Inclusion of pedagogical universities in international subject rankings: Problems and prospects

The present study actualizes the problem of internationalization of Russian pedagogical education, the solution to which will ensure the “recognition of universities” in the global education market and the entry of Russian and Chinese universities into the international educational market. We associate the solution to this problem with the digitalization of education, the internationalization of the national system of higher education, organization of worldclass research, participation in projects, programs and international professional associations. The study used the method of analysis of open sources of data, a survey of experts (working at the Higher School of Economics (HSE), Kazan Federal University (KFU)) and the method of semi-structured interviews. The empirical basis of the study was the analysis of data from the international rankings Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS), Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) (including the subject ranking “Education”) and the Moscow International Ranking “Three University Missions” (MosIUR). In the experimental activities, the results of the monitoring study of the participation of Russian universities in MosIUR that have the required validity and are an adequate tool for scientific assessment of changes were used. The study identified and confirmed that international rankings use different source bases for similar indicators. In the TNE ranking, the assessment of the citation of scientific works is carried out according to the international scientometric database Web of Science, while the QS ranking uses the citation index of scientific publications of teachers from the scientometric database Scopus. A monitoring study of the effectiveness of the participation of Russian universities in the MosIUR ranking for 2018–2020 shows the high activity of universities. The analysis of strategies and programs for the development of pedagogical universities included in the MosIUR ranking showed the orientation of universities to solve intra-sectoral problems and consider regional specifics. It has been established that, for pedagogical universities, it is becoming significant to reorient from institutional rankings to subject and branch ones, which measure the international reputation of an educational institution in a particular subject branch. The results of a monitoring study in 2017–2021 showed a low probability of achieving indicators of international rankings ARWU, THE, QS (including the subject ranking “Education”) for Russian pedagogical universities. The most promising for pedagogical universities may be the Moscow International Ranking “Three University Missions”, as well as the use of the experience of leading research universities of the TOP 5–100 project, which occupy high ranks in international rankings – HSE (QS subject ranking “Education”) and KFU (THE, subject ranking “Education”)

CT synthesis from MRI with an improved multi-scale learning network

Introduction: Using MRI to synthesize CT and substitute its function in radiation therapy has drawn wide research interests. Currently, deep learning models have become the first choice for MRI—CT synthesis because of their ability to study complex non-linear relations. However, existing studies still lack the ability to learn complex local and global MRI–CT relations in the same time , which influences the intensity and structural performance of synthetic images.Methods: This study proposes a hybrid multi-scale model to explore rich local and global MRI—CT relations, relations, namely, the hybrid multi-scale synthesis network (HMSS-Net). It includes two modules modelling different resolution inputs. In the low-resolution module, the Transformer method is applied to build its bottleneck part to expand the receptive field and explore long-range MRI—CT relations to estimate the coarse distribution of widely spread tissues and large organs. In the high-resolution module, residual and dense connections are applied to explore complex local MRI—CT relations under multiple step sizes. Then, the feature spaces of two modules are combined together and utilized to provide synthetic CT. HMSS-Net also introduces the multi-scale structural similarity index measure loss to provide multi-scale supervision during training.Results: The experimental results on head and neck regions of 78 patients showed that HMSS–Net reduced the average of 7.6/3.13 HU on the mean absolute error and increased the average of 2.1/1.8% on the dice coefficient of bone compared with competing image–to–image synthesis methods.Conclusion: The results imply that HMSS–Net could effectively improve the intensity and structural performances of synthetic CT

HLA-DRB1 May Be Antagonistically Regulated by the Coordinately Evolved Promoter and 3′-UTR under Stabilizing Selection

