AIM： To evaluate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography （CEUS） using SonoVue in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors versus the combined gold standard comprising CT, MRI a...AIM： To evaluate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography （CEUS） using SonoVue in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors versus the combined gold standard comprising CT, MRI and clinical/histological data. METHODS： It is an international multicenter study, and there were 12 centres and 125 patients （64 males, 61 females, aged 59 ± 11 years） involved, with 102 patients per protocol. Primary tumors were colorectal in 35%, breast in 27%, pancreatic in 17% and others in 21%. CEUS using SonoVue was employed with a Iow-mechanical-index technique and contrast-specific software using Siemens Elegra, Philips HDI 5000 and Acuson Sequoia; continuous scanning for at least five minutes. RESULTS： CEUS with SonoVue increased significantly the number of focal liver lesions detected versus unenhanced sonography. In 31.4% of the patients, more lesions were found after contrast enhancement. The total numbers of lesions detected were comparable with CEUS （55）, triple-phase spiral CT （61） and HRI with a liverspecific contrast agent （53）. Accuracy of detection of metastatic disease （i.e. at least one metastatic lesion） was significantly higher for CEUS （91.2%） than for unenhanced sonography （81.4%） and was similar to that of triple-phase spiral CT （89.2 %）. In 53 patients whose CEUS examination was negative, a follow-up examination 3-6 months later confirmed the absence of metastatic lesions in 50 patients （94.4%）. CONCLUSION： CEUS is proved to be reliable in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors and suspected liver lesions.展开更多
In natural environments,plants are exposed to diverse microbiota that they interact with in complex ways.While plant-pathogen interactions have been intensely studied to understand defense mechanisms in plants,many mi...In natural environments,plants are exposed to diverse microbiota that they interact with in complex ways.While plant-pathogen interactions have been intensely studied to understand defense mechanisms in plants,many microbes and microbial communities can have substantial beneficial effects on their plant host.Such beneficial effects include improved acquisition of nutrients,accelerated growth,resilience against pathogens,and improved resistance against abiotic stress conditions such as heat,drought,and salinity.However,the beneficial effects of bacterial strains or consortia on their host are often cultivar and species specific,posing an obstacle to their general application.Remarkably,many of the signals that trigger plant immune responses are molecularly highly similar and often identical in pathogenic and beneficial microbes.Thus,it is unclear what determines the outcome of a particular microbe-host interaction and which factors enable plants to distinguish beneficials from pathogens.To unravel the complex network of genetic,microbial,and metabolic interactions,including the signaling events mediating microbe-host interactions,comprehensive quantitative systems biology approaches will be needed.展开更多
BACKGROUND In recent years,increasing evidence of second neoplasms associated with gastrointestinal stromal tumors(GIST)has been found.Numerous case reports,mostly retrospective studies and a few reviews,have been pub...BACKGROUND In recent years,increasing evidence of second neoplasms associated with gastrointestinal stromal tumors(GIST)has been found.Numerous case reports,mostly retrospective studies and a few reviews,have been published.To our knowledge,however,no systematic review or meta-analysis of the existing data has been performed so far.AIM To prepare a compilation,as complete as possible,of all reported second tumor entities that have been described in association with GIST and to systematically analyze the published studies with regard to frequency,localization,and types of GIST-associated neoplasms.METHODS The MEDLINE and EBSCO databases were searched for a combination of the keywords GIST/secondary,synchronous,coincident/tumor,neoplasm,and relevant publications were selected by two independent authors.RESULTS Initially,3042 publications were found.After deletion of duplicates,1631 remained,and 130 papers were selected;22 of these were original studies with a minimum of 20 patients,and 108 were case reports.In the 22 selected studies,comprising a total number of 12050 patients,an overall rate of GIST-associated neoplasias of 20%could be calculated.Most second neoplasias were found in the gastrointestinal tract(32%)and in the male and female urogenital tract(30%).The specific risk scores of GISTs associated with other tumors were significantly lower than those without associated neoplasias.CONCLUSION In this first systematic review,we could confirm previously reported findings of a more than coincidental association between GIST and other neoplasias.The question whether there is an underlying causal association will need further investigation.Our data suggest that even GIST with a very low risk of disease progression should prompt screening for second neoplasia and subsequent frequent controls or extended staging.展开更多
Size-resolved aerosols were continuously collected by a Nano Sampler for 13 days at an urban site in Beijing during winter 2012 to measure the chemical composition of ambient aerosol particles. Data collected by the N...Size-resolved aerosols were continuously collected by a Nano Sampler for 13 days at an urban site in Beijing during winter 2012 to measure the chemical composition of ambient aerosol particles. Data collected by the Nano Sampler and an ACSM（Aerodyne Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor） were compared. Between the data sets,similar trends and strong correlations were observed,demonstrating the validity of the Nano Sampler. PM10 and PM2.5concentrations during the measurement were 150.5 ± 96.0 μg/m3（mean ± standard variation）and 106.9 ± 71.6 μg/m3,respectively. The PM2.5/PM10 ratio was 0.70 ± 0.10,indicating that PM2.5dominated PM10. The aerosol size distributions showed that three size bins of 0.5–1,1–2.5 and 2.5–10 μm contributed 21.8%,23.3% and 26.0% to the total mass concentration（TMC）,respectively. OM（organic matter） and SIA（secondary ionic aerosol,mainly SO42-,NO3-and NH4＋） were major components of PM2.5. Secondary compounds（SIA and secondary organic carbon） accounted for half of TMC（about 49.8%） in PM2.5,and suggested that secondary aerosols significantly contributed to the serious particulate matter pollution observed in winter. Coal burning,biomass combustion,vehicle emissions and SIA were found to be the main sources of PM2.5. Mass concentrations of water-soluble ions and undetected materials,as well as their fractions in TMC,strikingly increased with deteriorating particle pollution conditions,while OM and EC（elemental carbon） exhibited different variations,with mass concentrations slightly increasing but fractions in TMC decreasing.展开更多
