Agricultural Investment Project Decisions Based on an Interactive Preference Disaggregation Model Considering Inconsistency

Agricultural investment project selection is a complex multi-criteria decision-making problem,as agricultural projects are easily influenced by various risk factors,and the evaluation information provided by decisionmakers usually involves uncertainty and inconsistency.Existing literature primarily employed direct preference elicitation methods to address such issues,necessitating a great cognitive effort on the part of decision-makers during evaluation,specifically,determining the weights of criteria.In this study,we propose an indirect preference elicitation method,known as a preference disaggregation method,to learn decision-maker preference models fromdecision examples.To enhance evaluation ease,decision-makers merely need to compare pairs of alternatives with which they are familiar,also known as reference alternatives.Probabilistic linguistic preference relations are employed to account for the presence of incomplete and uncertain information in such pairwise comparisons.To address the inconsistency among a group of decision-makers,we develop a pair of 0-1mixed integer programming models that consider both the semantics of linguistic terms and the belief degrees of decision-makers.Finally,we conduct a case study and comparative analysis.Results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed model in solving agricultural investment project selection problems with uncertain and inconsistent decision information.

Evaluation of coronary plaque and stent deployment by intravascular optical coherence tomography in elderly patients with unstable angina and non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Objective To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of intravascular optical coherence tomography(OCT)in the assessment of plaque characteristics and drug eluting stent deployment quality in the elderly patients with unstable angina(UA)and non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction(NSTEMI).Methods OCT was used in elderly patients undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions.Fifteen patients,9 males and 6 females with mean age of 72.6±5.3 years(range 67-92 years)were enrolled in the study.Images were obtained before initial balloon dilatation and following stent deployment.The plaque characteristics before dilation,vessel dissection,tissue prolapse,stent apposition and strut distribution after stent implantation were evaluated.Results Fifteen lesions were selected from 32 angiographic lesions as study lesions for OCT imaging after diagnostic coronary angiography.There were 7 lesions in the left anterior descending artery,5 lesions in the right coronary artery and 3 lesions in the left circumflex coronary artery.Among them,12(80.0%)were lipid-rich plaques,and 10(66.7%)were vulnerable plaques with fibrous cap thickness 54.2±7.3μm.Seven ruptured culprit plaques(46.7%)were found;4 in UA patients and 3 in NSTEMI patients.Tissue prolapse was observed in 11 lesions(73.3%).Irregular stent strut distribution was detected in 8 lesions(53.3%).Vessel dissections were found in 5 lesions(33.3%).Incomplete stent apposition was observed in 3 stents(20%)with mean spacing between the struts and the vessel wall 172±96 mm(range 117-436 mm).Conclusions 1)It is safe and feasible to perform intravascular OCT to differentiate vulnerable coronary plaque and monitor stent deployment in elderly patients with UA and USTEMI.2)Coronary plaques in elderly patients with UA and USTEMI could be divided into acute ruptured plaque,vulnerable plaque,lipid-rich plaque,and stable plaque.3)Minor or critical plaque rupture is one of the mechanisms of UA in elderly patients.4)Present drug eluting stent implantation is complicated with multiple tissue prolapses which are associated with irregular strut distributions.5)The action and significance of tissue prolapse on acute vessel flow and in-stent thrombus and restenosis need to be further studied.

Allosteric probe-modified liposome loading bufalin-fluorouracil complex for targeted colorectal cancer therapy

Objective Bufalin,the main active anti-tumor monomer of toad venom,is crucial in cancer treatment.However,intrinsic issues,such as poor solubility and systematic toxicity,have considerably mitigated its anticancer functions and caused unwanted side effects.It is essential to develop innovative targeting systems to precisely and efficiently deliver anticancer drugs to achieve satisfying therapeutic efficiency.Methods This work established a novel and more efficient system for simultaneously detecting and killing colorectal cancer cells.The proposed method designed two allosteric probes,a report probe and a recognize probe.The method exhibited high sensitivity towards cell detection via the recognizing probe identifying target cancer cells and the report probe’s signal report.Combining bufalin and fluorouracil endowed better tumor cell inhibition.Results We observed significantly enhanced fluorescence dots surrounding the HCT-116 cell membranes.No fluorescence increments in the other three cells were identified,indicating that the established liposome complex could specifically bind with target cells.In addition,the best ratio of bufalin to fluorouracil was 0.15 and 0.5,respectively.This improved the anti-tumor effects and achieved more than 60%tumor cell inhibition.Conclusion This method will provide new opportunities for intracellular biomolecule detection and targeted cancer cell therapy.