Implication of GRB 221009A: Can TeV Emission Come from the GRB Prompt Phase?

Recently, the B.O.A.T. ("brightest of all time") gamma-ray burst, dubbed GRB 221009A, was detected by various instruments. Unprecedentedly, the GRB presented very-high-energy (VHE, energy above 0.1 TeV) gamma-ray emission with energy extending above 10 TeV, as reported by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO). We here demonstrate that the VHE and especially >10 TeV emission may originate from the internal hadronic dissipation of the GRB, without the need of invoking any exotic processes as suggested by some previous studies. We also discuss the constraints on the properties of the GRB ejecta from multiwavelength and multi-messenger observations, which favors a magnetically dominated GRB ejecta. The suggested Poynting-flux-dominated GRB ejecta in this work supports the Blandford & Znajek (BZ) mechanism as the possible central engine model of GRB.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, accepted versio

Investigating Verticillium wilt occurrence in cotton and its risk management by the direct return of cotton plants infected with Verticillium dahliae to the field

Verticillium wilt is one of the most crucial diseases caused by Verticillium dahliae that threatens the cotton industry. Statistical results showed that the return of cotton plants infected with V. dahliae to the field might be an essential cause of the continuous aggravation of cotton Verticillium wilt. The correlation among the cotton plants infected with V. dahliae returning to the field, the occurrence of Verticillium wilt, and the number of microsclerotia in rhizosphere soil need further investigation. A potted experiment was carried out to explore the effects of the direct return of cotton plants infected with Verticillium dahliae to the field on the subsequent growth and Verticillium wilt occurrence in cotton. As a risk response plan, we investigated the feasibility of returning dung-sand (i.e., insect excreta) to the field, the dung-sand was from the larvae of Protaetia brevitarsis (Coleoptera: Cetoniidea) that were fed with the V. dahliae–infected cotton plants. The results demonstrated that the return of the entire cotton plants to the field presented a promotional effect on the growth and development of cotton, whereas the return of a single root stubble or cotton stalks had an inhibitive effect. The return of cotton stalks and root stubble infected with V. dahliae increased the risk and degree of Verticillium wilt occurrence. The disease index of Verticillium wilt occurrence in cotton was positively correlated with the number of microsclerotia in the rhizosphere soil. The disease index increased by 20.00%, and the number of soil microsclerotia increased by 8.37 fold in the treatment of returning root stubble infected with V. dahliae to the field. No Verticillium wilt microsclerotia were detected in the feed prepared from cotton stalks and root stubble fermented for more than 5 days or in the transformed dung-sand. There was no risk of inoculation with Verticillium wilt microsclerotia when the dung-sand was returned to the field. The indirect return of cotton plants infected with V. dahliae to the field by microorganism–insect systems is worthy of further exploration plan of the green prevention and control for Verticillium wilt and the sustainable development of the cotton industry

Efficacy and adverse effects of transdermal fentanyl and sustained-release oral morphine in treating moderate-severe cancer pain in Chinese population: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous meta-analysis suggested that transdermal fentanyl was not inferior to sustained-release oral morphine in treating moderate-severe cancer pain with less adverse effects. Now, we updated the data and performed a systematic review.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Updated cohort studies on transdermal fentanyl and oral morphine in the treatment of cancer pain were searched in electronic databases including CBMdisc, CNKI, VIP, Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane Library. Primary end points assessed by meta-analysis were remission rate of pain and incidence of adverse effects. Quality of life was assessed by systematic review, which was the second end point.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>32 cohort studies, which included 2651 patients, were included in present study. The remission rate in transdermal fentanyl group and sustained-release oral morphine group were 86.60% and 88.31% respectively, there was no significant difference [RR = 1.13, 95% CI (0.92, 1.38), P = 0.23]. Compared with oral morphine group, there were less adverse effects in terms of constipation [RR = 0.35, 95% CI (0.27, 0.45), P < 0.00001], nausea/vomiting [RR = 0.57, 95% CI (0.49, 0.67), P < 0.00001], and vertigo/somnolence [RR = 0.59, 95% CI (0.51, 0.68), P < 0.00001] in transdermal fentanyl group. Six of selected trials supported either transdermal fentanyl or sustained-release oral morphine improved QOL of cancer patients and one of them showed more patients got better QOL after sustained-release oral morphine transferred to transdermal fentanyl.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study showed again that both transdermal fentanyl and oral morphine had the same efficacy in the treatment of moderate-severe cancer pain in Chinese population, but the former might have less adverse effects and better quality of life.</p

Medical image segmentation based on self-supervised hybrid fusion network

Automatic segmentation of medical images has been a hot research topic in the field of deep learning in recent years, and achieving accurate segmentation of medical images is conducive to breakthroughs in disease diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. In medicine, MRI imaging technology is often used to image brain tumors, and further judgment of the tumor area needs to be combined with expert analysis. If the diagnosis can be carried out by computer-aided methods, the efficiency and accuracy will be effectively improved. Therefore, this paper completes the task of brain tumor segmentation by building a self-supervised deep learning network. Specifically, it designs a multi-modal encoder-decoder network based on the extension of the residual network. Aiming at the problem of multi-modal feature extraction, the network introduces a multi-modal hybrid fusion module to fully extract the unique features of each modality and reduce the complexity of the whole framework. In addition, to better learn multi-modal complementary features and improve the robustness of the model, a pretext task to complete the masked area is set, to realize the self-supervised learning of the network. Thus, it can effectively improve the encoder’s ability to extract multi-modal features and enhance the noise immunity. Experimental results present that our method is superior to the compared methods on the tested datasets

25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in children of different ages and with varying degrees of Helicobacter pylori infection and immunological features