This work presents the development and design of aptasensor employing porous silicon(PSi)Fabry‒Pérot thin films that are suitable for use as optical transducers for the detection of lactoferrin(LF),which is a pro...This work presents the development and design of aptasensor employing porous silicon(PSi)Fabry‒Pérot thin films that are suitable for use as optical transducers for the detection of lactoferrin(LF),which is a protein biomarker secreted at elevated levels during gastrointestinal(GI)inflammatory disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and chronic pancreatitis.To overcome the primary limitation associated with PSi biosensors—namely,their relatively poor sensitivity due to issues related to complex mass transfer phenomena and reaction kinetics—we employed two strategic approaches:First,we sought to optimize the porous nanostructure with respect to factors including layer thickness,pore diameter,and capture probe density.Second,we leveraged convection properties by integrating the resulting biosensor into a 3D-printed microfluidic system that also had one of two different micromixer architectures(i.e.,staggered herringbone micromixers or microimpellers)embedded.We demonstrated that tailoring the PSi aptasensor significantly improved its performance,achieving a limit of detection(LOD)of 50 nM—which is>1 order of magnitude lower than that achieved using previously-developed biosensors of this type.Moreover,integration into microfluidic systems that incorporated passive and active micromixers further enhanced the aptasensor’s sensitivity,achieving an additional reduction in the LOD by yet another order of magnitude.These advancements demonstrate the potential of combining PSi-based optical transducers with microfluidic technology to create sensitive label-free biosensing platforms for the detection of GI inflammatory biomarkers.展开更多
Introductory comments:The identification and validation of disease-modifying proteins are fundamental aspects in drug development.However,the m ultifactority of n eurodegen era tive diseases poses a real challenge for...Introductory comments:The identification and validation of disease-modifying proteins are fundamental aspects in drug development.However,the m ultifactority of n eurodegen era tive diseases poses a real challenge for targeted therapies.Furthermore,the behavior of individually(over-)expressed to rget proteins in vitro is likely to differ from their actual functional behavior when embedded in cascades and pathways in vivo.展开更多
Objective Speech recognition technology is widely used as a mature technical approach in many fields.In the study of depression recognition,speech signals are commonly used due to their convenience and ease of acquisi...Objective Speech recognition technology is widely used as a mature technical approach in many fields.In the study of depression recognition,speech signals are commonly used due to their convenience and ease of acquisition.Though speech recognition is popular in the research field of depression recognition,it has been little studied in somatisation disorder recognition.The reason for this is the lack of a publicly accessible database of relevant speech and benchmark studies.To this end,we introduced our somatisation disorder speech database and gave benchmark results.Methods By collecting speech samples of somatisation disorder patients,in cooperation with the Shenzhen University General Hospital,we introduced our somatisation disorder speech database,the Shenzhen Somatisation Speech Corpus(SSSC).Moreover,a benchmark for SSSC using classic acoustic features and a machine learning model was proposed in our work.Results To obtain a more scientific benchmark,we compared and analysed the performance of different acoustic features,i.e.,the full ComPare feature set,or only Mel frequency cepstral coefficients(MFCCs),fundamental frequency(F0),and frequency and bandwidth of the formants(F1-F3).By comparison,the best result of our benchmark was the 76.0%unweighted average recall achieved by a support vector machine with formants F1–F3.Conclusion The proposal of SSSC may bridge a research gap in somatisation disorder,providing researchers with a publicly accessible speech database.In addition,the results of the benchmark could show the scientific validity and feasibility of computer audition for speech recognition in somatization disorders.展开更多
We consider an Adaptive Edge Finite Element Method （AEFEM） for the 3D eddy currents equations with variable coefficients using a residual-type a posteriori error estimator. Both the components of the estimator and c...We consider an Adaptive Edge Finite Element Method （AEFEM） for the 3D eddy currents equations with variable coefficients using a residual-type a posteriori error estimator. Both the components of the estimator and certain oscillation terms, due to the occurrence of the variable coefficients, have to be controlled properly within the adaptive loop which is taken care of by appropriate bulk criteria. Convergence of the AEFEM in terms of reductions of the energy norm of the discretization error and of the oscillations is shown. Numerical results are given to illustrate the performance of the AEFEM.展开更多
Neural network models for audio tasks,such as automatic speech recognition(ASR)and acoustic scene classification(ASC),are susceptible to noise contamination for real-life applications.To improve audio quality,an enhan...Neural network models for audio tasks,such as automatic speech recognition(ASR)and acoustic scene classification(ASC),are susceptible to noise contamination for real-life applications.To improve audio quality,an enhancement module,which can be developed independently,is explicitly used at the front-end of the target audio applications.In this paper,we present an end-to-end learning solution to jointly optimise the models for audio enhancement(AE)and the subsequent applications.To guide the optimisation of the AE module towards a target application,and especially to overcome difficult samples,we make use of the sample-wise performance measure as an indication of sample importance.In experiments,we consider four representative applications to evaluate our training paradigm,i.e.,ASR,speech command recognition(SCR),speech emotion recognition(SER),and ASC.These applications are associated with speech and nonspeech tasks concerning semantic and non-semantic features,transient and global information,and the experimental results indicate that our proposed approach can considerably boost the noise robustness of the models,especially at low signal-to-noise ratios,for a wide range of computer audition tasks in everyday-life noisy environments.展开更多
The floodplain -egetation of the Tarim River in Northwest China is strongly influenced by irrigated agriculture. The abstrac- tion of river water disturbs; the natural dynamics of the floodplain ecosystem. The human i...The floodplain -egetation of the Tarim River in Northwest China is strongly influenced by irrigated agriculture. The abstrac- tion of river water disturbs; the natural dynamics of the floodplain ecosystem. The human impact on the hydrological system by bank dams and the irrigation of cotton plantings have caused adverse changes of the Tarim River and its floodplains, so the current stocks of the typical Tugai vegetation show significant signs of degradation. Field studies of soils and statistical analysis of soil moisture data have shown that the vitality of the Tugai vegetation is primarily determined by its position to the riverbank and the groundwater. There exist complex interactions between soil hydrological conditions and the vitality of the vegetation. But the availability of water is not only influenced by the groundwater level and seasonal flood events. The spatial distribution of stocks at different states of vitality seems also to be decisively influenced by physical soil properties. Our results show that the water supply of plant communities is strongly in- fluenced by the soil texture. Spatial differences of soil moisture and corresponding soil water tensions may be the decisive factors for the zonafion of vegetation. Physical soil properties control the water retention and rising of capillary water from deeper soil layers and the phreatic zone and may supply the root systems of the phreatophytic vegetation with water. Keywords： soil moisture;soil texture; soil water tensions; Tarim River; water retention展开更多
