BACKGROUND Heat shock protein A4(HSPA4)belongs to molecular chaperone protein family which plays important roles within variable cellular activities,including cancer initiation and progression.However,the prognostic a...BACKGROUND Heat shock protein A4(HSPA4)belongs to molecular chaperone protein family which plays important roles within variable cellular activities,including cancer initiation and progression.However,the prognostic and immunological significance of HSPA4 in lung adenocarcinoma(LUAD)has not been revealed yet.AIM To explore the prognostic and immunological roles of HSPA4 to identify a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for LUAD.METHODS We assessed the prognostic and immunological significance of HSPA4 in LUAD using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas database.The association between HSPA4 expression and clinical-pathological features was assessed through Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon signed-rank test.Univariate/multivariate Cox regression analyses and Kaplan-Meier curves were employed to evaluate prognostic factors,including HSPA4,in LUAD.Gene set enrichment analysis(GSEA)was conducted to identify the key signaling pathways associated with HSPA4.The correlation between HSPA4 expression and cancer immune infiltration was evaluated using single-sample gene set enrichment analysis(ssGSEA).RESULTS Overexpressing HSPA4 was significantly related to advanced pathologic TNM stage,advanced pathologic stage,progression disease status of primary therapy outcome and female subgroups with LUAD.In addition,increased HSPA4 expression was found to be related to worse disease-specific survival and overall survival.GSEA analysis indicated a significant correlation between HSPA4 and cell cycle regulation and immune response,particularly through diminishing the function of cytotoxicity cells and CD8 T cells.The ssGSEA algorithm showed a positive correlation between HSPA4 expression and infiltrating levels of Th2 cells,while a negative correlation was observed with cytotoxic cell infiltration levels.CONCLUSION Our findings indicate HSPA4 is related to prognosis and immune cell infiltrates and may act as a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for LUAD.展开更多
BACKGROUND： The Atlanta criteria for acute pancreatitis （AP） has been revised recently. This study was to evaluate its practical value in classification of AP, the severity assessment and management. METHODS： The ...BACKGROUND： The Atlanta criteria for acute pancreatitis （AP） has been revised recently. This study was to evaluate its practical value in classification of AP, the severity assessment and management. METHODS： The clinical features, severity classification, out- come and risk factors for mortality of 3212 AP patients who had been admitted in Ruijin Hospital from 2004 to 2011 were analyzed based on the revised Atlanta criteria （RAC） and the original Atlanta criteria （OAC）.展开更多
Objective: To compare the clinical outcomes of minimally invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy and traditional median stemotomy through right atrium in treatment of common congenital heart diseases. Methods:...Objective: To compare the clinical outcomes of minimally invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy and traditional median stemotomy through right atrium in treatment of common congenital heart diseases. Methods: Clinical data of 59 cases of common congenital heart diseases treated with minimally invasive right axillary vertical thoracotomy from May, 2011 to February, 2013 and 77 cases of same diseases with traditional median stemotomy in the past three years were retrospectively analyzed, including atrial septal defect, membranous ventricular septal defect and partial endocardial cushion defect. The results were compared from the two groups, including the time for operation and cardiopulmonary bypass, amount of blood transfusion, postoperative drainage, ventilation time, hospital stay, and prognosis. Results: No severe complications happened in both groups, like deaths or secondary surgery caused by bleeding. No significant differences were in CPB time and postoperative ventilator time between groups (P>0.05), while for all of the operative time, the length of incision, postoperative drainage and hospital stay, minimally invasive right axillary vertical thoracotomy was superior to median stemotomy, with statistically significant differences (P<0.05). In six month followup after operation, no complications of residual deformity and pericardial effusion were found in both groups by doing echocardiography, but mild pectus carinatum was found in 8 patients in the traditional median sternotomy group (traditional group), whereas patients in another group were well recovered. Conclusions: Minimally invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy for common congenital heart diseases is as safe as traditional median stemotomy, without the increasing incidence of postoperative complications. Additionally, compared with traditional median stemotomy, minimally - invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy is better in the aspects of hidden incision, appearance, and postoperative recovery.展开更多
