BACKGROUND Early screening and accurate staging of diabetic retinopathy(DR)can reduce blindness risk in type 2 diabetes patients.DR’s complex pathogenesis involves many factors,making ophthalmologist screening alone ...BACKGROUND Early screening and accurate staging of diabetic retinopathy(DR)can reduce blindness risk in type 2 diabetes patients.DR’s complex pathogenesis involves many factors,making ophthalmologist screening alone insufficient for prevention and treatment.Often,endocrinologists are the first to see diabetic patients and thus should screen for retinopathy for early intervention.AIM To explore the efficacy of non-mydriatic fundus photography(NMFP)-enhanced telemedicine in assessing DR and its various stages.METHODS This retrospective study incorporated findings from an analysis of 93 diabetic patients,examining both NMFP-assisted telemedicine and fundus fluorescein angiography(FFA).It focused on assessing the concordance in DR detection between these two methodologies.Additionally,receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves were generated to determine the optimal sensitivity and specificity of NMFP-assisted telemedicine,using FFA outcomes as the standard benchmark.RESULTS In the context of DR diagnosis and staging,the kappa coefficients for NMFPassisted telemedicine and FFA were recorded at 0.775 and 0.689 respectively,indicating substantial intermethod agreement.Moreover,the NMFP-assisted telemedicine’s predictive accuracy for positive FFA outcomes,as denoted by the area under the ROC curve,was remarkably high at 0.955,within a confidence interval of 0.914 to 0.995 and a statistically significant P-value of less than 0.001.This predictive model exhibited a specificity of 100%,a sensitivity of 90.9%,and a Youden index of 0.909.CONCLUSION NMFP-assisted telemedicine represents a pragmatic,objective,and precise modality for fundus examination,particularly applicable in the context of endocrinology inpatient care and primary healthcare settings for diabetic patients.Its implementation in these scenarios is of paramount significance,enhancing the clinical accuracy in the diagnosis and therapeutic management of DR.This methodology not only streamlines patient evaluation but also contributes substantially to the optimization of clinical outcomes in DR management.展开更多
Automatic collecting of phenotypic information from plants has become a trend in breeding and smart agriculture.Targeting mature soybean plants at the harvesting stage,which are dense and overlapping,we have proposed ...Automatic collecting of phenotypic information from plants has become a trend in breeding and smart agriculture.Targeting mature soybean plants at the harvesting stage,which are dense and overlapping,we have proposed the SPP-extractor(soybean plant phenotype extractor)algorithm to acquire phenotypic traits.First,to address the mutual occultation of pods,we augmented the standard YOLOv5s model for target detection with an additional attention mechanism.The resulting model could accurately identify pods and stems and could count the entire pod set of a plant in a single scan.Second,considering that mature branches are usually bent and covered with pods,we designed a branch recognition and measurement module combining image processing,target detection,semantic segmentation,and heuristic search.Experimental results on real plants showed that SPP-extractor achieved respective R^(2) scores of 0.93–0.99 for four phenotypic traits,based on regression on manual measurements.展开更多
BACKGROUND Atherosclerosis is a major cause of mortality worldwide and is driven by multiple risk factors,including diabetes,which results in an increased atherosclerotic burden,but the precise mechanisms for the occu...BACKGROUND Atherosclerosis is a major cause of mortality worldwide and is driven by multiple risk factors,including diabetes,which results in an increased atherosclerotic burden,but the precise mechanisms for the occurrence and development of diabetic atheroscerosis have not been fully elucidated.AIM To summarize the potential role of retinol binding protein 4(RBP4) in the pathogenesis of diabetic atheroscerosis,particularly in relation to the RBP4-Janus kinase 2/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3(JAK2/STAT3)signaling pathway.METHODS Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups,including a control group(NC group),diabetic rat group(DM group),and diabetic atherosclerotic rat group(DA group).The contents of total cholesterol(TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-c), triglycerides(TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDLc), fasting insulin(FINS),fasting plasma glucose,and hemoglobin A1 c(HbA1 c)were measured.Moreover,the adipose and serum levels of RBP4,along with the expression levels of JAK2, phosphorylated JAK2(p-JAK2), STAT3,phosphorylated STAT3(p-STAT3), B-cell lymphoma-2(Bcl-2), and Cyclin D1 in aortic tissues were also measured.Besides,homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance(HOMA-IR) and atherogenic indexes(AI) were calculated.RESULTS Compared with the NC and DM groups,the levels LDL-c,TG,TC,FINS,HOMAIR,RBP4,and AI were