bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mitigating the mistreatment of childbearing women: evaluation of respectful maternity care intervention in Ethiopian hospitals
Authors: Asefa Anteneh , Morgan Alison , Gebremedhin Samson , Tekle Ephrem , Abebe Sintayehu , Magge Hema , Kermode Michelle
Published: September 2020

Objectives

There is a lack of evidence on approaches to mitigating mistreatment during facility-based childbirth. This study compares the experiences of mistreatment reported by childbearing women before and after implementation of a respectful maternity care intervention.

Design

A pre–post study design was undertaken to quantify changes in women’s experiences of mistreatment during facility-based childbirth before and after the respectful maternity care intervention.

Intervention

A respectful maternity care intervention was implemented in three hospitals in southern Ethiopia between December 2017 and September 2018 and it included training of service providers, placement of wall posters in labour rooms and post-training supportive visits for quality improvement.

Outcome measures

A 25-item questionnaire asking women about mistreatment experiences was administered to 388 women (198 in the pre-intervention, 190 in the post-intervention). The outcome variable was the number of mistreatment components experienced by women, expressed as a score out of 25. Multilevel mixed-effects Poisson modelling was used to assess the change in mistreatment score from pre-intervention to post-intervention periods.

Results

The number of mistreatment components experienced by women was reduced by 18% when the post-intervention group was compared with the pre-intervention group (adjusted regression coefficient (Aβ)=0.82, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.91). Women who had a complication during pregnancy (Aβ=1.17, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.34) and childbirth (Aβ=1.16, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.32) experienced a greater number of mistreatment components. On the other hand, women who gave birth by caesarean birth after trial of vaginal birth (Aβ=0.76, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.92) and caesarean birth without trial of vaginal birth (Aβ=0.68, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.98) experienced a lesser number of mistreatment components compared with those who had vaginal birth.

Conclusions

Women reported significantly fewer mistreatment experiences during childbirth following implementation of the intervention. Given the variety of factors that lead to mistreatment in health facilities, interventions designed to mitigate mistreatment need to involve structural changes.
Retrospective review of end-of-life care in the last month of life in older patients with multiple myeloma: what collaboration between haematologists and palliative care teams?
Authors: Chalopin Thomas , Vallet Nicolas , Benboubker Lotfi , Ochmann Marlène , Gyan Emmanuel , Chaumier François
Published: September 2020

Objectives

Patients with haematological malignancies (HM) receive more aggressive treatments near the end-of-life (EOL) than patients with solid tumours. Palliative care (PC) needs are less widely acknowledged in patients with multiple myeloma (MM) than in other HM. The main objective of our study was to describe EOL care and PC referral in a population of older patients with MM.

Methods

We retrospectively included deceased inpatients and outpatients with an MM previously diagnosed at the age of 70 and over in two tertiary centres in France. We reported EOL characteristics regarding treatments considered to be aggressive—antimyeloma therapies, hospitalisations, blood product transfusions, intensive care units (ICUs) or emergency admissions—and PC referral.

Results

We included 119 patients. In their last month of life, 75 (63%) were hospitalised for fever, pain, asthenia, anaemia or bleeding, 49 (41%) were admitted in the emergency department and 12 (10%) in ICU, 76 (64%) still received antimyeloma therapy and 45 (38%) had at least two transfusions. Only 24 (20%) received PC intervention for pain, global care, family support, anxiety, social care or confusion. Median follow-up until death was 20 days.

Conclusions

Our study found a high rate of hospitalisations and antimyeloma therapies in the last month of life. The PC referral rate was low, often once specific treatments were stopped. Our results suggest the need for more effective collaboration between PC teams and haematologists in order to respond to the specific needs of these patients and to improve their quality of care at EOL.
Supporting the intoxicated patient: toxicants affecting the gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary systems
Authors: Cook Simon , Greensmith Tom
Published: September 2020

Background

The gastrointestinal and hepatic systems are the first to encounter many potentially toxic substances. Recognition, stabilisation and treatment of the consequences of intoxication are key to successful management.

Aim of the article

This is the final article in a series of four. It focuses on toxicants that affect the gastrointestinal or hepatobiliary systems, outlining the aetiology of the clinical signs observed, along with diagnostic assessment and treatment considerations.
Salmonella entericaserovar Typhimurium bacteraemia in a puppy with canine parvoviral enteritis
Authors: Hanekom Josef , Pazzi Paolo , Rautenbach Yolandi , Henning Alischa
Published: September 2020

