Research progress on anterior segment optical coherence tomography in glaucoma

Glaucoma is the second blindness disease in the world, and there are more primary angle closed glaucoma in China. The anatomy changes of the anterior chamber have close relationships with the development of glaucoma. Anterior segment optical coherence tomography(AS-OCT)has the advantages of fast, non-contact, high resolution and accurate quantitative measurement, which provides a kind of important method for finding the pathogenesis of primary angle closed glaucoma, for early diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma, and for the postoperative evaluation of glaucoma

DNA methylation and regulatory elements during chicken germline stem cell differentiation

Funding for Open Access provided by the UMD Libraries' Open Access Publishing Fund.The production of germ cells in vitro would open important new avenues for stem biology and human medicine, but the mechanisms of germ cell differentiation are not well understood. The chicken, as a great model for embryology and development, was used in this study to help us explore its regulatory mechanisms. In this study, we reported a comprehensive genome-wide DNA methylation landscape in chicken germ cells, and transcriptomic dynamics was also presented. By uncovering DNA methylation patterns on individual genes, some genes accurately modulated by DNA methylation were found to be associated with cancers and virus infection, e.g., AKT1 and CTNNB1. Chicken-unique markers were also discovered for identifying male germ cells. Importantly, integrated epigenetic mechanisms were explored during male germ cell differentiation, which provides deep insight into the epigenetic processes associated with male germ cell differentiation and possibly improves treatment options to male infertility in animals and humans

Phase diagram of holographic thermal dense QCD matter with rotation

We study the rotation effects of the hot and dense QCD matter in a non-perturbative regime by the gauge/gravity duality. We use the gravitational model that is designated to match the state-of-the-art lattice data on the thermal properties of (2+1)-flavor QCD and predict the location of the critical endpoint and the first-order phase transition line at large baryon chemical potential without rotation. After introducing the angular velocity via a local Lorentz boost, we investigate the thermodynamic quantities for the system under rotation in a self-consistent way. We find that the critical temperature and baryon chemical potential associated with the QCD phase transition decrease as the angular velocity increases. Moreover, some interesting phenomena are observed near the critical endpoint. We then construct the 3-dimensional phase diagram of the QCD matter in terms of temperature, baryon chemical potential, and angular velocity. As a parallel investigation, we also consider the gravitational model of $SU(3)$ pure gluon system, for which the 2-dimensional phase diagram associated with temperature and angular velocity has been predicted. The corresponding thermodynamic quantities with rotation are investigated.Comment: 22 pages, 24 figure

Problem Frame Analysis of Weapon System of Systems Requirement

AbstractThe requirement of weapon system of systems(WSoS) plays a very important role in the development of WSoS,which is the basis of the design of WSoS and runs through the research of WSoS. Based on the requirement engineering method of problem frame, the problem frame of WSoS requirement(WSoSR) is built which is consisted of requirement, mission domain, task domain, operation domain and system of systems(SoS) domain. The phenomena between the domains is defined and the constraint set is given. The model of the WSoSR problem transformation is put forward including the transformation process and the transformation content. An example of combined firing employment to the enemy ship fleet is shown in the end

Morphology-Enhanced CAM-Guided SAM for weakly supervised Breast Lesion Segmentation

Breast cancer diagnosis challenges both patients and clinicians, with early detection being crucial for effective treatment. Ultrasound imaging plays a key role in this, but its utility is hampered by the need for precise lesion segmentation-a task that is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. To address these challenges, we propose a new framework: a morphology-enhanced, Class Activation Map (CAM)-guided model, which is optimized using a computer vision foundation model known as SAM. This innovative framework is specifically designed for weakly supervised lesion segmentation in early-stage breast ultrasound images. Our approach uniquely leverages image-level annotations, which removes the requirement for detailed pixel-level annotation. Initially, we perform a preliminary segmentation using breast lesion morphology knowledge. Following this, we accurately localize lesions by extracting semantic information through a CAM-based heatmap. These two elements are then fused together, serving as a prompt to guide the SAM in performing refined segmentation. Subsequently, post-processing techniques are employed to rectify topological errors made by the SAM. Our method not only simplifies the segmentation process but also attains accuracy comparable to supervised learning methods that rely on pixel-level annotation. Our framework achieves a Dice score of 74.39% on the test set, demonstrating compareable performance with supervised learning methods. Additionally, it outperforms a supervised learning model, in terms of the Hausdorff distance, scoring 24.27 compared to Deeplabv3+'s 32.22. These experimental results showcase its feasibility and superior performance in integrating weakly supervised learning with SAM. The code is made available at: https://github.com/YueXin18/MorSeg-CAM-SAM

