Identification and functional characterization of EseH, a new effector of the type III secretion system of Edwardsiella piscicida

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135199/1/cmi12638_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135199/2/cmi12638.pd

Affection Driven Neural Networks for Sentiment Analysis

Deep neural network models have played a critical role in sentiment analysis with promising results in the recent decade. One of the essential challenges, however, is how external sentiment knowledge can be effectively utilized. In this work, we propose a novel affection-driven approach to incorporating affective knowledge into neural network models. The affective knowledge is obtained in the form of a lexicon under the Affect Control Theory (ACT), which is represented by vectors of three-dimensional attributes in Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (EPA). The EPA vectors are mapped to an affective influence value and then integrated into Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) models to highlight affective terms. Experimental results show a consistent improvement of our approach over conventional LSTM models by 1.0% to 1.5% in accuracy on three large benchmark datasets. Evaluations across a variety of algorithms have also proven the effectiveness of leveraging affective terms for deep model enhancement

A Case report: Synovial sarcoma of the mediastinum in an 18-year-old teenager

Synovial sarcomas (SSs) are a rare group of malignant tumors originating from pluripotential mesenchymal cells, which commonly occur as the primary tumor in the soft tissues near the articular surface, tendons, and articular synovium. Herein, we report a rare case of mediastinal SS in an 18-year-old teenager who initially presented with cough as the primary symptom. In this case, plain chest CT and contrast-enhanced CT clearly revealed the lesion presenting as a round-like and uneven density mass in the mediastinum with heterogeneous enhancement, which compressed the trachea and invaded the adjacent vessels. Based on the results of immunohistochemistry and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), combined with the differential diagnosis with other types of tumors in the mediastinum on imaging, we were able to diagnose the tumor as an SS located in the mediastinum. Subsequent resection of the lesion coupled with chemotherapy and immunotherapy led to an improvement in the patient’s symptoms

A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Comprehensive Smoking-Cessation Interventions Based on the Community and Hospital Collaboration

BackgroundThe prevalence of cigarette smoking in China is high and the utilization of smoking cessation clinics is very low. Multicomponent smoking cessation interventions involving community and hospital collaboration have the potential to increase the smoking cessation rate. However, the cost-effectiveness of this intervention model is unknown.MethodsWe conducted a smoking cessation intervention trial in 19 community health service centers in Beijing, China. A cost-effectiveness analysis was performed from a societal perspective to compare three strategies of smoking cessation: no intervention (NI), pharmacological intervention (PI), and comprehensive intervention (CI) (PI plus online health promotion). A Markov model, with a time horizon of 20 years, was used to simulate the natural progression of estimated 10,000 male smokers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to obtain data on costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) by using the five-level EuroQol-5-dimension (EQ-5D-5L) questionnaire. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was performed to explore parameters of uncertainty in the model.ResultsA total of 680 participants were included in this study, including 283 in the PI group and 397 in the CI group. After 6 months of follow-up, the smoking cessation rate reached 30.0% in the CI group and 21.2% in the PI group. Using the Markov model, compared with the NI group, the intervention strategies of the PI group and the CI group were found to be cost-effective, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $535.62/QALY and$366.19/QALY, respectively. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis indicated that the CI strategy was always the most cost-effective intervention.ConclusionCI for smoking cessation, based in hospital and community in China, is more cost-effective than PI alone. Therefore, this smoking cessation model should be considered to be implemented in healthcare settings

Syntaxin of plants71 plays essential roles in plant development and stress response via regulating pH homeostasis

SYP71, a plant-specific Qc-SNARE with multiple subcellular localization, is essential for symbiotic nitrogen fixation in nodules in Lotus, and is implicated in plant resistance to pathogenesis in rice, wheat and soybean. Arabidopsis SYP71 is proposed to participate in multiple membrane fusion steps during secretion. To date, the molecular mechanism underlying SYP71 regulation on plant development remains elusive. In this study, we clarified that AtSYP71 is essential for plant development and stress response, using techniques of cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and transcriptomics. AtSYP71-knockout mutant atsyp71-1 was lethal at early development stage due to the failure of root elongation and albinism of the leaves. AtSYP71-knockdown mutants, atsyp71-2 and atsyp71-3, had short roots, delayed early development, and altered stress response. The cell wall structure and components changed significantly in atsyp71-2 due to disrupted cell wall biosynthesis and dynamics. Reactive oxygen species homeostasis and pH homeostasis were also collapsed in atsyp71-2. All these defects were likely resulted from blocked secretion pathway in the mutants. Strikingly, change of pH value significantly affected ROS homeostasis in atsyp71-2, suggesting interconnection between ROS and pH homeostasis. Furthermore, we identified AtSYP71 partners and propose that AtSYP71 forms distinct SNARE complexes to mediate multiple membrane fusion steps in secretory pathway. Our findings suggest that AtSYP71 plays an essential role in plant development and stress response via regulating pH homeostasis through secretory pathway

Association of inpatient use of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers with mortality among patients with hypertension hospitalized with COVID-19

