Climatology of Different Classifications of Tropical Cyclones Landfalling in Guangdong Province of China during 1951–2020

The climatology of different classifications (based on the intensity at the landfall time) of tropical cyclones (TCs) making landfall in Guangdong Province of China during 1951–2020 (70 years) is investigated using the best track data from the China Meteorological Administration and ERA5 reanalysis data. There were 234 TCs making landfall in Guangdong Province, with more severe tropical storms (STSs, 30.8%) and typhoons (TYs, 27.3%), and less tropical depressions (TDs, 19.7%) and tropical storms (TSs, 22.2%) during the past 70 years. The frequency of the landfall TCs had a significant interannual oscillation of 2–5 years. Landfall TCs generated over the western North Pacific (WNP) were usually more and stronger than those generated over the South China Sea (SCS). The TCs generated over the WNP had longer lifetime duration and shorter on-land duration than those generated over the SCS. TCs making landfall in western Guangdong were the most, followed by central Guangdong and eastern Guangdong. The composite analysis using TC-relative coordinates indicated that the precipitation of different classifications of TCs making landfall in Guangdong Province was asymmetric, which was stronger in the south of the TC center. The position of the maximum precipitation showed a cyclonic rotation around the TC center with increasing TC intensity. Generally, the vertical velocity, moisture flux, warm core, and vertical wind shear enhanced with the increasing landfall TC intensity. The vertical velocity and moisture flux of different classifications of TCs also showed an asymmetric structure related to the distribution of TC precipitation. TSs, STSs, and TYs had a double warm-core configuration. The precipitation of the TDs and TSs usually occurred over the down-shear of average vertical wind shear, those of the STSs and TYs over the left-of-shear

Automated Behavior Recognition and Tracking of Group-Housed Pigs with an Improved DeepSORT Method

Pig behavior recognition and tracking in group-housed livestock are effective aids for health and welfare monitoring in commercial settings. However, due to demanding farm conditions, the targets in the pig videos are heavily occluded and overlapped, and there are illumination changes, which cause error switches of pig identify (ID) in the tracking process and decrease the tracking quality. To solve these problems, this study proposed an improved DeepSORT algorithm for object tracking, which contained three processes. Firstly, two detectors, YOLOX-S and YOLO v5s, were developed to detect pig targets and classify four types of pig behaviors including lying, eating, standing, and other. Then, the improved DeepSORT was developed for pig behavior tracking and reducing error changes of pig ID by improving trajectory processing and data association. Finally, we established the public dataset annotation of group-housed pigs, with 3600 images in a total from 12 videos, which were suitable for pig tracking applications. The advantage of our method includes two aspects. One is that the trajectory processing and data association are improved by aiming at pig-specific scenarios, which are indoor scenes, and the number of pig target objects is stable. This improvement reduces the error switches of pig ID and enhances the stability of the tracking. The other is that the behavior classification information from the detectors is introduced into the tracking algorithm for behavior tracking. In the experiments of pig detection and behavior recognition, the YOLO v5s and YOLOX-S detectors achieved a high precision rate of 99.4% and 98.43%, a recall rate of 99% and 99.23, and a mean average precision (mAP) rate of 99.50% and 99.23%, respectively, with an AP.5:.95 of 89.3% and 87%. In the experiments of pig behavior tracking, the improved DeepSORT algorithm based on YOLOX-S obtained multi-object tracking accuracy (MOTA), ID switches (IDs), and IDF1 of 98.6%,15, and 95.7%, respectively. Compared with DeepSORT, it improved by 1.8% and 6.8% in MOTA and IDF1, respectively, and IDs had a significant decrease, with a decline of 80%. These experiments demonstrate that the improved DeepSORT can achieve pig behavior tracking with stable ID values under commercial conditions and provide scalable technical support for contactless automated pig monitoring

Climatology of Different Classifications of Tropical Cyclones Landfalling in Guangdong Province of China during 1951–2020

The climatology of different classifications (based on the intensity at the landfall time) of tropical cyclones (TCs) making landfall in Guangdong Province of China during 1951–2020 (70 years) is investigated using the best track data from the China Meteorological Administration and ERA5 reanalysis data. There were 234 TCs making landfall in Guangdong Province, with more severe tropical storms (STSs, 30.8%) and typhoons (TYs, 27.3%), and less tropical depressions (TDs, 19.7%) and tropical storms (TSs, 22.2%) during the past 70 years. The frequency of the landfall TCs had a significant interannual oscillation of 2–5 years. Landfall TCs generated over the western North Pacific (WNP) were usually more and stronger than those generated over the South China Sea (SCS). The TCs generated over the WNP had longer lifetime duration and shorter on-land duration than those generated over the SCS. TCs making landfall in western Guangdong were the most, followed by central Guangdong and eastern Guangdong. The composite analysis using TC-relative coordinates indicated that the precipitation of different classifications of TCs making landfall in Guangdong Province was asymmetric, which was stronger in the south of the TC center. The position of the maximum precipitation showed a cyclonic rotation around the TC center with increasing TC intensity. Generally, the vertical velocity, moisture flux, warm core, and vertical wind shear enhanced with the increasing landfall TC intensity. The vertical velocity and moisture flux of different classifications of TCs also showed an asymmetric structure related to the distribution of TC precipitation. TSs, STSs, and TYs had a double warm-core configuration. The precipitation of the TDs and TSs usually occurred over the down-shear of average vertical wind shear, those of the STSs and TYs over the left-of-shear