A 12‐week‐old female intact, pit bull terrier cross breed puppy presented with vomiting and haemorrhagic diarrhoea. Phagocytosed bacterial rods were observed on peripheral and central blood smears. A commercially available canine parvovirus ELISA test and subsequent electron microscopy for viral particles both tested negative on faecal sampling. The owners declined treatment and the puppy was euthanased. The postmortem revealed enteric necrosis, purulent meningoencephalitis, necropurulent hepatitis and diffuse interstitial pneumonia, with heavySalmonella entericaserovar Typhimurium growth on blood and tissue culture. TheSalmonellaspecies were sensitive to most commonly used antimicrobials including ampicillin. Canine parvovirus enteritis was diagnosed by positive canine parvovirus specific immune‐peroxidase staining of intestinal tissue sections. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to describe canine parvoviral enteritis complicated by a salmonella bacteraemia, and the detection of a bacteraemia on a peripheral blood smear in a live dog.
Investigating the presence of equine piroplasmosis in Ireland
Authors: Coultous Robert M , Leadon Desmond P , Shiels Brian R , Sutton David , Weir William
Published: September 2020

Background

Equine piroplasmosis (EP) is a notifiable disease in Ireland and a significant concern to domestic and international equine industries. Information regarding EP presence in Ireland is currently limited. This retrospective surveillance study describes a serological and molecular analysis of blood samples submitted to the Irish Equine Centre for EP testing between January 2013 and April 2016.

Methods

Following serological testing, seropositive samples were screened using a PCR targeting the 18S ribosomal RNA gene. Amplicon sequences were bioinformatically analysed to identify the parasite species and to assess genetic diversity.

Results

From 2099 screened equine blood samples, 2.5 per cent and 1 per cent were seropositive for Theileria equi and Babesia caballi, respectively. T equi DNA was detected in 9 per cent of the seropositive samples while B caballi DNA was not detected in any sample. The T equi DNA sequences displayed no genetic diversity at this locus, in contrast to samples from the UK and from endemic areas.

Conclusion

Detection of EP‐seropositive and parasitaemic horses in Ireland indicates a clear and present health risk to the equine population. It is recommended that owners adopt appropriate biosecurity measures and that clinicians are mindful of this disease as a differential diagnosis.
Regularization, renormalization and consistency conditions in QED with x-electric potential steps
Authors: Gavrilov S. P. , Gitman D. M.
Published: September 2020

The present article is an important addition to the nonperturbative formulation of QED with x-steps presented by Gavrilov and Gitman (Phys. Rev. D. 93:045002, 2016). Here we propose a new renormalization and volume regularization procedures which allow one to calculate and distinguish physical parts of different matrix elements of operators of the current and of the energy–momentum tensor, at the same time relating the latter quantities with characteristics of the vacuum instability. For this purpose, a modified inner product and a parameter $$\tau $$
τ
of the regularization are introduced. The latter parameter can be fixed using physical considerations. In the Klein zone this parameter can be interpreted as the time of the observation of the pair-production effect. In the refined formulation of QED with x-steps, we succeeded to consider the back-reaction problem. In the case of an uniform electric field E confined between two capacitor plates separated by a finite distance L, we see that the smallness of the back-reaction implies a restriction (the consistency condition) on the product EL from above.
New version of the gedanken experiments to test the weak cosmic censorship in charged dilaton-Lifshitz black holes
Authors: Jiang Jie , Zhang Ming
Published: September 2020

In this paper, based on the new version of the gedanken experiments proposed by Sorce and Wald, we examine the weak cosmic censorship in the perturbation process of accreting matter fields for the charged dilaton-Lifshitz black holes. In the investigation, we assume that the black hole is perturbed by some extra matter source satisfied the null energy condition and ultimately settle down to a static charged dilaton-Lifshitz black hole in the asymptotic future. Then, after applying the Noether charge method, we derive the first-order and second-order perturbation inequalities of the perturbation matter fields. As a result, we find that the nearly extremal charged dilaton-Lifshitz black hole cannot be destroyed under the second-order approximation of perturbation. This result implies that the weak cosmic censorship conjecture might be a general feature of the Einstein gravity, and it is independent of the asymptotic behaviors of the black holes.
Machine Learning Models for Government to Predict COVID-19 Outbreak
Authors: Gupta Rajan , Pandey Gaurav , Chaudhary Poonam , Pal Saibal K.
Published: September 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a major threat to the whole world. Analysis of this disease requires major attention by the government in all countries to take necessary steps in reducing the effect of this global pandemic. In this study, outbreak of this disease has been analysed and trained for Indian region till 10th May, 2020, and testing has been done for the number of cases for the next three weeks. Machine learning models such as SEIR model and Regression model have been used for predictions based on the data collected from the official portal of the Government of India in the time period of 30th January, 2020, to 10th May, 2020. The performance of the models was evaluated using RMSLE and achieved 1.52 for SEIR model and 1.75 for the regression model. The RMSLE error rate between SEIR model and Regression model was found to be 2.01. Also, the value of R0, which is the spread of the disease, was calculated to be 2.84. Expected cases are predicted around 175K--200K in the three-week time period of test data, which is very close to the actual numbers. This study will help the government and doctors in preparing their plans for the future.
Lockdowns & Rebounds
Authors: Smyth Barry
Published: September 2020

