Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions.

The continuance of the COVID-19 pandemic largely depends on the spread of virus-carrying aerosols in ambient air. The mechanism of virus transmission and infection remains under intense investigation. In this study, an evaporation flow model of airborne sputum droplets is proposed which considers the evolution effects of the humidity field under different particle distributions and solid/salt fraction interactions.

Transition pathways connecting crystals and quasicrystals.

Due to structural incommensurability, the emergence of a quasicrystal from a crystalline phase represents a challenge to computational physics. Here, the nucleation of quasicrystals is investigated by using an efficient computational method applied to a Landau free-energy functional. Specifically, transition pathways connecting different local minima of the Lifshitz-Petrich model are obtained by using the high-index saddle dynamics.

Synbiotics Supplements Lower the Risk of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease in Children, Potentially by Providing Resistance to Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis.

Background: Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is an acute enterovirus-induced disease. Gut microbiota dysbiosis has been identified as a factor that plays an important role in enteral virus infection, but the gut microbiota profile in hand, foot and mouth disease has rarely been studied in a large population.

Methods: A total of 749 children (HFMD: n = 262, healthy control: n = 487) aged 2 to 7 years were recruited from hospitals and communities in the period from May to July, 2017.

1D/2D van der Waals Heterojunctions Composed of Carbon Nanotubes and a GeSe Monolayer.

Based on first-principles calculations, we propose van der Waals (vdW) heterojunctions composed of one-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and two-dimensional GeSe. Our calculations show that (,0)CNT/GeSe ( = 5-11) heterojunctions are stable through weak vdW interactions. Among these heterojunctions, (,0)CNT/GeSe ( = 5-7) exhibit metallic properties, while (,0)CNT/GeSe ( = 8-11) have a small bandgap, lower than 0.

CMMCSegNet: Cross-Modality Multicascade Indirect LGE Segmentation on Multimodal Cardiac MR.

Since Late-Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) visualizes myocardial infarction, and the balanced-Steady State Free Precession (bSSFP) cine sequence can capture cardiac motions and present clear boundaries; multimodal CMR segmentation has played an important role in the assessment of myocardial viability and clinical diagnosis, while automatic and accurate CMR segmentation still remains challenging due to a very small amount of labeled LGE data and the relatively low contrasts of LGE. The main purpose of our work is to learn the real/fake bSSFP modality with ground truths to indirectly segment the LGE modality of cardiac MR by using a proposed cross-modality multicascade framework: cross-modality translation network and automatic segmentation network, respectively. In the segmentation stage, a novel multicascade pix2pix network is designed to segment the fake bSSFP sequence obtained from a cross-modality translation network.

Periodicity and multi-periodicity generated by impulses control in delayed Cohen-Grossberg-type neural networks with discontinuous activations.

This paper discusses the periodicity and multi-periodicity in delayed Cohen-Grossberg-type neural networks (CGNNs) possessing impulsive effects, whose activation functions possess discontinuities and are allowed to be unbounded or nonmonotonic. Based on differential inclusion and cone expansion-compression fixed-point theory of set-valued mapping, several improved criteria are given to derive the positive solution with ω-periodicity and ω-multi-periodicity for delayed CGNNs under impulsive control. These ω-periodicity/ω-multi-periodicity orbits are produced by impulses control.

Prediction of hepatocellular carcinoma risk in patients with chronic liver disease from dynamic modular networks.

Background: Discovering potential predictive risks in the super precarcinomatous phase of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) without any clinical manifestations is impossible under normal paradigm but critical to control this complex disease.

Methods: In this study, we utilized a proposed sequential allosteric modules (AMs)-based approach and quantitatively calculated the topological structural variations of these AMs.

Results: We found the total of 13 oncogenic allosteric modules (OAMs) among chronic hepatitis B (CHB), cirrhosis and HCC network used SimiNEF.

[Effects of wearing a mask on oxygenation of subjects with spontaneous breathing during supplementary oxygen through facemask].

During the COVID-19 epidemic, our national guidelines have suggested that surgical patients should wear a mask to decrease the potential transmission of COVID-19 in the operating room, as long as the condition allows. However, so far, there is no study to discuss the influence of wearing a mask on the ventilation and blood oxygenation status in patients of spontaneous breathing with supplementary oxygen through an anesthetic facemask. This is a before-after study in the same patient, and 10 healthy volunteers were recruited, by testing the arterial blood gas parameters at key time points before and after oxygen inhalation to evaluate the effects of two different supplementary oxygen methods ('disposable medical mask + anesthetic facemask' and 'anesthetic facemask only') on the oxygenation of subjects.

Identifying rare variants for quantitative traits in extreme samples of population via Kullback-Leibler distance.

Background: The rapid development of sequencing technology and simultaneously the availability of large quantities of sequence data has facilitated the identification of rare variant associated with quantitative traits. However, existing statistical methods depend on certain assumptions and thus lacking uniform power. The present study focuses on mapping rare variant associated with quantitative traits.

Queuing Models of Gene Expression: Analytical Distributions and Beyond.

Activation of a gene is a multistep biochemical process, involving recruitments of transcription factors and histone kinases as well as modification of histones. Many of these intermediate reaction steps would have been unspecified by experiments. Therefore, classical two-state models of gene expression established based on the memoryless (or Markovian) assumption would not well describe the reality in gene expression.

LDNFSGB: prediction of long non-coding rna and disease association using network feature similarity and gradient boosting.

Background: A large number of experimental studies show that the mutation and regulation of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are associated with various human diseases. Accurate prediction of lncRNA-disease associations can provide a new perspective for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The main function of many lncRNAs is still unclear and using traditional experiments to detect lncRNA-disease associations is time-consuming.

