NH4+ directed assembly of zinc oxide micro-tubes from nanoflakes

A simple precipitation process followed with the heat treatment was developed to synthesize ZnO micro-tubes by self-assembly of nanoflakes composed of nanoparticles. The resulting ZnO micro-tubes demonstrated excellent photocatalytic performance in degrading methylene blue (MB) under UV illumination. It was found that NH4+ ion played a critical role in directing the assembly of the nanoflakes to form the micro-tube structure. A critical reaction ratio existed at or above which the ZnO micro-tubes could be obtained. For the mixtures of solutions of (NH4)2CO3 and zinc salt, the ratio () was 2:1

Association between polymorphism of TGFA Taq I and cleft Lip and/or palate: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Cleft lip and palate (CL/P) is one of the most common malformations in humans. Transforming growth factor alpha (TGFA) is a well characterized mammalian growth factor which might contribute to the development of CL/P. This meta-analysis aimed to summarize the association between the TGFA Taq I polymorphisms and CL/P. METHODS: We retrieved the relevant articles from PubMed, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science and SCOPUS databases. Studies were selected using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. The odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated to assess the association between TGFA Taq I polymorphism and CL/P risk. Meta-analyses were performed on the total data set and separately for the major ethnic groups, disease type and source of control. All analyses were performed using the Stata software. RESULTS: Twenty articles were included in the present analysis. There is a significant association between the TGFA Taq I polymorphism and CL/P (C1C2 vs C1C1: OR = 1.67, 95% CI = 1.23-2.25, C2C2 + C1C2 vs C1C1C1: OR = 1.52, 95% CI = 1.15-2.01; C2 vs C1:OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.12-1.78). Stratified analyses suggested that the TGFA Taq I polymorphism was significantly associated with CL/P in Caucasians (C1C2 vs C1C1: OR = 1.95, 95% CI = 1.34-2.86; C2C2 + C1C2 vs C1C1: OR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.18-2.38; C2 vs V1: OR = 1.52, 95% CI = 1.14 -2.02). CONCLUSION: TGFA Taq I polymorphism may be associated with the risk of CL/P

Heat Dissipation Performance of Micro-channel Heat Sink with Various Protrusion Designs

This research will focus on studying the effect of aperture size and shape of the micro-channel heat sink on heat dissipation performance for chip cooling. The micro-channel heat sink is considered to be a porous medium with fluid subject inter-facial convection. Derivation based on energy equation gives a set of governing partial differential equations describing the heat transfer through the micro-channels. Numerical simulation, including steady-state thermal analysis based on CFD software, is used to create a finite element solver to tackle the derived partial differential equations with properly defined boundary conditions related to temperature. After simulating three types of heat sinks with various protrusion designs including micro-channels fins, curly micro-channels fins, and Micro-pin fins, the result shows that the heat sink with the maximum contact area per unit volume will have the best heat dissipation performance, we will interpret the result by using the volume averaging theorem on the porous medium model of the heat sink

Increased expression of MMP9 is correlated with poor prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>The aim of the present study was to analyze the expression of matrix metalloproteinase 9 (<it>MMP9</it>) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and its correlation with clinicopathologic features, including the survival of patients with NPC.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using real-time PCR, we detected the mRNA expression of <it>MMP9 </it>in normal nasopharyngeal tissues and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) tissues. Using immunohistochemistry analysis, we analyzed <it>MMP9 </it>protein expression in clinicopathologically characterized 164 NPC cases (116 male and 48 female) with age ranging from 17 to 80 years (median = 48.4 years) and 32 normal nasopharyngeal tissues. Cases with greater than or equal to 6 and less than 6 of the score value of cytoplasmic <it>MMP9 </it>immunostaining were regarded as high expression and low expression, respectively. The relationship between the expression levels of <it>MMP9 </it>and clinical features was analyzed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The expression level of <it>MMP9 </it>mRNA was markedly greater in NPC tissues than that in the nasopharyngeal tissues. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the protein expression of <it>MMP9 </it>detected in NPC tissues was higher than that in the nasopharyngeal tissues (<it>P </it>= 0.004). In addition, high levels of <it>MMP9 </it>protein were positively correlated with the status of lymph node metastasis (N classification) (<it>P </it>= 0.002) and clinical stage (<it>P </it>< 0.001) of NPC patients. Patients with higher <it>MMP9 </it>expression had a significantly shorter overall survival time than did patients with low <it>MMP9 </it>expression. Multivariate analysis suggested that the level of <it>MMP9 </it>expression was an independent prognostic indicator (<it>P </it>= 0.008) for the survival of patients with NPC.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>High level of <it>MMP9 </it>expression is a potential unfavorable prognostic factor for patients with NPC.</p

Experience-driven Networking: A Deep Reinforcement Learning based Approach

Modern communication networks have become very complicated and highly dynamic, which makes them hard to model, predict and control. In this paper, we develop a novel experience-driven approach that can learn to well control a communication network from its own experience rather than an accurate mathematical model, just as a human learns a new skill (such as driving, swimming, etc). Specifically, we, for the first time, propose to leverage emerging Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for enabling model-free control in communication networks; and present a novel and highly effective DRL-based control framework, DRL-TE, for a fundamental networking problem: Traffic Engineering (TE). The proposed framework maximizes a widely-used utility function by jointly learning network environment and its dynamics, and making decisions under the guidance of powerful Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). We propose two new techniques, TE-aware exploration and actor-critic-based prioritized experience replay, to optimize the general DRL framework particularly for TE. To validate and evaluate the proposed framework, we implemented it in ns-3, and tested it comprehensively with both representative and randomly generated network topologies. Extensive packet-level simulation results show that 1) compared to several widely-used baseline methods, DRL-TE significantly reduces end-to-end delay and consistently improves the network utility, while offering better or comparable throughput; 2) DRL-TE is robust to network changes; and 3) DRL-TE consistently outperforms a state-ofthe-art DRL method (for continuous control), Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), which, however, does not offer satisfying performance.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, paper is accepted as a conference paper at IEEE Infocom 201

Research Progress on the Influence of Movement Instruction on Community Life in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease

The incidence of coronary heart disease increases year by year with the material level of our country. It has a harmful effect on the patient’s life health and quality of life. Movement Instruction is an important aspect of the secondary prevention project of cardiac rehabilitation in patients with coronary heart disease. Although it has a history of decades at inland and abroad, the present situation in China is not optimistic. Some studies have shown that the popularization and participation of cardiac rehabilitation is true and lacking. This paper sums up the relevant knowledge of coronary heart disease, coronary heart disease movement instruction and its impact on community life of patients at home and abroad, and reviews the research results of movement instruction on community rehabilitation of coronary heart disease in recent years, which provides a theoretical reference and prospect for the future research of community exercise rehabilitation of coronary heart disease