The dimethadione-exposed rat fetus: an animal model for the prenatal ultrasound characterization of ventricular septal defect.

BACKGROUND: Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is the most prevalent congenital heart disease (CHD) and is easily misdiagnosed or missed. An appropriate VSD animal model could be used to analyze the ultrasound characteristics and their related pathological bases, and provides the opportunity to further explore the pathogenesis of VSD. Currently, little is known about whether ultrahigh-frequency ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) is suitable to diagnose VSD of fetal rats. There is no research on whether a dimethadione (DMO)-induced fetal VSD model is suitable for the observation and analysis of imaging characteristics and the associated pathological basis. METHODS: We used DMO to induce VSD. UBM was used to perform the prenatal ultrasound characterization. With the pathological results used as the gold standard, the ultrasound characteristics and their related pathological bases were analyzed. RESULTS: The incidence of VSD in the DMO group was 42.05% and 39.71% (diagnosed by UBM and pathology, respectively, P > 0.05). The prenatal ultrasound findings and pathological basis of various diseases, including isolated VSD, complex CHD containing VSD, and extracardiac lesions, were detected and discussed. It was discovered that some fetuses showed features of noncompacted ventricular myocardium, and for the first time, clusters of red blood cell traversing the cardiomyocytes. CONCLUSIONS: The DMO-induced VSD model is a low-cost model with a high success rate and is suitable for the observation and analysis of VSD. UBM is suitable for evaluating VSD.

Four-section approach of fetal congenital heart disease at 11-13+6 weeks.

Objective: The objective of the study is to explore the value of the four-section approach in detecting fetal heart defects in the first trimester (11-13+6 weeks), analyze the reasons for the inconsistency between the results of ultrasound examination in the first trimester and subsequent verification, and describe the most common abnormal flow patterns of four sections. Materials and methods: Between June 2019 and June 2021, a prenatal four-section approach (upper abdominal transverse section, four-chamber section, three vessel-trachea section, and bilateral subclavian artery section) with verification results in early pregnancy was analyzed. Results: In total, 9,533 fetuses were included. Finally, 176 fetuses with congenital heart disease (CHD), containing 34 types, were identified. The total detection rate of cardiac abnormalities was 1.85%. 102 cases were accurately diagnosed by ultrasonography during early pregnancy. A total of 74 fetuses who had inconsistent results between fetal cardiac ultrasound and verification in early pregnancy were reported, of which the cases of 22 fetuses were inconsistent due to disease evolution and progression and the cases of 52 fetuses were inconsistent due to missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the four-section approach were 67.05%, 99.96%, 96.58%, and 99.33%, respectively. In this study, a total of 30 abnormal ultrasonic imaging patterns in four sections were summarized. Conclusion: We confirmed that the four-section approach in early pregnancy has a good diagnostic efficacy for fetal CHD. Intrauterine evolution of the fetal heart, missed diagnosis, and misdiagnosis are the reasons for the inconsistency between the results of early pregnancy ultrasound and subsequent verification. This study also presents the abnormal imaging patterns of four scan sections of CHD in early pregnancy, which are instructive for the rapid identification and diagnosis of CHD in the first trimester.

How to achieve sustainable distribution in the fast fashion industry? An electric vehicle solution under the "vehicle-battery separation" mode.

Exploring sustainable urban distribution based on electric vehicles is crucial given the rise in global greenhouse gas emissions, especially for fast fashion industries with extremely high distribution frequencies. However, most studies have overlooked the impact of deep discharge on the distribution route scheme, and few studies fit the characteristics of the fast fashion industry. As a result, this study presents a novel electric vehicle routing problem considering deep discharge model (EVRP-DD) for distribution route optimization, which fully considers deep discharge under the emerging mode of vehicle-battery separation. The characteristics of fashion consumers and products were also integrated into the model, such as consumer satisfaction and 3D loading constraints. To solve this complex programming problem, a sophisticated hybrid ant colony optimization (HACO) algorithm was designed by combining the advantages of ACO and A-star algorithms. Using real-life data, the experimental results verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed solution. EVRP-DD achieved reduced driving distance, total distribution cost, and deep discharge distance. HACO can enhance the computation speed and reduce the total distribution cost compared with the two conventional algorithms. The proposed solution showed excellent flexibility and could effectively adjust the optimal route scheme according to the ever-changing external environment. Thus, it can be concluded that this solution is a powerful tool for enterprises to achieve sustainable distribution. This study has realized theoretical innovation in sustainable distribution under the new mode of vehicle-battery separation, and its successful application in the fast fashion industry reflects its valuable application value.

Extracellular biomineralization of uranium and its toxicity alleviation to Bacillus thuringiensis X-27.

