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Coal and gas outburst is a frequent dynamic disaster during underground coal mining activities. After about 150 years of exploration, the mechanisms of outbursts remain unclear to date. Studies on outburst mechanisms worldwide focused on the physicochemical and mechanical properties of outburst-prone coal, laboratory-scale outburst experiments and numerical modeling, mine-site investigations, and doctrines of outburst mechanisms. Outburst mechanisms are divided into two categories: single-factor and multi-factor mechanisms. The multi-factor mechanism is widely accepted, but all statistical phenomena during a single outburst cannot be explained using present knowledge. Additional topics about outburst mechanisms are proposed by summarizing the phenomena that need precise explanation. The most appealing research is the microscopic process of the interaction between coal and gas. Modern physical-chemical methods can help characterize the natural properties of outburst-prone coal. Outburst experiments can compensate for the deficiency of first-hand observation at the scene. Restoring the original outburst scene by constructing a geomechanical model or numerical model and reproducing the entire outburst process based on mining environment conditions, including stratigraphic distribution, gas occurrence, and geological structure, are important. Future studies can explore outburst mechanisms at the microscale.

Objective： Photoacoustic （PA） tomography （PAT） has attracted extensive interest because of its optical absorption contrast and ultrasonic detection. This study aims to develop a biocompatible and biodegradable PA contrast agent particularly promising for clinical applications in human body. Methods： In this study, we presented a PA contrast agent： 1, 2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine-N-[methoxy （polyethylene glycol）] （DSPE-PEG）-coated superparamagnetic iron oxide （SPIO） nanoparticles （NPs） loaded with indocyanine green （ICG）. We used ICG and SPIO NPs because both drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Given the strong absorption of near-infrared laser pulses, SPIO@DSPE-PEG/ICG NPs with a uniform diameter of -28 nm could significantly enbance PA signals. Results： We demonstrated the contrast enhancement of these NPs in phantom and animal experiments, in which the in vivo circulation time of SPIO@DSPE-PEG/ICG NPs was considerably longer than that of free ICG. These novel NPs also displayed a high efficiency of tumor targeting. Conclusions： SPIO@DSPE-PEG/ICG NPs are promising PAT contrast agents for clinical applications.

Plasma trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is associated with coronary atherosclerotic plaque and cardiovascular disease risk, but associations between gut microbes in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and post-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (post-STEMI) events are unknown. We investigated associations between gut microbial taxa and systemic TMAO levels and the possible TMAO contribution to incident post-STEMI cardiovascular events. Patients and Methods. A total of 60 patients, including 30 with unstable angina pectoris (UAP), 30 post-STEMI and 30 healthy controls, were enrolled from June to November 2017. Metagenomic sequencing was performed and TMAO and IL-6 were detected. Results. Minimal discriminators of gut microbial taxa (top 40) distinguished ACS patients from controls. Serum TMAO levels were positively associated with increased abundance of Aerococcaceae, Ruminococcaceae_UCG.005, Ruminococcaceae_UCC.014 and X. Eubacterium_fissicatena , and decreased abundance of Lachnospiraceae_FCS020 (P < 0.05). Elevated serum TMAO levels correlated independently with ACS (P < 0.05). Risk stratification for incident major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) improved at one year in patients with serum TMAO levels ≦2.19 µM. Serum interleukin-6 levels were not significantly increased in patients with ACS and post-STEMI MACE. Conclusions. ACS and incident post-STEMI MACE may be associated with the gut bacteria choline metabolite TMAO. The specific gut microbial taxa identified in association with serum TMAO levels may be potential predictive biomarkers for accurate diagnosis of ACS onset.

This article presents a new sensor fusion method for visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) through integration of a monocular camera and a 1D-laser range finder. Such as a fusion method provides the scale estimation and drift correction and it is not limited by volume, e.g., the stereo camera is constrained by the baseline and overcomes the limited depth range problem associated with SLAM for RGBD cameras. We first present the analytical feasibility for estimating the absolute scale through the fusion of 1D distance information and image information. Next, the analytical derivation of the laser-vision fusion is described in detail based on the local dense reconstruction of the image sequences. We also correct the scale drift of the monocular SLAM using the laser distance information which is independent of the drift error. Finally, application of this approach to both indoor and outdoor scenes is verified by the Technical University of Munich dataset of RGBD and self-collected data. We compare the effects of the scale estimation and drift correction of the proposed method with the SLAM for a monocular camera and a RGBD camera.

