The diagnostic value of four-dimensional ultrasound examination of perineum in the diagnosis of postpartum pelvic floor dysfunction

Objective to explore the diagnostic value of perineal four-dimensional ultrasound (4D-US) in postpartum pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) disease. 328 postpartum PFD patients diagnosed by clinical pelvic floor palpation from June 2018 to December 2020 were selected as the PFD group, and 328 patients without PFD were selected as the control group. All participants underwent perineal 4D-US, the indicators were statistically analyzed. The results showed that the LAT of left and right, LHLR, LHAP, LHA, resting state and holding the breath in the PFD group were higher than those in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). From cervix to lower margin of pubic symphysis, bladder to lower margin of pubic symphysis of the pubic symphysis, and from the ampulla of the rectum to the lower margin of the pubic symphysis, the PFD group was larger than the control group, but the result of urethral rotation was reversed, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). The morphologic features of the levator ani muscle and pelvic fissure can be detected early using 4D-US, which is a reliable technique that can be learned in a short period of time

The diffusion rule of demand-oriented biogas supply in distributed renewable energy system : an evolutionary game-based approach

Biogas can be regarded as a dispatchable renewable source when changing into the demand-oriented operation mode (DO), thus could be used for complementing with solar and wind power in distributed energy system (DES) as a substitute for chemical energy storage. However, if the DO is implemented in regional DES, uncertainties are emerged caused by the complex interest interaction between the seller and the buyer groups formed by the biogas plant and the DES’s dispatching center, thus making the development trend of DO unknown. In this context, this study explored the diffusion law of DO in regional DES by establishing a mathematical model based on an evolutionary game between the two major stakeholders, during which the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) was deduced for understanding their strategy selections, and then the dynamic diffusion trend was simulated by the system dynamics via a case example. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of parameters is carried out and the optimal policy instruments are proposed according to the main influencing factors. The study revealed that when the DES can realize monetized returns from socio-environmental benefits, the adoption of DO becomes more feasible. Importantly, the revenue generated from electricity sales, by the dispatching center when they do not utilize biogas, emerged as the most critical parameter influencing the ultimate outcomes. The limitations of this research and modeling are discussed to lay a foundation for further improvement.National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNature Science Research Project of Anhui ProvinceOpen Fund of Engineering Research Center of Biofilm Water Purification and Utilization Technology of Ministry of Educatio

DialogRE^C+: An Extension of DialogRE to Investigate How Much Coreference Helps Relation Extraction in Dialogs

Dialogue relation extraction (DRE) that identifies the relations between argument pairs in dialogue text, suffers much from the frequent occurrence of personal pronouns, or entity and speaker coreference. This work introduces a new benchmark dataset DialogRE^C+, introducing coreference resolution into the DRE scenario. With the aid of high-quality coreference knowledge, the reasoning of argument relations is expected to be enhanced. In DialogRE^C+ dataset, we manually annotate total 5,068 coreference chains over 36,369 argument mentions based on the existing DialogRE data, where four different coreference chain types namely speaker chain, person chain, location chain and organization chain are explicitly marked. We further develop 4 coreference-enhanced graph-based DRE models, which learn effective coreference representations for improving the DRE task. We also train a coreference resolution model based on our annotations and evaluate the effect of automatically extracted coreference chains demonstrating the practicality of our dataset and its potential to other domains and tasks.Comment: Accepted by NLPCC 202

Experimental study on sinomenine derivative modulating chemokine receptor in multiple myeloma cells