Rationale: Use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) is a major concern for clinicians treating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients with hypertension. Objective: To determine the association between in-hospital use of ACEI/ARB and all-cause mortality in COVID-19 patients with hypertension. Methods and Results: This retrospective, multi-center study included 1128 adult patients with hypertension diagnosed with COVID-19, including 188 taking ACEI/ARB (ACEI/ARB group; median age 64 [IQR 55-68] years; 53.2% men) and 940 without using ACEI/ARB (non-ACEI/ARB group; median age 64 [IQR 57-69]; 53.5% men), who were admitted to nine hospitals in Hubei Province, China from December 31, 2019 to February 20, 2020. Unadjusted mortality rate was lower in the ACEI/ARB group versus the non-ACEI/ARB group (3.7% vs. 9.8%; P = 0.01). In mixed-effect Cox model treating site as a random effect, after adjusting for age, gender, comorbidities, and in-hospital medications, the detected risk for all-cause mortality was lower in the ACEI/ARB group versus the non-ACEI/ARB group (adjusted HR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.19-0.92; P =0.03). In a propensity score-matched analysis followed by adjusting imbalanced variables in mixed-effect Cox model, the results consistently demonstrated lower risk of COVID-19 mortality in patients who received ACEI/ARB versus those who did not receive ACEI/ARB (adjusted HR, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.15-0.89; P = 0.03). Further subgroup propensity score-matched analysis indicated that, compared to use of other antihypertensive drugs, ACEI/ARB was also associated with decreased mortality (adjusted HR, 0.30; 95%CI, 0.12-0.70; P = 0.01) in COVID-19 patients with hypertension. Conclusions: Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients with hypertension, inpatient use of ACEI/ARB was associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality compared with ACEI/ARB non-users. While study interpretation needs to consider the potential for residual confounders, it is unlikely that in-hospital use of ACEI/ARB was associated with an increased mortality risk

Review of biochar role as additive in anaerobic digestion processes

because of the urgent need to provide renewable energy sources and efficiently manage the continuously growing amount of organic waste. Biochar (BC) is an extremely versatile material, which could be produced by carbonization of organic materials, including biomass and wastes, consistently with Circular Economy principles, and “tailor-made” for specific applications. The potential BC role as additive in the control of the many wellknown critical issues of AD processes has been increasingly explored over the past few years. However, a clear and comprehensive understanding of the connections between BC and AD is still missing. This review paper analyses and discusses significant references (review articles, research papers and international databases and reports), mostly published in the last 10 years. This review is aimed at addressing three key issues related to the better understanding of the BC role in AD processes: 1. Investigation of the influence of BC properties on AD performances and of their ability to counteract its main challenges; 2. Assessment of the optimal BC production chain (i.e. feedstock-pyrolysis-activation) to achieve the desired features; 3. Evaluation of the economic and environmental advantages connected to BC use in AD processes, compared to conventional solutions applied to address AD challenges

A novel optimized grey model and its application in forecasting CO2 emissions

Carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of global warming. At present, how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while promoting energy savings and emission reduction is a hot research topic. Hence, China’s carbon dioxide emissions must be reasonably and accurately predicted because it is very important for the Chinese government to formulate energy and environmental policies. In this study, the classical optimization theory of the Fibonacci sequence and golden ratio were applied to the grey prediction model of an approximately inhomogeneous exponential series. Then, a new optimization model was established, and the properties of the optimization model were studied. The purpose is to reduce the parameter estimation errors of the model and improve the simulation and prediction accuracy of the model. Next, the novel model was applied to the simulation and prediction of CO2 emissions in China. The experimental results show that the effectiveness of the novel model was much better than that of the other models, which confirms the effectiveness of the new model. Based on this, China’s carbon dioxide emissions were predicted and analysed. The results show that China’s carbon dioxide emissions will still be on the rise over the next five years, and carbon dioxide emissions remain a serious problem

Application of Improved CycleGAN in Laser-Visible Face Image Translation

CycleGAN is widely used in various image translations, such as thermal-infrared–visible-image translation, near-infrared–visible-image translation, and shortwave-infrared–visible-image translation. However, most image translations are used for infrared-to-visible translation, and the wide application of laser imaging has an increasingly strong demand for laser–visible image translation. In addition, the current image translation is mainly aimed at frontal face images, which cannot be effectively utilized to translate faces at a certain angle. In this paper, we construct a laser-visible face mapping dataset; in case of the gradient dispersion of the objective function of the original adversarial loss, the least squares loss function is used to replace the cross-entropy loss function and an identity loss function is added to strengthen the network constraints on the generator. The experimental results indicate that the SSIM value of the improved model increases by 1.25%, 8%, 0, 8%, the PSNR value is not much different, and the FID value decreases by 11.22, 12.85, 43.37 and 72.19, respectively, compared with the CycleGAN, Pix2pix, U-GAN-IT and StarGAN models. In the profile image translation, in view of the poor extraction effect of CycleGAN’s original feature extraction module ResNet, the RRDB module is used to replace it based on the first improvement. The experimental results show that, compared with the CycleGAN, Pix2pix, U-GAN-IT, StarGAN and the first improved model, the SSIM value of the improved model increased by 3.75%, 10.67%, 2.47%, 10.67% and 2.47%, respectively; the PSNR value increased by 1.02, 2.74, 0.32, 0.66 and 0.02, respectively; the FID value reduced by 26.32, 27.95, 58.47, 87.29 and 15.1, respectively. Subjectively, the contour features and facial features were better conserved