Tension Strength Prediction of Transverse Branch Plate-to-Rectangular Joint with Concrete Filling

This paper predicts the tension strength of Concrete-filled Branch Plate-to-Rectangular Hollow (CBPRH) joint by conducting experimental and theoretical analysis. A total of 46 X-joints with different geometric parameters were investigated, in which 4 specimens were tested under ultimate tension and 42 specimens were numerically analyzed. The joint’s strength, failure mode and load-displacement curve were obtained. Perfobond Leister Rib (PBR) was welded in part of the specimens to investigate its effect on joint’s tensile performance. It is shown that the ultimate strength of transverse CBPRH joint benefit from grouting of chord and installation of PBR. The ultimate strength of CBPRH joint with PBR is larger than the counterpart without PBR. Tension strength equations were proposed for both CBPRH joints with and without PBR by nonlinear regression. The chord axial stress reduction factor was discussed and a modified equation originated from hollow joint was recommended for CBPRH joint. Connection efficiency was presented and compared among branch plate-to-rectangular hollow (BPRH) joint, CBPRH joint and CBPRH joint with PBR

Application of Bunchy TiO2 Hierarchical Microspheres as a Scattering Layer for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

A novel bunchy TiO2 hierarchical microspheres composite nanostructure with strings of anatase TiO2 hierarchical micro-spheres and rutile nanobelts framework (HSN) was synthesized via an one-pot hydrothermal process. This new structure presents great specific surface area, large pore size distribution, homogeneous three-dimensional (3D) structure, high crystallinity and excellent light scattering performance simultaneously. The bi-layer photoanode film was successfully prepared which TiO2 P25 as absorption layer and HSN as an efficient scattering layer on the top of TiO2 P25 film in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The bi-layer DSSC taken on a great progress in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) achieved 8.08%. However, the PCE of single and double layer TiO2 film DSSCs just showed 6.72% and 3.67% respectively. Such improvement was mainly because of the efficient scattering centers (HSN) which can bring the enhanced dye loading, fast charge transfer and excellent light harvesting efficiency

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal composition affects the growth and nutrient acquisition of two plants from a karst area

How the composition of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal community affects plant traits of different plant species in karst environments is poorly understood. Broussonetia papyrifera (a woody shrub) and Bidens pilosa (a herbaceous plant) growing in pots in limestone soil were inoculated with an AM fungus, either Funneliformis mosseae (FM), Diversispora versiformis (DV) or Glomus diaphanum (GD) or with an inoculum mixture of all three AM fungi (bn). B. papyrifera and B. pilosa seedlings inoculated with AM fungi showed a significant increase in biomass and nitrogen and phosphorus acquisition compared with the controls, which lacked mycorrhiza. Mixed fungal inoculations significantly enhanced biomass and nitrogen and phosphorus acquisition by B. papyrifera seedlings compared with single fungal inoculations. Nitrogen and phosphorus acquisition by B. papyrifera mycorrhizal seedlings was significantly greater than that of B. pilosa mycorrhizal seedlings. Fungal composition significantly influenced the mycorrhizal benefits of biomass and phosphorus acquisition and mixed fungal inoculations enhanced nitrogen acquisition. Plant species significantly affected nitrogen acquisition but did not have an effect on biomass and phosphorus benefits. We concluded that AM fungal associations increased plant growth and nutrient absorption and that in general a mixed inoculation of AM fungi enhanced biomass and nutrient acquisition more than a single AM fungal inoculation. In addition, a mycorrhizal association was more beneficial for B. papyrifera seedlings in terms of biomass and nutrient acquisition than for B. pilosa seedlings

TriMLP: Revenge of a MLP-like Architecture in Sequential Recommendation

In this paper, we present a MLP-like architecture for sequential recommendation, namely TriMLP, with a novel Triangular Mixer for cross-token communications. In designing Triangular Mixer, we simplify the cross-token operation in MLP as the basic matrix multiplication, and drop the lower-triangle neurons of the weight matrix to block the anti-chronological order connections from future tokens. Accordingly, the information leakage issue can be remedied and the prediction capability of MLP can be fully excavated under the standard auto-regressive mode. Take a step further, the mixer serially alternates two delicate MLPs with triangular shape, tagged as global and local mixing, to separately capture the long range dependencies and local patterns on fine-grained level, i.e., long and short-term preferences. Empirical study on 12 datasets of different scales (50K\textasciitilde 10M user-item interactions) from 4 benchmarks (Amazon, MovieLens, Tenrec and LBSN) show that TriMLP consistently attains promising accuracy/efficiency trade-off, where the average performance boost against several state-of-the-art baselines achieves up to 14.88% with 8.65% less inference cost.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 5 table