BACKGROUND: The effects of gangrenous cholecystitis (GC) and consequent surgical interventions on the clinical outcomes and prognosis of patients with severe acute pancreatitis are not clear. The present study was to ...BACKGROUND: The effects of gangrenous cholecystitis (GC) and consequent surgical interventions on the clinical outcomes and prognosis of patients with severe acute pancreatitis are not clear. The present study was to characterize the clinical outcomes of patients with severe acute pancreatitis complicated with GC. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 253 consecutive patients hospitalized for acute pancreatitis in intensive care unit. Among them, 68 were diagnosed as having severe acute pancreatitis; 10 out of the 68 patients had GC. We compared these 10 patients with GC and 58 patients without GC. The indices analyzed included sepsis/septic shock, pancreatic encephalopathy, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute renal failure, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, and death. RESULTS: Specific CT images of GC in patients with severe acute pancreatitis included enlarged and high-tensioned gallbladder, wall thickening, lumenal emphysema, discontinuous and/or irregular enhancement of mucosa, and pericholecystic effusion. The rates of severe sepsis/septic shock (70.0% vs 24.1%, P【0.01), pancreatic encephalopathy (50.0% vs 17.2%, P【0.05), acute respiratory distress syndrome (90.0% vs 41.4%, P【0.01), multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (70.0% vs 24.1%, P【0.01), acute renal failure (40.0% vs 27.6%, P【0.05), and death (40.0% vs 13.8%, P【0.05) were significantly higher in patients with GC than in those without GC.CONCLUSION: CT scans can help to identify early GC in patients with severe acute pancreatitis; early diagnosis and intervention for patients with GC can reduce morbidity and mortality.展开更多
Objective:To evaluate the anti-inflammatory activity of Crotalaria ferruginea extract(CFE)and its mechanism.Methods:An intratracheal lipopolysaccharide(LPS)instillationinduced acute lung injury(ALI)model was used to s...Objective:To evaluate the anti-inflammatory activity of Crotalaria ferruginea extract(CFE)and its mechanism.Methods:An intratracheal lipopolysaccharide(LPS)instillationinduced acute lung injury(ALI)model was used to study the antiinflammatory activity of CFE in vivo.The LPS-induced shock model was used to analyze the effect of CFE on survival.LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cell model was used to investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of CFE in vitro and the effects on mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK)or nuclear factor-κB(NF-κB)signaling pathways.Results:CFE administration decreased the number of inflammatory cells,reduced the levels of tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α),monocyte chemotactic protein-1(MCP-1),interleukin-6(IL-6),and interferon-γ,and diminished protein content in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of mice.CFE also reduced lung wet-to-dry weight ratio,myeloperoxidase,and lung tissue pathological injury.CFE preadministration improved the survival rate of mice challenged with a lethal dose of LPS.CFE reduced LPS-activated RAW264.7 cells to produce nitric oxide,TNF-α,MCP-1,and IL-6.Furthermore,CFE inhibited nuclear translocation and phosphorylation of NF-κB P65,extracellular signal-regulated kinase,c-Jun N-terminal kinases,and P38 MAPKs.Conclusions:CFE exhibits potent anti-inflammatory activity in LPS-induced ALI mice,LPS-shock mice,and RAW264.7 cells,and its mechanism may be associated with the inhibition of NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways.Crotalaria ferruginea may be a useful therapeutic drug for the treatment of ALI and other respiratory inflammations.展开更多
Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS)cloud platforms offer resources with diverse buying options.Users can run an instance on the on-demand market which is stable but expensive or on the spot market with a significant dis...Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS)cloud platforms offer resources with diverse buying options.Users can run an instance on the on-demand market which is stable but expensive or on the spot market with a significant discount.However,users have to carefully weigh the low cost of spot instances against their poor availability.Spot instances will be revoked when the revocation event occurs.Thus,an important problem that an IaaS user faces now is how to use spot in-stances in a cost-effective and low-risk way.Based on the replication-based fault tolerance mechanism,we propose an on-line termination algorithm that optimizes the cost of using spot instances while ensuring operational stability.We prove that in most cases,the cost of our proposed online algorithm will not exceed twice the minimum cost of the optimal of-fline algorithm that knows the exact future a priori.Through a large number of experiments,we verify that our algorithm in most cases has a competitive ratio of no more than 2,and in other cases it can also reach the guaranteed competitive ratio.展开更多