upregulated,whereas that of HDL-c was downregulated in the DA group(P <0.05);the mRNA levels of JAK2,STAT3,Cyclin D1,and Bcl-2 in the DA group were significantly increased compared with the NC group and the DM group;P-JAK2,p-JAK2/JAK2 ratio,p-STAT3,p-STAT3/STAT3 ratio,Cyclin D1,and Bcl-2 at protein levels were significantly upregulated in the DA group compared with the NC group and DM group.In addition,as shown by Pearson analysis,serum RBP4 had a positive correlation with TG,TC,LDL-c,FINS,HbA1 C,p-JAK2,p-STAT3,Bcl-2,Cyclin D1,AI,and HOMA-IR but a negative correlation with HDL-c.In addition,multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that serum RBP4,p-JAK2,p-STAT3,and LDL-c were predictors of the presence of diabetic atherosclerosis.CONCLUSION RBP4 could be involved in the initiation or progression of diabetic atherosclerosis by regulating the JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway.展开更多
GONGTAN, a town with over 1,700 years of history, is located in Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, in the southeastern part of Chongqing Municipality. It originally sat at the con uence of the Wujiang and Apeng...GONGTAN, a town with over 1,700 years of history, is located in Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, in the southeastern part of Chongqing Municipality. It originally sat at the con uence of the Wujiang and Apeng rivers. But with the announcement that a hydroelectric power plant would be built on the Wujiang River, a resettlement project for the town’s residents was initiated in 2005. Four years later, the whole town had been moved展开更多
Conventional colorimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)is a time-consuming laboratory assay that is not very sensitive and consumes a large amount of samples.Herein,the development of a reusable,cost-effect...Conventional colorimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)is a time-consuming laboratory assay that is not very sensitive and consumes a large amount of samples.Herein,the development of a reusable,cost-effective,and eco-friendly poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA)/paper hybrid plug-and-play(PnP)device for high-sensitivity immunoassay by analyte enrichment and efficient passing-through washing has been reported.The PMMA device has multiple slots where a pre-patterned paper substrate can be inserted.The sample flows back-and-forth through a low-cost,3D paper substrate within the PMMA channels,thereby enhancing the amount of analyte adsorbed and dramatically increasing the sensitivity while decreasing the assay time.After the enrichment assay,the paper substrate can simply be pulled out of the device,and the results can be qualitatively viewed with the naked eye or scanned through a simple desktop scanner for quantitative analysis.The paper substrate can be replaced with a new substrate so that the device can be reused.The limits of detection(LODs)of 200pg/mL for immunoglobulin G(IgG)and 270 pg/mL for hepatitis B surface antigen(HBsAg)were obtained.This IgG assay is at least 10 times more sensitive than commercial ELISA kits.In addition,the PnP ELISA exhibited a significant increase in the linear dynamic range from 3 orders of magnitude in a common paper-based device to a wide range of six orders of magnitude in the PnP hybrid device.This reusable PnP device has great potential for the low-cost yet high-sensitivity detection of infectious diseases,cancers,and other important biomolecules.展开更多
Emerging topics in app reviews highlight the topics(e.g.,software bugs)with which users are concerned during certain periods.Identifying emerging topics accurately,and in a timely manner,could help developers more eff...Emerging topics in app reviews highlight the topics(e.g.,software bugs)with which users are concerned during certain periods.Identifying emerging topics accurately,and in a timely manner,could help developers more effectively update apps.Methods for identifying emerging topics in app reviews based on topic models or clustering methods have been proposed in the literature.However,the accuracy of emerging topic identification is reduced because reviews are short in length and offer limited information.To solve this problem,an improved emerging topic identification(IETI)approach is proposed in this work.Specifically,we adopt natural language processing techniques to reduce noisy data,and identify emerging topics in app reviews using the adaptive online biterm topic model.Then we interpret the implicature of emerging topics through relevant phrases and sentences.We adopt the official app changelogs as ground truth,and evaluate IETI in six common apps.The experimental results indicate that IETI is more accurate than the baseline in identifying emerging topics,with improvements in the F1 score of 0.126 for phrase labels and 0.061 for sentence labels.Finally,we release the codes of IETI on Github(https://github.com/wanizhou/IETI).展开更多
基金Supported by the Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China,No.82270863Major Project of Anhui Provincial University Research Program,No.2023AH040400Joint Fund for Medical Artificial Intelligence,No.MAI2023Q026.