In this review,we revisit the pivotal role of fibroblast growth factor receptor 3(FGFR3)in bladder cancer(BLCA),underscoring its prevalence in both nonmuscle-invasive and muscle-invasive forms of the disease.FGFR3 mut...In this review,we revisit the pivotal role of fibroblast growth factor receptor 3(FGFR3)in bladder cancer(BLCA),underscoring its prevalence in both nonmuscle-invasive and muscle-invasive forms of the disease.FGFR3 mutations in up to half of BLCAs play a well-established role in tumorigenesis,shaping distinct tumor initiation patterns and impacting the tumor microenvironment(TME).Emphasizing the importance of considering epithelial-mesenchymal transition profile and TME status,we revisit their relevance in predicting responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in FGFR3-mutated BLCAs.This writing highlights the initially promising yet transient efficacy of the FGFR inhibitor Erdafitinib on FGFR3-mutated BLCA,stressing the pressing need to unravel resistance mechanisms and identify co-targets for future combinatorial studies.A thorough analysis of recent preclinical and clinical evidence reveals resistance mechanisms,including secondarymutations,epigenetic alterations in pathway effectors,phenotypic heterogeneity,and population-specific variations within FGFR3 mutational status.Lastly,we discuss the potential of combinatorial treatments and concepts like synthetic lethality for discovering more effective targeted therapies against FGFR3-mutated BLCA.展开更多
Background A crucial element of human-machine interaction,the automatic detection of emotional states from human speech has long been regarded as a challenging task for machine learning models.One vital challenge in s...Background A crucial element of human-machine interaction,the automatic detection of emotional states from human speech has long been regarded as a challenging task for machine learning models.One vital challenge in speech emotion recognition(SER)is learning robust and discriminative representations from speech.Although machine learning methods have been widely applied in SER research,the inadequate amount of available annotated data has become a bottleneck impeding the extended application of such techniques(e.g.,deep neural networks).To address this issue,we present a deep learning method that combines knowledge transfer and self-attention for SER tasks.Herein,we apply the log-Mel spectrogram with deltas and delta-deltas as inputs.Moreover,given that emotions are time dependent,we apply temporal convolutional neural networks to model the variations in emotions.We further introduce an attention transfer mechanism,which is based on a self-attention algorithm to learn long-term dependencies.The self-attention transfer network(SATN)in our proposed approach takes advantage of attention transfer to learn attention from speech recognition,followed by transferring this knowledge into SER.An evaluation built on Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture(IEMOCAP)dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.展开更多
AIM： This study evaluated colorectal mucosal histamine release in response to blinded food challenge-positive and-negative food antigens as a new diagnostic procedure. METHODS： 19 patients suffering from gastrointes...AIM： This study evaluated colorectal mucosal histamine release in response to blinded food challenge-positive and-negative food antigens as a new diagnostic procedure. METHODS： 19 patients suffering from gastrointestinally mediated allergy confirmed by blinded oral provocation were investigated on grounds of their case history, skin prick tests, serum IgE detection and colorectal mucosal histamine release by ex vivo mucosa oxygenation. Intact tissue particles were incubated/stimulated in an oxygenated culture with different food antigens for 30 min. Specimens challenged with anti-human immunoglobulin E and without any stimulus served as positive and negative controls, respectively. Mucosal histamine release （% of total biopsy histamine content） was considered successful （positive）, when the rate of histamine release from biopsies in response to antigens reached more than twice that of the spontaneous release. Histamine measurement was performed by radioimmunoassay. RESULTS： The median （range） of spontaneous histamine release from colorectal mucosa was found to be 3.2 （0.1%-25.8%） of the total biopsy histamine content. Food antigens tolerated by oral provocation did not elicit mast cell degranulation 3.4 （0.4%-20.7%, P=0.4）, while anti-IgE and causative food allergens induced a significant histamine release of 5.4 （1.1%-25.6%, P = 0.04） and 8.1 （1.5%-57.9%, P = 0.008）, respectively. 12 of 19 patients （63.1%） showed positive colorectal mucosal histamine release in accordance with the blinded oral challenge responding to the same antigen （s）, while the specificity of the functional histamine release to accurately recognise tolerated foodstuffs was found to be 78.6%. In comparison with the outcome of blinded food challenge tests, sensitivity and specificity of history （30.8% and 57.1%）, skin tests （47.4% and 78.6%） or antigen-specific serum IgE determinations （57.9% and 50%） were found to be of lower diagnostic accuracy in gastrointestinally mediated allergy. CONC展开更多
We develop and analyze an adaptive hybridized Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin(IPDG-H)method for H(curl)-elliptic boundary value problems in 2D or 3D arising from a semi-discretization of the eddy currents equ...We develop and analyze an adaptive hybridized Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin(IPDG-H)method for H(curl)-elliptic boundary value problems in 2D or 3D arising from a semi-discretization of the eddy currents equations.The method can be derived from a mixed formulation of the given boundary value problem and involves a Lagrange multiplier that is an approximation of the tangential traces of the primal variable on the interfaces of the underlying triangulation of the computational domain.It is shown that the IPDG-H technique can be equivalently formulated and thus implemented as a mortar method.The mesh adaptation is based on a residual-type a posteriori error estimator consisting of element and face residuals.Within a unified framework for adaptive finite element methods,we prove the reliability of the estimator up to a consistency error.The performance of the adaptive symmetric IPDG-H method is documented by numerical results for representative test examples in 2D.展开更多
