Screening biomarkers for spinal cord injury using weighted gene co-expression network analysis and machine learning

Immune changes and inflammatory responses have been identified as central events in the pathological process of spinal co rd injury.They can greatly affect nerve regeneration and functional recovery.However,there is still limited understanding of the peripheral immune inflammato ry response in spinal cord inju ry.In this study.we obtained microRNA expression profiles from the peripheral blood of patients with spinal co rd injury using high-throughput sequencing.We also obtained the mRNA expression profile of spinal cord injury patients from the Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO)database(GSE151371).We identified 54 differentially expressed microRNAs and 1656 diffe rentially expressed genes using bioinformatics approaches.Functional enrichment analysis revealed that various common immune and inflammation-related signaling pathways,such as neutrophil extracellular trap formation pathway,T cell receptor signaling pathway,and nuclear factor-κB signal pathway,we re abnormally activated or inhibited in spinal cord inju ry patient samples.We applied an integrated strategy that combines weighted gene co-expression network analysis,LASSO logistic regression,and SVM-RFE algorithm and identified three biomarke rs associated with spinal cord injury:ANO10,BST1,and ZFP36L2.We verified the expression levels and diagnostic perfo rmance of these three genes in the original training dataset and clinical samples through the receiver operating characteristic curve.Quantitative polymerase chain reaction results showed that ANO20 and BST1 mRNA levels were increased and ZFP36L2 mRNA was decreased in the peripheral blood of spinal cord injury patients.We also constructed a small RNA-mRNA interaction network using Cytoscape.Additionally,we evaluated the proportion of 22 types of immune cells in the peripheral blood of spinal co rd injury patients using the CIBERSORT tool.The proportions of naive B cells,plasma cells,monocytes,and neutrophils were increased while the proportions of memory B cells,CD8^(+)T cells,resting natural killer cells,resting dendritic cells,and eosinophils were markedly decreased in spinal cord injury patients increased compared with healthy subjects,and ANO10,BST1 and ZFP26L2we re closely related to the proportion of certain immune cell types.The findings from this study provide new directions for the development of treatment strategies related to immune inflammation in spinal co rd inju ry and suggest that ANO10,BST2,and ZFP36L2 are potential biomarkers for spinal cord injury.The study was registe red in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry(registration No.ChiCTR2200066985,December 12,2022).

Social-ecological perspective on the suicidal behaviour factors of early adolescents in China:a network analysis

Background In early adolescence,youth are highly prone to suicidal behaviours.Identifying modifiable risk factors during this critical phase is a priority to inform effective suicide prevention strategies.Aims To explore the risk and protective factors of suicidal behaviours(ie,suicidal ideation,plans and attempts)in early adolescence in China using a social-ecological perspective.Methods Using data from the cross-sectional project‘Healthy and Risky Behaviours Among Middle School Students in Anhui Province,China',stratified random cluster sampling was used to select 5724 middle school students who had completed self-report questionnaires in November 2020.Network analysis was employed to examine the correlates of suicidal ideation,plans and attempts at four levels,namely individual(sex,academic performance,serious physical llness/disability,history of self-harm,depression,impulsivity,sleep problems,resilience),family(family economic status,relationship with mother,relationship with father,family violence,childhood abuse,parental mental illness),school(relationship with teachers,relationship with classmates,school-bullying victimisation and perpetration)and social(social support,satisfaction with society).Results In total,37.9%,19.0%and 5.5%of the students reported suicidal ideation,plans and attempts in the past 6 months,respectively.The estimated network revealed that suicidal ideation,plans and attempts were collectively associated with a history of self-harm,sleep problems,childhood abuse,school bullying and victimisation.Centrality analysis indicated that the most influential nodes in the network were history of self-harm and childhood abuse.Notably,the network also showed unique correlates of suicidal ideation(sex,weight=0.60;impulsivity,weight=0.24;family violence,weight=0.17;relationship with teachers,weight=-0.03;school-bullying perpetration,weight=0.22),suicidal plans(social support,weight=-0.15)and suicidal attempts(relationship with mother,weight=-0.10;parental mental llness,weight=0.61).Conclusions This study identified the correlates of suicidal ideation,plans and attempts,and provided practical implications for suicide prevention for young adolescents in China.Firstly,this study highlighted the importance of joint interventions across multiple departments.Secondly,the common risk factors of suicidal ideation,plans and attempts were elucidated.Thirdly,this study proposed target interventions to address the unique influencing factors of suicidal ideation,plans and attempts.