In a 1961 lecture to celebrate MIT’s centennial,John McCarthy proposed the vision of utility computing,including three key concepts of pay-per-use service,large computer and private computer.Six decades have passed,b...In a 1961 lecture to celebrate MIT’s centennial,John McCarthy proposed the vision of utility computing,including three key concepts of pay-per-use service,large computer and private computer.Six decades have passed,but Mc-Carthy’s computing utility vision has not yet been fully realized,despite advances in grid computing,services computing and cloud computing.This paper presents a perspective of computing utility called Information Superbahn,building on recent advances in cloud computing.This Information Superbahn perspective retains McCarthy’s vision as much as possible,while making essential modern requirements more explicit,in the new context of a networked world of billions of users,trillions of devices,and zettabytes of data.Computing utility offers pay-per-use computing services through a 1)planetscale,2)low-entropy and 3)high-goodput utility.The three salient characteristics of computing utility are elaborated.Initial evidence is provided to support this viewpoint.展开更多
Background:Computed tomography images are easy to misjudge because of their complexity,especially images of solitary pulmonary nodules,of which diagnosis as benign or malignant is extremely important in lung cancer tr...Background:Computed tomography images are easy to misjudge because of their complexity,especially images of solitary pulmonary nodules,of which diagnosis as benign or malignant is extremely important in lung cancer treatment.Therefore,there is an urgent need for a more effective strategy in lung cancer diagnosis.In our study,we aimed to externally validate and revise the Mayo model,and a new model was established.Methods:A total of 1450 patients from three centers with solitary pulmonary nodules who underwent surgery were included in the study and were divided into training,internal validation,and external validation sets(n=849,365,and 236,respectively).External verification and recalibration of the Mayo model and establishment of new logistic regression model were performed on the training set.Overall performance of each model was evaluated using area under receiver operating characteristic curve(AUC).Finally,the model validation was completed on the validation data set.Results:The AUC of the Mayo model on the training set was 0.653(95%confidence interval[CI]:0.613–0.694).After re-estimation of the coefficients of all covariates included in the original Mayo model,the revised Mayo model achieved an AUC of 0.671(95%CI:0.635–0.706).We then developed a new model that achieved a higher AUC of 0.891(95%CI:0.865–0.917).It had an AUC of 0.888(95%CI:0.842–0.934)on the internal validation set,which was significantly higher than that of the revised Mayo model(AUC:0.577,95%CI:0.509–0.646)and the Mayo model(AUC:0.609,95%CI,0.544–0.675)(P<0.001).The AUC of the new model was 0.876(95%CI:0.831–0.920)on the external verification set,which was higher than the corresponding value of the Mayo model(AUC:0.705,95%CI:0.639–0.772)and revised Mayo model(AUC:0.706,95%CI:0.640–0.772)(P<0.001).Then the prediction model was presented as a nomogram,which is easier to generalize.Conclusions:After external verification and recalibration of the Mayo model,the results show that they are not suitable for the prediction of malignant pulmonary nodules in the Chinese population.Therefore,a new model was established by a backward stepwise process.The new model was constructed to rapidly discriminate benign from malignant pulmonary nodules,which could achieve accurate diagnosis of potential patients with lung cancer.展开更多
Summary of main observation and conclusion Outstanding accomplishments have been achieved in the chemistry of difluorocarbene,but transitionmetal-catalyzed transfer of difluorocarbene for coupling remains a challengin...Summary of main observation and conclusion Outstanding accomplishments have been achieved in the chemistry of difluorocarbene,but transitionmetal-catalyzed transfer of difluorocarbene for coupling remains a challenging task.Herein,we describe a Pd-catalyzed coupling of difluorocarbene with two aryl carbon centers to give difluoromethylenation products,which cannot be obtained by any previous difluorocarbene-transformation method.展开更多
Learning comprehensive spatiotemporal features is crucial for human action recognition. Existing methods tend to model the spatiotemporal feature blocks in an integrate-separate-integrate form, such as appearance-and-...Learning comprehensive spatiotemporal features is crucial for human action recognition. Existing methods tend to model the spatiotemporal feature blocks in an integrate-separate-integrate form, such as appearance-and-relation network(ARTNet) and spatiotemporal and motion network(STM). However, with blocks stacking up, the rear part of the network has poor interpretability. To avoid this problem, we propose a novel architecture called spatial temporal relation network(STRNet), which can learn explicit information of appearance, motion and especially the temporal relation information. Specifically, our STRNet is constructed by three branches,which separates the features into 1) appearance pathway, to obtain spatial semantics, 2) motion pathway, to reinforce the spatiotemporal feature representation, and 3) relation pathway, to focus on capturing temporal relation details of successive frames and to explore long-term representation dependency. In addition, our STRNet does not just simply merge the multi-branch information, but we apply a flexible and effective strategy to fuse the complementary information from multiple pathways. We evaluate our network on four major action recognition benchmarks: Kinetics-400, UCF-101, HMDB-51, and Something-Something v1, demonstrating that the performance of our STRNet achieves the state-of-the-art result on the UCF-101 and HMDB-51 datasets, as well as a comparable accuracy with the state-of-the-art method on Something-Something v1 and Kinetics-400.展开更多