Background and purpose: The interaction of CXC motif chemokine receptor (CXCR) on the cell surface of multiple myeloma (MM) with chemokines in the bone marrow microenvironment is involved in proliferation, survival and extramedullary invasion of MM cells. Sinomenine derivative YL064 exerts its biological effects by targeting intracellular signaling regulators in MM cells. This study aimed to explore possible modulating and biological effects of sinomenine derivative YL064 on CXCR3 in MM cells. Methods: The MM cell lines H929 and MM1.S were used as in vitro models. H929-OE and MM1.S-OE cells with stable overexpression of CXCR3 were constructed with lentivirus vector. The effects of CXCR3 on clonal formation and migration of MM cells were detected by clone spot formation and transwell migration assay. Meanwhile, flow cytometry was used to analyze apoptotic rates of H929, H929-OE, MM1.S and MM1.S-OE cells treated with different concentrations of YL064. Furthermore, real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RTFQ-PCR) and Western blot assay were applied to detect expression levels of CXCR3 and its downstream signal regulators extracellular regulated protein kinase (ERK) and p-protein kinase B (p-AKT) in H929 and MM1.S cells before and after the treatment with YL064. Results: The clonal formation rates of H929-OE and MM1.S-OE cells with CXCR3 overexpression reached to 81.33%±5.79% and 73.00%±4.90%, which were significantly higher compared with H929 (58.33%±3.30%) and MM1.S cells (41.00%±3.14%). The migration proportion of H929-OE and MM1.S-OE cells were 7.90%±0.81% and 23.00%±1.63%, which were significantly higher compared with H929 (4.63%±0.37%) and MM1.S cells (14.63%±1.04%). After treatment with YL064, the apoptotic rates of H929-OE and MM1.S-OE cells were 29.80%±0.30% and 14.20%±0.26%, which were lower than those of H929 (33.40%±0.25%) and MM1.S cells (21.60%±0.21%). It was also shown that YL064 could reduce clonal formation and migration, inhibit CXCR3 gene transcription and downregulate expressions of CXCR3, ERK and AKT in H929 and MM1.S cells. Conclusions: CXCR3 might promote proliferation and invasion of MM cells. Sinomenine derivative YL064 could downregulate expressions of CXCR3 and its downstream signal regulators in MM cells, reduce abilities of clonal formation and migration, and induce apoptosis

Effect of Soymilk Fermented by Different Lactic Acid Bacteria on Dough Fermentation Characteristics and Steamed Bun Quality

The effects of soymilk fermented with single and mixed (1:1:1) cultures of three strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from sourdough from Fuchun Teahouse in Yangzhou City on the fermentation characteristics of dough and the quality of steamed bun were investigated. The results showed that the acidity and viable bacterial count of soymilk fermented with the mixed culture were 85.06 °T and 9.66 (lg(CFU/mL)), respectively, which were higher than those of the single culture fermented samples. Meanwhile, compared with the control group, the addition of fermented soymilk significantly increased the organic acid content and viable bacterial count of dough. The lactic acid content and viable bacterial count of dough supplemented with Lactobacillus pentosus 203 fermented soymilk were the highest, which were 18.57 mg/g and 8.94 (lg(CFU/g)), respectively. Dough added with Lactobacillus fermentum 202 fermented soymilk had the highest acetic acid content (3.81 mg/g). Compared with control steamed buns, the specific volume, elasticity and height to diameter ratio of four steamed buns supplemented with fermented soymilk were significantly increased, while the hardness and chewiness were significantly decreased. Steamed buns added with mixed-culture fermented soymilk had the highest overall acceptability. A total of 48 volatile flavor substances were detected in the five groups of steamed buns. Among them, the relative contents and types of flavor substances in the mixed culture group were the highest, which were 71.62% and 47, respectively. After being stored at 4 ℃ for 4 days, the moisture loss rate and retrogradation enthalpy of steamed buns added with fermented soymilk were significantly lower than those of the control group; the highest moisture content of 38.53% and the lowest retrogradation enthalpy of 1.00 J/g were found in the mixed culture group. In conclusion, adding fermented soymilk can effectively improve the quality and flavor and delay the aging of steamed buns, this effect being most pronounced with the incorporation of mixed-culture fermented soymilk