Taxi trajectories from urban environments allow inferring various information about the transport service qualities and commuter dynamics.It is possible to associate starting and end points of taxi trips with requirem...Taxi trajectories from urban environments allow inferring various information about the transport service qualities and commuter dynamics.It is possible to associate starting and end points of taxi trips with requirements of individual groups of people and even social inequalities.Previous research shows that due to service restrictions,boro taxis have typical customer destination locations on selected Saturdays:many drop-off clusters appear near the restricted zone,where it is not allowed to pick up customers and only few drop-off clusters appear at complicated crossing.Detected crossings imply recent infrastructural modifications.We want to follow up on these results and add one additional group of commuters:Citi Bike users.For selected Saturdays in June 2015,we want to compare the destinations of boro taxi and Citi Bike users.This is challenging due to manifold differences between active mobility and motorized road users,and,due to the fact that station-based bike sharing services are restricted to stations.Start and end points of trips,as well as the volumes in between rely on specific numbers of bike sharing stations.Therefore,we introduce a novel spatiotemporal assigning procedure for areas of influence around static bike sharing stations for extending available computational methods.展开更多
Ferroelectric domain walls are promising quasi-2D structures that can be leveraged for miniaturization of electronics components and new mechanisms to control electronic signals at the nanoscale.Despite the significan...Ferroelectric domain walls are promising quasi-2D structures that can be leveraged for miniaturization of electronics components and new mechanisms to control electronic signals at the nanoscale.Despite the significant progress in experiment and theory,however,most investigations on ferroelectric domain walls are still on a fundamental level,and reliable characterization of emergent transport phenomena remains a challenging task.展开更多
We will be concerned with the mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and shape optimization of micro fluidic biochips that are used for various biomedical applications. A particular feature is that the fluid flo...We will be concerned with the mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and shape optimization of micro fluidic biochips that are used for various biomedical applications. A particular feature is that the fluid flow in the fluidic network on top of the biochips is in- duced by surface acoustic waves generated by interdigital transducers. We are thus faced with a multiphysics problem that will be modeled by coupling the equations of piezoelectricity with the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Moreover, the fluid flow exhibits a multiscale character that will be taken care of by a homogenization approach. We will discuss and analyze the mathematical models and deal with their numerical solution by space-time discretizations featuring appropriate finite element approximations with respect to hierarchies of simplicial triangulations of the underlying computational domains. Simulation results will be given for the propagation of the surface acoustic waves on top of the piezoelectric substrate and for the induced fluid flow in the microchannels of the fluidic network. The performance of the operational behavior of the biochips can be significantly improved by shape optimization. In particular, for such purposes we present a multilevel interior point method relying on a predictor-corrector strategy with an adaptive choice of the continuation steplength along the barrier path. As a specific example, we will consider the shape optimization of pressure driven capillary barriers between microchannels and reservoirs.展开更多
We consider a strongly heterogeneous medium saturated by an incompressible viscous fluid as it appears in geomechanical modeling.This poroelasticity problem suffers from rapidly oscillating material parameters,which c...We consider a strongly heterogeneous medium saturated by an incompressible viscous fluid as it appears in geomechanical modeling.This poroelasticity problem suffers from rapidly oscillating material parameters,which calls for a thorough numerical treatment.In this paper,we propose a method based on the local orthogonal decomposition technique and motivated by a similar approach used for linear thermoelasticity.Therein,local corrector problems are constructed in line with the static equations,whereas we propose to consider the full system.This allows to benefit from the given saddle point structure and results in two decoupled corrector problems for the displacement and the pressure.We prove the optimal first-order convergence of this method and verify the result by numerical experiments.展开更多
While public-private partnerships(PPPs)have surged worldwide since the 1990s,they have been met with growing skepticism during the last years.A recent revision of Germany's constitutional rules on motorway constru...While public-private partnerships(PPPs)have surged worldwide since the 1990s,they have been met with growing skepticism during the last years.A recent revision of Germany's constitutional rules on motorway construction and observations on the use of PPPs published by both the German and the European Courts of Auditors illustrate this new caution.These two examples fit into a general trend towards a revival of the public sector,which can be summarized under the cross-level umbrella term"publicization."It would,however,be remiss to replace the uncritical euphoria that once surrounded privatization with a similarly undifferentiated euphoria regarding publicization.Rather,it is crucial to identify the most appropriate solution for the fulfilment of each public task from the"toolbox"of publicization on the one hand and privatization on the other hand in order to ensure the most effective completion of public functions.展开更多
文摘AIM： To evaluate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography （CEUS） using SonoVue in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors versus the combined gold standard comprising CT, MRI and clinical/histological data. METHODS： It is an international multicenter study, and there were 12 centres and 125 patients （64 males, 61 females, aged 59 ± 11 years） involved, with 102 patients per protocol. Primary tumors were colorectal in 35%, breast in 27%, pancreatic in 17% and others in 21%. CEUS using SonoVue was employed with a Iow-mechanical-index technique and contrast-specific software using Siemens Elegra, Philips HDI 5000 and Acuson Sequoia; continuous scanning for at least five minutes. RESULTS： CEUS with SonoVue increased significantly the number of focal liver lesions detected versus unenhanced sonography. In 31.4% of the patients, more lesions were found after contrast enhancement. The total numbers of lesions detected were comparable with CEUS （55）, triple-phase spiral CT （61） and HRI with a liverspecific contrast agent （53）. Accuracy of detection of metastatic disease （i.e. at least one metastatic lesion） was significantly higher for CEUS （91.2%） than for unenhanced sonography （81.4%） and was similar to that of triple-phase spiral CT （89.2 %）. In 53 patients whose CEUS examination was negative, a follow-up examination 3-6 months later confirmed the absence of metastatic lesions in 50 patients （94.4%）. CONCLUSION： CEUS is proved to be reliable in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors and suspected liver lesions.