Lagrangian coherent structure analysis on transport of Acetes chinensis along coast of Lianyungang,China

Spatial heterogeneity or“patchiness”of plankton distributions in the ocean has always been an attractive and challenging scientific issue to oceanographers.We focused on the accumulation and dynamic mechanism of the Acetes chinensis in the Lianyungang nearshore licensed fishing area.The Lagrangian frame approaches including the Lagrangian coherent structures theory,Lagrangian residual current,and Lagrangian particle-tracking model were applied to find the transport pathways and aggregation characteristics of Acetes chinensis.There exist some material transport pathways for Acetes chinensis passing through the licensed fishing area,and Acetes chinensis is easy to accumulate in the licensed fishing area.The main mechanism forming this distribution pattern is the local circulation induced by the nonlinear interaction of topography and tidal flow.Both the Lagrangian coherent structure analysis and the particle trajectory tracking indicate that Acetes chinensis in the licensed fishing area come from the nearshore estuary.This work contributed to the adjustment of licensed fishing area and the efficient utilization of fishery resources.

Iron and ferritin effects on intensive care unit mortality:A metaanalysis

BACKGROUND The effect of serum iron or ferritin parameters on mortality among critically ill patients is not well characterized.AIM To determine the association between serum iron or ferritin parameters and mortality among critically ill patients.METHODS Web of Science,Embase,PubMed,and Cochrane Library databases were searched for studies on serum iron or ferritin parameters and mortality among critically ill patients.Two reviewers independently assessed,selected,and abstracted data from studies reporting on serum iron or ferritin parameters and mortality among critically ill patients.Data on serum iron or ferritin levels,mortality,and demographics were extracted.RESULTS Nineteen studies comprising 125490 patients were eligible for inclusion.We observed a slight negative effect of serum ferritin on mortality in the United States population[relative risk(RR)1.002;95%CI:1.002-1.004].In patients with sepsis,serum iron had a significant negative effect on mortality(RR=1.567;95%CI:1.208-1.925).CONCLUSION This systematic review presents evidence of a negative correlation between serum iron levels and mortality among patients with sepsis.Furthermore,it reveals a minor yet adverse impact of serum ferritin on mortality among the United States population.

Semi-analytical solution for drained expansion analysis of a hollow cylinder of critical state soils

The expansion of a thick-walled hollow cylinder in soil is of non-self-similar nature that the stress/deformation paths are not the same for different soil material points.As a result,this problem cannot be solved by the common self-similar-based similarity techniques.This paper proposes a novel,exact solution for rigorous drained expansion analysis of a hollow cylinder of critical state soils.Considering stress-dependent elastic moduli of soils,new analytical stress and displacement solutions for the nonself-similar problem are developed taking the small strain assumption in the elastic zone.In the plastic zone,the cavity expansion response is formulated into a set of first-order partial differential equations(PDEs)with the combination use of Eulerian and Lagrangian descriptions,and a novel solution algorithm is developed to efficiently solve this complex boundary value problem.The solution is presented in a general form and thus can be useful for a wide range of soils.With the new solution,the non-self-similar nature induced by the finite outer boundary is clearly demonstrated and highlighted,which is found to be greatly different to the behaviour of cavity expansion in infinite soil mass.The present solution may serve as a benchmark for verifying the performance of advanced numerical techniques with critical state soil models and be used to capture the finite boundary effect for pressuremeter tests in small-sized calibration chambers.

