Exploration of Treatment in Patients with T3 Rectal Cancer with EMVI

To explore the clinical efficacy of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, combined with surgery and direct surgery in patients with stage T3 rectal cancer combined with EMVI. Method: The clinical data of patients with extragastrointestinal middle and low rectal cancer in the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University from January 2015 to May 2019 were retrospective reviewed, including 59 patients in the neoadjuvant treatment group (neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy + surgical treatment) and 71 patients in the direct surgery group. Both groups underwent total rectal total membrane resection. Data and Methods:The concurrent chemotherapy regimens were all included in the XELOX regimen. The RT was performed by IMRT with D T 45 to 50.4 G y, from 1.8 to 2.0 G y each, for 25 to 28 sessions. Perioperative conditions, postoperative pathology and follow-up of the two groups were observed. Results: There was no significant difference in postoperative conditions (gastrointestinal function recovery time, postoperative drainage drainage, postoperative time of drainage removal) between the neoadjuvant treatment group and the direct surgery group (P> 0. 05); The length of postoperative hospital stay was significantly different (P <0.05); No significant operation time occurred between the neoadjuvant treatment group (264 min vs. 239 min) and the surgical group, (P> 0. 05)；The amount of intraoperative bleeding (85.7ml vs.110.0 ml), the number of lymph node dissection (11 vs. 13), the lymph node positive rate (27.12% vs.43.6%) betweenthe neoadjuvant treatment group and the direct surgery group had statistical significant (P＜0. 05); The 3-yearrecurrence-free survival (93.2 %) rate was higher in the neoadjuvant treatment group than in the direct surgery group (74.6 %), which was significant (P <0.05); The 3-year survival rate (98.30,% vs. 85.9 %) was significantly significant (P <0.05); There was no significant difference in the anal preservation rate (71.19% vs. 80.28%) (P> 0. 05). Conclusion: The neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy improves the recurrence-free survival rate of locally advanced rectal cancer, and has no obvious effect on the postoperative complications rate, anal preservation rate and gastrointestinal function recovery

Partition Speeds Up Learning Implicit Neural Representations Based on Exponential-Increase Hypothesis

$\textit{Implicit neural representations}$ (INRs) aim to learn a $\textit{continuous function}$ (i.e., a neural network) to represent an image, where the input and output of the function are pixel coordinates and RGB/Gray values, respectively. However, images tend to consist of many objects whose colors are not perfectly consistent, resulting in the challenge that image is actually a $\textit{discontinuous piecewise function}$ and cannot be well estimated by a continuous function. In this paper, we empirically investigate that if a neural network is enforced to fit a discontinuous piecewise function to reach a fixed small error, the time costs will increase exponentially with respect to the boundaries in the spatial domain of the target signal. We name this phenomenon the $\textit{exponential-increase}$ hypothesis. Under the $\textit{exponential-increase}$ hypothesis, learning INRs for images with many objects will converge very slowly. To address this issue, we first prove that partitioning a complex signal into several sub-regions and utilizing piecewise INRs to fit that signal can significantly speed up the convergence. Based on this fact, we introduce a simple partition mechanism to boost the performance of two INR methods for image reconstruction: one for learning INRs, and the other for learning-to-learn INRs. In both cases, we partition an image into different sub-regions and dedicate smaller networks for each part. In addition, we further propose two partition rules based on regular grids and semantic segmentation maps, respectively. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed partitioning methods in terms of learning INR for a single image (ordinary learning framework) and the learning-to-learn framework.Comment: Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision. 202

EPCFormer: Expression Prompt Collaboration Transformer for Universal Referring Video Object Segmentation

Audio-guided Video Object Segmentation (A-VOS) and Referring Video Object Segmentation (R-VOS) are two highly-related tasks, which both aim to segment specific objects from video sequences according to user-provided expression prompts. However, due to the challenges in modeling representations for different modalities, contemporary methods struggle to strike a balance between interaction flexibility and high-precision localization and segmentation. In this paper, we address this problem from two perspectives: the alignment representation of audio and text and the deep interaction among audio, text, and visual features. First, we propose a universal architecture, the Expression Prompt Collaboration Transformer, herein EPCFormer. Next, we propose an Expression Alignment (EA) mechanism for audio and text expressions. By introducing contrastive learning for audio and text expressions, the proposed EPCFormer realizes comprehension of the semantic equivalence between audio and text expressions denoting the same objects. Then, to facilitate deep interactions among audio, text, and video features, we introduce an Expression-Visual Attention (EVA) mechanism. The knowledge of video object segmentation in terms of the expression prompts can seamlessly transfer between the two tasks by deeply exploring complementary cues between text and audio. Experiments on well-recognized benchmarks demonstrate that our universal EPCFormer attains state-of-the-art results on both tasks. The source code of EPCFormer will be made publicly available at https://github.com/lab206/EPCFormer.Comment: The source code will be made publicly available at https://github.com/lab206/EPCForme

