Long-term outcomes of mitral valve annuloplasty versus subvalvular sparing replacement for severe ischemic mitral regurgitation

Background: Although practice guidelines recommend surgery for patients with severe chronic ischemic mitral regurgitation (CIMR), they do not specify whether to repair or replace the mitral valve. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term outcomes in patients with severe CIMR undergoing mitral valve annuloplasty (MVA) versus subvalvular sparing mitral valve replacement (MVR).  Methods: 392 consecutive patients who underwent MVA or subvalvular sparing MVR for treatment of severe CIMR were retrospectively reviewed. Results: After adjustment for baseline differences with multivariable regression analysis at 53 months follow-up (interquartile range, 34–81 months), there was no significant difference between the two groups for risk of major adverse cardiac or cerebrovascular events (MACCE), cardiac death, or all-cause death. Propensity score matching extracted 77 pairs. During the follow-up, compared with the MVR group, both the left atrium and left ventricle end-diastolic diameter were markedly larger (p = 0.013 and p = 0.033, respectively), and the incidence of mitral regurgitation recurrence was significantly higher in the MVA group (p < 0.001). No significant difference was observed between the two propensity score-matched groups in composite in-hospital outcomes, overall survival, freedom from cardiac death or MACCE, except subvalvular sparing MVR was associated with a lower incidence of hospitalization for heart failure than MVA (p = 0.015). Conclusions: Subvalvular sparing MVR is a suitable management of patients with severe CIMR, it is more favorable to ventricular remodeling and is associated with a lower incidence of hospitalization for heart failure than MVA

Predicting functional mitral stenosis after restrictive annuloplasty for ischemic mitral regurgitation

Background: Although it has been realized that restrictive mitral valve annuloplasty (MVA) may re­sult in clinically significant functional mitral stenosis (MS), it still cannot be predicted. The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors for clinically significant functional MS following restrictive MVA surgery for chronic ischemic mitral regurgitation (CIMR). Methods: One hundred and fourteen patients who underwent restrictive MVA with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for treatment of CIMR were retrospectively reviewed. Clinically significant functional MS was defined as resting transmitral peak pressure gradient (PPG) ≥ 13 mmHg. Results: During the follow-up period (range 6–12 months), 28 (24.56%) patients developed clinically significant functional MS. The PPG at follow-up was significantly higher than that measured in the early postoperative stage (3–5 days after surgery). Moreover, there was a linear correlation between the two measurements (r = 0.398, p < 0.001). Annuloplasty size ≤ 27 mm and early postoperative PPG ≥ 7.4 mmHg could predict clinically significant functional MS at 6–12 months postoperatively. Conclusions: Chronic ischemic mitral regurgitation patients treated with restrictive MVA and CABG have significant increases in PPG postoperatively. Annuloplasty size ≤ 27 mm and early postopera­tive PPG ≥ 7.4 mmHg can predict clinically significant functional MS at 6–12 months after surgery

Text Style Transfer Back-Translation

Back Translation (BT) is widely used in the field of machine translation, as it has been proved effective for enhancing translation quality. However, BT mainly improves the translation of inputs that share a similar style (to be more specific, translation-like inputs), since the source side of BT data is machine-translated. For natural inputs, BT brings only slight improvements and sometimes even adverse effects. To address this issue, we propose Text Style Transfer Back Translation (TST BT), which uses a style transfer model to modify the source side of BT data. By making the style of source-side text more natural, we aim to improve the translation of natural inputs. Our experiments on various language pairs, including both high-resource and low-resource ones, demonstrate that TST BT significantly improves translation performance against popular BT benchmarks. In addition, TST BT is proved to be effective in domain adaptation so this strategy can be regarded as a general data augmentation method. Our training code and text style transfer model are open-sourced.Comment: acl2023, 14 pages, 4 figures, 19 table

Data-Driven Distributed Optical Vibration Sensors: A Review

Distributed optical vibration sensors (DOVS) have attracted much attention recently since it can be used to monitor mechanical vibrations or acoustic waves with long reach and high sensitivity. Phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) is one of the most commonly used DOVS schemes. For Φ-OTDR, the whole length of fiber under test (FUT) works as the sensing instrument and continuously generates sensing data during measurement. Researchers have made great efforts to try to extract external intrusions from the redundant data. High signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is necessary in order to accurately locate and identify external intrusions in Φ-OTDR systems. Improvement in SNR is normally limited by the properties of light source, photodetector and FUT. But this limitation can also be overcome by post-processing of the received optical signals. In this context, detailed methodologies of SNR enhancement post-processing algorithms in Φ-OTDR systems have been described in this paper. Furthermore, after successfully locating the external vibrations, it is also important to identify the types of source of the vibrations. Pattern classification is a powerful tool in recognizing the intrusion types from the vibration signals in practical applications. Recent reports of Φ-OTDR systems employed with pattern classification algorithms are subsequently reviewed and discussed. This thorough review will provide a design pathway for improving the performance of Φ-OTDR while maintaining the cost of the system as no additional hardware is required

