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Background Brain abscesses caused by Nocardia farcinica are rare, and mostly occur in immunocompromised individuals. Rapid and accurate diagnosis of nocardiosis is challenging. Due to the inadequate performance of conventional diagnostic methods for Nocardia infection, metagenomics next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has the potential to improve the diagnosis intracranial nocardiosis. Case presentation We report a case of 50-year-old man with brain abscess caused by Nocardia farcinica . The patient had a idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura complication that required long-term methylprednisolone administration. His chest image showed multiple lesions, which had been misdiagnosed as lung cancer, and his head image showed multiple intracranial metastases. No pathogen was detected in routine examinations including blood culture, sputum culture and traditional culture methods of cerebrospinal fluid. In order to accurately identify the pathogen, mNGS was used to detect Nocardia in CSF. Although the patient’s condition improved after using sensitive antibiotics, he transferred to the local hospital for treatment because of many complicated diseases and family financial limitations. Conclusion This case highlights the value of mNGS in the diagnosis of Nocardia brain abscess, and emphasizes the inadequate sensitivity of conventional diagnostic methods for Nocardia infection. Using mNGS can facilitate early and accurate detection of Norcadia-associated of meningitis in immunocompromised patients, thereby reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics and reducing mortality of the disease.

Background Enterococcus faecalis ( E. faecalis ) meningitis is a rare disease, and most of its occurrences are of post-operative origin. Its rapid diagnosis is critical for effective clinical management. Currently, the diagnosis is focused on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture, but this is quite limited. By comparison, metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) can overcome the deficiencies of conventional diagnostic approaches. To our knowledge, mNGS analysis of the CSF in the diagnosis of E. faecalis meningitis has been not reported. Case presentation We report the case of E. faecalis meningitis in a 70-year-old female patient without a preceding history of head injury or surgery, but with an occult sphenoid sinus bone defect. Enterococcus faecalis meningitis was diagnosed using mNGS of CSF, and she recovered satisfactorily following treatment with appropriate antibiotics and surgical repair of the skull bone defect. Conclusions Non-post-traumatic or post-surgical E. faecalis meningitis can occur in the presence of occult defects in the cranium, and mNGS technology could be helpful in diagnosis in the absence of a positive CSF culture.

Computer holography is a technology that use a mathematical model of optical holography to generate digital holograms. It has wide and promising applications in various areas, especially holographic display. However, traditional computational algorithms for generation of phase-type holograms based on iterative optimization have a built-in tradeoff between the calculating speed and accuracy, which severely limits the performance of computational holograms in advanced applications. Recently, several deep learning based computational methods for generating holograms have gained more and more attention. In this paper, a convolutional neural network for generation of multi-plane holograms and its training strategy is proposed using a multi-plane iterative angular spectrum algorithm (ASM). The well-trained network indicates an excellent ability to generate phase-only holograms for multi-plane input images and to reconstruct correct images in the corresponding depth plane. Numerical simulations and optical reconstructions show that the accuracy of this method is almost the same with traditional iterative methods but the computational time decreases dramatically. The result images show a high quality through analysis of the image performance indicators, e.g., peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM) and contrast ratio. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through experimental investigations.

EPM2A has been certified as a causative gene in patients with Lafora disease (LD), which is a rare autosomal recessive and severe form of progressive myoclonus epilepsy. LD classically starts in adolescence, characterized by various types of seizure with myoclonic seizure as the main type. Typically within 10 years, intractable seizure attack, rapidly progressing dementia, and a vegetative state were present. LD is particularly frequently found in Mediterranean countries. Here, we report a Chinese family with a novel compound heterozygous mutation in the EPM2A gene, characterized by recurrent vomiting, intractable epilepsy, and progressive cognitive decline.

