The Connecting Method for the Spiral Blades of Concrete Mixer Truck

For the spiral blade of the concrete mixing tank of concrete mixer truck, in order to satisfy the stirring and discharging performance, the installation angle and helix angle of the blade should be assigned according to their segmentation function. Due to the different helix angles and the installation tilt angles, a junction gap of blade is formed at the joint, resulting in the severe silting of discharge or the uneven agitation. We put forward a more reasonable solution by using the MFG (method of fitting gradient) to solve the gap connection of spiral blades. The MFG that can reduce the discharging residual rate of the mixing material has been verified by experiments and applied to actual mass production. We also make the coupling simulation of Multi-Physics Field based on simulation software 17-STARCCM+® to visually verify the scientificity of design and study the complex stresses distribution inside the actual mixing tank. Finally, we provide an up-to-date reference for the design of spiral logarithmic blade, solving the problem of the gap at the traditional spiral-blade connection

Prevalence of mobile genetic elements and transposase genes in Vibrio alginolyticus from the southern coastal region of China and their role in horizontal gene transfer

Vibrio alginolyticus has high genetic diversity, but little is known about the means by which it has been acquired. In this study, the distributions of mobile genetic elements (MGEs), including integrating conjugative elements (ICEs), superintegron-like cassettes (SICs), insertion sequences (ISs), and two types of transposase genes (valT1 and valT2), in 192 strains of V. alginolyticus were investigated. ICE, SIC, and IS elements, valT1, and valT2 were detected in 8.9 %, 13.0 %, 4.7 %, 9.4 %, and 2.6 % of the strains, respectively. Blast searches and phylogenetic analysis of the acquired sequences of the ICE, SIC, IS elements and transposase genes showed that the corresponding homologues were bacterial and derived from extensive sources. The high prevalences of the se MGEs in V. alginolyticus implied the extensive and frequent exchange of genes with environmental bacteria and that these elements strongly contribute to the genetic and phenotypic diversity of the bacterium. To our knowledge, this is the fi rst report of V. alginolyticus harboring ICE and SIC elements. [Int Microbiol 2012; 15(4): 199-208

GPS-MBA: Computational Analysis of MHC Class II Epitopes in Type 1 Diabetes

As a severe chronic metabolic disease and autoimmune disorder, type 1 diabetes (T1D) affects millions of people world-wide. Recent advances in antigen-based immunotherapy have provided a great opportunity for further treating T1D with a high degree of selectivity. It is reported that MHC class II I-Ag7 in the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse and human HLA-DQ8 are strongly linked to susceptibility to T1D. Thus, the identification of new I-Ag7 and HLA-DQ8 epitopes would be of great help to further experimental and biomedical manipulation efforts. In this study, a novel GPS-MBA (MHC Binding Analyzer) software package was developed for the prediction of I-Ag7 and HLA-DQ8 epitopes. Using experimentally identified epitopes as the training data sets, a previously developed GPS (Group-based Prediction System) algorithm was adopted and improved. By extensive evaluation and comparison, the GPS-MBA performance was found to be much better than other tools of this type. With this powerful tool, we predicted a number of potentially new I-Ag7 and HLA-DQ8 epitopes. Furthermore, we designed a T1D epitope database (TEDB) for all of the experimentally identified and predicted T1D-associated epitopes. Taken together, this computational prediction result and analysis provides a starting point for further experimental considerations, and GPS-MBA is demonstrated to be a useful tool for generating starting information for experimentalists. The GPS-MBA is freely accessible for academic researchers at: http://mba.biocuckoo.org

Impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on culture-proven sepsis in neonates

ObjectiveTo assess the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the epidemiology of neonatal sepsis and the antibiotic resistance profiles of pathogens involved.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study analyzed infants diagnosed with culture-proven sepsis at the neonatal department of a tertiary children’s hospital in East China from January 2016 to December 2022. We compared the clinical and microbiological characteristics of neonatal sepsis cases between the pre-pandemic Phase I (2016–2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic Phase II (2020–2022).ResultsA total of 507 infants with 525 sepsis episodes were included, with 343 episodes in Phase I and 182 in Phase II. The incidence of early-onset sepsis (EOS) was significantly lower during Phase II (p < 0.05). Infants in Phase II had lower gestational ages and birth weights compared to Phase I. Clinical signs such as mottled skin, severe anemia, thrombocytopenia were more prevalent in Phase II, alongside a higher incidence of complications. Notably, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) (p < 0.05) and meningitis (p < 0.1) occurred more frequently during Phase II. Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) were the predominant pathogens isolated from infants of death and cases with complications. A significant decrease in the proportion of K. pneumoniae was observed in Phase II, alongside increased antibiotic resistance in both E. coli and K. pneumoniae. The period of the COVID-19 pandemic (Phase II) was identified as an independent risk factor for complications in infants with neonatal sepsis.ConclusionCOVID-19 pandemic response measures correlated with a decrease in EOS and an increase in neonatal sepsis complications and antibiotic resistance

