Distribution of Onryza maga (Leech, 1890) (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) with description of female genitalia and taxonomic notes

For more than twenty years, Hainan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia have been erroneously reported in Chinese literature as belonging to the distribution range of Onryza maga (Leech 1890). Based upon a careful survey of specimens and relevant literature, these regions are omitted from the known range of this species. Onryza maga maga is found from northeast Guizhou, south Henan and Qinling-Daba Mountains in Shaanxi of China, its occurrence in Hunan is confirmed. The adults are redescribed and the variability of wing patterns is discussed. Female genitalia are illustrated and described for the first time. Some biological information and an updated distribution map of the species are provided

Arylsulfonyl indoline-enzamide exhibits inhibitory effect on nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Purpose: To investigate the effect of arylsulfonyl indoline-benzamide (ASIB) on the viability of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cells, and the underlying mechanism of action. Methods: The viability of C666 and NPC 039 cells was determined using 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl) 2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Cell migration was analysed by wound healing assay, while protein expression levels of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), p50, p65 and NF κB were assayed using western blotting. Results: MTT assay results showed that ASIB treatment led to significant and dose-dependent reductions in the viability of C666 and NPC 039 (p ˂ 0.05). The migration and invasive potential of C666 cells were decreased on incubation with ASIB for 48 h. Western blotting data showed significant decrease in MMP 2/9 expressions in C666 cells on treatment with ASIB (p ˂ 0.05). The levels of p65 and p50 in the nuclear fraction of C666 cells were markedly lower than those in the negative control group. Arylsulfonyl indoline-benzamide (ASIB) treatment for 48 h decreased the level of NF κB expression in C666 cells (p ˂ 0.05). The volume of tumor excised from ASIB-treated NPC mice was lower than that of the untreated group. Conclusion: Arylsulfonyl indoline-benzamide (ASIB) exhibits inhibitory effects on the viability and metastasis potential of NPC cells. Thus, it may be beneficial in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma but this has to be further investigated

TopoCluster: A Localized Data Structure for Topology-based Visualization

Unstructured data are collections of points with irregular topology, often represented through simplicial meshes, such as triangle and tetrahedral meshes. Whenever possible such representations are avoided in visualization since they are computationally demanding if compared with regular grids. In this work, we aim at simplifying the encoding and processing of simplicial meshes. The paper proposes TopoCluster, a new localized data structure for tetrahedral meshes. TopoCluster provides efficient computation of the connectivity of the mesh elements with a low memory footprint. The key idea of TopoCluster is to subdivide the simplicial mesh into clusters. Then, the connectivity information is computed locally for each cluster and discarded when it is no longer needed. We define two instances of TopoCluster. The first instance prioritizes time efficiency and provides only a modest savings in memory, while the second instance drastically reduces memory consumption up to an order of magnitude with respect to comparable data structures. Thanks to the simple interface provided by TopoCluster, we have been able to integrate both data structures into the existing Topological Toolkit (TTK) framework. As a result, users can run any plugin of TTK using TopoCluster without changing a single line of code

Epidemiological features of tuberculosis infection in a rural prefecture of Japan from 2007 to 2018

This study aimed to investigate the epidemiological features of reported tuberculosis (TB) infections in a western prefecture (Nagasaki Prefecture) from 2007 to 2018, and to identify the high-risk group for TB infection. The characteristics of 12 years of reported TB infections from the Nagasaki Prefectural Informational Center of Infectious Diseases were summarized by median (interquartile range [IQR]) and proportion; the annual TB infections’ notification rate regarding sex/age was calculated accordingly. The diagnosis of TB infection was made according to clinic symptoms and laboratory examination. In total, 4364 TB infections were reported in 2007 and 2018, with a median age (IQR) of 74 (55–84) years. The majority of TB infections were male (52.6%, 2297/4364), > 65 years (65.8%, 2869/4364), and indigenous (98.1%, 4276/4364). Among active TB, 66.9% (1833/2740) had pulmonary TB, and 25.3% (694/2740) were diagnosed as extrapulmonary TB. The highest notification rate of TB infection was observed in the elderly male population (> 85 years). The annual notification rate of TB infections ranged between 19.4/and 34.0/100,000 for 12 years. The notification rates of TB infections were high in older people of both sexes, especially in men aged > 85. Therefore, appropriate interventions and health management are essential for TB control in (and with a focus on) the elderly population