Identification of cell surface markers for acute myeloid leukemia prognosis based on multi-model analysis

Given the extremely high inter-patient heterogeneity of acute myeloid leukemia(AML),the identification of biomarkers for prognostic assessment and therapeutic guidance is critical.Cell surface markers(CSMs)have been shown to play an important role in AML leukemogenesis and progression.In the current study,we evaluated the prognostic potential of all human CSMs in 130 AML patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA)based on differential gene expression analysis and univariable Cox proportional hazards regression analysis.By using multi-model analysis,including Adaptive LASSO regression,LASSO regression,and Elastic Net,we constructed a 9-CSMs prognostic model for risk stratification of the AML patients.The predictive value of the 9-CSMs risk score was further validated at the transcriptome and proteome levels.Multivariable Cox regression analysis showed that the risk score was an independent prognostic factor for the AML patients.The AML patients with high 9-CSMs risk scores had a shorter overall and event-free survival time than those with low scores.Notably,single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis indicated that patients with high 9-CSMs risk scores exhibited chemotherapy resistance.Furthermore,PI3K inhibitors were identified as potential treatments for these high-risk patients.In conclusion,we constructed a 9-CSMs prognostic model that served as an independent prognostic factor for the survival of AML patients and held the potential for guiding drug therapy.

Model reduction of fractional impedance spectra for time–frequency analysis of batteries, fuel cells, and supercapacitors

Joint time–frequency analysis is an emerging method for interpreting the underlying physics in fuel cells,batteries,and supercapacitors.To increase the reliability of time–frequency analysis,a theoretical correlation between frequency-domain stationary analysis and time-domain transient analysis is urgently required.The present work formularizes a thorough model reduction of fractional impedance spectra for electrochemical energy devices involving not only the model reduction from fractional-order models to integer-order models and from high-to low-order RC circuits but also insight into the evolution of the characteristic time constants during the whole reduction process.The following work has been carried out:(i)the model-reduction theory is addressed for typical Warburg elements and RC circuits based on the continued fraction expansion theory and the response error minimization technique,respectively;(ii)the order effect on the model reduction of typical Warburg elements is quantitatively evaluated by time–frequency analysis;(iii)the results of time–frequency analysis are confirmed to be useful to determine the reduction order in terms of the kinetic information needed to be captured;and(iv)the results of time–frequency analysis are validated for the model reduction of fractional impedance spectra for lithium-ion batteries,supercapacitors,and solid oxide fuel cells.In turn,the numerical validation has demonstrated the powerful function of the joint time–frequency analysis.The thorough model reduction of fractional impedance spectra addressed in the present work not only clarifies the relationship between time-domain transient analysis and frequency-domain stationary analysis but also enhances the reliability of the joint time–frequency analysis for electrochemical energy devices.

Application of Isogeometric Analysis Method in Three-Dimensional Gear Contact Analysis

Gears are pivotal in mechanical drives,and gear contact analysis is a typically difficult problem to solve.Emerging isogeometric analysis(IGA)methods have developed new ideas to solve this problem.In this paper,a threedimensional body parametric gear model of IGA is established,and a theoretical formula is derived to realize single-tooth contact analysis.Results were benchmarked against those obtained from commercial software utilizing the finite element analysis(FEA)method to validate the accuracy of our approach.Our findings indicate that the IGA-based contact algorithmsuccessfullymet theHertz contact test.When juxtaposed with the FEA approach,the IGAmethod demonstrated fewer node degrees of freedomand reduced computational units,all whilemaintaining comparable accuracy.Notably,the IGA method appeared to exhibit consistency in analysis accuracy irrespective of computational unit density,and also significantlymitigated non-physical oscillations in contact stress across the tooth width.This underscores the prowess of IGA in contact analysis.In conclusion,IGA emerges as a potent tool for addressing contact analysis challenges and holds significant promise for 3D gear modeling,simulation,and optimization of various mechanical components.