We present an analysis of COVID-19 lockdowns for 56 countries based on daily mobility levels and estimated virus transmission rates. What will happen to transmission rates when countries begin to ease restrictions and mobility levels start to increase? Our analysis, based on data up to May 11th, 2020, show how, even when mobility levels increase, most countries (87%) continue to reduce the effective reproduction number (
R

t

) of the virus. Moreover, when restrictions were eased only after
R

t

was below 1, then countries always managed to maintain
R

t

≤ 1 even as mobility levels rose, at least for the period covered by the data. In contrast, when restrictions were eased before
R

t

fell below 1, then only 55% of countries managed to subsequently reduce
R

t

to below 1. By easing restrictions cautiously and carefully, it was possible to avoid a rebound in transmission rates while allowing mobility levels to increase.
SUME
Authors: Xu Fengli , Lin Zongyu , Xia Tong , Guo Diansheng , Li Yong
Published: September 2020

Recent years have witnessed a rapid proliferation of personalized mobile applications, which poses a pressing need for accurate user demographics inference. Facilitated by the prevalent smart devices, the ubiquitously collected mobility trace presents a promising opportunity to infer user demographics at large-scale. In this paper, we propose a novel Semantic-enhanced Urban Mobility Embedding (SUME) model, which learns dense representation vectors for user demographic inference by jointly modelling the physical mobility patterns and the semantic of urban mobility. Specifically, SUME models urban mobility as a heterogeneous network of users and locations, with various types of edges denoting the physical visitation and semantic similarities. Moreover, SUME optimizes the node representation vectors with two alternating objective functions that preserve the feature in physical and semantic domains, respectively. As a result, it is able to capture the effective signals in the heterogeneous urban mobility network. Empirical experiments on two real-world mobility traces show the proposed model significantly out-performs all state-of-the-art baselines with an accuracy margin of 8.6%~14.3% for occupation, gender, age, education and income inference. In addition, further experiments show SUME is able to reveal meaningful correlations between user demographics and the mobility patterns in spatial, temporal and urban structure domain.
Will You Come Back / Check-in Again?
Authors: Chen Zhilong , Cao Hancheng , Wang Huangdong , Xu Fengli , Kostakos Vassilis , Li Yong
Published: September 2020

Recent years have witnessed much work unraveling human mobility patterns through urban visitation and location check-in data. Traditionally, user visitation and check-in have been assumed as the same behavior, yet this fundamental assumption can be questionable and lacks supporting evidence. In this paper, we seek to understand the similarities and differences of visitation and check-in by presenting a large-scale systematic analysis under the specific setting of urban revisitation and re-check-in, which demonstrate people's periodic behaviors and regularities. Leveraging a localization dataset to model urban revisitation and a Foursqaure dataset to delineate re-check-in, we identify features concerning POI visitation patterns, POI background information, user visitation patterns, user preference and users' behavioral characteristics to understand their effects on urban revisitation and re-check-in. We examine the relationship between revisitation/re-check-in rate and the features we identify, highlighting the similarities and differences between urban revisitation and re-check-in. We demonstrate the prediction effectiveness of the identified characteristics utilizing machine learning models, with an overall ROC AUC of 0.92 for urban revisitation and 0.82 for re-check-in, respectively. This study has important research implications, including improved modeling of human mobility and better understanding of human behavior, and sheds light on designing novel ubiquitous computing applications.
Dyadic Mirror
Authors: Kim Wonjung , Lee Seungchul , Kim Seonghoon , Jo Sungbin , Yoo Chungkuk , Hwang Inseok , Kang Seungwoo , Song Junehwa
Published: September 2020

A parent's capacity to understand the mental states of both him/herself and the child is considered to play a significant role in various aspects of parent-child relationship-e.g., lowering parental stress and supporting cognitive development of the child. We propose Dyadic Mirror, a wearable smart mirror which is designed to foster the aforementioned parental capacity in everyday parent-child interaction. Its key feature is to provide a parent with a second-person live-view from the child, i.e., the parent's own face as seen by the child, during their face-to-face interaction. Dyadic Mirror serves as a straightforward cue that helps the parent be aware of (1) his/her emotional state, and (2) the way he/she would be now being seen by the child, thereby facilitate the parent to infer the child's mental state. To evaluate Dyadic Mirror under unconstrained parent-child interactions in real-life, we implemented the working prototype of Dyadic Mirror and deployed it to 6 families over 4 weeks. The participating parents reported extensive experiences with Dyadic Mirror, supporting that Dyadic Mirror has helped them be aware of their recurring but unconscious behaviors, understand their children's feelings, reason with the children's behaviors, and find self-driven momenta to better their attitude and expressions towards their children.
SyncWISE
Authors: Zhang Yun C. , Zhang Shibo , Liu Miao , Daly Elyse , Battalio Samuel , Kumar Santosh , Spring Bonnie , Rehg James M. , Alshurafa Nabil
Published: September 2020