Exascale supercomputing refers to the scientific research efforts and activities to build and use supercomputers that can perform scientific computing at the speed of exaflops,or 10^(18) floating-point(64-bit)operatio...Exascale supercomputing refers to the scientific research efforts and activities to build and use supercomputers that can perform scientific computing at the speed of exaflops,or 10^(18) floating-point(64-bit)operations per second.Exascale supercomputing is a major milestone in surpassing the展开更多
Background:Understanding the global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza is essential for influenza control and prevention.Available data on the updated global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza are ...Background:Understanding the global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza is essential for influenza control and prevention.Available data on the updated global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza are scarce.This study aimed to assess the spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza after the 2009 influenza pandemic.Methods:Weekly influenza surveillance data in 86 countries from 2010 to 2017 were obtained from FluNet.First,the proportion of influenza A in total influenza viruses(PA)was calculated.Second,weekly numbers of influenza positive virus(A and B)were divided by the total number of samples processed to get weekly positive rates of influenza A(RWA)and influenza B(RWB).Third,the average positive rates of influenza A(RA)and influenza B(RB)for each country were calculated by averaging RWA,and RWB of 52 weeks.A Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to examine if the year-to-year change in PA in all countries were significant,and a universal kriging method with linear semivariogram model was used to extrapolate RA and RB in all countries.Results:PA ranged from 0.43 in Zambia to 0.98 in Belarus,and PA in countries with higher income was greater than those countries with lower income.The spatial patterns of high RB were the highest in sub-Saharan Africa,Asia-Pacific region and South America.RWA peaked in early weeks in temperate countries,and the peak of RWB occurred a bit later.There were some temperate countries with non-distinct influenza seasonality(e.g.,Mauritius and Maldives)and some tropical/subtropical countries with distinct influenza seasonality(e.g.,Chile and South Africa).Conclusions:Influenza seasonality is not predictable in some temperate countries,and it is distinct in Chile,Argentina and South Africa,implying that the optimal timing for influenza vaccination needs to be chosen with caution in these unpredictable countries.展开更多
Background and Aims:We compared lung function parameters in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD)and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease(MAFLD),and examined the association between lung function par...Background and Aims:We compared lung function parameters in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD)and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease(MAFLD),and examined the association between lung function parameters and fibrosis severity in MAFLD.Methods:In this cross-sectional study,we randomly recruited 2,543 middle-aged individuals from 25 communities across four cities in China during 2016 and 2020.All participants received a health check-up including measurement of anthropometric parameters,biochemical variables,liver ultrasonography,and spirometry.The severity of liver disease was assessed by the fibrosis(FIB)-4 score.Results:The prevalence of MAFLD was 20.4%(n=519)and that of NAFLD was 18.4%(n=469).After adjusting for age,sex,adiposity measures,smoking status,and significant alco-hol intake,subjects with MAFLD had a significantly lower predicted forced vital capacity(FVC,88.27±17.60%vs.90.82±16.85%,p<0.05)and lower 1 s forced expiratory volume(FEV1,79.89±17.34 vs.83.02±16.66%,p<0.05)than those with NAFLD.MAFLD with an increased FIB-4 score was significantly associated with decreased lung function.For each 1-point increase in FIB-4,FVC was diminished by 0.507(95%CI:-0.840,-0.173,p=0.003),and FEV1 was diminished by 0.439(95%CI:-0.739,-0.140,p=0.004).The results remained unchanged when the statistical analyses was performed separately for men and women.Conclusions:MAFLD was significantly asso-ciated with a greater impairment of lung function param-eters than NAFLD.展开更多
Functional connectivity has emerged as a promising approach to study the functional organisation of the brain and to define features for prediction of brain state. The most widely used method for inferring functional ...Functional connectivity has emerged as a promising approach to study the functional organisation of the brain and to define features for prediction of brain state. The most widely used method for inferring functional connectivity is Pearson＇s correlation, but it cannot differentiate direct and indirect effects. This disadvantage is often avoided by computing the partial correlation between two regions controlling all other regions, but this method suffers from Berkson＇s paradox. Some advanced methods, such as regularised inverse covariance, have been applied. However, these methods usually depend on some parameters. Here we propose use of minimum partial correlation as a parameter-free measure for the skeleton of functional connectivity in functional magnetic resonance imaging （flVIRI）. The minimum partial correlation between two regions is the minimum of absolute values of partial correlations by controlling all possible subsets of other regions. Theoretically, there is a direct effect between two regions if and only if their minimum partial correlation is non-zero under faithfulness and Gaussian assumptions. The elastic PC-algorithm is designed to efficiently approximate minimum partial correlation within a computational time budget. The simulation study shows that the proposed method outperforms others in most cases and its application is illustrated using a resting-state fMRI dataset from the human connectome project.展开更多