The CSP-Based New Features Plus Non-Convex Log Sparse Feature Selection for Motor Imagery EEG Classification.

The common spatial pattern (CSP) is a very effective feature extraction method in motor imagery based brain computer interface (BCI), but its performance depends on the selection of the optimal frequency band. Although a lot of research works have been proposed to improve CSP, most of these works have the problems of large computation costs and long feature extraction time. To this end, three new feature extraction methods based on CSP and a new feature selection method based on non-convex log regularization are proposed in this paper.

A Posteriori Error Estimates for Fully Discrete Finite Element Method for Generalized Diffusion Equation with Delay.

In this paper, we derive several a posteriori error estimators for generalized diffusion equation with delay in a convex polygonal domain. The Crank-Nicolson method for time discretization is used and a continuous, piecewise linear finite element space is employed for the space discretization. The a posteriori error estimators corresponding to space discretization are derived by using the interpolation estimates.

A Novel Method for Asynchronous Time-of-Arrival-Based Source Localization: Algorithms, Performance and Complexity.

In time-of-arrival (TOA)-based source localization, accurate positioning can be achieved only when the correct signal propagation time between the source and the sensors is obtained. In practice, a clock error usually exists between the nodes causing the source and sensors to often be in an asynchronous state. This leads to the asynchronous source localization problem which is then formulated to a least square problem with nonconvex and nonsmooth objective function.

Segmentation of small ground glass opacity pulmonary nodules based on Markov random field energy and Bayesian probability difference.

Background: Image segmentation is an important part of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD), the segmentation of small ground glass opacity (GGO) pulmonary nodules is beneficial for the early detection of lung cancer. For the segmentation of small GGO pulmonary nodules, an integrated active contour model based on Markov random field energy and Bayesian probability difference (IACM_MRFEBPD) is proposed in this paper.

Methods: First, the Markov random field (MRF) is constructed on the computed tomography (CT) images, then the MRF energy is calculated.

An atomic scale study of two-dimensional quasicrystal nucleation controlled by multiple length scale interactions.

Formation of quasicrystal structures has always been mysterious since the discovery of these magic structures. In this work, the nucleation of decagonal, dodecagonal, heptagonal, and octagonal quasicrystal structures controlled by the coupling among multiple length scales is investigated using a dynamic phase-field crystal model. We observe that the nucleation of quasicrystals proceeds through local rearrangement of length scales, i.

Multi-term time fractional diffusion equations and novel parameter estimation techniques for chloride ions sub-diffusion in reinforced concrete.

In this paper, searching for a better chloride ions sub-diffusion system, a multi-term time-fractional derivative diffusion model is proposed for the description of the time-dependent chloride ions penetration in reinforced concrete structures exposed to chloride environments. We prove the stability and convergence of the model. We use the modified grid approximation method (MGAM) to estimate the fractional orders and chloride ions diffusion coefficients in the reinforced concrete for the multi-term time fractional diffusion system.

Antioxidant Proteins' Identification Based on Support Vector Machine.

Background: Evidence have increasingly indicated that for human disease, cell metabolism are deeply associated with proteins. Structural mutations and dysregulations of these proteins contribute to the development of the complex disease. Free radicals are unstable molecules that seek for electrons from the surrounding atoms for stability.

Revealing Dynamic Mechanisms of Cell Fate Decisions From Single-Cell Transcriptomic Data.

Cell fate decisions play a pivotal role in development, but technologies for dissecting them are limited. We developed a multifunction new method, Topographer, to construct a "quantitative" Waddington's landscape of single-cell transcriptomic data. This method is able to identify complex cell-state transition trajectories and to estimate complex cell-type dynamics characterized by fate and transition probabilities.

Two-dimensional polar metals in KNbO/BaTiO superlattices: first-principle calculations.

Polar metals, commonly defined by the coexistence of polar structure and metallicity, are thought to be scarce because free carriers eliminate internal dipoles that may arise owing to asymmetric charge distributions. By using first-principle electronic structure calculations, we explored the possibility of producing metallic states in the polar/nonpolar KNbO/BaTiO superlattice (SL) composed of two prototypical ferroelectric materials: BaTiO (BTO) and KNbO (KNO). Two types of polar/nonpolar interfaces, p-type (KO)/(TiO) and n-type (NbO)/(BaO), which can be constituted into two symmetric NbO/BaO-NbO/BaO (NN-type) and KO/TiO-KO/TiO (PP-type) SL, as well as one asymmetric KO/TiO-NbO/BaO (PN-type) SL.

Theoretical analysis and simulation of phase separation in a driven bidirectional two-lane system.

The two-lane driven system is a type of important model to research some transport systems, and also a powerful tool to investigate properties of nonequilibrium state systems. This paper presents a driven bidirectional two-lane model. The dynamic characteristics of the model with periodic boundary are investigated by Monte Carlo simulation, simple mean field, and cluster mean field methods, respectively.

The role of microRNA-148a and downstream DLGAP1 on the molecular regulation and tumor progression on human glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant primary brain tumor in adults. Currently, the prognosis of the patients with GBM is very poor and new molecular targets and treatment strategies are urgently needed to combat it. MicroRNA-148a (miR-148a) has been shown to be dysregulated in certain tumor types.

Effect of younger age on survival outcomes in T1N0M0 breast cancer: A propensity score matching analysis.

Purpose: We evaluated the effect of younger age on recurrence risk in Chinese women diagnosed with T1N0M0 breast cancer (BC), using propensity score matching (PSM) analysis.

Methods: We included 365 women who were diagnosed with T1N0M0 BC between 2003 and 2016, and who received surgery at our center. They were classified as younger (≤40 years) and older (>40 years).