文摘In natural environments,plants are exposed to diverse microbiota that they interact with in complex ways.While plant-pathogen interactions have been intensely studied to understand defense mechanisms in plants,many microbes and microbial communities can have substantial beneficial effects on their plant host.Such beneficial effects include improved acquisition of nutrients,accelerated growth,resilience against pathogens,and improved resistance against abiotic stress conditions such as heat,drought,and salinity.However,the beneficial effects of bacterial strains or consortia on their host are often cultivar and species specific,posing an obstacle to their general application.Remarkably,many of the signals that trigger plant immune responses are molecularly highly similar and often identical in pathogenic and beneficial microbes.Thus,it is unclear what determines the outcome of a particular microbe-host interaction and which factors enable plants to distinguish beneficials from pathogens.To unravel the complex network of genetic,microbial,and metabolic interactions,including the signaling events mediating microbe-host interactions,comprehensive quantitative systems biology approaches will be needed.
文摘BACKGROUND In recent years,increasing evidence of second neoplasms associated with gastrointestinal stromal tumors(GIST)has been found.Numerous case reports,mostly retrospective studies and a few reviews,have been published.To our knowledge,however,no systematic review or meta-analysis of the existing data has been performed so far.AIM To prepare a compilation,as complete as possible,of all reported second tumor entities that have been described in association with GIST and to systematically analyze the published studies with regard to frequency,localization,and types of GIST-associated neoplasms.METHODS The MEDLINE and EBSCO databases were searched for a combination of the keywords GIST/secondary,synchronous,coincident/tumor,neoplasm,and relevant publications were selected by two independent authors.RESULTS Initially,3042 publications were found.After deletion of duplicates,1631 remained,and 130 papers were selected;22 of these were original studies with a minimum of 20 patients,and 108 were case reports.In the 22 selected studies,comprising a total number of 12050 patients,an overall rate of GIST-associated neoplasias of 20%could be calculated.Most second neoplasias were found in the gastrointestinal tract(32%)and in the male and female urogenital tract(30%).The specific risk scores of GISTs associated with other tumors were significantly lower than those without associated neoplasias.CONCLUSION In this first systematic review,we could confirm previously reported findings of a more than coincidental association between GIST and other neoplasias.The question whether there is an underlying causal association will need further investigation.Our data suggest that even GIST with a very low risk of disease progression should prompt screening for second neoplasia and subsequent frequent controls or extended staging.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.41175018)the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No.2013CB955804)the special fund of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (Nos.13Z02ESPCP and 13K04ESPCP)
文摘Size-resolved aerosols were continuously collected by a Nano Sampler for 13 days at an urban site in Beijing during winter 2012 to measure the chemical composition of ambient aerosol particles. Data collected by the Nano Sampler and an ACSM（Aerodyne Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor） were compared. Between the data sets,similar trends and strong correlations were observed,demonstrating the validity of the Nano Sampler. PM10 and PM2.5concentrations during the measurement were 150.5 ± 96.0 μg/m3（mean ± standard variation）and 106.9 ± 71.6 μg/m3,respectively. The PM2.5/PM10 ratio was 0.70 ± 0.10,indicating that PM2.5dominated PM10. The aerosol size distributions showed that three size bins of 0.5–1,1–2.5 and 2.5–10 μm contributed 21.8%,23.3% and 26.0% to the total mass concentration（TMC）,respectively. OM（organic matter） and SIA（secondary ionic aerosol,mainly SO42-,NO3-and NH4＋） were major components of PM2.5. Secondary compounds（SIA and secondary organic carbon） accounted for half of TMC（about 49.8%） in PM2.5,and suggested that secondary aerosols significantly contributed to the serious particulate matter pollution observed in winter. Coal burning,biomass combustion,vehicle emissions and SIA were found to be the main sources of PM2.5. Mass concentrations of water-soluble ions and undetected materials,as well as their fractions in TMC,strikingly increased with deteriorating particle pollution conditions,while OM and EC（elemental carbon） exhibited different variations,with mass concentrations slightly increasing but fractions in TMC decreasing.
基金supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Stiftung via the program“Niedersächsisches Vorab:Research cooperation Lower Saxony-Israel”supported by the Israel-Lower Saxony Scholar Exchange(ILSSE)program,which helped enable efficient collaborative work through travel grants..