Preliminary electromagnetic analysis of the COOL blanket for CFETR

The supercritical CO_(2)cOoled Lithium-Lead(COOL)blanket has been designed as one advanced blanket candidate for the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor(CFETR).This work focuses on the electromagnetic(EM)loads(Maxwell force and Lorentz force)acting on the COOL blanket,which are important mechanical loads in further structural analysis of the COOL blanket.A 3D electromagnetic analysis is performed using the ANSYS finite element method to obtain EM loads on the COOL blanket in this study.At first,the magnetic scalar potential(MSP)method is used to obtain the magnetic field and the Maxwell force on the COOL blanket.Then,the magnetic vector potential(MVP)method is performed during a plasma disruption event to get the eddy current distribution.At last,a multi-step method is adopted for the calculation of the Lorentz force and the torque.The maximum Lorentz forces of inboard and outboard blanket structural components are 5624 kN and 2360 kN respectively.

SFGA-CPA: A Novel Screening Correlation Power Analysis Framework Based on Genetic Algorithm

Correlation power analysis(CPA)combined with genetic algorithms(GA)now achieves greater attack efficiency and can recover all subkeys simultaneously.However,two issues in GA-based CPA still need to be addressed:key degeneration and slow evolution within populations.These challenges significantly hinder key recovery efforts.This paper proposes a screening correlation power analysis framework combined with a genetic algorithm,named SFGA-CPA,to address these issues.SFGA-CPA introduces three operations designed to exploit CPA characteris-tics:propagative operation,constrained crossover,and constrained mutation.Firstly,the propagative operation accelerates population evolution by maximizing the number of correct bytes in each individual.Secondly,the constrained crossover and mutation operations effectively address key degeneration by preventing the compromise of correct bytes.Finally,an intelligent search method is proposed to identify optimal parameters,further improving attack efficiency.Experiments were conducted on both simulated environments and real power traces collected from the SAKURA-G platform.In the case of simulation,SFGA-CPA reduces the number of traces by 27.3%and 60%compared to CPA based on multiple screening methods(MS-CPA)and CPA based on simple GA method(SGA-CPA)when the success rate reaches 90%.Moreover,real experimental results on the SAKURA-G platform demonstrate that our approach outperforms other methods.

Geometric prior guided hybrid deep neural network for facial beauty analysis

Facial beauty analysis is an important topic in human society.It may be used as a guidance for face beautification applications such as cosmetic surgery.Deep neural networks(DNNs)have recently been adopted for facial beauty analysis and have achieved remarkable performance.However,most existing DNN-based models regard facial beauty analysis as a normal classification task.They ignore important prior knowledge in traditional machine learning models which illustrate the significant contribution of the geometric features in facial beauty analysis.To be specific,landmarks of the whole face and facial organs are introduced to extract geometric features to make the decision.Inspired by this,we introduce a novel dual-branch network for facial beauty analysis:one branch takes the Swin Transformer as the backbone to model the full face and global patterns,and another branch focuses on the masked facial organs with the residual network to model the local patterns of certain facial parts.Additionally,the designed multi-scale feature fusion module can further facilitate our network to learn complementary semantic information between the two branches.In model optimisation,we propose a hybrid loss function,where especially geometric regulation is introduced by regressing the facial landmarks and it can force the extracted features to convey facial geometric features.Experiments performed on the SCUT-FBP5500 dataset and the SCUT-FBP dataset demonstrate that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks models,which proves the effectiveness of the proposed geometric regularisation and dual-branch structure with the hybrid network.To the best of our knowledge,this is the first study to introduce a Vision Transformer into the facial beauty analysis task.

Microbiological and Physico-Chemical Analysis of the Waters of the “Mamouwol” Stream in the Urban District of Mamou (Republic of Guinea)

Water is essential to life and to the sustainable socio-economic development of a nation, It is therefore interesting to have a better knowledge of the quality of this water. The aim was to determine the degree of microbiological and physico-chemical pollution of the water of the “Mamouwol” river in the town of Mamou. To do this, we chose four (4) sampling sites spread throughout the town of Mamou. During the month of March (2024), 4 water samples were analyzed to monitor the water quality of this river. The average values of the flora analyzed show that these water are heavily contaminated with bacteria indicative of fecal and metal pollution. This study showed that sites: Mam4;Mam2 and Mam1 contain the highest loads, with Total Coliform counts ranging from 1534 CFU/100 ml to 2100 CFU/100 ml, the number of faecal coliforms varies between 526 and 1240 CFU/100 ml, and that of faecal streptococci between 526 and 841 CFU/100 ml. Metal content, BOD5 and COD all comply with the laboratory’s analysis criteria, although they vary from point to point.