文摘BACKGROUND Early screening and accurate staging of diabetic retinopathy(DR)can reduce blindness risk in type 2 diabetes patients.DR’s complex pathogenesis involves many factors,making ophthalmologist screening alone insufficient for prevention and treatment.Often,endocrinologists are the first to see diabetic patients and thus should screen for retinopathy for early intervention.AIM To explore the efficacy of non-mydriatic fundus photography(NMFP)-enhanced telemedicine in assessing DR and its various stages.METHODS This retrospective study incorporated findings from an analysis of 93 diabetic patients,examining both NMFP-assisted telemedicine and fundus fluorescein angiography(FFA).It focused on assessing the concordance in DR detection between these two methodologies.Additionally,receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves were generated to determine the optimal sensitivity and specificity of NMFP-assisted telemedicine,using FFA outcomes as the standard benchmark.RESULTS In the context of DR diagnosis and staging,the kappa coefficients for NMFPassisted telemedicine and FFA were recorded at 0.775 and 0.689 respectively,indicating substantial intermethod agreement.Moreover,the NMFP-assisted telemedicine’s predictive accuracy for positive FFA outcomes,as denoted by the area under the ROC curve,was remarkably high at 0.955,within a confidence interval of 0.914 to 0.995 and a statistically significant P-value of less than 0.001.This predictive model exhibited a specificity of 100%,a sensitivity of 90.9%,and a Youden index of 0.909.CONCLUSION NMFP-assisted telemedicine represents a pragmatic,objective,and precise modality for fundus examination,particularly applicable in the context of endocrinology inpatient care and primary healthcare settings for diabetic patients.Its implementation in these scenarios is of paramount significance,enhancing the clinical accuracy in the diagnosis and therapeutic management of DR.This methodology not only streamlines patient evaluation but also contributes substantially to the optimization of clinical outcomes in DR management.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62276032,32072016)the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program(ASTIP)of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences。
文摘Automatic collecting of phenotypic information from plants has become a trend in breeding and smart agriculture.Targeting mature soybean plants at the harvesting stage,which are dense and overlapping,we have proposed the SPP-extractor(soybean plant phenotype extractor)algorithm to acquire phenotypic traits.First,to address the mutual occultation of pods,we augmented the standard YOLOv5s model for target detection with an additional attention mechanism.The resulting model could accurately identify pods and stems and could count the entire pod set of a plant in a single scan.Second,considering that mature branches are usually bent and covered with pods,we designed a branch recognition and measurement module combining image processing,target detection,semantic segmentation,and heuristic search.Experimental results on real plants showed that SPP-extractor achieved respective R^(2) scores of 0.93–0.99 for four phenotypic traits,based on regression on manual measurements.
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China,No.81800713 and No.81971264The Project of Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province,No.1808085QH292Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,No.WK9110000041。
文摘BACKGROUND Atherosclerosis is a major cause of mortality worldwide and is driven by multiple risk factors,including diabetes,which results in an increased atherosclerotic burden,but the precise mechanisms for the occurrence and development of diabetic atheroscerosis have not been fully elucidated.AIM To summarize the potential role of retinol binding protein 4(RBP4) in the pathogenesis of diabetic atheroscerosis,particularly in relation to the RBP4-Janus kinase 2/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3(JAK2/STAT3)signaling pathway.METHODS Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups,including a control group(NC group),diabetic rat group(DM group),and diabetic atherosclerotic rat group(DA group).The contents of total cholesterol(TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-c), triglycerides(TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDLc), fasting insulin(FINS),fasting plasma glucose,and hemoglobin A1 c(HbA1 c)were measured.Moreover,the adipose and serum levels of RBP4,along with the expression levels of JAK2, phosphorylated JAK2(p-JAK2), STAT3,phosphorylated STAT3(p-STAT3), B-cell lymphoma-2(Bcl-2), and Cyclin D1 in aortic tissues were also measured.Besides,homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance(HOMA-IR) and atherogenic indexes(AI) were calculated.RESULTS Compared with the NC and DM groups,the levels LDL-c,TG,TC,FINS,HOMAIR,RBP4,and AI were upregulated,whereas that of HDL-c was downregulated in the DA group(P <0.05);the mRNA levels of JAK2,STAT3,Cyclin D1,and Bcl-2 in the DA group were significantly increased compared with the NC group and the DM group;P-JAK2,p-JAK2/JAK2 ratio,p-STAT3,p-STAT3/STAT3 ratio,Cyclin D1,and Bcl-2 at protein levels were significantly upregulated in the DA group compared with the NC group and DM group.In addition,as shown by Pearson analysis,serum RBP4 had a positive correlation with TG,TC,LDL-c,FINS,HbA1 C,p-JAK2,p-STAT3,Bcl-2,Cyclin D1,AI,and HOMA-IR but a negative correlation with HDL-c.In addition,multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that serum RBP4,p-JAK2,p-STAT3,and LDL-c were predictors of the presence of diabetic atherosclerosis.CONCLUSION RBP4 could be involved in the initiation or progression of diabetic atherosclerosis by regulating the JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway.