BackgroundAbnormal expanded GGC repeats within the NOTCH2HLC gene has been confirmed as the genetic mechanism for most Asian patients with neuronal intranuclear inclusion disease (NIID). This cross-sectional observational study aimed to characterise the clinical features of NOTCH2NLC-related NIID in China.MethodsPatients with NOTCH2NLC-related NIID underwent an evaluation of clinical symptoms, a neuropsychological assessment, electrophysiological examination, MRI and skin biopsy.ResultsIn the 247 patients with NOTCH2NLC-related NIID, 149 cases were sporadic, while 98 had a positive family history. The most common manifestations were paroxysmal symptoms (66.8%), autonomic dysfunction (64.0%), movement disorders (50.2%), cognitive impairment (49.4%) and muscle weakness (30.8%). Based on the initial presentation and main symptomology, NIID was divided into four subgroups: dementia dominant (n=94), movement disorder dominant (n=63), paroxysmal symptom dominant (n=61) and muscle weakness dominant (n=29). Clinical (42.7%) and subclinical (49.1%) peripheral neuropathies were common in all types. Typical diffusion-weighted imaging subcortical lace signs were more frequent in patients with dementia (93.9%) and paroxysmal symptoms types (94.9%) than in those with muscle weakness (50.0%) and movement disorders types (86.4%). GGC repeat sizes were negatively correlated with age of onset (r=−0.196, p<0.05), and in the muscle weakness-dominant type (median 155.00), the number of repeats was much higher than in the other three groups (p<0.05). In NIID pedigrees, significant genetic anticipation was observed (p<0.05) without repeat instability (p=0.454) during transmission.ConclusionsNIID is not rare; however, it is usually misdiagnosed as other diseases. Our results help to extend the known clinical spectrum of NOTCH2NLC-related NIID.

The aim of the present study was to determine the expression profile of microRNA 638 (miR-638) and sex-determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and to investigate their association with clinicopathological features and survival. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis was used to investigate miR-638 and SOX2 expression in 78 patients with HCC. Western blot and immunohistochemical analyses were performed in order to determine SOX2 protein expression in HCC samples. Combined with the clinical postoperative follow-up data, the expression of miR-638 and SOX2 and the association between this and the prognostic values of patients with HCC were statistically analyzed. The results of the present study confirmed that miR-638 expression in tumor tissues was significantly downregulated (P<0.001), while SOX2 expression was significantly increased, compared with healthy control tissues (P<0.05). In addition, a significant inverse correlation between miR-638 and SOX2 expression was also observed in the HCC tissues (r=−0.675; P<0.05). Clinicopathological correlation analysis demonstrated that reduced miR-638 and elevated SOX2 expression was significantly associated with the Tumor-Node-Metastasis stage and portal vascular invasion (P<0.05). However, no significant differences were observed in other clinicopathological features, including age, sex, tumor size, tumor differentiation and hepatitis status (P>0.05). Notably, follow-up analysis revealed that patients with HCC with low miR-638 expression and high SOX2 expression tended to have a significantly shorter postoperative survival time (P<0.001). It was concluded that miR-638 may serve a vital role in the occurrence and progression of HCC by regulating SOX2 expression and thus, that miR-638 and SOX2 may be critical as novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for HCC.