Uranium biomineralization can slow uranium migration in the environment and thus prevent it from further contaminating the surroundings. Investigations into the uranium species, pH, inorganic phosphate (Pi) concentration, and microbial viability during biomineralization by microorganisms are crucial for understanding the mineralization mechanism. In this study, Bacillus thuringiensis X-27 was isolated from soil contaminated with uranium and was used to investigate the formation process of uranium biominerals induced by X-27. The results showed that as biomineralization proceeded, amorphous uranium-containing deposits were generated and transformed into crystalline minerals outside cells, increasing the overall concentration of uramphite. This is a cumulative rather than abrupt process. Notably, B. thuringiensis X-27 precipitated uranium outside the cell surface within 0.5 h, while the release of Pi into the extracellular environment and the change of pH to alkalescence further promoted the formation of uramphite. In addition, cell viability determination showed that the U(VI) biomineralization induced by B. thuringiensis X-27 was instrumental in alleviating the toxicity of U(VI) to cells. This work offers insight into the mechanism of U(VI) phosphate biomineralization and is a reference for bioremediation-related studies.

Efficient multicycle terahertz pulse generation based on the tilted pulse-front technique.

Controlling the time-domain oscillation of a terahertz (THz) wave offers promising capabilities for THz-based all-optical particle acceleration and strong-field THz nonlinear physics. However, the lack of highly efficient and frequency-modulable multicycle THz sources is impeding the spread of strong-field THz science and applications. Here, we show that by simply adding an echelon into a single-cycle THz source based on optical rectification in lithium niobate crystals via the tilted pulse-front technique, multicycle THz pulses can be efficiently generated with an 800 nm-to-THz efficiency of 0.1% at room temperature. The radiated THz properties can be engineered by precisely designing the echelon structure. Our proposed multicycle THz generation method has the advantages of high efficiency, ease of operation, and quick switching between single-cycle and multicycle working modes, all of which are important in the application of high-field THz radiation.

Metabolic characterization of amniotic fluid of fetuses with isolated choroid plexus cyst.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the amino acid (AA)-related metabolic characteristics of amniotic fluid (AF) obtained by ultrasound-guided amniocentesis from fetuses with isolated choroid plexus cysts of the central nervous system. METHODS: Ultrasound-guided amniocentesis was performed on 17 fetuses with isolated choroid plexus cysts (ICPCs) and 17 normal fetuses. The AF samples from normal pregnancies were matched with the case samples in a 1:1 ratio based upon gestational age. The AF samples from the 34 fetuses were analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Then, the peak areas of the metabolites were analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and univariate statistical analysis. RESULTS: This study ultimately identified 31 AAs. Seven differentially abundant AAs were screened out, including citrulline, ethanolamine, aspartic acid, valine, 5-hydroxylysine, proline, and isoleucine (p-value<0.05). A total of 4 metabolic pathways were significantly altered in the ICPC group: valine, leucine and isoleucine biosynthesis; valine, leucine and isoleucine degradation; pantothenate and coenzyme A (CoA) biosynthesis; and arginine biosynthesis. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that fetuses with ICPC have disrupted levels of citrulline, ethanolamine, aspartic acid, valine, 5-hydroxylysine, proline, and isoleucine, which may ultimately affect fetal glucose and lipid metabolism.

A Recognition Method of Aggressive Driving Behavior Based on Ensemble Learning.

Aggressive driving behavior (ADB) is one of the main causes of traffic accidents. The accurate recognition of ADB is the premise to timely and effectively conduct warning or intervention to the driver. There are some disadvantages, such as high miss rate and low accuracy, in the previous data-driven recognition methods of ADB, which are caused by the problems such as the improper processing of the dataset with imbalanced class distribution and one single classifier utilized. Aiming to deal with these disadvantages, an ensemble learning-based recognition method of ADB is proposed in this paper. First, the majority class in the dataset is grouped employing the self-organizing map (SOM) and then are combined with the minority class to construct multiple class balance datasets. Second, three deep learning methods, including convolutional neural networks (CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU), are employed to build the base classifiers for the class balance datasets. Finally, the ensemble classifiers are combined by the base classifiers according to 10 different rules, and then trained and verified using a multi-source naturalistic driving dataset acquired by the integrated experiment vehicle. The results suggest that in terms of the recognition of ADB, the ensemble learning method proposed in this research achieves better performance in accuracy, recall, and F1-score than the aforementioned typical deep learning methods. Among the ensemble classifiers, the one based on the LSTM and the Product Rule has the optimal performance, and the other one based on the LSTM and the Sum Rule has the suboptimal performance.

Diagnostic Performance of Ultrasound Computer-Aided Diagnosis Software Compared with That of Radiologists with Different Levels of Expertise for Thyroid Malignancy: A Multicenter Prospective Study.

The aim of the work described here was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of ultrasound thyroid computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) software. This multicenter prospective study included 494 patients (565 thyroid nodules) who underwent surgery or biopsy after ultrasonography at four hospitals from January 2019 to September 2019. The diagnostic performance metrics of different readers were calculated and compared with the pathologic results. The sensitivity of CAD was outstanding and was equivalent to that of a senior radiologist (90.51% vs. 88.47%, p > 0.05). The area under the curve of CAD was equivalent to that of a junior radiologist (0.748 vs. 0.739, p > 0.05). However, the specificity was only 49.63%, which was lower than those of the three radiologists (75.56%, 85.93% and 90.37% for the junior, intermediate and senior radiologists, respectively). The diagnostic performance of the junior radiologist was significantly improved with the aid of CAD (junior + CAD). The sensitivity and area under the curve of junior + CAD were improved from 72.20% to 89.93% and from 0.739 to 0.816, respectively (both p values <0.05), and the positive predictive value, negative predictive value and κ coefficient improved from 76.3% to 78.6%, 82.0% to 86.8% and 0.394 to 0.511, respectively. Though specificity slightly decreased from 75.56% to 73.33%, the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). In general, the clinical application value of CAD is promising, and its instrumental value for junior radiologists is significant.