Extensive necrotizing fasciitis of scrotum and abdominal wall: Report of two cases and a review of the literature

The incidence rate of necrotizing fasciitis(NF) is low, but it has a high mortality rate. At present, it lacks experience in clinical treatment in municipal and county-level hospitals, insufficient awareness of disease risk, lack of experience in disease surgical intervention, and lack of a set of mature treatment norms and standards. Most patients have no time to transfer to a higher hospital for treatment. In January and April 2022, two cases of large-scale necrotizing fasciitis of the scrotum and abdominal wall were treated in the Department of Urology of Weifang people's Hospital respectively and were clinically cured after active surgical debridement combined with broad-spectrum antibiotics. Through the retrospective analysis of the diagnosis and treatment of two cases of necrotizing fasciitis, this paper analyzes and summarizes the scope of surgical debridement of NF, postoperative dressing changing skills, timing of multiple debridements, application and timing of vacuum sealing drainage(VSD), and the combined use of antibiotics. To provide experience for clinical diagnosis and treatment of necrotizing fasciitis

Multiferroic Magnon Spin-Torque Based Reconfigurable Logic-In-Memory

Magnons, bosonic quasiparticles carrying angular momentum, can flow through insulators for information transmission with minimal power dissipation. However, it remains challenging to develop a magnon-based logic due to the lack of efficient electrical manipulation of magnon transport. Here we present a magnon logic-in-memory device in a spin-source/multiferroic/ferromagnet structure, where multiferroic magnon modes can be electrically excited and controlled. In this device, magnon information is encoded to ferromagnetic bits by the magnon-mediated spin torque. We show that the ferroelectric polarization can electrically modulate the magnon spin-torque by controlling the non-collinear antiferromagnetic structure in multiferroic bismuth ferrite thin films with coupled antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric orders. By manipulating the two coupled non-volatile state variables (ferroelectric polarization and magnetization), we further demonstrate reconfigurable logic-in-memory operations in a single device. Our findings highlight the potential of multiferroics for controlling magnon information transport and offer a pathway towards room-temperature voltage-controlled, low-power, scalable magnonics for in-memory computing

The first clinical data of the SAPIEN 3 aortic valve in the treatment of aortic stenosis in China

BackgroundData on outcomes following transcatheter aortic valve replacement with SAPIEN 3 in China is limited as it was approved by the National Medical Products since 2020. The present study was designed to collect clinical data on the SAPIEN 3 aortic valve in Chinese patients with bicuspid aortic valve and tricuspid aortic valve stenosis.MethodsWe analyzed the patient characteristics, procedural features and procedural outcomes of the first 438 patients (223 for bicuspid aortic valve and 215 tricuspid aortic valve) from 21 provinces in 74 sites treated with the SAPIEN 3 valve system for transcatheter aortic valve replacement between September 2020 and May 2022.ResultsProcedural mortality was 0.7%. 5 cases during the operation were converted to surgery. Among 438 cases, permanent pacemaker implantation was performed in a total of 12 cases (2.7%). The patient had severe leaflet calcification of the aortic valve, with moderate and severe calcification reaching 39.7% and 35.2% respectively. The size of the implanted valves was predominantly 26 mm and 23 mm, reaching 42.5% and 39.5% respectively. The incidence of moderate or severe perivalvular leak in the postoperative period was 0.5%, with a predominance of 90/10 and 80/20 valve deployment height. There was a significant difference in the deployment height of the valve between bicuspid aortic valve and tricuspid aortic valve, with the bicuspid aortic valve having a more deployment height of 90/10. Annulus size in bicuspid aortic valve group was significantly larger than tricuspid aortic valve group. Valve sizing for oversized, within size, and undersized were different between bicuspid aortic valve and tricuspid aortic valve.ConclusionsProcedural success rates were high, with similar and good results for bicuspid aortic valve and tricuspid aortic valve, low perivalvular leak for both valve types, and low permanent pacemaker implantation rates for both valve types. Annulus size, valve sizing and coronary artery height were significantly different in the BAV and TAV group