Efficient Characterizations of Multiphoton States with Ultra-thin Integrated Photonics

Metasurface enables the generation and manipulation of multiphoton entanglement with flat optics, providing a more efficient platform for large-scale photonic quantum information processing. Here, we show that a single metasurface optical chip would allow more efficient characterizations of multiphoton entangled states, such as shadow tomography, which generally requires fast and complicated control of optical setups to perform projective measurements in different bases, a demanding task using conventional optics. The compact and stable device here allows implementations of general positive observable value measures with a reduced sample complexity and significantly alleviates the experimental complexity to implement shadow tomography. Integrating self-learning and calibration algorithms, we observe notable advantages in the reconstruction of multiphoton entanglement, including using fewer measurements, having higher accuracy, and being robust against optical loss. Our work unveils the feasibility of metasurface as a favorable integrated optical device for efficient characterization of multiphoton entanglement, and sheds light on scalable photonic quantum technologies with ultra-thin integrated optics.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Layered Rendering Diffusion Model for Zero-Shot Guided Image Synthesis

This paper introduces innovative solutions to enhance spatial controllability in diffusion models reliant on text queries. We present two key innovations: Vision Guidance and the Layered Rendering Diffusion (LRDiff) framework. Vision Guidance, a spatial layout condition, acts as a clue in the perturbed distribution, greatly narrowing down the search space, to focus on the image sampling process adhering to the spatial layout condition. The LRDiff framework constructs an image-rendering process with multiple layers, each of which applies the vision guidance to instructively estimate the denoising direction for a single object. Such a layered rendering strategy effectively prevents issues like unintended conceptual blending or mismatches, while allowing for more coherent and contextually accurate image synthesis. The proposed method provides a more efficient and accurate means of synthesising images that align with specific spatial and contextual requirements. We demonstrate through our experiments that our method provides better results than existing techniques both quantitatively and qualitatively. We apply our method to three practical applications: bounding box-to-image, semantic mask-to-image and image editing

Regional Homogeneity and Multivariate Pattern Analysis of Cervical Spondylosis Neck Pain and the Modulation Effect of Treatment

Objects: We investigated brain functional alteration in patients with chronic cervical spondylosis neck pain (CSNP) compared to healthy controls (HCs) and the effect of intervention.Methods: 104 CSNP patients and 96 matched HCs were recruited. Patients received 4 weeks of treatment. Resting-state fMRI and Northwick Park Neck Pain Questionnaire (NPQ) were collected before and after treatment. Resting state regional homogeneity (rs-ReHo) and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) were applied to (1) investigate rs-ReHo differences between CSNP patients and controls and the effect of longitudinal treatment and (2) classify CSNP patients from HCs and predict clinical outcomes before treatment using MVPA.Results: We found that (1) CSNP patients showed decreased rs-ReHo in the left sensorimotor cortex and right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), and rs-ReHo at the rTPJ significantly increased after treatment; (2) rs-ReHo at rTPJ was associated with NPQ at baseline, and pre- and post-treatment rs-ReHo changes at rTPJ were associated with NPQ changes in CSNP patients; and (3) MVPA could discriminate CSNP patients from HCs with 72% accuracy and predict clinical outcomes with a mean absolute error of 19.6%.Conclusion: CSNP patients are associated with dysfunction of the rTPJ and sensorimotor area.Significance: rTPJ plays on important role in the pathophysiology and development of CSNP