Wheat Rhizosphere Metagenome Reveals Newfound Potential Soil Zn-Mobilizing Bacteria Contributing to Cultivars’ Variation in Grain Zn Concentration

An effective solution to global human zinc (Zn) deficiency is Zn biofortification of staple food crops, which has been hindered by the low available Zn in calcareous soils worldwide. Many culturable soil microbes have been reported to increase Zn availability in the laboratory, while the status of these microbes in fields and whether there are unculturable Zn-mobilizing microbes remain unexplored. Here, we use the culture-independent metagenomic sequencing to investigate the rhizosphere microbiome of three high-Zn (HZn) and three low-Zn (LZn) wheat cultivars in a field experiment with calcareous soils. The average grain Zn concentration of HZn was higher than the Zn biofortification target 40 mg kg–1, while that of LZn was lower than 40 mg kg–1. Metagenomic sequencing and analysis showed large microbiome difference between wheat rhizosphere and bulk soil but small difference between HZn and LZn. Most of the rhizosphere-enriched microbes in HZn and LZn were in common, including many of the previously reported soil Zn-mobilizing microbes. Notably, 30 of the 32 rhizosphere-enriched species exhibiting different abundances between HZn and LZn possess the functional genes involved in soil Zn mobilization, especially the synthesis and exudation of organic acids and siderophores. Most of the abundant potential Zn-mobilizing species were positively correlated with grain Zn concentration and formed a module with strong interspecies relations in the co-occurrence network of abundant rhizosphere-enriched microbes. The potential Zn-mobilizing species, especially Massilia and Pseudomonas, may contribute to the cultivars’ variation in grain Zn concentration, and they deserve further investigation in future studies on Zn biofortification

Apolygus lucorum genome provides insights into omnivorousness and mesophyll feeding.

peer reviewedApolygus lucorum (Miridae) is an omnivorous pest that occurs worldwide and is notorious for the serious damage it causes to various crops and substantial economic losses. Although some studies have examined the biological characteristics of the mirid bug, no reference genome is available in Miridae, limiting in-depth studies of this pest. Here, we present a chromosome-scale reference genome of A. lucorum, the first sequenced Miridae species. The assembled genome size was 1.02 Gb with a contig N50 of 785 kb. With Hi-C scaffolding, 1,016 Mb contig sequences were clustered, ordered and assembled into 17 large scaffolds with scaffold N50 length 68 Mb, each corresponding to a natural chromosome. Numerous transposable elements occur in this genome and contribute to the large genome size. Expansions of genes associated with omnivorousness and mesophyll feeding such as those related to digestion, chemosensory perception, and detoxification were observed in A. lucorum, suggesting that gene expansion contributed to its strong environmental adaptability and severe harm to crops. We clarified that a salivary enzyme polygalacturonase is unique in mirid bugs and has significantly expanded in A. lucorum, which may contribute to leaf damage from this pest. The reference genome of A. lucorum not only facilitates biological studies of Hemiptera as well as an understanding of the damage mechanism of mesophyll feeding, but also provides a basis on which to develop efficient control technologies for mirid bugs

Research on the Application of Vacuum Freeze-drying Technology for Food

Vacuum freeze-drying technology is the best way to preserve the quality of food at present, which can maintain the nutrition and flavor of food to the maximum extent. It has the characteristics of being green, convenient, and nutritious. This paper analyses the principle of vacuum freeze-drying technology and introduces its application in the processing of fruits and vegetables, meat food, aquatic products, and drinks, discusses the four operation processes of pre-treatment, pre-freezing, freeze-drying, and post-treatment, and finally summarizes the existing problems, deficiencies and development prospects

Design of Multi-speed Motor Control System Based on S7-1200 PLC and Frequency Converter

In order to realize multi-speed control of motor, a control system based on S7-1200 PLC and Siemens MicroMaster420 frequency converter is designed. Through the analysis of the cooling fan control requirements, the hardware system and software programming of the whole control system are designed. The PLC control unit of the control system completes signal acquisition, logic control and communication, etc. The system sets the parameters of the converter by changing the on-off state of the converter digital input, and further realizes the steering change and speed adjustment of the motor. Through experimental comparison, it is concluded that the control system designed in this paper can save more than 30% of the electric energy. The load of the motor is greater, and the energy-saving effect is more obvious. The advantages of the control system are simple circuit structure and convenient operation. The designed control system is simple and effective to realize the multi-stage control of the motor and improve the reliability and stability of the motor