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major cause of liver cirrhosis and liver cancer, despite strong prevention and treatment efforts. The study of the epigenetic modification of HBV has become a research hotspot, including the N 6-methyladenosine (m 6 A) modification of HBV RNA, which plays complex roles in the HBV life cycle. In addition to m 6 A modification, 5-methylcytosine (m 5 C) is another major modification of eukaryotic mRNA. In this study, we explored the roles of m 5 C methyltransferase and demethyltransferase in the HBV life cycle. The results showed that m 5 C methyltransferase NSUN2 deficiency could negatively regulate the expression of HBV while m 5 C demethyltransferase TET2 deficiency positively regulates the expression of HBV. Subsequently, we combined both in vitro bisulfite sequencing and high-throughput bisulfite sequencing methods to determine the distribution and stoichiometry of m 5 C modification in HBV RNA. Two sites: C2017 and C131 with the highest-ranking methylation rates were identified, and mutations at these two sites could lead to the decreased expression and replication of HBV, while the mutation of the “fake” m 5 C site had no effect. Mechanistically, NSUN2-mediated m 5 C modification promotes the stability of HBV RNA. In addition, compared with wild-type HepG2-NTCP cells and primary human hepatocytes, the replication level of HBV after NSUN2 knockdown decreased, and the ability of the mutant virus to infect and replicate in wild-type HepG2-NTCP cells and PHHs was substantially impaired. Similar results were found in the experiments using C57BL/6JGpt- Nsun2 +/- mice. Interestingly, we also found that HBV expression and core protein promoted the endogenous expression of NSUN2, which implied a positive feedback loop. In summary, our study provides an accurate and high-resolution m 5 C profile of HBV RNA and reveals that NSUN2-mediated m 5 C modification of HBV RNA positively regulates HBV replication by maintaining RNA stability.

This study investigated the application effect of lean management in the treatment of acute stroke in medical laboratories and evaluated the impact on laboratory turnaround time (TAT) and operator satisfaction. In this study, 287 patients with acute stroke were selected from the Second People’s Hospital of Hunan Province and divided into a control group (129 cases, before lean management) and an experimental group (158 cases, after lean management). Lean management measures included establishing fast transfer channels, information management, optimisation of the centrifuge configuration, priority management, personnel training, use of the 6 S method, and visual management to optimise the process. The effects of lean management were evaluated by comparing the TAT of key inspection items using an operator satisfaction questionnaire. Lean management shortened the TAT for coagulation (21–18 min) and biochemical (33–29 min) tests ( P  = 0.000). Laboratory operators reported that lean management positively affects the overall performance of the laboratory. The application of lean management in medical laboratories can effectively improve the treatment efficiency of patients with acute stroke, shorten the TAT of key detection items, and provide high satisfaction among laboratory personnel.

Cytochrome P450 superfamily proteins play important roles in detoxification of xenobiotics and during physiological and developmental processes. To contribute to our understanding of this large gene family in insects, we have investigated the function of the cytochrome P450 gene LmCYP4G102 in the migratory locust Locusta migratoria . Suppression of LmCYP4G102 expression by RNA interference (RNAi) does not interfere with moulting but causes rapid loss of body weight - probably due to massive loss of water, and death soon after moulting. Accordingly, maintaining these animals at 90% relative humidity prevented lethality. Consistently, RNAi against LmCYP4G102 provoked a decrease in the content of cuticular alkanes, which as an important fraction of cuticular hydrocarbons have been shown to confer desiccation resistance. In addition, the cuticle of LmCYP4G102 -knockdown locusts was fragile and easier deformable than in control animals. Presumably, this phenotype is due to decreased amounts of cuticular water that is reported to modulate cuticle mechanics. Interestingly, LmCYP4G102 was not expressed in the epidermis that produces the cuticle but in the sub-epdiermal hepatocyte-like oenocytes. Together, our results suggest that the oenocyte-specific LmCYP4G102 plays a critical role in the synthesis of cuticular hydrocarbons, which are important for cuticle waterproofing and mechanical stability in L. migratoria

