Research on the Application of Art Therapy into College Art Teaching in the Context of COVID-19 Prevention and Control

Art therapy employ art symbols to externalize an individual’s psychology, emotion, personality and subconsciousness. Thus, it is widely applied in psychological consultation and treatment as well as clinical treatment of physical and mental diseases, whereas the study of integrating art therapy into art teaching among colleges and universities is rarely seen. To this end, this study, aimed at the psychological behavior and problems of college students who are prone to worry, dysphoria, fear, melancholy and irritability after the outbreak of COVID-19 in spring 2020, carries out the application research of integrating art therapy into college art teaching, in attempt to alleviate their psychological distress caused by the epidemic and assist them to establish a psychological defense mechanism for addressing future similar catastrophic events while inculcating art knowledge, and further develop the art teaching mode of “art therapy integrated into art teaching”

Renewable Energy in China: Market Barriers and Policy Options

With an obvious characteristic of innovation, the development of renewable energy (RE) industry is a process of industry innovation itself. There are serious market failures and barriers in the RE technology innovation process. The reasons for RE innovation’s market failure include “dual information externalities”, “coordination failure” and “lock-in effect”. As an emerging strategic industry, the RE industry has gained sound support from policies in recent years. Nevertheless, industrial development is being impeded by difficulties such as a lack of core technology, disorderly competition and a rupture in market demands, which also brought to the light the deviation of the current industry policies. Combined with industrial innovation theories of Neoclassical Economics, New Institutional Economics, and Evolutionary Economics, and based on the perspective of new industry policies, this paper reexamines the RE industrial policies in China and tries to explore new industry policies that accord with the innovative essence in the RE industry

Deep Cytometry: Deep learning with Real-time Inference in Cell Sorting and Flow Cytometry

Deep learning has achieved spectacular performance in image and speech recognition and synthesis. It outperforms other machine learning algorithms in problems where large amounts of data are available. In the area of measurement technology, instruments based on the photonic time stretch have established record real-time measurement throughput in spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and imaging flow cytometry. These extreme-throughput instruments generate approximately 1 Tbit/s of continuous measurement data and have led to the discovery of rare phenomena in nonlinear and complex systems as well as new types of biomedical instruments. Owing to the abundance of data they generate, time-stretch instruments are a natural fit to deep learning classification. Previously we had shown that high-throughput label-free cell classification with high accuracy can be achieved through a combination of time-stretch microscopy, image processing and feature extraction, followed by deep learning for finding cancer cells in the blood. Such a technology holds promise for early detection of primary cancer or metastasis. Here we describe a new deep learning pipeline, which entirely avoids the slow and computationally costly signal processing and feature extraction steps by a convolutional neural network that directly operates on the measured signals. The improvement in computational efficiency enables low-latency inference and makes this pipeline suitable for cell sorting via deep learning. Our neural network takes less than a few milliseconds to classify the cells, fast enough to provide a decision to a cell sorter for real-time separation of individual target cells. We demonstrate the applicability of our new method in the classification of OT-II white blood cells and SW-480 epithelial cancer cells with more than 95% accuracy in a label-free fashion

Pipeline for the quality control of sequencing

Sequencing technology has been developed for more than decades. In all methods applied, however, sequencing quality remains a problem. In most cases, raw DNA sequences obtained from automatic sequencing machines are not reliable, and the output sequence might contain errors, vector contamination might occur, Dye-terminator reaction might not occur, and segment migration might be abnormal in gel electrophoresis. In order to trim low quality regions and sequences, to remove contamination and to build reliable assembled contigs, we constructed the pipeline, which uses Phred, Lucy and Phrap tools together. Phred takes chromatogram data as input, then makes base calls and assigns quality values and finally generates sequence and quality files in FASTA format. In a subsequent step, Lucy trims vectors and low quality sequences, makes a clean range of each sequence. At the end Phrap will assemble these sequences using pairwise alignment information from the Smith-Waterman algorithm. The consensus sequences of the assemblies built by the pipeline are assumed to be reliable genes that can be used for gene annotation. Furthermore, we compared two pipelines, with and without the use of Lucy. The output clearly indicates that applying Lucy in the sequencing process generates more reliable consensus sequences