文摘BACKGROUND Heat shock protein A4(HSPA4)belongs to molecular chaperone protein family which plays important roles within variable cellular activities,including cancer initiation and progression.However,the prognostic and immunological significance of HSPA4 in lung adenocarcinoma(LUAD)has not been revealed yet.AIM To explore the prognostic and immunological roles of HSPA4 to identify a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for LUAD.METHODS We assessed the prognostic and immunological significance of HSPA4 in LUAD using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas database.The association between HSPA4 expression and clinical-pathological features was assessed through Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon signed-rank test.Univariate/multivariate Cox regression analyses and Kaplan-Meier curves were employed to evaluate prognostic factors,including HSPA4,in LUAD.Gene set enrichment analysis(GSEA)was conducted to identify the key signaling pathways associated with HSPA4.The correlation between HSPA4 expression and cancer immune infiltration was evaluated using single-sample gene set enrichment analysis(ssGSEA).RESULTS Overexpressing HSPA4 was significantly related to advanced pathologic TNM stage,advanced pathologic stage,progression disease status of primary therapy outcome and female subgroups with LUAD.In addition,increased HSPA4 expression was found to be related to worse disease-specific survival and overall survival.GSEA analysis indicated a significant correlation between HSPA4 and cell cycle regulation and immune response,particularly through diminishing the function of cytotoxicity cells and CD8 T cells.The ssGSEA algorithm showed a positive correlation between HSPA4 expression and infiltrating levels of Th2 cells,while a negative correlation was observed with cytotoxic cell infiltration levels.CONCLUSION Our findings indicate HSPA4 is related to prognosis and immune cell infiltrates and may act as a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for LUAD.
基金supported by a grant from Shanghai Science and Technology Committee(12411950500)
文摘BACKGROUND： The Atlanta criteria for acute pancreatitis （AP） has been revised recently. This study was to evaluate its practical value in classification of AP, the severity assessment and management. METHODS： The clinical features, severity classification, out- come and risk factors for mortality of 3212 AP patients who had been admitted in Ruijin Hospital from 2004 to 2011 were analyzed based on the revised Atlanta criteria （RAC） and the original Atlanta criteria （OAC）.
基金supported by college medical journal clinicalspecial funds(11321587)
文摘Objective: To compare the clinical outcomes of minimally invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy and traditional median stemotomy through right atrium in treatment of common congenital heart diseases. Methods: Clinical data of 59 cases of common congenital heart diseases treated with minimally invasive right axillary vertical thoracotomy from May, 2011 to February, 2013 and 77 cases of same diseases with traditional median stemotomy in the past three years were retrospectively analyzed, including atrial septal defect, membranous ventricular septal defect and partial endocardial cushion defect. The results were compared from the two groups, including the time for operation and cardiopulmonary bypass, amount of blood transfusion, postoperative drainage, ventilation time, hospital stay, and prognosis. Results: No severe complications happened in both groups, like deaths or secondary surgery caused by bleeding. No significant differences were in CPB time and postoperative ventilator time between groups (P>0.05), while for all of the operative time, the length of incision, postoperative drainage and hospital stay, minimally invasive right axillary vertical thoracotomy was superior to median stemotomy, with statistically significant differences (P<0.05). In six month followup after operation, no complications of residual deformity and pericardial effusion were found in both groups by doing echocardiography, but mild pectus carinatum was found in 8 patients in the traditional median sternotomy group (traditional group), whereas patients in another group were well recovered. Conclusions: Minimally invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy for common congenital heart diseases is as safe as traditional median stemotomy, without the increasing incidence of postoperative complications. Additionally, compared with traditional median stemotomy, minimally - invasive right subaxillary vertical thoracotomy is better in the aspects of hidden incision, appearance, and postoperative recovery.
