An External Calibration Method for Compensating for the Mutual Coupling Effect in Large Interferometric Aperture Synthesis Radiometers

This paper deals with the antenna mutual coupling effect in interferometric aperture synthesis radiometers (IASRs), which degrades the system radiometric performance. First, the conventional mutual impedance (CMI) is adopted to analyze the mutual coupling effect on the performance of IASR and a practical model of the coupled visibilities is developed. Based on the model, an external calibration method is then proposed to compensate for the mutual coupling effect. In this method, the measured visibilities are decoupled through the difference measurement between the original scene and a naturally occurring reference scene. Compared to the previous methods, the proposed method requires no extra additional hardware cost and has easier implementation and, therefore, fits for the large interferometric array radiometers. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Osteoma in the upper cervical spine with spinal cord compression

Osteoma is a common benign tumor. It occurs dominantly at the skull bone. Outside skull osteoma is rare, and primary intra-canal osteoma is extremely rare. To the author’s knowledge, only 14 cases of osteomas of the spine had been reported, in which only seven cases were in English literature. The authors reported two rare cases of intra-canal osteoma of the upper cervical spine with cord compression. Included are pertinent history, physical examination, rontgenographic evaluation before and after operation, surgical interventions, pathological study, and outcome. The available literature is also reviewed. On systemic examination and rontgenographic study, these two cases were found to have bone tumor in the upper cervical canal. Surgical interventions were performed, one with an en bloc excision, the other with a subtotal excision. The pathological study demonstrated a diagnosis of osteoma. After a follow-up with 20 and 15 months, the clinical symptoms of both cases significantly improved

Association Between Maternal Weight Gain in Different Periods of Pregnancy and the Risk of Venous Thromboembolism: A Retrospective Case–Control Study

BackgroundVenous thromboembolism (VTE) remains an important cause of maternal deaths. Little is known about the associations of specific periods of gestational weight gain (GWG) with the category of VTE, pulmonary embolism (PE), or deep venous thrombosis (DVT) with or without PE.MethodsIn a retrospective case–control study conducted in Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital from January 1, 2017 to September 30, 2021, cases of VTE within pregnancy or the first 6 postnatal weeks were identified. Controls without VTE were randomly selected from women giving birth on the same day as the cases, with 10 controls matched to each case. Total GWG and rates of early, mid, and late GWG values were standardized into z-scores, stratified by pre-pregnant body mass index (BMI). The adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated through multivariate logistic regression models.ResultsThere were 196 cases (14.4 per 10,000) of VTE within pregnancy or the first 6 postnatal weeks were identified. Higher total weight gain was associated with increased risks of PE (aOR, 13.22; 95% CI, 2.03–85.99) and VTE (OR, 10.49; 95% CI, 1.82–60.45) among women with underweight. In addition, higher total weight gain was associated with increased risk of PE (aOR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.14–3.72) among women with healthy weight. Similarly, rate of higher early weight gain was associated with significantly increased risk for PE (aOR, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.05–4.42) among women with healthy BMI. The lower rate of late weight gain was associated with increased risks of PE (aOR, 7.30; 95% CI, 1.14–46.55) and VTE (OR, 7.54; 95% CI, 1.20–47.57) among women with underweight. No significant associations between maternal rate of mid GWG and increased risk for any category of VTE, PE, or DVT with or without PE were present, regardless of maternal pre-pregnant BMI.ConclusionThe GWG associations with the category of VTE, PE, or DVT with or without PE differ at different periods of pregnancy. In order to effectively improve maternal and child outcomes, intensive weight management that continues through pregnancy may be indispensable

Pathological Features of Enterovirus 71-Associated Brain and Lung Damage in Mice Based on Quantitative Proteomic Analysis

The outbreaks of enterovirus 71 (EV71)-associated hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) have emerged as an emergency of global health due to its association with fatal encephalitis and subsequent neurogenic pulmonary edema; however, the molecular characteristics and pathological features underlying EV71-associated encephalitis and pulmonary edema remain largely unknown. In this study, we performed a proteomic analysis of fresh brain and lung tissues from EV71-infected mice at 7 days post infection. We detected a perturbed expression of 148 proteins in the brain and 78 proteins in the lung after EV71 expression. Further analysis showed that the dysregulated proteins in the brain are involved in a variety of fundamental biological pathways, including complement and coagulation cascades, innate and adaptive immune responses, platelet activation, and nitrogen metabolism, and those proteins in the lung participate in innate and adaptive immune responses, phagosome, arginine biosynthesis, and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 signaling pathway. Our results suggested that immune activation, complement and coagulation dysfunction, platelet activation, imbalance of nitrogen metabolism, and hypoxia could be involved in the pathogenesis of EV71, which explains the major clinical manifestation of hyperinflammatory status of severe HFMD cases. Our study provides further understanding of the molecular basis of EV71 pathogenesis

Thoracic myelopathy caused by ossification of ligamentum flavum of which fluorosis as an etiology factor

PURPOSE: To evaluate the clinical feature, operative method and prognosis of thoracic ossification of ligamentum flavum caused by skeletal fluorosis. METHODS: All the patients with thoracic OLF, who underwent surgical management in the authors' hospital from 1993–2003, were retrospectively studied. The diagnosis of skeletal fluorosis was made by the epidemic history, clinical symptoms, radiographic findings, and urinalysis. En bloc laminectomy decompression of the involved thoracic levels was performed in all cases. Cervical open door decompression or lumbar laminectomy decompression was performed if relevant stenosis existed. The neurological statuses were evaluated with the Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) scoring system preoperatively and at the end point of follow up. Also, the recovery rate was calculated. RESULTS: 23 cases have been enrolled in this study. Imaging study findings showed all the cases have ossification of ligamentum flavum together with ossification of many other ligaments and interosseous membranes, i.e. interosseous membranes of the forearm in 18 of 23 (78.3%), of the leg in 14 of 23 (60.1%) and of the ribs in 11 of 23 (47.8%). Urinalysis showed markedly increased urinary fluoride in 14 of 23 patients (60.9%). All the patients were followed up from 12 months to 9 years and 3 months, with an average of 4 years and 5 months. The JOA score increased significantly at the end of follow up (P = 0.0001). The recovery rate was 51.83 ± 32.36%. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the preoperative JOA score was an important predictor of surgical outcome (p = 0.0022, r = 0.60628). ANOVA analysis showed that patients with acute onset or too long duration had worse surgical result (P = 0.0003). CONCLUSION: Fluorosis can cause ossification of thoracic ligamentum flavum, as well as other ligaments. En bloc laminectomy decompression was an effective method. Preoperative JOA score was the most important predictor of surgical outcome. Patients with acute onset or too long duration had worse surgical outcome

Implementation and performances of the IPbus protocol for the JUNO Large-PMT readout electronics

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large neutrino detector currently under construction in China. Thanks to the tight requirements on its optical and radio-purity properties, it will be able to perform leading measurements detecting terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos in a wide energy range from tens of keV to hundreds of MeV. A key requirement for the success of the experiment is an unprecedented 3% energy resolution, guaranteed by its large active mass (20 kton) and the use of more than 20,000 20-inch photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) acquired by high-speed, high-resolution sampling electronics located very close to the PMTs. As the Front-End and Read-Out electronics is expected to continuously run underwater for 30 years, a reliable readout acquisition system capable of handling the timestamped data stream coming from the Large-PMTs and permitting to simultaneously monitor and operate remotely the inaccessible electronics had to be developed. In this contribution, the firmware and hardware implementation of the IPbus based readout protocol will be presented, together with the performances measured on final modules during the mass production of the electronics