The development and validation of computational models to detect daily human behaviors (e.g., eating, smoking, brushing) using wearable devices requires labeled data collected from the natural field environment, with tight time synchronization of the micro-behaviors (e.g., start/end times of hand-to-mouth gestures during a smoking puff or an eating gesture) and the associated labels. Video data is increasingly being used for such label collection. Unfortunately, wearable devices and video cameras with independent (and drifting) clocks make tight time synchronization challenging. To address this issue, we present the Window Induced Shift Estimation method for Synchronization (SyncWISE) approach. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our method by synchronizing the timestamps of a wearable camera and wearable accelerometer from 163 videos representing 45.2 hours of data from 21 participants enrolled in a real-world smoking cessation study. Our approach shows significant improvement over the state-of-the-art, even in the presence of high data loss, achieving 90% synchronization accuracy given a synchronization tolerance of 700 milliseconds. Our method also achieves state-of-the-art synchronization performance on the CMU-MMAC dataset.
Guiding Blind Pedestrians in Public Spaces by Understanding Walking Behavior of Nearby Pedestrians
Authors: Kayukawa Seita , Ishihara Tatsuya , Takagi Hironobu , Morishima Shigeo , Asakawa Chieko
Published: September 2020

We present a guiding system to help blind people walk in public spaces while making their walking seamless with nearby pedestrians. Blind users carry a rolling suitcase-shaped system that has two RGBD Cameras, an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor. The system senses the behavior of surrounding pedestrians, predicts risks of collisions, and alerts users to help them avoid collisions. It has two modes: the "on-path" mode that helps users avoid collisions without changing their path by adapting their walking speed; and the "off-path" mode that navigates an alternative path to go around pedestrians standing in the way Auditory and tactile modalities have been commonly used for non-visual navigation systems, so we implemented two interfaces to evaluate the effectiveness of each modality for collision avoidance. A user study with 14 blind participants in public spaces revealed that participants could successfully avoid collisions with both modalities. We detail the characteristics of each modality.
Extending Coverage of Stationary Sensing Systems with Mobile Sensing Systems for Human Mobility Modeling
Authors: Yang Yu , Fang Zhihan , Xie Xiaoyang , Zhang Fan , Liu Yunhuai , Zhang Desheng
Published: September 2020

Human mobility modeling has many applications in location-based services, mobile networking, city management, and epidemiology. Previous sensing approaches for human mobility are mainly categorized into two types: stationary sensing systems (e.g., surveillance cameras and toll booths) and mobile sensing systems (e.g., smartphone apps and vehicle tracking devices). However, stationary sensing systems only provide mobility information of human in limited coverage (e.g., camera-equipped roads) and mobile sensing systems only capture a limited number of people (e.g., people using a particular smartphone app). In this work, we design a novel system Mohen to model human mobility with a heterogeneous sensing system. The key novelty of Mohen is to fundamentally extend the sensing coverage of a large-scale stationary sensing system with a small-scale sensing system. Based on the evaluation on data from real-world urban sensing systems, our system outperforms them by 35% and achieves a competitive result to an Oracle method.
EchoWhisper
Authors: Gao Yang , Jin Yincheng , Li Jiyang , Choi Seokmin , Jin Zhanpeng
Published: September 2020

With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and mobile computing, intelligent speech interface has recently become one of the prevalent trends and has already presented huge potentials to the public. To address the privacy leakage issue during the speech interaction or accommodate some special demands, silent speech interfaces have been proposed to enable people's communication without vocalizing their sound (e.g., lip reading, tongue tracking). However, most existing silent speech mechanisms require either background illuminations or additional wearable devices. In this study, we propose the EchoWhisper as a novel user-friendly, smartphone-based silent speech interface. The proposed technique takes advantage of the micro-Doppler effect of the acoustic wave resulting from mouth and tongue movements and assesses the acoustic features of beamformed reflected echoes captured by the dual microphones in the smartphone. Using human subjects who perform a daily conversation task with over 45 different words, our system can achieve a WER (word error rate) of 8.33%, which shows the effectiveness of inferring silent speech content. Moreover, EchoWhisper has also demonstrated its reliability and robustness to a variety of configuration settings and environmental factors, such as smartphone orientations and distances, ambient noises, body motions, and so on.
ScraTouch
Authors: Ikematsu Kaori , Yamanaka Shota
Published: September 2020

We present ScraTouch, an interaction technique using fingernails, as a new input modality by leveraging capacitive touch sensing. Differentiating between fingertip and fingernail touches requires only tens of milliseconds worth of shunt current data from unmodified capacitive touch surfaces, thus requires no hardware modification. ScraTouch is simple but practical technique for command invocation and mode switching. An evaluation using a point-and-select task on a touchpad showed that although the switching between the finger and nail in ScraTouch required a little more time compared with the baseline (finger touching without mode switching), in overall the operations, ScraTouch was just as fast as the baseline, and on average, 29 % faster than a long press with 500-ms threshold. We also confirmed that setting a simple threshold on the measured shunt current for recognition works robustly across users (97 % accuracy).
Peer-to-Peer Localization for Single-Antenna Devices
Authors: Zhang Xianan , Wang Wei , Xiao Xuedou , Yang Hang , Zhang Xinyu , Jiang Tao
Published: September 2020

