The Existence and Uniqueness of Positive Periodic Solutions for a Class of Nicholson-Type Systems with Impulses and Delays

By establishing the equivalence, respectively, to the existence and uniqueness of positive periodic solutions for corresponding delay Nicholson-type systems without impulses, some criteria for the existence and uniqueness of positive periodic solutions for a class of Nicholson-type systems with impulses and delays are established. The results of this paper extend some earlier works reported in the literature

An Exploratory Study of Social Media Analysis for Rare Diseases using Machine Learning Algorithms: A case study of Trigeminal Neuralgia

Rare diseases, affecting approximately 30 million Americans, are often poorly understood by clinicians due to lack of familiarity with the disease and proper research. Patients with rare diseases are often unfavorably treated, especially those with extremely painful chronic orofacial rare disorders. In the absence of structured knowledge, such patients often choose social media to seek help from peers within patient-oriented social media communities thereby generating tremendous amounts of unstructured data daily. We investigate whether we can organize this unstructured data using machine learning to help members of rare communities find relevant information more efficiently in real-time. We chose Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN), an extremely painful rare disorder, as our case study and collected 20,000 social media TN posts. We categorized TN posts into Twitter (very short), and Facebook (short, medium, long) datasets based on message length and performed three clustering experiments. Results revealed GSDMM outperformed both K-means and Spherical K-means in clustering Facebook especially for short messages in terms of speed. For long messages, MDS reduction outperformed the PCA when both were used with K-means and Spherical K-means. Our study demonstrated the need for further topic modeling to utilize among high level clusters based on semantic analysis of posts within each cluster

Mean Square Almost Periodic Solutions for Impulsive Stochastic Differential Equations with Delays

We establish a result on existence and uniqueness on mean square almost periodic solutions for a class of impulsive stochastic differential equations with delays, which extends some earlier works reported in the literature

Recent Trends of Microfluidics in Food Science and Technology: Fabrications and Applications

The development of novel materials with microstructures is now a trend in food science and technology. These microscale materials may be applied across all steps in food manufacturing, from raw materials to the final food products, as well as in the packaging, transport, and storage processes. Microfluidics is an advanced technology for controlling fluids in a microscale channel (1~100 μm), which integrates engineering, physics, chemistry, nanotechnology, etc. This technology allows unit operations to occur in devices that are closer in size to the expected structural elements. Therefore, microfluidics is considered a promising technology to develop micro/nanostructures for delivery purposes to improve the quality and safety of foods. This review concentrates on the recent developments of microfluidic systems and their novel applications in food science and technology, including microfibers/films via microfluidic spinning technology for food packaging, droplet microfluidics for food micro-/nanoemulsifications and encapsulations, etc

Composite Coating of Oleaster Gum Containing Cuminal Keeps Postharvest Quality of Cherry Tomatoes by Reducing Respiration and Potentiating Antioxidant System

Exploring the green and affordable protection of perishable cherry tomato fruits during storage, herein, the protective efficacy, and its underpinning mechanisms, of a coating of oleaster gum, alone or incorporated with cuminal, on cherry tomatoes stored at ambient temperature was investigated. The composite coating of oleaster gum with 0.1% cuminal reduced the decay, respiration rate, weight loss, and softening of the fruits and decelerated the decreases in their total soluble solid, titratable acidity, and soluble protein levels, and therefore maintained their marketability. Furthermore, it reduced the accumulation of O2·− and H2O2 in the fruits and mitigated cell membrane lipid oxidation and permeabilization, thereby retarding their senescence. Instrumentally, it elevated the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, and ascorbate peroxidase and the levels of ascorbic acid and glutathione. This potentiation of the fruits’ antioxidant system makes this composite coating a promising approach to keeping the postharvest quality of perishable fruits

Wearable sensing, big data technology for cardiovascular healthcare: current status and future prospective

Abstract. Wearable technology, which can continuously and remotely monitor physiological and behavioral parameters by incorporated into clothing or worn as an accessory, introduces a new era for ubiquitous health care. With big data technology, wearable data can be analyzed to help long-term cardiovascular care. This review summarizes the recent developments of wearable technology related to cardiovascular care, highlighting the most common wearable devices and their accuracy. We also examined the application of these devices in cardiovascular healthcare, such as the early detection of arrhythmias, measuring blood pressure, and detecting prevalent diabetes. We provide an overview of the challenges that hinder the widespread application of wearable devices, such as inadequate device accuracy, data redundancy, concerns associated with data security, and lack of meaningful criteria, and offer potential solutions. Finally, the future research direction for cardiovascular care using wearable devices is discussed

Interactions between cytochrome c and DNA strands self-assembled at gold electrode

Abstract: In this work, we reported the investigation on the interaction between DNA strands self-assembled at gold electrodes and an electron transfer protein, cytochrome c. We observed that cytochrome c exhibited well-defined electrochemistry in both double-stranded and single-stranded DNA films. This suggested that the electron transfer reaction of cytochrome c arose possibly due to the electron hopping along DNA strands rather than wiring along the double helix. We also compared the heterogeneous electron transfer rate of cytochrome c with that of a ruthenium complex, which further confirmed this mechanism

Driving mechanisms of community biomass allocation along environmental gradients in different grasslands in China

A variable future climate would lead to changes in the biomass allocation pattern of plant communities, but its divergent changes under different environments have not been clearly explored, greatly limiting a better understanding of the responsess of grassland ecosystems to environmental changes. Herein, we conducted field samplings at 215 grassland sites in the Qinghai-Tibetan and Inner Mongolian Plateaus to analyze community biomass allocation patterns (specifically, the ratio of root to shoot, R/S) in various grasslands along environmental gradients. We found a gradual increase in R/S from humid to semi-arid and arid environments across both plateaus. In humid environment, soil factor had a significant effect on the R/S of alpine humid grassland, while climate factor had a significant effect on the R/S of humid grassland. In semi-arid environment, both climate and plant factors had significant effects on R/S in semi-arid grassland. In arid environments, climate and plant factors had significant effects on R/S in arid grassland. These findings emphasize the multifaceted role of environmental factors in shaping biomass allocations across diverse ecosystems, enriching our understanding of ecological dynamics. The current results are timely in advancing the fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of biomass allocation in grasslands and are useful for global research on grasslands in different environments