基金supported by a grant from Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (12411950500)
文摘BACKGROUND: The effects of gangrenous cholecystitis (GC) and consequent surgical interventions on the clinical outcomes and prognosis of patients with severe acute pancreatitis are not clear. The present study was to characterize the clinical outcomes of patients with severe acute pancreatitis complicated with GC. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 253 consecutive patients hospitalized for acute pancreatitis in intensive care unit. Among them, 68 were diagnosed as having severe acute pancreatitis; 10 out of the 68 patients had GC. We compared these 10 patients with GC and 58 patients without GC. The indices analyzed included sepsis/septic shock, pancreatic encephalopathy, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute renal failure, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, and death. RESULTS: Specific CT images of GC in patients with severe acute pancreatitis included enlarged and high-tensioned gallbladder, wall thickening, lumenal emphysema, discontinuous and/or irregular enhancement of mucosa, and pericholecystic effusion. The rates of severe sepsis/septic shock (70.0% vs 24.1%, P【0.01), pancreatic encephalopathy (50.0% vs 17.2%, P【0.05), acute respiratory distress syndrome (90.0% vs 41.4%, P【0.01), multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (70.0% vs 24.1%, P【0.01), acute renal failure (40.0% vs 27.6%, P【0.05), and death (40.0% vs 13.8%, P【0.05) were significantly higher in patients with GC than in those without GC.CONCLUSION: CT scans can help to identify early GC in patients with severe acute pancreatitis; early diagnosis and intervention for patients with GC can reduce morbidity and mortality.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang province(Grant LQ19H280009)Special Projects of Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences(Grant CA1918D-04,CA1903Q-04)Medical Health Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission(Grant 2020384536)。
文摘Objective:To evaluate the anti-inflammatory activity of Crotalaria ferruginea extract(CFE)and its mechanism.Methods:An intratracheal lipopolysaccharide(LPS)instillationinduced acute lung injury(ALI)model was used to study the antiinflammatory activity of CFE in vivo.The LPS-induced shock model was used to analyze the effect of CFE on survival.LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cell model was used to investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of CFE in vitro and the effects on mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK)or nuclear factor-κB(NF-κB)signaling pathways.Results:CFE administration decreased the number of inflammatory cells,reduced the levels of tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α),monocyte chemotactic protein-1(MCP-1),interleukin-6(IL-6),and interferon-γ,and diminished protein content in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of mice.CFE also reduced lung wet-to-dry weight ratio,myeloperoxidase,and lung tissue pathological injury.CFE preadministration improved the survival rate of mice challenged with a lethal dose of LPS.CFE reduced LPS-activated RAW264.7 cells to produce nitric oxide,TNF-α,MCP-1,and IL-6.Furthermore,CFE inhibited nuclear translocation and phosphorylation of NF-κB P65,extracellular signal-regulated kinase,c-Jun N-terminal kinases,and P38 MAPKs.Conclusions:CFE exhibits potent anti-inflammatory activity in LPS-induced ALI mice,LPS-shock mice,and RAW264.7 cells,and its mechanism may be associated with the inhibition of NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways.Crotalaria ferruginea may be a useful therapeutic drug for the treatment of ALI and other respiratory inflammations.
基金This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant No.2018YFB14-04501。
文摘Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS)cloud platforms offer resources with diverse buying options.Users can run an instance on the on-demand market which is stable but expensive or on the spot market with a significant discount.However,users have to carefully weigh the low cost of spot instances against their poor availability.Spot instances will be revoked when the revocation event occurs.Thus,an important problem that an IaaS user faces now is how to use spot in-stances in a cost-effective and low-risk way.Based on the replication-based fault tolerance mechanism,we propose an on-line termination algorithm that optimizes the cost of using spot instances while ensuring operational stability.We prove that in most cases,the cost of our proposed online algorithm will not exceed twice the minimum cost of the optimal of-fline algorithm that knows the exact future a priori.Through a large number of experiments,we verify that our algorithm in most cases has a competitive ratio of no more than 2,and in other cases it can also reach the guaranteed competitive ratio.
基金supported in part by the State Key Laboratory of Computer Architecture of China under Grant No.CARCH 5206the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No.XDB44030000.
文摘In a 1961 lecture to celebrate MIT’s centennial,John McCarthy proposed the vision of utility computing,including three key concepts of pay-per-use service,large computer and private computer.Six decades have passed,but Mc-Carthy’s computing utility vision has not yet been fully realized,despite advances in grid computing,services computing and cloud computing.This paper presents a perspective of computing utility called Information Superbahn,building on recent advances in cloud computing.This Information Superbahn perspective retains McCarthy’s vision as much as possible,while making essential modern requirements more explicit,in the new context of a networked world of billions of users,trillions of devices,and zettabytes of data.Computing utility offers pay-per-use computing services through a 1)planetscale,2)low-entropy and 3)high-goodput utility.The three salient characteristics of computing utility are elaborated.Initial evidence is provided to support this viewpoint.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.81670091)the Zhongyuan Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talent Project(No.194200510).
