A Novel Multiplex Network-based Sensor Information Fusion Model and Its Application to Industrial Multiphase Flow System

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61473203, and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin, China under Grant No. 16JCYBJC18200.Peer reviewedPostprin

The fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio is associated with intracranial atherosclerosis plaque enhancement on contrast-enhanced high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging

BackgroundContrast-enhanced high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (CE-HR-MRI) is a useful imaging modality to assess vulnerable plaques in intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (ICAS) patients. We studied the relationship between the fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio (FAR) and plaque enhancement in patients with ICAS.MethodsWe retrospectively enrolled consecutive ICAS patients who had undergone CE-HR-MRI. The degree of plaque enhancement on CE-HR-MRI was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. Enrolled patients were classified into no enhancement, mild enhancement, and obvious enhancement groups. An independent association of the FAR with plaque enhancement was identified by multivariate logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses.ResultsOf the 69 enrolled patients, 40 (58%) were classified into the no/mild enhancement group, and 29 (42%) into the obvious enhancement group. The obvious enhancement group had a significantly higher FAR than the no/mild enhancement group (7.36 vs. 6.05, p = 0.001). After adjusting for potential confounders, the FAR was still significantly independently associated with obvious plaque enhancement in multiple regression analysis (odds ratio: 1.399, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.080–1.813; p = 0.011). ROC curve analysis revealed that FAR >6.37 predicted obvious plaque enhancement with 75.86% sensitivity and 67.50% specificity (area under the ROC curve = 0.726, 95% CI: 0.606–0.827, p < 0.001).ConclusionThe FAR can serve as an independent predictor of the degree of plaque enhancement on CE-HR-MRI in patients with ICAS. Also, as an inflammatory marker, the FAR has potential as a serological biomarker of intracranial atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability

Does Crop Rotation Enhance Groundwater Health? A Review of the Winter Wheat Fallow Policy in the North China Plain

Agricultural water management is a vital component of realizing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals because of water shortages worldwide leading to a severe threat to ecological environments and global food security. As an agro-intensified irrigation area, the North China Plain (NCP) is the most important grain basket in China, which produces 30%–40% of the maize and 60%–80% of the wheat for China. However, this area has already been one of the largest groundwater funnels in the world due to long-term over-exploitation of groundwater. Due to the low precipitation during the growing period, winter wheat requires a large amount of groundwater to be pumped for irrigation, which consumes 70% of the groundwater irrigation. To alleviate the overexploitation of groundwater, the Chinese government implemented the Winter Wheat Fallow Policy (WWFP) in 2014. The evaluation and summarization of the WWFP will be beneficial for improving the groundwater overexploitation areas under high-intensity irrigation over all the world. So far, there have been few attempts at estimating the effectiveness of this policy. To fill this gap, we assessed the planting area of field crops and calculated the evapotranspiration of crops based on remote-sensed and meteorological data in the key area—Hengshui. We compared the agricultural water consumption before and after the implementation of this policy, and we analyzed the relationship between changes in crop planting structure and groundwater variations based on geographically weighted regression. Our results showed the overall classification accuracies for 2013 and 2015 were 85.56% and 82.22%, respectively. The planting area of winter wheat, as the most reduced crop, decreased from 35.71% (314,053 ha) in 2013 to 32.98% (289,986 ha) in 2015. The actual reduction in area of winter wheat reached 84% of the target (26 thousand ha) of the WWFP. The water consumption of major crops decreased from 2.98 billion m3 of water in 2013 to 2.83 billion m3 in 2015, a total reduction of 146 million m3, and 88.43% of reduced target of the WWFP (166 million m3). The planting changes of winter wheat did not directly affect the change of shallow groundwater level, but ET was positively related to shallow groundwater level and precipitation was negatively related to shallow groundwater levels. This study can provide a basis for the WWFP’s improvement and the development of sustainable agriculture in high-intensity irrigation areas

A Cooperative-Dominated Model of Conservation Tillage to Mitigate Soil Degradation on Cultivated Land and Its Effectiveness Evaluation