Survey of Automatic Labeling Methods for Topic Models

Topic models are often used in modeling unstructured corpora and discrete data to extract the latent topic. As topics are generally expressed in the form of word lists, it is usually difficult for users to understand the meanings of topics, especially when users lack knowledge in the subject area. Although manually labeling topics can generate more explanatory and easily understandable topic labels, the cost is too high for the method to be feasible. Therefore, research on automatic labeling of topic discovered provides solutions to the problem. Firstly, the currently most popular technique, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), is elaborated and analyzed. According to the three different representations of topic labels, based on phrases, abstracts, and pictures, the topic labeling methods are classified into three types. Then, centered on improving the interpretability of topics, with different types of generated topic labels utilized, the relevant research in recent years is sorted out, analyzed, and summarized. The applicable scenarios and usability of different labels are also discussed. Meanwhile, methods are further categorized according to their different characteristics. The focus is placed on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the abstract topic labels generated through lexical-based, submodular optimization, and graph-based methods. The differences between separate methods with respect to the learning types, technologies used, and data sources are then compared. Finally, the existing problems and trend of development of research on automatic topic labeling are discussed. Based on deep learning, integrating with sentiment analysis, and continuously expanding the applicable scenarios of topic labeling, will be the directions of future development

Andrographolide alleviates paraquat-induced acute lung injury by activating the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway

Objective(s): Paraquat (PQ), a highly effective and rapidly non-selective herbicide, mainly targets the lungs and causes acute lung injury (ALI). So far, the scarcity of effective drug candidates against PQ-induced ALI remains a big challenge. Andrographolide (Andro), with its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities, has been demonstrated to alleviate ALI. Nevertheless, whether Andro could alleviate the PQ-mediated ALI remains unknown. Therefore, this study will explore the effects as well as the possible mechanism of Andro against ALI caused by PQ. Materials and Methods: C57BL/6J mice were injected with 20 mg/kg PQ intraperitoneally to establish an ALI model. PQ-treated MLE-12 cells were applied to a vitro model. Nuclear factor erythroid like-2 (Nrf2) was knocked out to explore the specific effects of the Nrf2/ Heme oxygenase-1 (OH-1) pathway in the protection of Andro against ALI caused by PQ.Results: Andro significantly reduced lung damage and the ratio of Wet/Dry (W/D) weight, decreased MDA, IL-6, IL-1β, and TNF-ɑ levels, reversed the decrease of CAT and SOD levels, and inhibited apoptosis caused by PQ. Andro obviously increased the ratio of Bcl-2/Bax while reducing caspase-3 and cleaved caspase-3 levels. Furthermore, Andro dramatically elevated the antioxidant proteins Nrf2, NQO-1, and HO-1 levels compared with the PQ group. This experiment demonstrated that Andro reduced ROS and inhibited apoptosis, induced by PQ in MLE-12 cells, by inducing Nrf2/HO-1 pathway activation.Conclusion: Andro effectively ameliorates oxidant stress and apoptosis in ALI caused by PQ, possibly through inducing Nrf2/HO-1 pathway activation

Simultaneous Determination of 49 Antibiotics Residues in Pork by a Modified QuEChERS Method Based on Silanized Melamine Sponge Coupled with Ultra-high Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Two new types of elastic porous silanized melamine sponges (MeS) were prepared by silylation reaction using octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) and N-[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl]ethylenediamine (ATS), which were respectively designated as OTS@MeS and ATS@MeS. The silanized sponges were used to develop a modified quick, easy, check, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method that can quickly and efficiently separate interfering matrices from the extract through spontaneous solution infiltration and physical extrusion. In this study, an analytical method using the modified QuEChERS procedure combined with ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was established for the simultaneous determination of 49 antibiotic residues in pork. Samples were extracted with 10 mL of acetonitrile containing 0.1% acetic acid, and then salted out with 2.0 g of Na2SO4 and 0.5 g of NaCl. After centrifugation, a 1 mL aliquot of the supernatant was cleaned up with a mixture of OTS@MeS and ATS@MeS. The chromatographic separation was conducted on an Agilent ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18 column with gradient elution using a mobile phase comprised of methanol and aqueous solution (methanol/water, 5:95, V/V) containing 0.1% formic acid and 5 mmol/L ammonium acetate. The qualitative and quantitative detection were performed by multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) using an electrospray ionization source in the positive ion mode. The results showed that the correlation coefficients for all analytes were greater than 0.999. The matrix effects (ME) were in the range of −13.5%−10.9%. The limits of detection (LOQ) and quantitation (LOQ) were 0.1–10.0 and 0.3–33.3 μg/kg, respectively. The recoveries at three spiked levels ranged from 65.0% to 112.7%, with intra- and interday relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.3%–11.8% and 2.4%–18.4%, respectively. The developed method was simple, rapid, highly sensitive and accurate, and could be used for the efficient and rapid determination of the 49 antibiotics residues in pork