Challenges in QCD matter physics - The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sqrt(s_NN) = 2.7 - 4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (mu_B > 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation-of-state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2022, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Published in European Physical Journal

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Hydrometallurgy

The bioleaching of high-magnesium Jinchuan nickel-bearing pyrrhotite using Acidithiobacilus ferrooxidans was investigated. The experimental results show that the bioleaching time can be reduced from 16 days to 10 days by sulphuric acid pretreatment of the nickel-bearing pyrrhotite and by using ore-adapted A. ferrooxidans. At pH 2.0, 30 degrees C, pulp density 5% (wt./vol.), cell transfer quantity 10% and rotary shaker at 180 min(-1), the leaching of Ni was 88%, Co 78%, Cu 45% and Mg similar to 50%. The leaching of Cu was poor due to chalcopyrite, which exhibited slower leaching rate by bacteria. Mg was dissolved from magnesium-containing gangue minerals by acid and its dissolution was related to the acid concentration of leaching liquor. Mineralogical examination indicated that the relative order of leaching for the sulphide minerals by A. ferrooxidans was nickel-bearing pyrrhotite > pentlandite > chalcopyrite and the relative order of dissolution for the gangue minerals by acid pretreatment was chlorite > antigonite > olivine > tremolite and talc. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The bioleaching of high-magnesium Jinchuan nickel-bearing pyrrhotite using Acidithiobacilus ferrooxidans was investigated. The experimental results show that the bioleaching time can be reduced from 16 days to 10 days by sulphuric acid pretreatment of the nickel-bearing pyrrhotite and by using ore-adapted A. ferrooxidans. At pH 2.0, 30 degrees C, pulp density 5% (wt./vol.), cell transfer quantity 10% and rotary shaker at 180 min(-1), the leaching of Ni was 88%, Co 78%, Cu 45% and Mg similar to 50%. The leaching of Cu was poor due to chalcopyrite, which exhibited slower leaching rate by bacteria. Mg was dissolved from magnesium-containing gangue minerals by acid and its dissolution was related to the acid concentration of leaching liquor. Mineralogical examination indicated that the relative order of leaching for the sulphide minerals by A. ferrooxidans was nickel-bearing pyrrhotite > pentlandite > chalcopyrite and the relative order of dissolution for the gangue minerals by acid pretreatment was chlorite > antigonite > olivine > tremolite and talc. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The effects of molecular collisions between the mobile phase and the solute in gas-solid chromatography

In chromatographic processes, molecular collisions between the mobile phase and the solute result in the transfer of kinetic energy. Based on these interactions, the relationship between the gauge pressure of the carrier gas at the column inlet and the partition frequency of the solute is derived; consequently, the relationship between the column temperature and partition frequency can be obtained. These relationships have been experimentally validated. The change in the peak shape described herein has been successfully explained using this relationship: the partition frequency was calculated from the theoretical plate number of a tailing peak. We propose a new mechanism for peak tailing using plate theory, which states that as the number of plates increases, the symmetry of the peak increases.</p

Relationship of Five Plate Numbers in Chromatography

AbstractSlip mechanism and plate theory were utilized to the investigation of computing formulas of five plate numbers. Column plate number and peak plate number were two different concepts. Peak plate number was a new concept which came from slip mechanism. A good relation existed between the peak plate number and the asymmetry of practical peak of chromatogram. Peak plate number could be regarded as an asymmetry index of chromatogram peak, as column plate number is regarded as an efficiency index of column. The plate in slip mechanism was mobile, which was different from the fixed plate in plate theory. The five plate numbers were four kinds of column plate numbers and one kind of peak plate number (q’); the four column plate numbers were theoretical plate number (n0), real plate number (n), plate-model plate number (q0) and slip-mechanism plate number (q)