Growth patterns and environmental adaptions of the tree species planted for ecological remediation in typhoon-disturbed areas—A case study in Zhuhai, China

Typhoon frequently results in various mechanical damages to urban forest ecosystems. Imperative forest remediation projects were launched to restore the environmental conditions in cities, in which massive trees were newly planted. However, it was rarely answered whether the newly planted trees could acclimate to typhoon circumstances and enhance the wind resistance of the local ecosystem. Therefore, it was necessary to achieve information on the physical growth and windy environmental adaption of newly planted trees, which could promote a profound understanding of the efficiency of post-typhoon ecological remediation. In this study, we selected Zhuhai's urban-forest remediation district as our research area that suffered severely from Typhoon Hato (2017). The six newly-planted tree species for the ecological remediation were measured for their above- and below-ground processes from June 2018 to December 2019, including their development of tree height, ground diameter, crown size, and fine root biomass. Additionally, the variations of the soil's physical and chemical properties were also measured to assess the impact of plantation on soil conditions. Our results showed that the six surveyed tree species had different above- and below-ground growth patterns. With robust root development at horizontal and vertical levels combined with relatively short and thick above-ground profiles, Sterculia lanceolata Cav. and Cinnamomum camphora (Linn) were likely to cope well with typhoon disturbances. Ilex rotunda Thunb. and Schima superba Gardn. et Champ. exhibited moderate acclimation to windy environment, while Elaeocarpus sylvestris (Lour.) Poir. and Elaeocarpus apiculatus Mast. were not recommended to be planted in typhoon-disturbed areas concerning their unstable root development. In addition, the ecological remediation did improve the soil properties, specifically for the chemical characteristics including available nitrogen, available potassium, and soil organic matter. To improve the effectiveness of forest remediation in the future, it was better to choose those tree species with vigorous root development and steady values of root:shoot ratios, which might be advantageous for coping with typhoon disturbances. The tree species with prosperous above-ground growth were not suitable for areas facing strong winds directly but could be planted in leeward regions to amplify their landscape functions

Benzyl 3-(10-oxo-9,10-dihydrophenanthren-9-ylidene)dithiocarbazate

In the title compound, C22H16N2OS2, the phenanthrene ring is nearly perpendicular to the phenyl ring, making a dihedral angle of 87.2 (2)°. Intra­molecular N—H⋯O inter­actions are present. In the crystal structure, the mol­ecules are linked through inter­molecular C—H⋯O inter­actions. The crystal structure is also stabilized by C—H⋯π inter­actions and weak π–π contacts [centroid-centroid distance = 3.36 (6) Å]

Supervised geodesic propagation for semantic label transfer

Abstract. In this paper we propose a novel semantic label transfer method using supervised geodesic propagation (SGP). We use supervised learning to guide the seed selection and the label propagation. Given an input image, we first retrieve its similar image set from annotated databases. A Joint Boost model is learned on the similar image set of the input image. Then the recognition proposal map of the input image is inferred by this learned model. The initial distance map is defined by the proposal map: the higher probability, the smaller distance. In each iteration step of the geodesic propagation, the seed is selected as the one with the smallest distance from the undetermined superpixels. We learn a classifier as an indicator to indicate whether to propagate labels between two neighboring superpixels. The training samples of the indicator are annotated neighboring pairs from the similar image set. The geodesic distances of its neighbors are updated according to the combination of the texture and boundary features and the indication value. Experiments on three datasets show that our method outperforms the traditional learning based methods and the previous label transfer method for the semantic segmentation work

Therapeutic potential of traditional Chinese medicine on heat stroke

As global warming progresses, heat waves are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, meanwhile the incidence of heat stroke (HS) has increased sharply during the past decades. HS is typically associated with significant morbidity and mortality, and there is an urgent need for further research to solve this difficult issue. There currently exists difficulties regarding on-site emergency treatment methods and limited in-hospital treatment approaches, and better treatments are required as soon as possible. Theories and therapies from various traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) academic groups have been widely reported. Therefore, an exploration of prevention and protection methods should consider TCM experiences as an alternative. This article primarily reviews TCM herbal therapies and external therapies that have been described in various clinical reports and demonstrated in relevant studies. Herbal therapies, including herbal formulas, Chinese patent medicines (CPMs), single Chinese herbs, and associated extracts or monomers, are summarized based on the shared perspectives of the underlying mechanisms from TCM. In addition, external therapies including acupuncture, bloodletting, cupping, Gua sha and Tui na that have rarely been rarely mentioned and considered in most cases, are introduced and discussed to offer a unique perspective in the search for novel interventions for HS. In summary, TCM may provide abundant potential clinical benefits and research directions in the fight against HS