PM2.5 pollution is substantially affected by ammonia emissions in China

Urban air quality in China has been declining substantially in recent years due to severe haze episodes. The reduction of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions since 2013 does not yet appear to yield substantial benefits for haze mitigation. As the reductions of those key precursors to secondary aerosol formation appears not to sufficient, other crucial factors need to be considered for the design of effective air pollution control strategies. Here we argue that ammonia (NH3) plays a - so far - underestimated role in the formation of secondary inorganic aerosols, a main component of urban fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in China. By analyzing in situ concentration data observed in major cities alongside gridded emission data obtained from remote sensing and inventories, we find that emissions of NH3 have a more robust association with the spatiotemporal variation of PM2.5 levels than emissions of SO2 and NOx. As a consequence, we argue that urban PM2.5 pollution in China in many locations is substantially affected by NH3 emissions. We highlight that more efforts should be directed to the reduction of NH3 emissions that help mitigate PM2.5 pollution more efficiently than other PM2.5 precursors. Such efforts will yield substantial co-benefits by improving nitrogen use efficiency in farming systems. As a consequence, such integrated strategies would not only improve urban air quality, but also contribute to China's food-security goals, prevent further biodiversity loss, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lead to economic savings

Intelligent contour extraction approach for accurate segmentation of medical ultrasound images

Introduction: Accurate contour extraction in ultrasound images is of great interest for image-guided organ interventions and disease diagnosis. Nevertheless, it remains a problematic issue owing to the missing or ambiguous outline between organs (i.e., prostate and kidney) and surrounding tissues, the appearance of shadow artifacts, and the large variability in the shape of organs.Methods: To address these issues, we devised a method that includes four stages. In the first stage, the data sequence is acquired using an improved adaptive selection principal curve method, in which a limited number of radiologist defined data points are adopted as the prior. The second stage then uses an enhanced quantum evolution network to help acquire the optimal neural network. The third stage involves increasing the precision of the experimental outcomes after training the neural network, while using the data sequence as the input. In the final stage, the contour is smoothed using an explicable mathematical formula explained by the model parameters of the neural network.Results: Our experiments showed that our approach outperformed other current methods, including hybrid and Transformer-based deep-learning methods, achieving an average Dice similarity coefficient, Jaccard similarity coefficient, and accuracy of 95.7 ± 2.4%, 94.6 ± 2.6%, and 95.3 ± 2.6%, respectively.Discussion: This work develops an intelligent contour extraction approach on ultrasound images. Our approach obtained more satisfactory outcome compared with recent state-of-the-art approaches . The knowledge of precise boundaries of the organ is significant for the conservation of risk structures. Our developed approach has the potential to enhance disease diagnosis and therapeutic outcomes

Large-area, freestanding single-crystal gold of single nanometer thickness

Two-dimensional single-crystal metals are highly sought after for next-generation technologies. Here, we report large-area (>10^4 {\mu}m2), single-crystal two-dimensional gold with thicknesses down to a single-nanometer level, employing an atomic-level-precision chemical etching approach. The ultrathin thickness and single-crystal quality endow two-dimensional gold with unique properties including significantly quantum-confinement-augmented optical nonlinearity, low sheet resistance, high transparency and excellent mechanical flexibility. By patterning the two-dimensional gold into nanoribbon arrays, extremely-confined near-infrared plasmonic resonances are further demonstrated with quality factors up to 5. The freestanding nature of two-dimensional gold allows its straightforward manipulation and transfer-printing for integration with other structures. The developed two-dimensional gold provides an emerging platform for fundamental studies in various disciplines and opens up new opportunities for applications in high-performance ultrathin optoelectronic, photonic and quantum devices

A Two-Year Surveillance of 2009 Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) in Guangzhou, China: From Pandemic to Seasonal Influenza?

In this two-years surveillance of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) (pH1N1) in Guangzhou, China, we reported here that the scale and duration of pH1N1 outbreaks, severe disease and fatality rates of pH1N1 patients were significantly lower or shorter in the second epidemic year (May 2010-April 2011) than those in the first epidemic year (May 2009-April 2010) (P<0.05), but similar to those of seasonal influenza (P>0.05). Similar to seasonal influenza, pre-existing chronic pulmonary diseases was a risk factor associated with fatal cases of pH1N1 influenza. Different from seasonal influenza, which occurred in spring/summer seasons annually, pH1N1 influenza mainly occurred in autumn/winter seasons in the first epidemic year, but prolonged to winter/spring season in the second epidemic year. The information suggests a tendency that the epidemics of pH1N1 influenza may probably further shift to spring/summer seasons and become a predominant subtype of seasonal influenza in coming years in Guangzhou, China