Table_1_Vitamin D status and its associations with bone mineral density, bone turnover markers, and parathyroid hormone in Chinese postmenopausal women with osteopenia and osteoporosis.docx

BackgroundVitamin D is a key factor in bone metabolism, yet vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency are prevalent among postmenopausal women, with potential repercussions on bone mineral density (BMD), bone turnover markers (BTMs), and parathyroid hormone (PTH). Nonetheless, the findings from existing studies exhibit inconsistency, and a notable gap exists in the availability of large-scale investigations.MethodsIn this real-world study, 8,532 postmenopausal women over 50 years old with a diagnosis of osteopenia (50.9%) and osteoporosis (49.1%) at the first visit were enrolled in this study. Serum 25(OH)D level, PTH, osteocalcin (OC) and Beta-CrossLaps of type 1 collagen containing cross-linked C-telopeptide (β-CTX), were measured. BMD at all sites, including the lumbar spine, femoral neck, and total hip were obtained by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The associations of serum 25(OH)D level with BMDs and BTMs were investigated using spearman correlation analysis and analysis of general linear model adjusted by age and body mass index.ResultsThe serum 25(OH)D level was 22.17 ± 9.75 ng/mL among all patients included in this study. For the osteopenia group, the serum 25(OH)D level was 22.40 ± 9.41 ng/mL, while for the osteoporosis group, it measured 21.93 ± 10.08 ng/mL. In the osteopenia group, the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, insufficiency and sufficiency was 45.8, 34.6, and 19.6%, respectively, which was close to that of the osteoporosis group (47.4, 34.3, and 18.3%) (p = 0.202). Spearman correlation analysis unveiled negative associations between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and both BTMs and PTH within both the osteopenia and osteoporosis group. In the osteoporosis group, there were positive correlations between 25(OH)D levels and femoral neck BMD (r = 0.040, p = 0.010) and total hip BMD (r = 0.053, p = 0.001). Furthermore, we found that for the osteopenia group, greater vitamin D levels were associated with greater femoral neck BMD (p = 0.020) and total hip BMD (p = 0.008) and lower β-CTX (p ConclusionThis study showed high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency in Chinese postmenopausal women with osteopenia and osteoporosis and the relationships between vitamin D and BMD, BTMs and PTH. The results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how vitamin D may impact bone health.</p

How far are direct alcohol fuel cells from our energy future?

Direct alcohol fuel cells (DAFCs) have been attracting more and more attention and interest during the last decade due to their simplicity, the easy handle and the high power density of the liquid alcohol fuels. However, along with DAFCs' development several problems related to their performance optimizations have arisen that are well established and researches are already in progress for their solutions. These problems are responsible for the short lifetime and low cell performance and can be summarized as follows: (a) low alcohol electro-oxidation kinetics, (b) alcohol crossover, and (c) electrode delamination. This article briefly reviews DAFCs' state of the art, the pertinent work done for the localization and quantification of the above-mentioned problems and the work aiming at the identification and use of novel materials which could catalyze the rate-determining step for the DAFCs' development and further commercialization. Furthermore, taking into account that fuel choice is still a disputed issue, the alcohols suitable as potential fuels for DAFCs are also summarized and compared. Copyright © 2007 by ASME

Are medical record front page data suitable for risk adjustment in hospital performance measurement? Development and validation of a risk model of in-hospital mortality after acute myocardial infarction

Objectives To develop a model of in-hospital mortality using medical record front page (MRFP) data and assess its validity in case-mix standardisation by comparison with a model developed using the complete medical record data.Design A nationally representative retrospective study.Setting Representative hospitals in China, covering 161 hospitals in modelling cohort and 156 hospitals in validation cohort.Participants Representative patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction. 8370 patients in modelling cohort and 9704 patients in validation cohort.Primary outcome measures In-hospital mortality, which was defined explicitly as death that occurred during hospitalisation, and the hospital-level risk standardised mortality rate (RSMR).Results A total of 14 variables were included in the model predicting in-hospital mortality based on MRFP data, with the area under receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.78 among modelling cohort and 0.79 among validation cohort. The median of absolute difference between the hospital RSMR predicted by hierarchical generalised linear models established based on MRFP data and complete medical record data, which was built as ‘reference model’, was 0.08% (10th and 90th percentiles: −1.8% and 1.6%). In the regression model comparing the RSMR between two models, the slope and intercept of the regression equation is 0.90 and 0.007 in modelling cohort, while 0.85 and 0.010 in validation cohort, which indicated that the evaluation capability from two models were very similar.Conclusions The models based on MRFP data showed good discrimination and calibration capability, as well as similar risk prediction effect in comparison with the model based on complete medical record data, which proved that MRFP data could be suitable for risk adjustment in hospital performance measurement