《夷坚志》报应类故事研究 = Research on the Retributive Stories in Yijian Zhi

Master'sMASTER OF ART

Oscillation-specific nodal alterations in early to middle stages Parkinsons disease.

Background: Different oscillations of brain networks could carry different dimensions of brain integration. We aimed to investigate oscillation-specific nodal alterations in patients with Parkinsons disease (PD) across early stage to middle stage by using graph theory-based analysis. Methods: Eighty-eight PD patients including 39 PD patients in the early stage (EPD) and 49 patients in the middle stage (MPD) and 36 controls were recruited in the present study. Graph theory-based network analyses from three oscillation frequencies (slow-5: 0.01-0.027 Hz; slow-4: 0.027-0.073 Hz; slow-3: 0.073-0.198 Hz) were analyzed. Nodal metrics (e.g. nodal degree centrality, betweenness centrality and nodal efficiency) were calculated. Results: Our results showed that (1) a divergent effect of oscillation frequencies on nodal metrics, especially on nodal degree centrality and nodal efficiency, that the anteroventral neocortex and subcortex had high nodal metrics within low oscillation frequencies while the posterolateral neocortex had high values within the relative high oscillation frequency was observed, which visually showed that network was perturbed in PD; (2) PD patients in early stage relatively preserved nodal properties while MPD patients showed widespread abnormalities, which was consistently detected within all three oscillation frequencies; (3) the involvement of basal ganglia could be specifically observed within slow-5 oscillation frequency in MPD patients; (4) logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses demonstrated that some of those oscillation-specific nodal alterations had the ability to well discriminate PD patients from controls or MPD from EPD patients at the individual level; (5) occipital disruption within high frequency (slow-3) made a significant influence on motor impairment which was dominated by akinesia and rigidity. Conclusions: Coupling various oscillations could provide potentially useful information for large-scale network and progressive oscillation-specific nodal alterations were observed in PD patients across early to middle stages

The association between serum uric acid and blood pressure in different age groups in a healthy Chinese cohort

High serum uric acid (sUA) has been reported to be a risk factor for hypertension however, whether this is the case for all age groups is not clear. We examined the association between sUA concentrations and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) in different age groups in a cohort of healthy Chinese participants. A total of 1082 healthy participants aged from 41 to 70 years were included. sUA concentration was measured by the uricaseperoxidase method. SBP and DBP were assessed using mercury sphygmomanometry. Hypertension was defined as SBP ≥140 mm Hg or DBP ≥90 mm Hg. Hyperuricemia (HUA) was defined as sUA concentration of >7mg/dL in men and >6mg/dL in women. The association between sUA concentration and SBP and DBP was examined using Pearson's correlation test, multivariate linear regression, and logistic regression analysis. The prevalence of hypertension and HUA increased with age (P<.001). Hypertension was more common in participants that had HUA than in those that did not (38.95% vs 30.16%, P=.02). Higher sUA was significantly associated with higher SBP and DBP in the 41- to 50-year-old participants (SBP, b=0.35, P<.001; DBP, b=.29, P<.001; after adjustment for age, sex, total cholesterol, estimated glomerular filtration rate, and fasting plasma glucose). HUA was also a risk factor for hypertension in this age group (odds ratio 1.425, 95% confidence interval, 1.217–1.668, P<.001). There was no association between sUA concentration and SBP and DBP in the other age groups. In this population of healthy Chinese participants, sUA concentration was positively associated with hypertension only in the 41- to 50-year-old group. Lowering uric acid in this age group may help to reduce the incidence of hypertension

A contrast-enhanced CT-based radiomic nomogram for the differential diagnosis of intravenous leiomyomatosis and uterine leiomyoma

ObjectiveUterine intravenous leiomyomatosis (IVL) is a rare and unique leiomyoma that is difficult to surgery due to its ability to extend into intra- and extra-uterine vasculature. And it is difficult to differentiate from uterine leiomyoma (LM) by conventional CT scanning, which results in a large number of missed diagnoses. This study aimed to evaluate the utility of a contrast-enhanced CT-based radiomic nomogram for preoperative differentiation of IVL and LM.Methods124 patients (37 IVL and 87 LM) were retrospectively enrolled in the study. Radiomic features were extracted from contrast-enhanced CT before surgery. Clinical, radiomic, and combined models were developed using LightGBM (Light Gradient Boosting Machine) algorithm to differentiate IVL and LM. The clinical and radiomic signatures were integrated into a nomogram. The diagnostic performance of the models was evaluated using the area under the curve (AUC) and decision curve analysis (DCA).ResultsClinical factors, such as symptoms, menopausal status, age, and selected imaging features, were found to have significant correlations with the differential diagnosis of IVL and LM. A total of 108 radiomic features were extracted from contrast-enhanced CT images and selected for analysis. 29 radiomics features were selected to establish the Rad-score. A clinical model was developed to discriminate IVL and LM (AUC=0.826). Radiomic models were used to effectively differentiate IVL and LM (AUC=0.980). This radiological nomogram combined the Rad-score with independent clinical factors showed better differentiation efficiency than the clinical model (AUC=0.985, p=0.046).ConclusionThis study provides evidence for the utility of a radiomic nomogram integrating clinical and radiomic signatures for differentiating IVL and LM with improved diagnostic accuracy. The nomogram may be useful in clinical decision-making and provide recommendations for clinical treatment