文摘Background:Computed tomography images are easy to misjudge because of their complexity,especially images of solitary pulmonary nodules,of which diagnosis as benign or malignant is extremely important in lung cancer treatment.Therefore,there is an urgent need for a more effective strategy in lung cancer diagnosis.In our study,we aimed to externally validate and revise the Mayo model,and a new model was established.Methods:A total of 1450 patients from three centers with solitary pulmonary nodules who underwent surgery were included in the study and were divided into training,internal validation,and external validation sets(n=849,365,and 236,respectively).External verification and recalibration of the Mayo model and establishment of new logistic regression model were performed on the training set.Overall performance of each model was evaluated using area under receiver operating characteristic curve(AUC).Finally,the model validation was completed on the validation data set.Results:The AUC of the Mayo model on the training set was 0.653(95%confidence interval[CI]:0.613–0.694).After re-estimation of the coefficients of all covariates included in the original Mayo model,the revised Mayo model achieved an AUC of 0.671(95%CI:0.635–0.706).We then developed a new model that achieved a higher AUC of 0.891(95%CI:0.865–0.917).It had an AUC of 0.888(95%CI:0.842–0.934)on the internal validation set,which was significantly higher than that of the revised Mayo model(AUC:0.577,95%CI:0.509–0.646)and the Mayo model(AUC:0.609,95%CI,0.544–0.675)(P<0.001).The AUC of the new model was 0.876(95%CI:0.831–0.920)on the external verification set,which was higher than the corresponding value of the Mayo model(AUC:0.705,95%CI:0.639–0.772)and revised Mayo model(AUC:0.706,95%CI:0.640–0.772)(P<0.001).Then the prediction model was presented as a nomogram,which is easier to generalize.Conclusions:After external verification and recalibration of the Mayo model,the results show that they are not suitable for the prediction of malignant pulmonary nodules in the Chinese population.Therefore,a new model was established by a backward stepwise process.The new model was constructed to rapidly discriminate benign from malignant pulmonary nodules,which could achieve accurate diagnosis of potential patients with lung cancer.
基金We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.21421002,21672242,21971252,21991122)Key ResearchProgram of Frontier Sciences,Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS)(QYZDISSW-SLH049)and Youth Innovation Promotion Associa-tion CAS(2019256)for tinancial support.
文摘Summary of main observation and conclusion Outstanding accomplishments have been achieved in the chemistry of difluorocarbene,but transitionmetal-catalyzed transfer of difluorocarbene for coupling remains a challenging task.Herein,we describe a Pd-catalyzed coupling of difluorocarbene with two aryl carbon centers to give difluoromethylenation products,which cannot be obtained by any previous difluorocarbene-transformation method.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.U1836218,62020106012,61672265 and 61902153)the 111 Project of Ministry of Education of China(No.B12018)+1 种基金the EPSRC Programme FACER2VM(No.EP/N007743/1)the EPSRC/MURI/Dstl Project under(No.EP/R013616/1.)。
文摘Learning comprehensive spatiotemporal features is crucial for human action recognition. Existing methods tend to model the spatiotemporal feature blocks in an integrate-separate-integrate form, such as appearance-and-relation network(ARTNet) and spatiotemporal and motion network(STM). However, with blocks stacking up, the rear part of the network has poor interpretability. To avoid this problem, we propose a novel architecture called spatial temporal relation network(STRNet), which can learn explicit information of appearance, motion and especially the temporal relation information. Specifically, our STRNet is constructed by three branches,which separates the features into 1) appearance pathway, to obtain spatial semantics, 2) motion pathway, to reinforce the spatiotemporal feature representation, and 3) relation pathway, to focus on capturing temporal relation details of successive frames and to explore long-term representation dependency. In addition, our STRNet does not just simply merge the multi-branch information, but we apply a flexible and effective strategy to fuse the complementary information from multiple pathways. We evaluate our network on four major action recognition benchmarks: Kinetics-400, UCF-101, HMDB-51, and Something-Something v1, demonstrating that the performance of our STRNet achieves the state-of-the-art result on the UCF-101 and HMDB-51 datasets, as well as a comparable accuracy with the state-of-the-art method on Something-Something v1 and Kinetics-400.
文摘Exascale supercomputing refers to the scientific research efforts and activities to build and use supercomputers that can perform scientific computing at the speed of exaflops,or 10^(18) floating-point(64-bit)operations per second.Exascale supercomputing is a major milestone in surpassing the
基金We’d like to thank World Health Organization for making the FluNet data publicly available.Dr.Wenbiao Hu was supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship(award number FT140101216).