The booming development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to an explosion of web services, making it more inconvenient for users to choose satisfactory services among numerous options. Therefore, ensuring quality of service (QoS) in a service-oriented IoT environment is crucial, highlighting QoS prediction as a prominent research focus. However, issues related to information credibility, user data privacy, and prediction accuracy in QoS prediction for IoT services have become significant challenges in current research. To tackle these issues, we propose TPP-GNCF, a trust-aware privacy-preserving QoS prediction framework that integrates graph neural networks with collaborative filtering methods. In TPP-GNCF, we filter out untrustworthy QoS values provided by users for certain services to select credible QoS values. Then, a message-passing graph neural network (MP-GNN) is utilized to effectively capture information transmission and relationships in the graph structure, while differential privacy is used to protect user node information. In addition, we use a similarity calculation method based on weight function in collaborative filtering to mine implicit embedded features that graph neural networks cannot directly utilize. Finally, the final missing QoS values are achieved by fusing graph neural predicted QoS and feature collaborative filtering predicted QoS. We conducted extensive experiments on the well-known WS-DREAM dataset. The results demonstrate that the TPP-GNCF framework not only surpasses existing schemes in performance but also effectively addresses issues of information credibility and user privacy.

Near-infrared fluorescence probes (NIFPs) have been widely used in immunoassay, bio-imaging and medical diagnosis. We review the basic principles of near-infrared fluorescence and near-infrared detection technology, and summarize structures, properties and characteristics of NIFPs (i.e., cyanines, xanthenes fluorescent dyes, phthalocyanines, porphyrin derivates, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), quantum dots and rare earth compounds). We next analyze applications of NIFPs in immunoassays, and prospect the application potential of lateral flow assay (LFA) in rapid detection of pathogens. At present, our team intends to establish a new platform that has highly sensitive NIFPs combined with portable and simple immunochromatographic test strips (ICTSs) for rapid detection of food-borne viruses. This will provide technical support for rapid detection on the port.

Objective Rehabilitation is an important means to help hemophilic arthropathy (HA) patients recover joint function after total knee arthroplasty (TKA). This article retrospectively analyzes the experience of rehabilitation therapy. Methods We retrospectively analyzed cases from January 2011 to December 2021 in the Bone Injury Center Database of Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A total of 50 patients were included, classified according to preoperative range of motion (ROM): 14 with ROM between 0 and 45 degrees, 28 with ROM between 45 and 90 degrees, and 8 with ROM greater than 90 degrees. Recording knee joint function and complications from preoperative to postoperative 24 months. Results Patients’ knee joint function improved after rehabilitation. The clinical and functional Knee Society Score (KSS) of 0°-45° group increased from 91.36 ± 7.91 to 102.25 ± 5.75 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group increased from 102.25 ± 5.75 to 126.64 ± 6.97 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group increased from 104.13 ± 2.80 to 128.00 ± 3.16 ( P  < 0.001). ROM of 0°-45° group increased from 54.07 ± 8.44 to 77.86 ± 8.20 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group increased from 77.75 ± 9.59 to 90.43 ± 5.07 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group increased from 103.25 ± 5.28 to 109.00 ± 5.58 ( P  < 0.001), and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) of 0°-45° group decreased from 5.36 ± 1.01 to 3.86 ± 0.86 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group decreased from 5.07 ± 0.98 to 3.64 ± 0.95 ( P  < 0.001), 45°-90° group decreased from 5.38 ± 0.74 to 3.88 ± 0.64 ( P  < 0.001). In a subgroup analysis, the patients with higher preoperative ROM have higher postoperative ROM and KSS. At the end of follow-up, patients with low preoperative ROM had higher VAS scores than other patients. Conclusion We recommend conducting a systematic evaluation and pre rehabilitation of patients before TKA surgery, and establishing their psychological expectations, followed by early initiation of postoperative rehabilitation. Furthermore, attention should be paid to psychological counseling for patients to enhance their awareness of autonomous rehabilitation. Additionally, monitoring clotting factor levels and promoting functional recovery of adjacent joints and soft tissues are also crucial aspects to consider.