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

仙家之史：神仙集传在明清时期的衍变 = THE HISTORY OF IMMORTAL: THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF DAOIST HAGIOGRAPHY IN MING AND QING DYNASTIES

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (FASS

Autonomous Searching for a Diffusive Source Based on Minimizing the Combination of Entropy and Potential Energy

The infotaxis scheme is a search strategy for a diffusive source, where the sensor platform is driven to reduce the uncertainty about the source through climbing the information gradient. The infotaxis scheme has been successfully applied in many source searching tasks and has demonstrated fast and stable searching capabilities. However, the infotaxis scheme focuses on gathering information to reduce the uncertainty down to zero, rather than chasing the most probable estimated source when a reliable estimation is obtained. This leads the sensor to spend more time exploring the space and yields a longer search path. In this paper, from the context of exploration-exploitation balance, a novel search scheme based on minimizing free energy that combines the entropy and the potential energy is proposed. The term entropy is implemented as the exploration to gather more information. The term potential energy, leveraging the distance to the estimated sources, is implemented as the exploitation to reinforce the chasing behavior with the receding of the uncertainty. It results in a faster effective search strategy by which the sensor determines its actions by minimizing the free energy rather than only the entropy in traditional infotaxis. Simulations of the source search task based on the computational plume verify the efficiency of the proposed strategy, achieving a shorter mean search time

Automatic extraction of built-up areas in Chinese urban agglomerations based on the deep learning method using NTL data

Rapidly and accurately extracting built-up areas is an essential prerequisite of urbanization research. There have been many studies on the extraction of built-up areas using remote sensing technologies. So far, few studies have been conducted to evaluate the applicability of the deep learning method to extract built-up areas under the condition that only nighttime light (NTL) data are used. This study proposed a deep learning method to extract the built-up areas using NTL data, and applied the method to analyze the spatial and temporal changes of the built-up areas in Chinese two urban agglomerations from 2000 to 2020. The results show that the U-Net deep learning method can be used to extract built-up areas efficiently under the condition that only NTL data are used. The proposed method was able to improve the accuracy of built-up area extraction significantly compared to the existing method. For the extraction of built-up areas in large regions with long time series, the proposed method can facilitate the work and improve the processing efficiency. The gravity centre of the built-up areas in the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration migrated south-eastward, and the gravity centre of the built-up areas in the Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration migrated south-westward, with these gravity centres gradually approaching the geometric centres of the corresponding urban agglomerations. The built-up areas in the Central Plains and Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomerations grew rapidly, increasing by 4.14 times and 3.73 times from 2000 to 2020, respectively. The built-up areas in the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration expanded faster, while the urban development degree of the Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration was higher. The urban distributions and development modes of these two urban agglomerations were quite different. The Central Plains Urban Agglomeration tended to further agglomerate, while the Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration tended to disperse

Application of a Novel Long-Gauge Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor for Corrosion Detection via a Two-level Strategy

Corrosion of main steel reinforcement is one of the most significant causes of structuraldeterioration and durability reduction. This research proposes a two-level detection strategy tolocate and quantify corrosion damage via a new kind of long-gauge fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor.Compared with the traditional point strain gauges, this new sensor has been developed for bothlocal and global structural monitoring by measuring the averaged strain within a long gauge length.Based on the dynamic macrostrain responses of FBG sensors, the strain flexibility of structures areidentified for corrosion locating (Level 1), and then the corrosion is quantified (Level 2) in terms ofreduction of sectional stiffness of reinforcement through the sensitivity analysis of strain flexibility.The two-level strategy has the merit of reducing the number of unknown structural parametersthrough corrosion damage location (Level 1), which guarantees that the corrosion quantification(Level 2) can be performed efficiently in a reduced domain. Both numerical and experimentalexamples have been studied to reveal the ability of distributed long-gauge FBG sensors for corrosionlocalization and quantification