文摘This work presents the development and design of aptasensor employing porous silicon(PSi)Fabry‒Pérot thin films that are suitable for use as optical transducers for the detection of lactoferrin(LF),which is a protein biomarker secreted at elevated levels during gastrointestinal(GI)inflammatory disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and chronic pancreatitis.To overcome the primary limitation associated with PSi biosensors—namely,their relatively poor sensitivity due to issues related to complex mass transfer phenomena and reaction kinetics—we employed two strategic approaches:First,we sought to optimize the porous nanostructure with respect to factors including layer thickness,pore diameter,and capture probe density.Second,we leveraged convection properties by integrating the resulting biosensor into a 3D-printed microfluidic system that also had one of two different micromixer architectures(i.e.,staggered herringbone micromixers or microimpellers)embedded.We demonstrated that tailoring the PSi aptasensor significantly improved its performance,achieving a limit of detection(LOD)of 50 nM—which is>1 order of magnitude lower than that achieved using previously-developed biosensors of this type.Moreover,integration into microfluidic systems that incorporated passive and active micromixers further enhanced the aptasensor’s sensitivity,achieving an additional reduction in the LOD by yet another order of magnitude.These advancements demonstrate the potential of combining PSi-based optical transducers with microfluidic technology to create sensitive label-free biosensing platforms for the detection of GI inflammatory biomarkers.
基金supported by the Walter Benjamin and Research Grant Programs of the German Research Foundation(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,DFG,Germany,#446812474,#504079349[PANABC])(to SMS),the DFG(#437446827)the Research Program of the University Medical Center Gottingen(to MR)。
文摘Introductory comments:The identification and validation of disease-modifying proteins are fundamental aspects in drug development.However,the m ultifactority of n eurodegen era tive diseases poses a real challenge for targeted therapies.Furthermore,the behavior of individually(over-)expressed to rget proteins in vitro is likely to differ from their actual functional behavior when embedded in cascades and pathways in vivo.
基金supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China with the STI2030-Major Projects(Grant No.2021ZD0201900)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.62227807 and 62272044)+3 种基金the Teli Young Fellow Program from the Beijing Institute of Technology,the Shenzhen Municipal Scheme for Basic Research(Grant Nos.JCYJ20210324100208022andJCYJ20190808144005614),Chinathe JSPS KAKENHI(Grant No.20H00569)the JST Mirai Program(Grant No.21473074)the JST MOONSHOT Program(Grant No.JPMJMS229B).
文摘Objective Speech recognition technology is widely used as a mature technical approach in many fields.In the study of depression recognition,speech signals are commonly used due to their convenience and ease of acquisition.Though speech recognition is popular in the research field of depression recognition,it has been little studied in somatisation disorder recognition.The reason for this is the lack of a publicly accessible database of relevant speech and benchmark studies.To this end,we introduced our somatisation disorder speech database and gave benchmark results.Methods By collecting speech samples of somatisation disorder patients,in cooperation with the Shenzhen University General Hospital,we introduced our somatisation disorder speech database,the Shenzhen Somatisation Speech Corpus(SSSC).Moreover,a benchmark for SSSC using classic acoustic features and a machine learning model was proposed in our work.Results To obtain a more scientific benchmark,we compared and analysed the performance of different acoustic features,i.e.,the full ComPare feature set,or only Mel frequency cepstral coefficients(MFCCs),fundamental frequency(F0),and frequency and bandwidth of the formants(F1-F3).By comparison,the best result of our benchmark was the 76.0%unweighted average recall achieved by a support vector machine with formants F1–F3.Conclusion The proposal of SSSC may bridge a research gap in somatisation disorder,providing researchers with a publicly accessible speech database.In addition,the results of the benchmark could show the scientific validity and feasibility of computer audition for speech recognition in somatization disorders.
基金The work of the first author was supported by the NSF under Grant No.DMS-0411403 and Grant No.DMS-0511611The second author acknowledges the support from the Austrian Science Foundation(FWF)under Grant No.Start Y-192Both authors acknowledge support and the inspiring athmosphere at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics(RICAM),Linz,Austria,during the special semester on computational mechanics
文摘We consider an Adaptive Edge Finite Element Method （AEFEM） for the 3D eddy currents equations with variable coefficients using a residual-type a posteriori error estimator. Both the components of the estimator and certain oscillation terms, due to the occurrence of the variable coefficients, have to be controlled properly within the adaptive loop which is taken care of by appropriate bulk criteria. Convergence of the AEFEM in terms of reductions of the energy norm of the discretization error and of the oscillations is shown. Numerical results are given to illustrate the performance of the AEFEM.
基金supported by the Affective Computing&HCI Innovation Research Lab between Huawei Technologies and the University of Augsburg,and the EU H2020 Project under Grant No.101135556(INDUX-R).
文摘Neural network models for audio tasks,such as automatic speech recognition(ASR)and acoustic scene classification(ASC),are susceptible to noise contamination for real-life applications.To improve audio quality,an enhancement module,which can be developed independently,is explicitly used at the front-end of the target audio applications.In this paper,we present an end-to-end learning solution to jointly optimise the models for audio enhancement(AE)and the subsequent applications.To guide the optimisation of the AE module towards a target application,and especially to overcome difficult samples,we make use of the sample-wise performance measure as an indication of sample importance.In experiments,we consider four representative applications to evaluate our training paradigm,i.e.,ASR,speech command recognition(SCR),speech emotion recognition(SER),and ASC.These applications are associated with speech and nonspeech tasks concerning semantic and non-semantic features,transient and global information,and the experimental results indicate that our proposed approach can considerably boost the noise robustness of the models,especially at low signal-to-noise ratios,for a wide range of computer audition tasks in everyday-life noisy environments.