Serum proteome analysis for profiling protein markers associated with carcinogenesis and lymph node metastasis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), one of the most common cancers in population with Chinese or Asian progeny, poses a serious health problem for southern China. It is unfortunate that most NPC victims have had lymph node metastasis (LNM) when first diagnosed. We believe that the 2D based serum proteome analysis can be useful in discovering new biomarkers that may aid in the diagnosis and therapy of NPC patients. To filter the tumor specific antigen markers of NPC, sera from 42 healthy volunteers, 27 non-LNM NPC patients and 37 LNM NPC patients were selected for screening study using 2D combined with MS. Pretreatment strategy, including sonication, albumin and immunoglobulin G (IgG) depletion, was adopted for screening differentially expressed proteins of low abundance in serum. By 2D image analysis and MALDI-TOF-MS identification, twenty-three protein spots were differentially expressed. Three of them were further validated in the sera using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Our research demonstrates that HSP70, sICAM-1 and SAA, confirmed with ELISA at sera and immunohistochemistry, are potential NPC metastasis-specific serum biomarkers which may be of great underlying significance in clinical detection and management of NPC

Seismic stratigraphy of the central South China Sea basin and implications for neotectonics

Coring/logging data and physical property measurements from International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 349 are integrated with, and correlated to, reflection seismic data to map seismic sequence boundaries and facies of the central basin and neighboring regions of the South China Sea. First-order sequence boundaries are interpreted, which are Oligocene/Miocene, middle Miocene/late Miocene, Miocene/Pliocene, and Pliocene/Pleistocene boundaries. A characteristic early Pleistocene strong reflector is also identified, which marks the top of extensive carbonate-rich deposition in the southern East and Southwest Subbasins. The fossil spreading ridge and the boundary between the East and Southwest Subbasins acted as major sedimentary barriers, across which seismic facies changes sharply and cannot be easily correlated. The sharp seismic facies change along the Miocene-Pliocene boundary indicates that a dramatic regional tectonostratigraphic event occurred at about 5 Ma, coeval with the onsets of uplift of Taiwan and accelerated subsidence and transgression in the northern margin. The depocenter or the area of the highest sedimentation rate switched from the northern East Subbasin during the Miocene to the Southwest Subbasin and the area close to the fossil ridge in the southern East Subbasin in the Pleistocene. The most active faulting and vertical uplifting now occur in the southern East Subbasin, caused most likely by the active and fastest subduction/obduction in the southern segment of the Manila Trench and the collision between the northeast Palawan and the Luzon arc. Timing of magmatic intrusions and seamounts constrained by seismic stratigraphy in the central basin varies and does not show temporal pulsing in their activities.Keywords: South China Sea, Neotectonism, Core-well-seismic integration, Seismic facies, Seismic stratigraphy, IODP Expedition 34

Actively implementing an evidence-based feeding guideline for critically ill patients (NEED): a multicenter, cluster-randomized, controlled trial

Background: Previous cluster-randomized controlled trials evaluating the impact of implementing evidence-based guidelines for nutrition therapy in critical illness do not consistently demonstrate patient benefits. A large-scale, sufficiently powered study is therefore warranted to ascertain the effects of guideline implementation on patient-centered outcomes. Methods: We conducted a multicenter, cluster-randomized, parallel-controlled trial in intensive care units (ICUs) across China. We developed an evidence-based feeding guideline. ICUs randomly allocated to the guideline group formed a local "intervention team", which actively implemented the guideline using standardized educational materials, a graphical feeding protocol, and live online education outreach meetings conducted by members of the study management committee. ICUs assigned to the control group remained unaware of the guideline content. All ICUs enrolled patients who were expected to stay in the ICU longer than seven days. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality within 28 days of enrollment. Results: Forty-eight ICUs were randomized to the guideline group and 49 to the control group. From March 2018 to July 2019, the guideline ICUs enrolled 1399 patients, and the control ICUs enrolled 1373 patients. Implementation of the guideline resulted in significantly earlier EN initiation (1.20 vs. 1.55 mean days to initiation of EN; difference − 0.40 [95% CI − 0.71 to − 0.09]; P = 0.01) and delayed PN initiation (1.29 vs. 0.80 mean days to start of PN; difference 1.06 [95% CI 0.44 to 1.67]; P = 0.001). There was no significant difference in 28-day mortality (14.2% vs. 15.2%; difference − 1.6% [95% CI − 4.3% to 1.2%]; P = 0.42) between groups. Conclusions: In this large-scale, multicenter trial, active implementation of an evidence-based feeding guideline reduced the time to commencement of EN and overall PN use but did not translate to a reduction in mortality from critical illness. Trial registration: ISRCTN, ISRCTN12233792. Registered November 20th, 2017