Paeonol Inhibits Proliferation of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Stimulated by High Glucose via Ras-Raf-ERK1/2 Signaling Pathway in Coculture Model

Paeonol (Pae) has been previously reported to protect against atherosclerosis (AS) by inhibiting vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation or vascular endothelial cell (VEC) injury. But studies lack how VSMCs and VECs interact when Pae plays a role. The current study was based on a coculture model of VSMCs and VECs to investigate the protective mechanisms of Pae on atherosclerosis (AS) by determining the secretory function of VECs and proliferation of VSMCs focusing on the Ras-Raf-ERK1/2 signaling pathway. VECs were stimulated by high glucose. Our data showed that high concentration (35.5 mM) of glucose induced damage in VECs. Injury of VECs stimulated VSMC proliferation in the coculture model. Pae (120 μM) decreased vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and platelet derivative growth factor B (PDGF-B) release from VECs and inhibited overexpression of Ras, P-Raf, and P-ERK proteins in VSMCs. The results indicate that diabetes modulates the inflammatory response in VECs to stimulate VSMC proliferation and promote the development of AS. Pae was beneficial by inhibiting the inflammatory effects of VECs on VSMC proliferation. This study suggests the inhibitory mechanism of Pae due to the inhibition of VEGF and PDGF-B secretion in VECs and Ras-Raf-ERK1/2 signaling pathway in VSMCs

Urinary screening of elementary school students in Taicang, China

AbstractBackground: Chronic kidney disease in children is a severe progressive disease that influences the growth, development, and life quality of patients. This study aimed to explore the detection rate of proteinuria and hematuria in elementary school students in Taicang, China.Materials and methods: From 2015 to 2019, urine specimens were selected from 11,753 pupils in Taicang. The samples were tested for proteinuria and hematuria by applying single urine tests and urine sediment microscopic examinations. The observation results were divided into three groups: hematuria, proteinuria, and co-existing hematuria and proteinuria. In addition, kidney biopsies were carried out.Results: The positive rate of urinary abnormalities was 0.842% (99 cases), of which there were 51 cases (0.433%) of proteinuria, 42 cases (0.357%) of hematuria, and six cases (0.051%) of co-existing proteinuria and hematuria. In terms of gender, of the 99 cases, 63 were female students (1.142%) and 36 were male students (0.577%). Additionally, the age distribution results indicated that the prevalence of urine abnormalities in each age group from age 7 to age 13 were 11.11%, 12.12%, 12.12%, 16.16%, 29.29%, 18.18% and 3.03%, respectively. Furthermore, one immunoglobin A nephropathy case was certified by renal biopsy assay in the follow-up at six months.Conclusions: The urine screening revealed that abnormal proteinuria was the main form of urinary abnormalities in elementary school students from Taicang. Urine screening is necessary for early detection and intervention of kidney disease. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2021; 35(2):91-96] Key words: Urine screening, Taicang, elementary school student, proteinuria, hematuri

Surface Electromyography Analysis of the Lower Extremities of Subjects Participating in Baduanjin Exercises

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of practicing Baduanjin exercises on the lower extremities of subjects using electromyography analysis. Subjects. 110 healthy adults were randomly assigned as subjects to two groups: SG group who received sixteen weeks of Baduanjin training and CG group who received no training. Methods. The methods used in this study included the use of a sixteen-channel sEMG system to record and measure activity changes in vastus medialis and vastus lateralis. Results. After 16 weeks of Baduanjin training, the results of this study showed that the SG group had significant increases in RMS (root mean square) (in vastus lateralis, p > 0.05; in vastus medialis, p < 0.05), in AEMG (average electromyographic activity) (in vastus lateralis, p > 0.05; in vastus medialis, p < 0.05), and in IEMG (integrated electromyogram) (in vastus lateralis, p > 0.05; in vastus medialis, p < 0.05). No adverse events from treatment were reported during the whole period of this study. Conclusion. This study concludes that performing 16 weeks of Baduanjin training can significantly improve strength and the physical function of the lower extremities among healthy adults