Some important indoor localization applications, such as localizing a lost kid in a shopping mall, call for a new peer-to-peer localization technique that can localize an individual's smartphone or wearables by directly using another's on-body devices in unknown indoor environments. However, current localization solutions either require pre-deployed infrastructures or multiple antennas in both transceivers, impending their wide-scale application. In this paper, we present P2PLocate, a peer-to-peer localization system that enables a single-antenna device co-located with a batteryless backscatter tag to localize another single-antenna device with decimeter-level accuracy. P2PLocate leverages the multipath variations intentionally created by an on-body backscatter tag, coupled with spatial information offered by user movements, to accomplish this objective without relying on any pre-deployed infrastructures or pre-training. P2PLocate incorporates novel algorithms to address two major challenges: (i) interference with strong direct-path signal while extracting multipath variations, and (ii) lack of direction information while using single-antenna transceivers. We implement P2PLocate on commercial off-the-shelf Google Nexus 6p, Intel 5300 WiFi card, and Raspberry Pi B4. Real-world experiments reveal that P2PLocate can localize both static and mobile targets with a median accuracy of 0.88 m.
How to tame your chatbot
Authors: Lüer Fiete
Published: September 2020

The best way to stop a bad chatbot spreading misinformation may be a good chatbot providing facts. But how can we deploy these bots on short notice without compromising quality and user privacy?
An 'infodemic' infested world under lockdown---
Authors: Dutta Ankuran
Published: September 2020

With a sea of misinformation surrounding COVID-19, fake news and rumors on social media have run amok. We need to flatten the curve of this infodemic and flatten the curve of COVID-19.
Evolutionary AI site with expert podcasts and a COVID-19 intervention demo
Authors: Miikkulainen Risto
Published: September 2020

The AI research group at Sentient has moved to Cognizant Technology solutions, and we have a new website, https://evolution.ml. In particular, the earlier content, such as the video interviews with 17 academic and industry leaders on "The Future of AI", is there, as well as the "Evolution is the New Deep Learning" microsite.
Toxin-Antidote Elements Across the Tree of Life
Authors: Burga Alejandro , Ben-David Eyal , Kruglyak Leonid
Published: September 2020

In life's constant battle for survival, it takes one to kill but two to conquer. Toxin-antitoxin or toxin-antidote (TA) elements are genetic dyads that cheat the laws of inheritance to guarantee their transmission to the next generation. This seemingly simple genetic arrangement—a toxin linked to its antidote—is capable of quickly spreading and persisting in natural populations. TA elements were first discovered in bacterial plasmids in the 1980s and have recently been characterized in fungi, plants, and animals, where they underlie genetic incompatibilities and sterility in crosses between wild isolates. In this review, we provide a unified view of TA elements in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms and highlight their similarities and differences at the evolutionary, genetic, and molecular levels. Finally, we propose several scenarios that could explain the paradox of the evolutionary origin of TA elements and argue that these elements may be key evolutionary players and that the full scope of their roles is only beginning to be uncovered.
Autoimmune Endocrinopathies: An Emerging Complication of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors
Authors: Quandt Zoe , Young Arabella , Perdigoto Ana Luisa , Herold Kevan C. , Anderson Mark S.
Published: September 2020

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs) reverse immune suppression that is thought to allow malignant growth. Despite remarkable efficacy in a subset of cancers, their use is accompanied by immune-related adverse events, including endocrinopathies such as hypophysitis, thyroid dysfunction, diabetes, and adrenalitis. These conditions are heterogenous, with differing incidence across CPI types, but are unified by the acuity and extremity of tissue-specific organ failure. Their occurrence may be associated with beneficial tumor control. Further understanding of the risk factors and mechanisms of these endocrine immunotoxicities can help optimize CPI use as well as improve understanding of spontaneous autoimmune diseases.
The Psychology of Moral Conviction
Authors: Skitka Linda J. , Hanson Brittany E. , Morgan G. Scott , Wisneski Daniel C.
Published: September 2020