Automatic area estimation of algal blooms in water bodies from UAV images using texture analysis

Algal blooms,the spread of algae on the surface of water bodies,have adverse effects not only on aquatic ecosystems but also on human life.The adverse effects of harmful algal blooms(HABs)necessitate a convenient solution for detection and monitoring.Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have recently emerged as a tool for algal bloom detection,efficiently providing on-demand images at high spatiotemporal resolutions.This study developed an image processing method for algal bloom area estimation from the aerial images(obtained from the internet)captured using UAVs.As a remote sensing method of HAB detection,analysis,and monitoring,a combination of histogram and texture analyses was used to efficiently estimate the area of HABs.Statistical features like entropy(using the Kullback-Leibler method)were emphasized with the aid of a gray-level co-occurrence matrix.The results showed that the orthogonal images demonstrated fewer errors,and the morphological filter best detected algal blooms in real time,with a precision of 80%.This study provided efficient image processing approaches using on-board UAVs for HAB monitoring.

Evaluation of the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete structures with flat slab-column gravity frame and shear walls through nonlinear analysis methods

This paper presents an investigation of the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete(RC)structures in which shear walls are the main lateral load-resisting elements and the participation of flat slab floor systems is not considered in the seismic design procedure.In this regard,the behavior of six prototype structures(with different heights and plan layouts)is investigated through nonlinear static and time history analyses,implemented in the OpenSees platform.The results of the analyses are presented in terms of the behavior of the slab-column connections and their mode of failure at different loading stages.Moreover,the global response of the buildings is discussed in terms of some parameters,such as lateral overstrength due to the gravity flat slab-column frames.According to the nonlinear static analyses,in structures in which the slab-column connections were designed only for gravity loads,the slab-column connections exhibited a punching mode of failure even in the early stages of loading.However,the punching failure was eliminated in structures in which a minimum transverse reinforcement recommended in ACI 318(2019)was provided in the slabs at joint regions.Furthermore,despite neglecting the contribution of gravity flat slab-column frames in the lateral load resistance of the structures,a relatively significant overstrength was imposed on the structures by the gravity frames.

Numerical Analysis of Steady Smoldering of Biomass Rods

Understanding the steady mechanism of biomass smoldering plays a great role in the utilization of smoldering technology.In this study numerical analysis of steady smoldering of biomass rods was performed.A two-dimensional(2D)steady model taking into account both char oxidation and pyrolysis was developed on the basis of a calculated propagation velocity according to empirical correlation.The model was validated against the smoldering experiment of biomass rods under natural conditions,and the maximum error was smaller than 31%.Parameter sensitivity analysis found that propagation velocity decreases significantly while oxidation area and pyrolysis zone increase significantly with the increasing diameter of rod fuel.

Privacy Protection in COVID Data Tracking: Textual Analysis of the Literature

The literary review presented in the following paper aims to analyze the tracking tools used in different countries during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tracking apps that have been adopted in many countries to collect data in a homogeneous and immediate way have made up for the difficulty of collecting data and standardizing evaluation criteria. However, the regulation on the protection of personal data in the health sector and the adoption of the new General Data Protection Regulation in European countries has placed a strong limitation on their use. This has not been the case in non-European countries, where monitoring methodologies have become widespread. The textual analysis presented is based on co-occurrence and multiple correspondence analysis to show the contact tracing methods adopted in different countries in the pandemic period by relating them to the issue of privacy. It also analyzed the possibility of applying Blockchain technology in applications for tracking contagions from COVID-19 and managing health data to provide a high level of security and transparency, including through anonymization, thus increasing user trust in using the apps.

