4,374 research outputs found
Alterations in vaginal microbiota in uterine fibroids patients with ultrasound-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound ablation
IntroductionVaginal microbiota dysbiosis is closely related to diseases of the vagina and uterus. Uterine fibroids (UF) are the most common benign neoplasms of the uterus, and increased diversity in vaginal microbial of UF patients. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is effective invasive treatment for fibroids in women who are not good surgical candidates. Whether HIFU of uterine fibroids will cause the change in vaginal microbiota has not been reported. We aimed to investigate the vaginal microbiota of UF patients with/without HIFU treatment using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.MethodsVaginal secretions were collected from 77 UF patients (pre-operative and post-operative) and were used for comparative composition, diversity, and richness analyses of microbial communities.ResultsThe microbial α-diversity was significantly lower in the vaginal of UF patients with HIFU treatment. The relative abundance of some pathogenic bacteria of UF patients with HIFU treatment were significantly decreased in the bacterial phylum and genus level. Proteobacteria were found to be significantly upregulated as a biomarker in the HIFU treatment group in our study.ConclusionThese findings might confirm the effectiveness of HIFU treatment from the point of view of microbiota
Performance Limits and Geometric Properties of Array Localization
Location-aware networks are of great importance and interest in both civil
and military applications. This paper determines the localization accuracy of
an agent, which is equipped with an antenna array and localizes itself using
wireless measurements with anchor nodes, in a far-field environment. In view of
the Cram\'er-Rao bound, we first derive the localization information for static
scenarios and demonstrate that such information is a weighed sum of Fisher
information matrices from each anchor-antenna measurement pair. Each matrix can
be further decomposed into two parts: a distance part with intensity
proportional to the squared baseband effective bandwidth of the transmitted
signal and a direction part with intensity associated with the normalized
anchor-antenna visual angle. Moreover, in dynamic scenarios, we show that the
Doppler shift contributes additional direction information, with intensity
determined by the agent velocity and the root mean squared time duration of the
transmitted signal. In addition, two measures are proposed to evaluate the
localization performance of wireless networks with different anchor-agent and
array-antenna geometries, and both formulae and simulations are provided for
typical anchor deployments and antenna arrays.Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
4-CarbÂoxyÂanilinium chloride
In the title salt, C7H8NO2
+·Cl−, the cation and anion are linked by an O—H⋯Cl hydrogen bond. The three-dimensional crystal structure is stabilized by N—H⋯O and N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds
Quantum delayed-choice experiment with a beam splitter in a quantum superposition
A quantum system can behave as a wave or as a particle, depending on the
experimental arrangement. When for example measuring a photon using a
Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the photon acts as a wave if the second
beam-splitter is inserted, but as a particle if this beam-splitter is omitted.
The decision of whether or not to insert this beam-splitter can be made after
the photon has entered the interferometer, as in Wheeler's famous
delayed-choice thought experiment. In recent quantum versions of this
experiment, this decision is controlled by a quantum ancilla, while the beam
splitter is itself still a classical object. Here we propose and realize a
variant of the quantum delayed-choice experiment. We configure a
superconducting quantum circuit as a Ramsey interferometer, where the element
that acts as the first beam-splitter can be put in a quantum superposition of
its active and inactive states, as verified by the negative values of its
Wigner function. We show that this enables the wave and particle aspects of the
system to be observed with a single setup, without involving an ancilla that is
not itself a part of the interferometer. We also study the transition of this
quantum beam-splitter from a quantum to a classical object due to decoherence,
as observed by monitoring the interferometer output.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, Accepted by Physical Review Letter
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