Surgery for Complete Vertical Rectus Paralysis Combined with Horizontal Strabismus

Aims. To report outcomes of the simultaneous surgical correction of vertical rectus paralysis combined with moderate-to-large angle horizontal strabismus. Methods. If a preoperative forced duction test was positive, antagonist muscle weakening surgery was performed, and then augmented partial rectus muscle transposition (APRMT) + partial horizontal rectus recession-resection was performed 2 months later. If a preoperative forced duction test was negative, APRMT + partial horizontal rectus recession-resection was performed. Antagonistic muscle weakening surgery and/or conventional recession-resection of the horizontal and/or vertical muscles of the contralateral eye was performed 2 months later, as needed. Results. Ten patients with a mean age of 22.3 ± 13.0 years were included and mean follow-up was 7.1 months. The mean vertical deviation that APRMT corrected was 21.4 ± 3.7 PD (prism diopter). The absolute deviation in horizontal significantly decreased from a preoperative value of 48.5 ± 27.4 PD to a value of 3.0 ± 2.3 PD 6 months postoperatively. The movement score decreased from a value of −5 ± 0 preoperatively to a value of −2.7 ± 0.8 at 6 months postoperatively. Conclusion. For patients with complete vertical rectus paralysis combined with a moderate- to-large angle of horizontal strabismus, combined APRMT and partial horizontal rectus recession-resection is safe and effective for correcting vertical and horizontal strabismus

Pretraining Language Models with Text-Attributed Heterogeneous Graphs

In many real-world scenarios (e.g., academic networks, social platforms), different types of entities are not only associated with texts but also connected by various relationships, which can be abstracted as Text-Attributed Heterogeneous Graphs (TAHGs). Current pretraining tasks for Language Models (LMs) primarily focus on separately learning the textual information of each entity and overlook the crucial aspect of capturing topological connections among entities in TAHGs. In this paper, we present a new pretraining framework for LMs that explicitly considers the topological and heterogeneous information in TAHGs. Firstly, we define a context graph as neighborhoods of a target node within specific orders and propose a topology-aware pretraining task to predict nodes involved in the context graph by jointly optimizing an LM and an auxiliary heterogeneous graph neural network. Secondly, based on the observation that some nodes are text-rich while others have little text, we devise a text augmentation strategy to enrich textless nodes with their neighbors' texts for handling the imbalance issue. We conduct link prediction and node classification tasks on three datasets from various domains. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach over existing methods and the rationality of each design. Our code is available at https://github.com/Hope-Rita/THLM.Comment: Accepted by EMNLP 2023 Finding

Event-based Dynamic Graph Representation Learning for Patent Application Trend Prediction

Accurate prediction of what types of patents that companies will apply for in the next period of time can figure out their development strategies and help them discover potential partners or competitors in advance. Although important, this problem has been rarely studied in previous research due to the challenges in modelling companies' continuously evolving preferences and capturing the semantic correlations of classification codes. To fill in this gap, we propose an event-based dynamic graph learning framework for patent application trend prediction. In particular, our method is founded on the memorable representations of both companies and patent classification codes. When a new patent is observed, the representations of the related companies and classification codes are updated according to the historical memories and the currently encoded messages. Moreover, a hierarchical message passing mechanism is provided to capture the semantic proximities of patent classification codes by updating their representations along the hierarchical taxonomy. Finally, the patent application trend is predicted by aggregating the representations of the target company and classification codes from static, dynamic, and hierarchical perspectives. Experiments on real-world data demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach under various experimental conditions, and also reveal the abilities of our method in learning semantics of classification codes and tracking technology developing trajectories of companies.Comment: Accepted by the TKDE journa

Editorial: Advances and applications of artificial intelligence and numerical simulation in risk emergency management and treatment

No abstract available

From mandatory icebreaker guiding to a permission regime: changes to the new Russian legislation of the Northern Sea Route

This article focuses on two issues. The first concerns definitions of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in old and new Russian legislation, and the second relates to Russian rules on icebreaker guiding. Based on a comprehensive comparative analysis of relevant Russian legal provisions enacted in 2013 and previous laws in this area, we offer the following conclusions. (1) Our legal analysis indicates that Russia’s view of the NSR as a historical national transportation route has not changed. However, the new law redefines the scope and coverage of the NSR, which now comprises the internal waters, territorial sea, adjacent zone, and the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation. In fact, the new law resolves previous ambiguity regarding extension of the NSR boundary to the high seas. (2) Based on an analysis of the new rules on icebreaker guiding, the article concludes that NSR is transitioning from a mandatory icebreaker guiding regime into a permit regime. This is particularly evident in its provision of a concrete, practical, and predictable clause on permissible or impermissible conditions relating to independent navigation. According to the new rules, it is possible for foreign ships to undertake independent navigation in the NSR. The Russian NSR policy, therefore, appears to have changed significantly, and has future potential for opening the NSR up to the international community

What Is the Impact of Early and Subsequent Epidemic Characteristics on the Pre-delta COVID-19 Epidemic Size in the United States?