Erratum to:Vibration analysis of a gear-rotor-bearing system with outer-ring spalling and misalignment

Because of an unfortunate mistake during the production of this article,Figure 13 was wrongly inserted.The corrected Figure 13 is shown as follows.

Stability Analysis of Inverse Lax-Wendroff Procedure for a High order Compact Finite Difference Schemes

This paper considers the finite difference(FD)approximations of diffusion operators and the boundary treatments for different boundary conditions.The proposed schemes have the compact form and could achieve arbitrary even order of accuracy.The main idea is to make use of the lower order compact schemes recursively,so as to obtain the high order compact schemes formally.Moreover,the schemes can be implemented efficiently by solving a series of tridiagonal systems recursively or the fast Fourier transform(FFT).With mathematical induction,the eigenvalues of the proposed differencing operators are shown to be bounded away from zero,which indicates the positive definiteness of the operators.To obtain numerical boundary conditions for the high order schemes,the simplified inverse Lax-Wendroff(SILW)procedure is adopted and the stability analysis is performed by the Godunov-Ryabenkii method and the eigenvalue spectrum visualization method.Various numerical experiments are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our algorithms.

Multi-omics analysis of human tendon adhesion reveals that ACKR1-regulated macrophage migration is involved in regeneration

Tendon adhesion is a common complication after tendon injury with the development of accumulated fibrotic tissues without effective anti-fibrotic therapies,resulting in severe disability.Macrophages are widely recognized as a fibrotic trigger during peritendinous adhesion formation.However,different clusters of macrophages have various functions and receive multiple regulation,which are both still unknown.In our current study,multi-omics analysis including single-cell RNA sequencing and proteomics was performed on both human and mouse tendon adhesion tissue at different stages after tendon injury.The transcriptomes of over 74000 human single cells were profiled.As results,we found that SPP1^(+)macrophages,RGCC^(+)endothelial cells,ACKR1^(+)endothelial cells and ADAM12^(+)fibroblasts participated in tendon adhesion formation.Interestingly,despite specific fibrotic clusters in tendon adhesion,FOLR2^(+)macrophages were identified as an antifibrotic cluster by in vitro experiments using human cells.Furthermore,ACKR1 was verified to regulate FOLR2^(+)macrophages migration at the injured peritendinous site by transplantation of bone marrow from Lysm-Cre;R26R^(tdTomato) mice to lethally irradiated Ackr1^(-/-)mice(Ackr1^(-/-)chimeras;deficient in ACKR1)and control mice(WT chimeras).Compared with WT chimeras,the decline of FOLR2^(+)macrophages was also observed,indicating that ACKR1 was specifically involved in FOLR2^(+)macrophages migration.Taken together,our study not only characterized the fibrosis microenvironment landscape of tendon adhesion by multi-omics analysis,but also uncovered a novel antifibrotic cluster of macrophages and their origin.These results provide potential therapeutic targets against human tendon adhesion.

Advances in microfluidic-based DNA methylation analysis

DNA methylation has been extensively investigated in recent years,not least because of its known relationship with various diseases.Progress in analytical methods can greatly increase the relevance of DNA methylation studies to both clinical medicine and scientific research.Microflu-idic chips are excellent carriers for molecular analysis,and their use can provide improvements from multiple aspects.On-chip molecular analysis has received extensive attention owing to its advantages of portability,high throughput,low cost,and high efficiency.In recent years,the use of novel microfluidic chips for DNA methylation analysis has been widely reported and has shown obvious superiority to conventional methods.In this review,wefirst focus on DNA methylation and its applications.Then,we discuss advanced microfluidic-based methods for DNA methylation analysis and describe the great progress that has been made in recent years.Finally,we summarize the advantages that microfluidic technology brings to DNA methylation analysis and describe several challenges and perspectives for on-chip DNA methylation analysis.This review should help researchers improve their understanding and make progress in developing microfluidic-based methods for DNA methylation analysis.