Injection of gas (CO 2) into coal seams is an effective method to benefit from both CO 2 geological storage and coalbed methane recovery. Based on the dual pore structure of coal mass, and the Weibull distribution of fracture permeability, a thermal-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) coupling mathematical model is proposed involving the non-isothermal adsorption of binary gases, dynamic gas diffusion between matrix and fractures, multiphase seepage, coal deformation, heat conduction and heat convection. This mathematical model is applied to study the process of CO 2-enhanced coalbed methane recovery (CO 2-ECBM). Results show that the CH 4 content of CO 2-ECBM in coal seam decreases significantly when compared with that of regular drainage, and decreases rapidly in the early stage but slowly in the later stage. Coal seam permeability evolution is triggered by changes in gas adsorption/desorption, temperature and effective stress. For regular drainage, the early permeability shows a decreasing trend dominated by the increase of effective stress, while the later permeability shows an increasing trend dominated by the CH 4 desorption caused shrinkage of coal matrix. For CO 2-ECBM, the permeability in coal seam generally shows a downward trend due to both matrix swelling induced by gas adsorption and thermal expansion, particularly near injection well. There appears an increased and delayed peak production rate of CH 4. The CH 4 production rate of CO 2-ECBM is always higher than that of regular drainage. The CH 4 cumulative production and CO 2 cumulative storage linearly increase with time, and the CH 4 cumulative production of CO 2-ECBM increased by 39.2% in the duration of 5000 d compared with regular drainage. Reasonable CO 2 injection starting time can overcome the issue of early CO 2 breakthrough and ineffective increase of CH 4 production. In the studied case, the optimal injection starting time is 2500 d. Compared with the simultaneous CH 4 extraction and CO 2 injection, the CH 4 cumulative production of optimal time has increased by 30.1%. The research provides a reference for determining the reasonable CO 2 injection time under similar conditions.

In this study, based on the frictional velocity-weakening law used in continuum modeling, an adapted Hertz-Mindlin contact model between particles and the ground surface is established to accurately simulate the landslide dynamics process. Moreover, the long-period seismic waves indicating the dynamic characteristics of large landslides are adopted to determine the computational parameters for the discrete element method (DEM). By combining the force-time functions obtained from the long-period seismic waves and numerical modeling, the dynamic parameters and reasonableness of the simulation results of the first Baige landslide on October 11, 2018, in eastern Tibet, China, have been validated. The friction coefficient obtained in this study is also in agreement with the relationship between the volume and friction coefficients reported in the literature. Taking the same model and parameters, the dynamic process leading to the second Baige landslide on November 3, 2018, is analyzed. The modeled profile and position of the maximum thickness of the deposits arising from the two landslides both match the observations well. It is demonstrated that this combination procedure is feasible for the prediction and identification of areas susceptible to large landslides.

The focus of this paper is on two large sequential landslides which formed a dam and the resulting lake that occurred along the Jinsha River on October 11 and November 3, 2018. About 24 and 9 × 106 m3 of material failed and rushed into the river, respectively. Both landslides totally blocked the river and induced hazard chains. Four multi-temporal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based high-resolution images and digital elevation models (DEMs) before and after the landslides were obtained and merged. The initial deformation of the two landslides can be clearly captured by optical remote-sensing images and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) analysis. The depth-integrated continuum method was adopted to analyze the dynamic process of both landslides, using the same basal friction angle and cohesion. The computational results matched well with field measurements and observations. It is shown that the evaluation of potentially landslide-prone areas by the depth-integrated continuum method is feasible and is able to provide significant information before a possible event.

Since lots of underground and slope excavation works were conducted during the urbanization process, an increasing number of sites in ravines around a city have been used to stockpile a large amount of excavated soils. This brings a huge challenge for researchers and managers in the risk evaluation and mitigation of potential dangers of these man-made construction waste landfills. This paper describes a recently large landslide of the construction waste landfill, which occurred at a site of Guangming new district in Shenzhen, China, on December 20, 2015. This catastrophic landslide caused the death of 69 persons and 8 persons are still missing. In this paper, this landslide was numerically simulated and analyzed. In spite of neither high-intensity rainfall nor antecedent rainfall, a slope of this landfill with a relative height of 111 m sided and caused about 2.34 million cubic meters of the soils to travel over a gentle terrain more than 1.2 km. This means that the landslide mobility index (H/L = 0.092) is much lower than a general designed value and the values in most other cases. A depth-integrated continuum method and a MacCormack-TVD finite difference algorithm are adopted, in this paper, to numerically simulate the dynamic process of this large landslide. It is found that a Coulomb friction model with consideration of the pore water pressure effects can well reproduce the main characteristics of the dynamic process of this landslide. Sensitivity analysis has demonstrated that the high pore water pressure in the soils plays a significant role in its mobility and is a key factor to the severity of this landslide.