文摘GONGTAN, a town with over 1,700 years of history, is located in Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, in the southeastern part of Chongqing Municipality. It originally sat at the con uence of the Wujiang and Apeng rivers. But with the announcement that a hydroelectric power plant would be built on the Wujiang River, a resettlement project for the town’s residents was initiated in 2005. Four years later, the whole town had been moved
基金We would like to acknowledge the financial support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the NIH(R21AI107415)the U.S.NSF-PREM program(DMR 1827745)+2 种基金the Philadelphia Foundation,and the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation.Financial support from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH(SC2GM105584)the NIH RCMI Pilot grant,University of Texas(UT)System for the STARS awardthe University of Texas at El Paso(UTEP)for the IDR Program,Multidisciplinary Research Award Program(MRAP)and URI Program is also greatly acknowledged.
文摘Conventional colorimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)is a time-consuming laboratory assay that is not very sensitive and consumes a large amount of samples.Herein,the development of a reusable,cost-effective,and eco-friendly poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA)/paper hybrid plug-and-play(PnP)device for high-sensitivity immunoassay by analyte enrichment and efficient passing-through washing has been reported.The PMMA device has multiple slots where a pre-patterned paper substrate can be inserted.The sample flows back-and-forth through a low-cost,3D paper substrate within the PMMA channels,thereby enhancing the amount of analyte adsorbed and dramatically increasing the sensitivity while decreasing the assay time.After the enrichment assay,the paper substrate can simply be pulled out of the device,and the results can be qualitatively viewed with the naked eye or scanned through a simple desktop scanner for quantitative analysis.The paper substrate can be replaced with a new substrate so that the device can be reused.The limits of detection(LODs)of 200pg/mL for immunoglobulin G(IgG)and 270 pg/mL for hepatitis B surface antigen(HBsAg)were obtained.This IgG assay is at least 10 times more sensitive than commercial ELISA kits.In addition,the PnP ELISA exhibited a significant increase in the linear dynamic range from 3 orders of magnitude in a common paper-based device to a wide range of six orders of magnitude in the PnP hybrid device.This reusable PnP device has great potential for the low-cost yet high-sensitivity detection of infectious diseases,cancers,and other important biomolecules.
基金Project supported by the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China(No.1908085MF183)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.62002084and 61976005)+4 种基金the Training Program for Young and MiddleAged Top Talents of Anhui Polytechnic University,China(No.201812)the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China(No.LQ21F020004)the State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology(Nanjing University)Research Program,China(No.KFKT2019B23)the Open Research Fund of Anhui Key Laboratory of Detection Technology and Energy Saving Devices,Anhui Polytechnic University,China(No.DTESD2020B03)the Stable Support Plan for Colleges and Universities in Shenzhen,China(No.GXWD20201230155427003-20200730101839009)。
文摘Emerging topics in app reviews highlight the topics(e.g.,software bugs)with which users are concerned during certain periods.Identifying emerging topics accurately,and in a timely manner,could help developers more effectively update apps.Methods for identifying emerging topics in app reviews based on topic models or clustering methods have been proposed in the literature.However,the accuracy of emerging topic identification is reduced because reviews are short in length and offer limited information.To solve this problem,an improved emerging topic identification(IETI)approach is proposed in this work.Specifically,we adopt natural language processing techniques to reduce noisy data,and identify emerging topics in app reviews using the adaptive online biterm topic model.Then we interpret the implicature of emerging topics through relevant phrases and sentences.We adopt the official app changelogs as ground truth,and evaluate IETI in six common apps.The experimental results indicate that IETI is more accurate than the baseline in identifying emerging topics,with improvements in the F1 score of 0.126 for phrase labels and 0.061 for sentence labels.Finally,we release the codes of IETI on Github(https://github.com/wanizhou/IETI).
