cyclopentolate may be necessary to accurately measure refractive error in paediatric studies of such children. Our results suggest that children from all ethnic groups may follow a similar pattern of early refractive development, with little myopia and a hyperopic mean spherical equivalent over +1.00 D up to the age of 5-6 years in most conditions.Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing, China (grant no.: 81200714;http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/); Foundation for Distinguished Young Talents in Higher Education of Guangdong, Guangdong Province, China (grant no.: LYM 11009;http://www.gdhed.edu.cn/) and the Science and Information Technology Bureau of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China (grant no.: 2011Y2-00018-3;http://www.gzsi.gov.cn/)

Content analysis of systematic reviews on the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine

AbstractObjectiveTo evaluate evidence for the efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in systematic reviews.MethodsChinese (TCMPeriodical Literature Database, Chinese Biological Medicine database, Chinese Medical Current Contents, China Hospital Knowledge Database journal fulltext database, Virtual Machining and Inspection System, and Wanfang) and English (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed and Embase) databases were searched.ResultsThree thousand, nine hundred and fifty-five articles were initially identified, 606 of which met the inclusion criteria, including 251 in English (83 from the Cochrane Database) and 355 in Chinese. The number of articles published each year increased between 1989 and 2009. Cardiocerebrovascular disease was the most studied target disease. Intervention measures includedTCM preparations (177 articles), acupuncture (133 articles) and combinations of TCM and western medicine (38 articles). Control measures included positive medical (177 articles), basic treatment (100 articles), placebo (219 articles), and blank and mutual (107 articles). All articles included at least one reference; the greatest number was 268. Six of 10 articles with high quality references demonstrated curative effectsagainst target diseasesincludingupper respiratory tract infection, dementia and depression. Interventions that were not recommendedwere tripterygium for rheumatoid arthritis andTCM syndrome differentiation for pediatric nocturia. In 10.4% of the studies, the authors concluded that the intervention had a curative effect. The assessors agreed with the authors' conclusions in 88.32% of cases, but rejected 8.94% (54 articles).Conclusion1) Training in systematic review methods, including topic selection, study design, methods and technology, should be improved. 2) Upper respiratory tract infection, dementia and depression may become the predominant diseases treatedby TCM, and the corresponding interventions could be developed into practical applications. 3) Use of non-recommended interventions should be controlled, and there should be more research on side effects

Influence of Indentation on the Fatigue Strength of Carbonitrided Plain Steel

To study the influence of indentation on the fatigue strength of untreated and carbonitrided specimens of S38C steel, the fatigue limit of specimens with and without indentations was tested. Fracture surfaces were observed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show that the fatigue strength of the untreated specimen decreases with increasing dimension of indentation, without significant difference compared to the predicted results. Compared to the fatigue limit of the untreated specimen, those of the carbonitrided specimen and the carbonitrided specimen whose compound layer was polished were improved by 12% and 40%, respectively. The fatigue strength of the carbonitrided specimen decreased sharply with increasing indentation size because of the presence of microcracks in the compound layer. When the compound layer was removed, the fatigue limit was observed to be less sensitive to indentation than that of the carbonitrided specimen