基金Under the auspices of Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany Project-Sustainable Management of River Oases along the Tarim River(No.01LL0918D)National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.31270742,31360200)
文摘The floodplain -egetation of the Tarim River in Northwest China is strongly influenced by irrigated agriculture. The abstrac- tion of river water disturbs; the natural dynamics of the floodplain ecosystem. The human impact on the hydrological system by bank dams and the irrigation of cotton plantings have caused adverse changes of the Tarim River and its floodplains, so the current stocks of the typical Tugai vegetation show significant signs of degradation. Field studies of soils and statistical analysis of soil moisture data have shown that the vitality of the Tugai vegetation is primarily determined by its position to the riverbank and the groundwater. There exist complex interactions between soil hydrological conditions and the vitality of the vegetation. But the availability of water is not only influenced by the groundwater level and seasonal flood events. The spatial distribution of stocks at different states of vitality seems also to be decisively influenced by physical soil properties. Our results show that the water supply of plant communities is strongly in- fluenced by the soil texture. Spatial differences of soil moisture and corresponding soil water tensions may be the decisive factors for the zonafion of vegetation. Physical soil properties control the water retention and rising of capillary water from deeper soil layers and the phreatic zone and may supply the root systems of the phreatophytic vegetation with water. Keywords： soil moisture;soil texture; soil water tensions; Tarim River; water retention
文摘In this review,we revisit the pivotal role of fibroblast growth factor receptor 3(FGFR3)in bladder cancer(BLCA),underscoring its prevalence in both nonmuscle-invasive and muscle-invasive forms of the disease.FGFR3 mutations in up to half of BLCAs play a well-established role in tumorigenesis,shaping distinct tumor initiation patterns and impacting the tumor microenvironment(TME).Emphasizing the importance of considering epithelial-mesenchymal transition profile and TME status,we revisit their relevance in predicting responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in FGFR3-mutated BLCAs.This writing highlights the initially promising yet transient efficacy of the FGFR inhibitor Erdafitinib on FGFR3-mutated BLCA,stressing the pressing need to unravel resistance mechanisms and identify co-targets for future combinatorial studies.A thorough analysis of recent preclinical and clinical evidence reveals resistance mechanisms,including secondarymutations,epigenetic alterations in pathway effectors,phenotypic heterogeneity,and population-specific variations within FGFR3 mutational status.Lastly,we discuss the potential of combinatorial treatments and concepts like synthetic lethality for discovering more effective targeted therapies against FGFR3-mutated BLCA.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62071330)the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars(61425017)+3 种基金the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation(61831022)the Key Program of the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin(18JCZDJC36300)the Open Projects Program of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and the Senior Visiting Scholar Program of Tianjin Normal Universitythe Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking(115902),which receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and EFPIA.
文摘Background A crucial element of human-machine interaction,the automatic detection of emotional states from human speech has long been regarded as a challenging task for machine learning models.One vital challenge in speech emotion recognition(SER)is learning robust and discriminative representations from speech.Although machine learning methods have been widely applied in SER research,the inadequate amount of available annotated data has become a bottleneck impeding the extended application of such techniques(e.g.,deep neural networks).To address this issue,we present a deep learning method that combines knowledge transfer and self-attention for SER tasks.Herein,we apply the log-Mel spectrogram with deltas and delta-deltas as inputs.Moreover,given that emotions are time dependent,we apply temporal convolutional neural networks to model the variations in emotions.We further introduce an attention transfer mechanism,which is based on a self-attention algorithm to learn long-term dependencies.The self-attention transfer network(SATN)in our proposed approach takes advantage of attention transfer to learn attention from speech recognition,followed by transferring this knowledge into SER.An evaluation built on Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture(IEMOCAP)dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.
文摘AIM： This study evaluated colorectal mucosal histamine release in response to blinded food challenge-positive and-negative food antigens as a new diagnostic procedure. METHODS： 19 patients suffering from gastrointestinally mediated allergy confirmed by blinded oral provocation were investigated on grounds of their case history, skin prick tests, serum IgE detection and colorectal mucosal histamine release by ex vivo mucosa oxygenation. Intact tissue particles were incubated/stimulated in an oxygenated culture with different food antigens for 30 min. Specimens challenged with anti-human immunoglobulin E and without any stimulus served as positive and negative controls, respectively. Mucosal histamine release （% of total biopsy histamine content） was considered successful （positive）, when the rate of histamine release from biopsies in response to antigens reached more than twice that of the spontaneous release. Histamine measurement was performed by radioimmunoassay. RESULTS： The median （range） of spontaneous histamine release from colorectal mucosa was found to be 3.2 （0.1%-25.8%） of the total biopsy histamine content. Food antigens tolerated by oral provocation did not elicit mast cell degranulation 3.4 （0.4%-20.7%, P=0.4）, while anti-IgE and causative food allergens induced a significant histamine release of 5.4 （1.1%-25.6%, P = 0.04） and 8.1 （1.5%-57.9%, P = 0.008）, respectively. 12 of 19 patients （63.1%） showed positive colorectal mucosal histamine release in accordance with the blinded oral challenge responding to the same antigen （s）, while the specificity of the functional histamine release to accurately recognise tolerated foodstuffs was found to be 78.6%. In comparison with the outcome of blinded food challenge tests, sensitivity and specificity of history （30.8% and 57.1%）, skin tests （47.4% and 78.6%） or antigen-specific serum IgE determinations （57.9% and 50%） were found to be of lower diagnostic accuracy in gastrointestinally mediated allergy. CONC
基金The work of the first author has been supported by the German Na-tional Science Foundation DFG within the Research Center MATHEON and by the WCU program through KOSEF(R31-2008-000-10049-0).The other authors acknowledge sup-port by the NSF grant DMS-0810176.1
文摘We develop and analyze an adaptive hybridized Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin(IPDG-H)method for H(curl)-elliptic boundary value problems in 2D or 3D arising from a semi-discretization of the eddy currents equations.The method can be derived from a mixed formulation of the given boundary value problem and involves a Lagrange multiplier that is an approximation of the tangential traces of the primal variable on the interfaces of the underlying triangulation of the computational domain.It is shown that the IPDG-H technique can be equivalently formulated and thus implemented as a mortar method.The mesh adaptation is based on a residual-type a posteriori error estimator consisting of element and face residuals.Within a unified framework for adaptive finite element methods,we prove the reliability of the estimator up to a consistency error.The performance of the adaptive symmetric IPDG-H method is documented by numerical results for representative test examples in 2D.
