Protective effects of Zhuifeng tougu on collagen-induced arthritis in DBA/1 mice

Purpose: To investigate the protective effects of Zhuifengtougu (ZFTG) on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mouse modelMethods: DBA/1 mice were randomly divided into 7 treatment groups (n = 8): normal, positive control (CIA mice), CIA mice + total glucosides of peony (TGP), CIA mice + cyclophosphamide (CPA), CIA mice + 100 mg/kg ZFTG, CIA mice + 200 mg/kg ZFTG, and CIA mice + 400 mg/kg ZFTG. The serum levels of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-αwere measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Western blot was used to determine the protein expression of B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2), p53 and first apoptosis signal receptor (Fas).Results: Following drug administration, the arthritic index in CIA mice administered low-dose, mediumdose, or high-dose ZFTG (1.53 – 1.87), TGP (1.75 ± 0.42), or CPA (1.52 ± 0.36) was reduced significantly (p < 0.05), compared with positive control group (5.66 ± 0.73; p < 0.01). Levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-17 and TNF-α in serum and expression of Bcl-2, p53, and Fas were also significantly decreased (p < 0.05) in CIA mice administered ZFTG, TGP, or CPA, whereas IL-10 levels increased.Conclusion: These results suggest that ZFTG exhibit anti-rheumatic activity in CIA mice via modulation of inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17 and TNF-α) and downregulation of the expressions of Bcl-2, p53, and Fas. Thus, ZFTG is a potential candidate drug for the treatment of RA.Keywords: Zhuifengtougu pill, Rheumatoid arthritis, Cytokines, Bcl-2, Fas, p5

CFD Simulation of Temperature Field Distribution of the Liquefied Hydrocarbon Spherical Tank Leaking

AbstractLiquefied hydrocarbon is normally stored under high pressure in overheating state in the spherical tank. Once leakage occurs, the liquefied hydrocarbon will quickly gasify and absorb a great deal of heat, making temperature of spherical tank decrease sharply. In order to investigate this process, physical model was established, and the Reynolds time averaged Navier-Stokes equation and k-ɛ turbulent model as the CFD simulation method were used in this study. The temperature distribution of the spherical tank and the environment after spherical tank pipeline leaking was analyzed. The influences of leakage location and leak area on the spherical tank temperature distribution were analyzed, and a meaningful conclusion was obtained. This study could provide theoretical basis and technical support for the safety control of liquefied hydrocarbon spherical tank leakage. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review (pre-review) under responsibility of the Capital University of Economics and Business, China Academy of Safety Science and Technology

Determinants of Residential Satisfaction During the Initial Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Xiangyang City, China

Objectives: To explore the impacts of psychological character strengths, self-efficacy, and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on residential satisfaction at the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.Methods: To achieve the study aim, we collected data from 281 observations from Xiangyang City, China, via an online survey. Data were analyzed using linear regression.Results: Character strengths and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases significantly impacted residential satisfaction. While self-efficacy did not directly impact residential satisfaction, it moderated the relationship between the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and residential satisfaction. The control variables of social trust and shared value positively impacted residential satisfaction, and their influence on residential satisfaction was higher than that of character strengths. The sociodemographic variables of marriage, age, educational attainment, and housing area per capita also impacted residential satisfaction significantly. However, strong ties and weak ties became insignificant variables due to social distancing strategies.Conclusion: The study findings offer insights for local governments to enhance residential satisfaction in the community to avoid social panic during unpredictable threats or future pandemics

Relationships between Landscape Patterns and Hydrological Processes in the Subtropical Monsoon Climate Zone of Southeastern China

With rapid economic development, extensive human activity has changed landscape patterns (LPs) dramatically, which has further influenced hydrological processes. However, the effects of LPs changes on hydrological processes, especially for the streamflow–sediment relationship in the subtropical monsoon climate zone, have not been reported. In our study, 10 watersheds with different sizes in the subtropical monsoon climate zone of southeastern China were chosen as the study area, and the effect of the 14 most commonly used landscape metrics (LMs) on 4 typical hydrological indices (water yields (WY), the runoff coefficient (RC), the soil erosion modulus (SEM), and the suspended sediment concentration (SSC)) were analyzed based on land use maps and hydrological data from 1990 to 2019. The results reveal that the LP characteristics within the study area have changed significantly. The number of patches and landscape shape indices were significantly positively correlated with watershed size (p &lt; 0.01). For most watersheds, the largest patch index was negatively correlated with WY, RC, and SEM, and the perimeter area fractal dimension was positively correlated with WY, RC, SEM, and SSC. The effects of several LMs on the hydrological indices had scale effects. WY/RC and the interspersion and juxtaposition index were negatively correlated in most larger watersheds but were positively correlated in most smaller watersheds. Similar results were found for Shannon’s diversity/evenness index and SEM. In general, an increase in a small patch of landscape and in landscape diversity would increase WY, the fragmentation of LPs would result in more soil erosion, and LPs would affect the relationship between streamflow and sediment yield. As a result, a proper decrease in landscape fragmentation and physical connectivity in the subtropical monsoon climate zone of southeastern China would benefit soil erosion prevention. These results enhance the knowledge about the relationship between LPs and hydrological processes in the subtropical monsoon climate zone of southeastern China and benefit local water and soil conservation efforts.</p

Connecting Speech Encoder and Large Language Model for ASR

The impressive capability and versatility of large language models (LLMs) have aroused increasing attention in automatic speech recognition (ASR), with several pioneering studies attempting to build integrated ASR models by connecting a speech encoder with an LLM. This paper presents a comparative study of three commonly used structures as connectors, including fully connected layers, multi-head cross-attention, and Q-Former. Speech encoders from the Whisper model series as well as LLMs from the Vicuna model series with different model sizes were studied. Experiments were performed on the commonly used LibriSpeech, Common Voice, and GigaSpeech datasets, where the LLMs with Q-Formers demonstrated consistent and considerable word error rate (WER) reductions over LLMs with other connector structures. Q-Former-based LLMs can generalise well to out-of-domain datasets, where 12% relative WER reductions over the Whisper baseline ASR model were achieved on the Eval2000 test set without using any in-domain training data from Switchboard. Moreover, a novel segment-level Q-Former is proposed to enable LLMs to recognise speech segments with a duration exceeding the limitation of the encoders, which results in 17% relative WER reductions over other connector structures on 90-second-long speech data