BackgroundHelicobacter pylori (HP) is a major cause of upper digestive tract diseases. However, the relationship between HP infection and 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels in children has not been fully elucidated. This study investigated the levels of 25(OH)D in children of different ages and with varying degrees of HP infection and immunological features as well as the correlations between 25(OH)D levels in children infected with HP and their ages and degrees of infection.Materials and methodsNinety-four children who underwent upper digestive endoscopy were divided into an HP-positive group without peptic ulcers (Group A), an HP-positive group with peptic ulcers (Group B) and an HP-negative control group (Group C). The serum levels of 25(OH)D and immunoglobulin and the percentages of lymphocyte subsets were determined. HP colonization, the degree of inflammation, and the degree of activity were further evaluated by HE staining and immunohistochemical staining in gastric mucosal biopsy.ResultsThe 25(OH)D level of the HP-positive groups (50.93 ± 16.51 nmol/L) was significantly lower than that of the HP-negative group (62.89 ± 19.18 nmol/L). The 25(OH)D level of Group B (47.79 ± 14.79 nmol/L) was lower than that of Group A (51.53 ± 17.05 nmol/L) and was significantly lower than that of Group C (62.89 ± 19.18 nmol/L). The 25(OH)D level decreased with increasing age, and there was a significant difference between Group C subjects who were ≤5 years old and those who were aged 6–9 years and ≥10 years. The 25(OH)D level was negatively correlated with HP colonization (r = −0.411, P &lt; 0.01) and the degree of inflammation (r = −0.456, P &lt; 0.01). The percentages of lymphocyte subsets and immunoglobulin levels among Groups A, B and C were not significantly different.ConclusionsThe 25(OH)D level was negatively correlated with HP colonization and the degree of inflammation. As the age of the children increased, the level of 25(OH)D decreased, and the susceptibility to HP infection increased

LyricWhiz: Robust Multilingual Zero-shot Lyrics Transcription by Whispering to ChatGPT

We introduce LyricWhiz, a robust, multilingual, and zero-shot automatic lyrics transcription method achieving state-of-the-art performance on various lyrics transcription datasets, even in challenging genres such as rock and metal. Our novel, training-free approach utilizes Whisper, a weakly supervised robust speech recognition model, and GPT-4, today's most performant chat-based large language model. In the proposed method, Whisper functions as the "ear" by transcribing the audio, while GPT-4 serves as the "brain," acting as an annotator with a strong performance for contextualized output selection and correction. Our experiments show that LyricWhiz significantly reduces Word Error Rate compared to existing methods in English and can effectively transcribe lyrics across multiple languages. Furthermore, we use LyricWhiz to create the first publicly available, large-scale, multilingual lyrics transcription dataset with a CC-BY-NC-SA copyright license, based on MTG-Jamendo, and offer a human-annotated subset for noise level estimation and evaluation. We anticipate that our proposed method and dataset will advance the development of multilingual lyrics transcription, a challenging and emerging task.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, 5 tables, accepted by ISMIR 202

A foodborne outbreak of gastroenteritis caused by vibrio parahaemolyticus and norovirus through non-seafood vehicle

Foodborne outbreaks caused by a mixed infection of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and norovirus have rarely been described. We reported a mixed outbreak of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and norovirus causing acute gastroenteritis in 99 staff members of a company in Guangdong, China, in May 2013, following consumption of roasted duck, an uncommon non-seafood vehicle for such mixed infection, in one meal served in the company's catering service. Epidemiological and laboratory findings indicated that a single asymptomatic food handler was the source of both pathogens, and the high rate of infection of both pathogens was exacerbated by the setting's suboptimal food hygiene practice. © 2015 Liu et al.published_or_final_versio

Live Bird Exposure among the General Public, Guangzhou, China, May 2013

Background A novel avian-origin influenza A(H7N9) caused a major outbreak in Mainland China in early 2013. Exposure to live poultry was believed to be the major route of infection. There are limited data on how the general public changes their practices regarding live poultry exposure in response to the early outbreak of this novel influenza and the frequency of population exposure to live poultry in different areas of China. Methodology This study investigated population exposures to live birds from various sources during the outbreak of H7N9 in Guangzhou city, China in 2013 and compared them with those observed during the 2006 influenza A(H5N1) outbreak. Adults were telephone-interviewed using two-stage sampling, stratified by three residential areas of Guangzhou: urban areas and two semi-rural areas in one of which (Zengcheng) A(H7N9) virus was detected in a chicken from wet markets. Logistic regression models were built to describe practices protecting against avian influenza, weighted by age and gender, and then compare these practices across residential areas in 2013 with those from a comparable 2006 survey. Principal Findings Of 1196 respondents, 45% visited wet markets at least daily and 22.0% reported buying live birds from wet markets at least weekly in April-May, 2013, after the H7N9 epidemic was officially declared in late March 2013. Of those buying live birds, 32.3% reported touching birds when buying and 13.7% would slaughter the poultry at home. Although only 10.1% of the respondents reported raising backyard birds, 92.1% of those who did so had physical contact with the birds they raised. Zengcheng respondents were less likely to report buying live birds from wet markets, but more likely to buy from other sources when compared to urban respondents. Compared with the 2006 survey, the prevalence of buying live birds from wet markets, touching when buying and slaughtering birds at home had substantially declined in the 2013 survey. Conclusion/Significance Although population exposures to live poultry were substantially fewer in 2013 compared to 2006, wet markets and backyard poultry remained the two major sources of live bird exposures for the public in Guangzhou in 2013. Zengcheng residents seemed to have reduced buying live birds from wet markets but not from other sources in response to the detection of H7N9 virus in wet markets.published_or_final_versio