文摘Taxi trajectories from urban environments allow inferring various information about the transport service qualities and commuter dynamics.It is possible to associate starting and end points of taxi trips with requirements of individual groups of people and even social inequalities.Previous research shows that due to service restrictions,boro taxis have typical customer destination locations on selected Saturdays:many drop-off clusters appear near the restricted zone,where it is not allowed to pick up customers and only few drop-off clusters appear at complicated crossing.Detected crossings imply recent infrastructural modifications.We want to follow up on these results and add one additional group of commuters:Citi Bike users.For selected Saturdays in June 2015,we want to compare the destinations of boro taxi and Citi Bike users.This is challenging due to manifold differences between active mobility and motorized road users,and,due to the fact that station-based bike sharing services are restricted to stations.Start and end points of trips,as well as the volumes in between rely on specific numbers of bike sharing stations.Therefore,we introduce a novel spatiotemporal assigning procedure for areas of influence around static bike sharing stations for extending available computational methods.
基金D.M.is supported by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology(NTNU)through the Onsager Fellowship Program and the Outstanding Academic Fellows Program,the Peder Sather Center(UC Berkeley and Norway)acknowledges funding from the European Research Council(ERC)under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program(Grant agreement No.863691)+3 种基金S.K.acknowledges funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via the Transregional Collaborative Research Center TRR80J.C.A.acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant TRIPODS+X:RES-1839234the Nano/Human Interfaces Presidential Initiative,the Institute for Functional Materials and Devices,and the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Computation all at Lehigh University.D.R.S.and S.M.S.were supported by the Research Council of Norway(231430)and NTNUComputational resources for DFT calculations were provided by Sigma2 Uninett through the project NN9264K.Z.Y.and E.B.were supported by the U.S.Department of Energy,Office of Science,Basic Energy Sciences,Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under Contract No.DE-AC02-05-CH11231 within the Quantum Materials program-KC2202.
文摘Ferroelectric domain walls are promising quasi-2D structures that can be leveraged for miniaturization of electronics components and new mechanisms to control electronic signals at the nanoscale.Despite the significant progress in experiment and theory,however,most investigations on ferroelectric domain walls are still on a fundamental level,and reliable characterization of emergent transport phenomena remains a challenging task.
基金support by the NSF under Grants No. DMS-0511611, DMS-0707602, DMS-0810156, DMS-0811153by the German National Science Foundation DFG within the Priority Program SPP 1253
文摘We will be concerned with the mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and shape optimization of micro fluidic biochips that are used for various biomedical applications. A particular feature is that the fluid flow in the fluidic network on top of the biochips is in- duced by surface acoustic waves generated by interdigital transducers. We are thus faced with a multiphysics problem that will be modeled by coupling the equations of piezoelectricity with the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Moreover, the fluid flow exhibits a multiscale character that will be taken care of by a homogenization approach. We will discuss and analyze the mathematical models and deal with their numerical solution by space-time discretizations featuring appropriate finite element approximations with respect to hierarchies of simplicial triangulations of the underlying computational domains. Simulation results will be given for the propagation of the surface acoustic waves on top of the piezoelectric substrate and for the induced fluid flow in the microchannels of the fluidic network. The performance of the operational behavior of the biochips can be significantly improved by shape optimization. In particular, for such purposes we present a multilevel interior point method relying on a predictor-corrector strategy with an adaptive choice of the continuation steplength along the barrier path. As a specific example, we will consider the shape optimization of pressure driven capillary barriers between microchannels and reservoirs.
文摘We consider a strongly heterogeneous medium saturated by an incompressible viscous fluid as it appears in geomechanical modeling.This poroelasticity problem suffers from rapidly oscillating material parameters,which calls for a thorough numerical treatment.In this paper,we propose a method based on the local orthogonal decomposition technique and motivated by a similar approach used for linear thermoelasticity.Therein,local corrector problems are constructed in line with the static equations,whereas we propose to consider the full system.This allows to benefit from the given saddle point structure and results in two decoupled corrector problems for the displacement and the pressure.We prove the optimal first-order convergence of this method and verify the result by numerical experiments.
文摘While public-private partnerships(PPPs)have surged worldwide since the 1990s,they have been met with growing skepticism during the last years.A recent revision of Germany's constitutional rules on motorway construction and observations on the use of PPPs published by both the German and the European Courts of Auditors illustrate this new caution.These two examples fit into a general trend towards a revival of the public sector,which can be summarized under the cross-level umbrella term"publicization."It would,however,be remiss to replace the uncritical euphoria that once surrounded privatization with a similarly undifferentiated euphoria regarding publicization.Rather,it is crucial to identify the most appropriate solution for the fulfilment of each public task from the"toolbox"of publicization on the one hand and privatization on the other hand in order to ensure the most effective completion of public functions.