Sustainable agricultural production systems are important for ensuring food security. However, they are severely threatened by soil degradation and carbon emissions resulting from traditional farming practices. A cooperative-dominated conservation tillage model attempts to mitigate these issues, yet it is not clear how this model has been implemented and how well it performs in practice. This study takes Lishu County in Jilin Province in Northeast China as a case study to explore the implementation of a cooperative-dominated conservation tillage (CDCT) model and its practical effectiveness. In contrast to the traditional production model, this model uses cooperatives as the direct managers of cultivated land and promotes the construction of new production units and large-scale and mechanized operations to standardize the application of conservation tillage technology in agricultural production. Scientific research institutes, governments, and enterprises are supporters of cooperatives, empowering them in terms of technology, capital, products, and services. The evaluation results show that, unlike the traditional production model, which caused a decrease in the soil organic carbon content, the organic carbon content of the topsoil of cultivated land under this model increased by an average of 6.17% after 9 years of conservation tillage application. Furthermore, the soil structural stability index of the cultivated land increased from 3.35% to 3.69%, indicating that the degree of soil structural degradation was alleviated to a certain extent. The CDCT model effectively enhanced the operational efficiency and fertilizer use efficiency, and the carbon footprint of maize production was also reduced by 15.65% compared to the traditional production model. In addition, the total production cost was reduced by 1449 CNY/ha and profit increased by 2599 CNY/ha on average, indicating higher economic returns under the CDCT model due to increased yields and lower input costs. Farmers who are freed from agricultural production activities by transferring their farmland can also gain two types of income—land revenue and labor wagesi—thus mproving their living conditions. The CDCT model can deliver multigoal benefits and be of great value in its extension to other regions. This study may provide lessons for the sustainable use of cultivated land in China and other developing countries, contributing to agricultural development with lower environmental costs

An improved social force model (ISFM)-based crowd evacuation simulation method in virtual reality with a subway fire as a case study

Crowd evacuation simulation using virtual reality (VR) is significant for digital emergency response construction. However, existing evacuation simulation studies suffer from poor adaptation to complex environments, inefficient evacuations, and poor simulation effects and do not fully consider the impacts of specific disaster environments on crowd evacuation. To more realistically express the crowd evacuation results obtained under the influence of fire environments and the subjective consciousness of pedestrians in subway stations, we designed a dynamic pedestrian evacuation path planning method under multiple constraints, analysed the influences of an ‘environmental role’ and a ‘subjective initiative’ on crowd evacuation, established an improved social force model (ISFM)-based crowd evacuation simulation method in VR, developed a prototype system and conducted experimental analyses. The experimental results show that the crowd evacuation time of the ISFM is affected by the disaster severity. In simulation experiments without disaster scenarios, the improved model's crowd evacuation efficiency improved by averages of 12.53% and 15.37% over the commercial Pathfinder software and the original social force model, respectively. The method described herein can effectively support real-time VR crowd evacuation simulation under multiexit and multifloor conditions and can provide technical support for emergency evacuation learning and management decision analyses involving subway fires

PPM1K mediates metabolic disorder of branched-chain amino acid and regulates cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury by activating ferroptosis in neurons

Abstract Ischemic stroke is a neurological disorder caused by vascular stenosis or occlusion, accounting for approximately 87% of strokes. Clinically, the most effective therapy for ischemic stroke is vascular recanalization, which aims to rescue neurons undergoing ischemic insults. Although reperfusion therapy is the most effective treatment for ischemic stroke, it still has limited benefits for many patients, and ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury is a widely recognized cause of poor prognosis. Here, we aim to investigate the mechanism of protein phosphatase Mg2+/Mn2+ dependent 1 K (PPM1K) mediates metabolic disorder of branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) by promoting fatty acid oxidation led to ferroptosis after cerebral I/R injury. We established the I/R model in mice and used BT2, a highly specific BCAA dehydrogenase (BCKD) kinase inhibitor to promote BCAA metabolism. It was further verified by lentivirus knocking down PPM1K in neurons. We found that BCAA levels were elevated after I/R injury due to dysfunctional oxidative degradation caused by phosphorylated BCKD E1α subunit (BCKDHA). Additionally, the level of phosphorylated BCKDHA was determined by decreased PPM1K in neurons. We next demonstrated that BCAA could induce oxidative stress, lipid peroxidation, and ferroptosis in primary cultured cortical neurons in vitro. Our results further showed that BT2 could reduce neuronal ferroptosis by enhancing BCAA oxidation through inhibition of BCKDHA phosphorylation. We further found that defective BCAA catabolism could induce neuronal ferroptosis by PPM1K knockdown. Furthermore, BT2 was found to alleviate neurological behavior disorders after I/R injury in mice, and the effect was similar to ferroptosis inhibitor ferrostatin-1. Our findings reveal a novel role of BCAA in neuronal ferroptosis after cerebral ischemia and provide a new potential target for the treatment of ischemic stroke