Coupling effect of molecular weight and crosslinking kinetics on the formation of rubber nanoparticles and their agglomerates in EPDM/PP TPVs during dynamic vulcanization.

It is well-known that a fine dispersed rubber phase in thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPVs) is a key to obtain good mechanical properties and high elasticity of TPV products. Previous studies reported that the rubber nanodroplets formed during shearing blending can transform into rubber nanoparticles by in situ rapid crosslinking and these rubber nanoparticles spontaneously form agglomerates dispersed in a plastic matrix during dynamic vulcanization (DV). However, important influencing factors on the formation of rubber nanoparticles and their agglomeration during DV have not been reported yet. In this study, the coupling effect of the molecular weight (MW) of polypropylene (PP) and crosslinking kinetics including the crosslinking rate (CR) and crosslinking degree (CD) on the size of ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubber nanoparticles and their agglomerates in EPDM/PP TPVs was systematically studied for the first time. The minimum diameter of EPDM nanodroplets was theoretically calculated by using the critical break-up law of viscoelastic melts for the blend with high MW PP or the critical capillary equation for the blend with low MW PP, and the real size of the EPDM nanoparticles was experimentally verified. Interestingly, the results show that the lower MW of the PP phase, lower CD and higher CR contribute to the formation of smaller rubber nanoparticles, whereas the higher MW of the PP phase and higher CD of the rubber phase contribute to the formation of smaller rubber nanoparticle agglomerates. This study provides guidance to optimize the microstructure of EPDM/PP TPVs for the preparation of high-performance TPV products.

One-step preparation of polyimide-inlaid amine-rich porous organic block copolymer for efficient removal of chlorophenols from aqueous solution.

A novel polyimide-inlaid amine-rich porous organic block copolymer (PI-b-ARPOP) was prepared via one-step polymerization by using different molar ratios of melamine (MA)/terephthalaldehyde (TA)/pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA), at molar ratios of 4/3/1, 4/2/2 and 4/1/3. The copolymer contained both aminal groups belonging to ARPOP and imide groups belonging to PI, and the bonding styles of the monomers and growth orientations of the polymeric chains were diversiform, forming an excellent porous structure. Notably, MA/TA/PMDA (4/2/2) had a surface area and pore volume of 487.27 m2/g and 1.169 cm3/g, respectively. The adsorption performance of the materials towards 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) in ultra-pure water was systematically studied. The pH value of 7 was optimal in aqueous solution. Na+ and Cl- ions did not negatively affect the adsorption process, while humic acid (HA) slightly decreased the capacity. The equilibrium time was 40 sec, and the maximum adsorption capacity reached 282.49 mg/g at 298 K. The removal process was endothermic and spontaneous, and the copolymer could maintain its porous structure and consistent performance after regeneration by treatment with alkali. Moreover, to further assess the practical applicability of the material, the adsorption performance towards 2,4-DCP in river water was also investigated. This paper demonstrated that the PI-b-ARPOP can be an efficient and practical adsorbent to remove chlorophenols from aqueous solution.

[JI Laixi's experience of acupuncture and moxibustion for knee osteoarthritis].

In theory of TCM, the root cause of knee osteoarthritis (xibi) is the deficiency of liver and kidney, while the symptoms are involved with multiple damages of muscles, tendons and joints. The exogenous evil of wind, coldness, dampness and heat as well as the blood stasis usually block the meridians and collaterals, which cause the knee osteoarthritis. Professor JI Laixi selects acupoints based on syndrome differentiation, and treats both root cause and symptoms. He attaches importance to the ashi points, and takes pain as acupoints. He also treats the lower part of body using the upper acupoints, and treats knees through stimulating the low back. The basic acupoints include the affected Dubi (ST 35), Yinlingquan (SP 9), Yanglingquan (GB 34), Liangqiu (ST 34), Xuehai (SP 10), Xixia point (extral) and ashi point in the knees and waist. Fengchi (GB 20) and Geshu (BL 17) are added for the symptom of wind; Guanyuan (CV 4) is added for the symptom of coldness; Zusanli (ST 36) is added for the symptom of dampness; Quchi (LI 11) is added for the symptom of heat; Fenglong (ST 40) and Sanyinjiao (SP 6) are added for the symptom of phlegm-stasis; Ganshu (BL 18) and Shenshu (BL 23) are added for the deficiency of the liver and kidney. The technical combination of acupuncture, including needle-knife, fire needle, bloodletting, regular acupuncture, TDP, are applied to regulate the patients' deficiency and excess using the nine-six reinforcing and reducing methods, and pay high attention to the mind regulation. Using this method, the efficacy is significant.