文摘Background:Understanding the global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza is essential for influenza control and prevention.Available data on the updated global spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza are scarce.This study aimed to assess the spatiotemporal pattern of seasonal influenza after the 2009 influenza pandemic.Methods:Weekly influenza surveillance data in 86 countries from 2010 to 2017 were obtained from FluNet.First,the proportion of influenza A in total influenza viruses(PA)was calculated.Second,weekly numbers of influenza positive virus(A and B)were divided by the total number of samples processed to get weekly positive rates of influenza A(RWA)and influenza B(RWB).Third,the average positive rates of influenza A(RA)and influenza B(RB)for each country were calculated by averaging RWA,and RWB of 52 weeks.A Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to examine if the year-to-year change in PA in all countries were significant,and a universal kriging method with linear semivariogram model was used to extrapolate RA and RB in all countries.Results:PA ranged from 0.43 in Zambia to 0.98 in Belarus,and PA in countries with higher income was greater than those countries with lower income.The spatial patterns of high RB were the highest in sub-Saharan Africa,Asia-Pacific region and South America.RWA peaked in early weeks in temperate countries,and the peak of RWB occurred a bit later.There were some temperate countries with non-distinct influenza seasonality(e.g.,Mauritius and Maldives)and some tropical/subtropical countries with distinct influenza seasonality(e.g.,Chile and South Africa).Conclusions:Influenza seasonality is not predictable in some temperate countries,and it is distinct in Chile,Argentina and South Africa,implying that the optimal timing for influenza vaccination needs to be chosen with caution in these unpredictable countries.
基金This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No:2016YFC1304000)National Natural Science Foundation of China(82000690)+2 种基金High Level Creative Talents from Department of Public Health in Zhejiang Province,and the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province(No:2019C03030)GT was supported in part by grants from the University School of Medicine of Verona,Verona,ItalyCDB was supported in part by the Southampton National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Center.
文摘Background and Aims:We compared lung function parameters in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD)and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease(MAFLD),and examined the association between lung function parameters and fibrosis severity in MAFLD.Methods:In this cross-sectional study,we randomly recruited 2,543 middle-aged individuals from 25 communities across four cities in China during 2016 and 2020.All participants received a health check-up including measurement of anthropometric parameters,biochemical variables,liver ultrasonography,and spirometry.The severity of liver disease was assessed by the fibrosis(FIB)-4 score.Results:The prevalence of MAFLD was 20.4%(n=519)and that of NAFLD was 18.4%(n=469).After adjusting for age,sex,adiposity measures,smoking status,and significant alco-hol intake,subjects with MAFLD had a significantly lower predicted forced vital capacity(FVC,88.27±17.60%vs.90.82±16.85%,p<0.05)and lower 1 s forced expiratory volume(FEV1,79.89±17.34 vs.83.02±16.66%,p<0.05)than those with NAFLD.MAFLD with an increased FIB-4 score was significantly associated with decreased lung function.For each 1-point increase in FIB-4,FVC was diminished by 0.507(95%CI:-0.840,-0.173,p=0.003),and FEV1 was diminished by 0.439(95%CI:-0.739,-0.140,p=0.004).The results remained unchanged when the statistical analyses was performed separately for men and women.Conclusions:MAFLD was significantly asso-ciated with a greater impairment of lung function param-eters than NAFLD.
基金WU-Minn Consortium (Principal Investigators: David Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil, 1U54MH091657) funded by the 16 NIH Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Researchby the Mc Donnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University+1 种基金support from the Imperial College NIHR Biomedical Research Centrepersonal support from the Edmond Safra Foundation and Lily Safra
文摘Functional connectivity has emerged as a promising approach to study the functional organisation of the brain and to define features for prediction of brain state. The most widely used method for inferring functional connectivity is Pearson＇s correlation, but it cannot differentiate direct and indirect effects. This disadvantage is often avoided by computing the partial correlation between two regions controlling all other regions, but this method suffers from Berkson＇s paradox. Some advanced methods, such as regularised inverse covariance, have been applied. However, these methods usually depend on some parameters. Here we propose use of minimum partial correlation as a parameter-free measure for the skeleton of functional connectivity in functional magnetic resonance imaging （flVIRI）. The minimum partial correlation between two regions is the minimum of absolute values of partial correlations by controlling all possible subsets of other regions. Theoretically, there is a direct effect between two regions if and only if their minimum partial correlation is non-zero under faithfulness and Gaussian assumptions. The elastic PC-algorithm is designed to efficiently approximate minimum partial correlation within a computational time budget. The simulation study shows that the proposed method outperforms others in most cases and its application is illustrated using a resting-state fMRI dataset from the human connectome project.