This review covers theory and research on the psychological characteristics and consequences of attitudes that are experienced as moral convictions, that is, attitudes that people perceive as grounded in a fundamental distinction between right and wrong. Morally convicted attitudes represent something psychologically distinct from other constructs (e.g., strong but nonmoral attitudes or religious beliefs), are perceived as universally and objectively true, and are comparatively immune to authority or peer influence. Variance in moral conviction also predicts important social and political consequences. Stronger moral conviction about a given attitude object, for example, is associated with greater intolerance of attitude dissimilarity, resistance to procedural solutions for conflict about that issue, and increased political engagement and volunteerism in that attitude domain. Finally, we review recent research that explores the processes that lead to attitude moralization; we integrate these efforts and conclude with a new domain theory of attitude moralization.
Rhythm dynamics of the aging heart: an experimental study using conscious, restrained mice
Authors: Comelli Martina , Meo Marianna , Cervantes Daniel O. , Pizzo Emanuele , Plosker Aaron , Mohler Peter J. , Hund Thomas J. , Jacobson Jason T. , Meste Olivier , Rota Marcello
Published: September 2020

We have investigated age-associated alterations of heart rate properties in mice using conscious electrocardiographic recordings. Our findings support the notion that aging is coupled with altered sympathovagal balance with consequences on heart rate variability. Moreover, by using a genetically engineered mouse line, we provide evidence that sodium channels modulate heart rate and its age-related adaptations.
Mitochondria-Associated Endoplasmic Reticulum Membranes (MAMs) and Their Prospective Roles in Kidney Disease
Authors: Gao Peng , Yang Wenxia , Sun Lin
Published: September 2020

Mitochondria-associated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membranes (MAMs) serve as essential hubs for interorganelle communication in eukaryotic cells and play multifunctional roles in various biological pathways. A defect in ER-mitochondria signaling or MAMs dysfunction has pleiotropic effects on a variety of intracellular events, which results in disturbances of the mitochondrial quality control system, Ca2+dyshomeostasis, apoptosis, ER stress, and inflammasome activation, which all contribute to the onset and progression of kidney disease. Here, we review the structure and molecular compositions of MAMs as well as the experimental methods used to study these interorganellar contact sites. We will specifically summarize the downstream signaling pathways regulated by MAMs, mainly focusing on mitochondrial quality control, oxidative stress, ER-mitochondria Ca2+crosstalk, apoptosis, inflammasome activation, and ER stress. Finally, we will discuss how alterations in MAMs integrity contribute to the pathogenesis of kidney disease and offer directions for future research.
Next-Generation Sequencing Characterizes the Landscape of Somatic Mutations and Pathways in Metastatic Bile Tract Carcinoma
Authors: Li Qi , Zhang Qifan , Cheng Xiao , Weng Xie , Chen Mian , Hu Xiaoyun , Huang Jing , Chen Jinzhang
Published: September 2020

Purpose. Tumor metastasis remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in biliary tract cancer. The etiology and mechanism of bile tract carcinoma metastasis are unclear.Methods. The primary tumor and blood samples of 14 patients with biliary tract cancer were collected, followed by nucleic acid extraction and library construction. Target sequencing with 556 panel genes and WES were performed to detect the hot spot genes variations. Bioinformatics was used to comprehensively analyze the sequencing data of these samples, including the differences of tumor mutation burden and signaling pathways.Results. The results showed that the mutation frequency ofTP53gene was the highest and the mutations ofCTNNB1,EPHA7,ARID2, andPIK3CAwere only found in metastatic samples. The TMB mean values of metastatic and non-metastatic groups were 12.97 and 10.38 mutations per Mb, respectively. There were significant differences in the enrichment pathways of cellular components between the tumor metastasis and non-metastatic samples.Conclusions. We identified multiple pathway differences, which helps us better understand metastatic biliary tumors and design clinical therapy for personalized medicine.
Simulating Notch‐Dome Morphology of Action Potential of Ventricular Cell: How the Speeds of Positive and Negative Feedbacks on Transmembrane Voltage Can Influence the Health of a Cell?
Authors: Sabzpoushan S. H. , Ghajarjazy A.
Published: September 2020

Ventricular action potential is well‐known because of its plateau phase with a spike‐notch‐dome morphology. As such, the morphology of action potential is necessary for ensuring a correct heart functioning. Any distraction from normal notch‐dome morphology may trigger a circus movement reentry in the form of lethal ventricular fibrillation. When the epicardial action potential dome propagates from a site where it is maintained to regions where it has been lost, it gives rise to the proposed mechanism for the Brugada syndrome. Despite the impact of notch‐dome dynamics on the heart function, no independent and explicit research has been performed on the simulation of notch‐dome dynamics and morphology. In this paper, using a novel mathematical approach, a three‐state variable model is proposed; we show that our proposed model not only can simulate morphology of action potential of ventricular cells but also can propose a biological reasonable tool for controlling of the morphology of action potential spike‐notch‐dome. We show that the processes of activation and inactivation of ionic gating variables (as positive or negative feedbacks on the voltage of cell membrane) and the ratio of their speeds (time constants) can be treated as a reasonable biological tool for simulating ventricular cell notch‐dome. This finding may led to a new insight to the quantification of the health of a ventricular cell and may also propose a new drug therapy strategy for cardiac diseases.
Fatigue Characteristics of Prestressed Concrete Beam under Freezing and Thawing Cycles
Authors: Zheng Yuanxun , Yang Lei , Guo Pan , Yang Peibing
Published: September 2020

