Incremental value of three-dimensional and contrast echocardiography in the evaluation of endocardial fibroelastosis and multiple cardiovascular thrombi: A case report

BACKGROUND Endocardial fibroelastosis(EFE)is a rare heart disease characterized by thickening of the endocardium caused by massive proliferation of collagenous and elastic tissue,usually leading to impaired cardiac function.Multimodality cardiovascular imaging for the evaluation of EFE with thrombi is even rarer.CASE SUMMARY We report a rare case of EFE associated with multiple cardiovascular thrombi.Three-dimensional(3D)and contrast echocardiography(CE)were used to assess ventricular thrombi.Anticoagulant therapy was administered to eliminate the thrombi.The peripheral contrast-enhanced thrombi with the highest risk were dissolved with anticoagulant therapy at the time of reexamination,which was consistent with the presumption of fresh loose thrombi.CONCLUSION This new echocardiography technique has a great advantage in the diagnosis and treatment of EFE.On the basis of conventional echocardiography,3D echocardiography is used to display the position,shape,and narrow base of the thrombus.CE does not only help to confirm the diagnosis of thrombus,but also determines its risk.

Quality control of the agricultural products supply chain based on"Internet+"

This paper describes a quality-control supply-chain model using the"Internet+"paradigm.The model is based on principal-agent theory,which considers the reputational loss due to inferior products and external responsibility identification.After model analysis and simulation verification,the results show that the optimal quality-control level and market price of agricultural products can be achieved in the agricultural supply chain based on"Internet+"if and only if the information platform’s claim to the agricultural producer is less than the agricultural producer’s claim to the delivery service provider.Also,a rise in consumers’claims or the agricultural producer’s reputational loss due to inferior products will motivate the quality control of an agricultural procedure.Meanwhile,the market price of agricultural products will also increase with enhanced quality control procedures.The quality-control level of a delivery service provider is inversely proportional to the information platform or its own reputational loss.Thus,the key to promoting quality control along the supply chain is to strengthen the responsibility confirmation of an inferior product between the agricultural producer and the delivery service provider.

Structure, Electronic, and Mechanical Properties of Three Fully Hydrogenation h-BN:Theoretical Investigations

The structural, electronic, elastic, mechanical properties and stress-strain relationship of chair, boat, and stirrup conformers of fully hydrogenated h-BN(fh-BN) are investigated in this work using the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof(PBE) function in the frame of density functional theory. The achieved results for the lattice parameters and band gaps of three conformers in this research are in good accordance with other theoretical results. The band structures of three conformers show that the chair, boat, and stirrup are direct band gap with a band gaps of(3.12, 4.95, and4.95 e V), respectively. To regulate the band structures of fh-BN, we employ a hybrid functional of Heyd-ScuseriaErnzerhof(HSE06) calculations and the band gaps are 3.84(chair), 6.12(boat), and 6.18 e V(stirrup), respectively.The boat and stirrup fh-BN exhibits varying degrees of mechanical anisotropic properties with respect to the Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio, while the chair fh-BN exhibits the mechanical isotropic properties. Furthermore, tensile strains are applied in the armchair and zigzag directions related to tensile deformation of zigzag and armchair nanotubes,respectively. We find that the ultimate strains in zigzag and armchair deformations in stirrup conformer are 0.34 and0.25, respectively, larger than the strains of zigzag(0.29) and armchair(0.18) deformations in h-BN although h-BN can surstain a surface tension up to the maximum stresses higher than those of three conformers of fh-BN. Furthermore, the band gap energies in three conformers can be modulated effectively with the biaxial tensile strain.