It is still uncertain how the epidemic characteristics of COVID-19 in its early phase and subsequent waves contributed to the pre-delta epidemic size in the United States. We identified the early and subsequent characteristics of the COVID-19 epidemic and the correlation between these characteristics and the pre-delta epidemic size. Most (96.1% (49/51)) of the states entered a fast-growing phase before the accumulative number of cases reached (30). The days required for the number of confirmed cases to increase from 30 to 100 was 5.6 (5.1–6.1) days. As of 31 March 2021, all 51 states experienced at least 2 waves of COVID-19 outbreaks, 23.5% (12/51) experienced 3 waves, and 15.7% (8/51) experienced 4 waves, the epidemic size of COVID-19 was 19,275–3,669,048 cases across the states. The pre-delta epidemic size was significantly correlated with the duration from 30 to 100 cases (p = 0.003, r = −0.405), the growth rate of the fast-growing phase (p = 0.012, r = 0.351), and the peak cases in the subsequent waves (K1 (p < 0.001, r = 0.794), K2 (p < 0.001, r = 0.595), K3 (p < 0.001, r = 0.977), and K4 (p = 0.002, r = 0.905)). We observed that both early and subsequent epidemic characteristics contribute to the pre-delta epidemic size of COVID-19. This identification is important to the prediction of the emerging viral infectious diseases in the primary stage

Identification of RyR2-PBmice and the effects of transposon insertional mutagenesis of the RyR2 gene on cardiac function in mice

Ryanodine receptor 2 (RyR2) plays an important role in maintaining the normal heart function, and mutantions can lead to arrhythmia, heart failure and other heart diseases. In this study, we successfully identified a piggyBac translocated RyR2 gene heterozygous mouse model (RyR2-PBmice) by tracking red fluorescent protein (RFP) and genotyping PCR. Cardiac function tests showed that there was no significant difference between the RyR2-PBmice and corresponding wild-type mice (WTmice), regardless of whether they were in the basal state or injected with epinephrine and caffeine. However, the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ content was significantly reduced in the cardiomyocytes of RyR2-PBmice as assessed by measuring caffeine-induced [Ca2+]i transients; the cardiac muscle tissue of RyR2-PBmice displayed significant mitochondrial swelling and focal dissolution of mitochondrial cristae, and the tissue ATP content in the RyR2-PBmice heart was significantly reduced. To further analyze the molecular mechanism behind these changes, we tested the expression levels of related proteins using RT-PCR and Western blot analyses. The mRNA level of RyR2 in RyR2-PBmice cardiac tissue decreased significantly compared with the WTmice, and the protein expression associated with the respiratory chain was also downregulated. These results suggested that the piggyBac transposon inserted into the RyR2 gene substantively affected the structure and function of mitochondria in the mouse cardiomyocytes, leading to disorders of energy metabolism

Chinese aquaculture in light of green growth

Over China’s long history of aquaculture development, great achievements have been made by enhancing aquaculture as the major contributor to aquatic products supply, while lessons have also been learnt that aquaculture has been developing at the cost of environment. Priority is now given to the aquaculture development in the light of green growth, which attaches importance to both environment protection and high productivity. To sustain Chinese aquaculture in a green-growth manner, polices changes have been made, a comprehensive legal framework has been developed, and an organized institutional framework has been set up. The extension of science and technology also serves as the back-up for green growth in Chinese aquaculture. Chinese aquaculture is still confronted with various challenges, while green growth will be the key to a more responsible and prosperous aquaculture industry in China

Review of Research on Development of Speech Act Theory and Its Application

Speech Act Theory has been the focus of linguistic research since its introduction in the early 1960s. This paper reviews the literature on Speech Act Theory collected from core journals at home and abroad and finds that the theory has been constantly revised and supplemented by domestic and international academics in the process of development; it also finds that Speech Act Theory has been well developed and applied in literature, journalism and communication, education and other fields in recent years, but not much research has been conducted in the field of political speech act. The former focuses on speech strategies, while the latter focuses on individual style differences. By reviewing the development of Speech Act Theory at home and abroad, we can help understand its development prospects and provide a theoretical framework for political speech act research; by reviewing applied research in different fields, we can better understand the application value of Speech Act Theory and provide inspiration on research methods for future political speech act research

A Literature Review on the Research Progress of Speech Act Theory and Its Applications

Speech act exists in every aspect of people's daily life and performs an extinguished position in people's communication. Speech Act Theory was first proposed by the British philosopher J.L. Austin and later expounded and revised by the American philosopher J. Searle, which linked the meaning of language with speech act for the first time, opening up a new perspective for the study of meaning in the philosophy of language and logic. Through a brief review of the literature related to speech acts in the past 40 years, this paper introduces the background of Speech Act Theory, summarizes the content framework of it, reviews the relevant research and evaluation of the theory by domestic and foreign scholars, and analyzes the current application and research of the theory in related fields. Finally, this paper calls on research on the application of the theory in analyzing speech acts in such hot-discussed fields as artificial intelligence in an attempt to contribute to the modernity process of Speech Act Theory