In order to reveal the influence of freezing and thawing on fatigue properties of the prestressed concrete beam, a kind of novel freeze‐thaw test method for large concrete structure components was proposed, and the freeze‐thaw experiments and fatigue failure test of prestressed concrete hollow beams were performed in this paper. Firstly, the compressive strength and dynamic elastic modulus of standard specimens subjected to different numbers of freeze‐thaw cycles (0, 50, 75, and 100) were determined. Then, the static and dynamic experiments were performed for prestressed concrete beams under different freeze‐thaw cycles. Depending on the static failure test results, the fatigue load for the prestressed concrete beam model was carried out, the fatigue tests for prestressed concrete beam under freezing and thawing cycles were done, and the influence of fatigue loading times on dynamic and static characteristics of prestressed concrete beam was also studied. Finally, the relation between fatigue characteristics and numbers of freeze‐thaw cycles was established, and the fatigue life prediction formulas of prestressed concrete beams under freeze‐thaw cycles were developed. The research shows that the freezing and thawing cycles had obvious influence on fatigue life, and the freezing and thawing cycles should be taken into account for life prediction and quality evaluation of prestressed concrete beams.
Recovery Routing Based on Q-Learning for Satellite Network Faults
Authors: Gu Rentao , Qin Jiawen , Dong Tao , Yin Jie , Liu Zhihui
Published: September 2020

With the fierce research on the space and terrestrial network, the satellite network as the main component has received increasing attention. Due to its special operating environment, there are temporary link failures caused by interference and permanent port failures caused by equipment problems. In this paper, we propose a new satellite network routing technology for fault recovery based on fault detection. Based on Bayesian decision, this technology judges the probability of each fault by a priori probability of the two faults to achieve the purpose of effectively distinguishing between two types of faults and locate faulty links and node ports. Then, corresponding to the previous two stages of the fault detection, different stages and different methods are updated for different types of fault. We also combine satellite network data from satellite simulation software to validate our study. The results show that the recovery strategy has good performance, and the effective resource utilization rate is improved significantly.
Safety Characteristic Evaluation of Cage in Cylindrical Roller Bearing at the Stage of Start-Up and Stop
Authors: Wenhu Zhang , Zhimin Wu , Sier Deng , Song Zhang , Heng Tian , Haisheng Yang
Published: September 2020

The dynamics model of cylindrical roller bearing (CRB) in aeroengine main shaft was promoted and solved by Hilber–Hughes–Taylor (HHT) integer algorithm with variable step in combination with symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) parallel solving technology, and a finite element model of roller to cage contact was built. The dynamic characteristics of CRB at the stage of start-up and stop were analyzed firstly, and then, the collision forces between rollers and cage were used as the boundary conditions of the finite element model to discuss the influences of working conditions, structural parameters, and materials on the stress distribution and safety characteristic of cage at the stage of start-up and stop. The findings will provide the theoretical basis for the designing of CRB in aeroengine main shaft.
Fault Diagnosis Method Research of Mechanical Equipment Based on Sensor Correlation Analysis and Deep Learning
Authors: Bai Tangbo , Yang Jianwei , Duan Lixiang , Wang Yanxue
Published: September 2020

Large-scale mechanical equipment monitoring involves various kinds and quantities of information, and the present research on multisensor information fusion may face problems of information conflicts and modeling complexity. This paper proposes an analysis method combining correlation analysis and deep learning. According to the characteristics of monitoring data, three types of correlation coefficients between sensors in different states are obtained, and a new composite correlation analytical matrix is established to fuse the multisource heterogeneous data. The matrix represents fault feature information of different equipment states and helps further image generation. Meanwhile, a convolutional neural network-based deep learning method is developed to process the matrix and to discover the relationship between results and equipment states for fault diagnosis. To verify the method of this paper, experimental and field case studies are performed. The results show that it can accurately identify fault states and has higher diagnostic efficiency and accuracy than traditional methods.
A Novel MEGNet for Classification of High-Frequency Oscillations in Magnetoencephalography of Epileptic Patients
Authors: Liu Jun , Sun Siqi , Liu Yang , Guo Jiayang , Li Hailong , Gao Yuan , Sun Jintao , Xiang Jing
Published: September 2020