HLA-DRB1 is the most polymorphic MHC (major histocompatibility complex) class II gene in human, and plays a crucial role in the development and function of the immune system. Extensive polymorphisms exist in the promoter and 3′-UTR of HLA-DRB1, especially a LTR (Long terminal repeat) element in the promoter, which may be involved in the expression regulation. However, it remains unknown how the polymorphisms in the whole promoter region and 3′-UTR to regulate the gene expression. In this study, we investigated the extensive polymorphisms in the HLA-DRB1 promoter and 3′-UTR, and how these polymorphisms affect the gene expression in both independent and jointly manners. It was observed that most of the haplotypes in the DRB1 promoter and 3′-UTR were clustered into 4 conserved lineages (H1, H2, H3 and H4), and showed high linkage disequilibrium. Compared with H1 and H2 lineage, a LTR element in the promoter of H3 and H4 lineage significantly suppressed the promoter activity, whereas the activity of the linked 3′-UTR increased, leading to no apparent difference in the final expression product between H1/H2 and H3/H4 lineage. Nevertheless, compared with the plasmid with a promoter and 3′-UTR from the same lineage, the recombinant plasmid with a promoter from H2 and a 3′-UTR from H3 showed about double fold increased luciferase activity, Conversely, the recombinant plasmid with a promoter from H3 and a 3′-UTR from H2 resulted in about 2-fold decreased luciferase activity. These results indicate that the promoter and 3′-UTR of HLA-DRB1 may antagonistically regulate the gene expression, which may be subjected to stabilizing selection. These findings may provide a novel insight into the mechanisms of the diseases associated with HLA-DRB1 genes

Sleepy Consensus in the Known Participation Model

We study sleepy consensus in the known participation model, where replicas are aware of the minimum number of awake honest replicas. Compared to prior works that almost all assume the unknown participation model, we provide a fine-grained treatment of sleepy consensus in the known participation model and show some interesting results. First, we present a synchronous atomic broadcast protocol with $5\Delta+2\delta$ expected latency and $2\Delta+2\delta$ best-case latency, where $\Delta$ is the bound on network delay and $\delta$ is the actual network delay. In contrast, the best-known result in the unknown participation model (MMR, CCS 2023) achieves $14\Delta$ latency, more than twice the latency of our protocol. Second, in the partially synchronous network (the value of $\Delta$ is unknown), we show that without changing the conventional $n \geq 3f+1$ assumption, one can only obtain a secure sleepy consensus by making the stable storage assumption (where replicas need to store intermediate consensus parameters in stable storage). Finally, still in the partially synchronous network but not assuming stable storage, we prove the bounds on $n \geq 3f+2s+1$ without the global awake time (GAT) assumption (all honest replicas become awake after GAT) and $n \geq 3f+s+1$ with the GAT assumption, where $s$ is the maximum number of honest replicas that may become asleep simultaneously. Using these bounds, we transform HotStuff (PODC 2019) into a sleepy consensus protocol via a timeoutQC mechanism and a low-cost recovery protocol

Application of 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor with elevated CA199: a case report and review of literature

BackgroundGallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor (GIPT) is a nonspecific chronic proliferative inflammation of the gallbladder. At present, the pathogenesis is not clear, which may be related to bacterial and viral infections, congenital diseases, gallstones, chronic cholangitis and so on. GIPT is rare and the imaging examination has no obvious specificity. There are few reports on the 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging characteristics of GIPT. In this paper, 18F-FDG PET/CT findings of GIPT with elevated CA199 are reported and the literature is reviewed.Case descriptionA 69-year-old female patient presented with recurrent intermittent right upper abdominal pain for more than 1 year, followed by nausea and vomiting for 3 hours, without fever, dizziness, chest tightness and other symptoms. Complete CT, MRI, PET/CT and related laboratory tests, CEA (-), AFP (-), Ca199 224.50U/mL ↑,18F-FDG PET/CT images showed uneven thickening at the bottom of the gallbladder, slightly increased gallbladder volume, eccentric and localized thickening of the gallbladder body wall, nodular soft tissue density shadow, clear boundary, smooth gallbladder wall, presence and smooth hepatobiliary interface, increased FDG radioactivity uptake, SUVmax was 10.2.The tumor was resected after operation and was diagnosed as gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor by postoperative pathology.Conclusion18F-FDGPET/CT imaging has a certain significance for gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor. In patients with chronic cholecystitis, when the CA199 increases, the gallbladder wall appears localized thickening, the hepatobiliary interface exists and is smooth, and the 18F-FDG metabolism is mildly to moderately increase. Gallbladder cancer cannot be diagnosed alone, and the possibility of gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor should also be considered. However, it should be noted that the cases with unclear diagnosis should still be actively treated with surgery, so as not to delay the treatment opportunity