Epilepsy is a neurological disease, and the location of a lesion before neurosurgery or invasive intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) surgery using intracranial electrodes is often very challenging. The high-frequency oscillation (HFOs) mode in MEG signal can now be used to detect lesions. Due to the time-consuming and error-prone operation of HFOs detection, an automatic HFOs detector with high accuracy is very necessary in modern medicine. Therefore, an optimized capsule neural network was used, and a MEG (magnetoencephalograph) HFOs detector based on MEGNet was proposed to facilitate the clinical detection of HFOs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a neural network has been used to detect HFOs in MEG. After optimized configuration, the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score of the proposed detector reached 94%, 95%, 94%, and 94%, which were better than other classical machine learning models. In addition, we used the k-fold cross-validation scheme to test the performance consistency of the model. The distribution of various performance indicators shows that our model is robust.
Abstract 1: Sulindac plus phospholipid is effective for polyp reduction and safer than sulindac alone
Authors: Davis Jennifer Sarah , Kanikarla Preeti , Yu Patrick L. , Gagea Mihai , Fang Dexing , Sebastian Manu , Yang Peiying , Hawk Ernest , Dashwood Roderick , Lichtenberger Lenard M. , Menter David , Kopetz Scott
Published: September 2020

Purpose: To evaluate the chemoprevention efficacy and relative safety of sulindac combined with a phospholipid compared to sulindac alone.

Methods: Apcmin/+ mice on the C57/B6 background were randomized to receive oral gavage of sulindac, sulindac combined with the phospholipid (phosphatidyl choline, sulindac-PC), saline or no treatment, daily for twenty-one days. At the end of the treatment period, polyp burden and gastric integrity were assessed in a blinded Following formalin fixation, the stomach from each animal was embedded in paraffin and sectioned for microscopic evaluation. In addition to mucosal ulceration, three measures of gastric inflammation were taken. To test biological activity of sulindac and sulindac-PC, nuclear β-catenin immunohistochemistry was performed on small intestinal polyps.

Results: Both sulindac and sulindac-PC treated animals had significantly decreased polyp burden compared to controls (Table 1). Additionally, sulindac-PC treated mice had significantly (p=0.02) lower gastric inflammation scores (1.00 ± 0.63) compared to sulindac alone (2.14 ± 0.90). Two out of seven sulindac treated mice were found to have gastric ulcers, compared to zero out of six sulindac-PC treated mice, though this difference was not statistically significant. Both sulindac and sulindac-PC treated mice had significantly lower nuclear β-catenin staining compared to control treated mice (Table 1).

Conclusions: Our findings suggest the addition of a phospholipid as an effective strategy to reduce gastric toxicity of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as sulindac, while maintaining chemopreventive efficacy.

Citation Format: Jennifer Sarah Davis, Preeti Kanikarla, Patrick L. Yu, Mihai Gagea, Dexing Fang, Manu Sebastian, Peiying Yang, Ernest Hawk, Roderick Dashwood, Lenard M. Lichtenberger, David Menter, Scott Kopetz. Sulindac plus phospholipid is effective for polyp reduction and safer than sulindac alone [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 1.
Abstract 1008: Characterizing the post-translational regulation of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in triple-negative breast cancer: Role of EphA3/Fes/Fer
Authors: Ling Min , Wang Wenqi , Yang Xiaolong
Published: September 2020

Background:

The programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) is a cell surface protein expressed on a variety of antigen-presenting cells for the purpose of controlling the immune response. As such, the role of PD-L1 expression on the surface of cancer cells has been proven to contribute to cancer immune evasion and tumor progression. Triple negative breast cancer has the most abundant tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and PD-L1 is found highly upregulated in TNBC, allowing blockade immune checkpoint therapy a potentially effective treatment. However, the overall response rate is less than 20-30%. Over the past years, the literature that implicated the regulation of PD-L1 was primarily on transcription levels. The objective of our present study is to further characterize the post-translational modification of PD-L1 in efforts to better target it in TNBC immunotherapy.

Methods and Results:

By proteomic screen utilizing tandem affinity purification of interacting proteins using SFB (S, Flag, and Streptavidin binding peptide)-tagged PD-L1, we identified a number of novel interactions between PD-L1 and 67 candidates. A number of exclusive kinases have also shown high-confidence binding with PD-L1 in the proteomic screen. The primary hits were shortlisted and validated by means of co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP). The co-IP has confirmed a number of hits identified in the proteomic screen, including receptor tyrosine kinases (ephrin receptors, EphA3), and non-receptor tyrosine kinases (Fes and Fer) which have been explored in tumor progression and immune cell development. To test whether our candidate kinases can directly phosphorylate PD-L1 in vitro, His tagged-PD-L1 was mixed with active EphA3/Fes/Fer kinases. Phosphorylated PD-L1-His was detected by WB using PNBM treatment and anti-thiophosphate antibody. Kinase assays showed that EphA3/Fes/Fer can directly phosphorylate PD-L1. We also found that Fes/Fer were able to up-regulate PD-L1 protein expression in a dose-dependent manner.

Conclusions:

PD-L1 exhibits interactions with tyrosine kinases, which suggests PD-L1 phosphorylation as a novel post-translational modification. Our findings provide a rationale for the development of combination kinase inhibitors and immunotherapy in TNBC.

Citation Format: Min Ling, Wenqi Wang, Xiaolong Yang. Characterizing the post-translational regulation of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in triple-negative breast cancer: Role of EphA3/Fes/Fer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 1008.