Beyond statistical significance:Embracing minimal clinically important difference for better patient care

The minimal clinically important difference(MCID)represents a pivotal metric in bridging the gap between statistical significance and clinical relevance,addressing the direct impact of medical interventions from the patient's perspective.This comprehensive review analyzes the evolution,applications,and challenges of MCID across medical specialties,emphasizing its necessity in ensuring that clinical outcomes not only demonstrate statistical significance but also offer genuine clinical utility that aligns with patient expectations and needs.We discuss the evolution of MCID since its inception in the 1980s,its current applications across various medical specialties,and the methodologies used in its calculation,highlighting both anchor-based and distribution-based approaches.Furthermore,the paper delves into the challenges associated with the application of MCID,such as methodological variability and the interpretation difficulties that arise in clinical settings.Recommendations for the future include standardizing MCID calculation methods,enhancing patient involvement in setting MCID thresholds,and extending research to incorporate diverse global perspectives.These steps are critical to refining the role of MCID in patient-centered healthcare,addressing existing gaps in methodology and interpretation,and ensuring that medical interventions lead to significant,patient-perceived improvements.

Seismic modeling by combining the finite-difference scheme with the numerical dispersion suppression neural network

Seismic finite-difference(FD) modeling suffers from numerical dispersion including both the temporal and spatial dispersion, which can decrease the accuracy of the numerical modeling. To improve the accuracy and efficiency of the conventional numerical modeling, I develop a new seismic modeling method by combining the FD scheme with the numerical dispersion suppression neural network(NDSNN). This method involves the following steps. First, a training data set composed of a small number of wavefield snapshots is generated. The wavefield snapshots with the low-accuracy wavefield data and the high-accuracy wavefield data are paired, and the low-accuracy wavefield snapshots involve the obvious numerical dispersion including both the temporal and spatial dispersion. Second, the NDSNN is trained until the network converges to simultaneously suppress the temporal and spatial dispersion.Third, the entire set of low-accuracy wavefield data is computed quickly using FD modeling with the large time step and the coarse grid. Fourth, the NDSNN is applied to the entire set of low-accuracy wavefield data to suppress the numerical dispersion including the temporal and spatial dispersion.Numerical modeling examples verify the effectiveness of my proposed method in improving the computational accuracy and efficiency.

Full-Wave Analysis of Slotline Using Time-Domain Finite-Difference Method

The transmission and dispersive characteristics of slotline are calculated in this paper. The tail of Gaussion pulse is improved because a modified dispersive boundary condition (DBC) is adopted. It leads to a reduction in computer memory requirements and computational time. The computational domain is greatly reduced to enable performance in personal computer. At the same time because edges of a boundary and summits are treated well, the computational results is more accurate and more collector.

Viscoacoustic prestack reverse time migration based onthe optimal time-space domain high-order finite-difference method

Prestack reverse time migration （RTM） is an accurate imaging method ofsubsurface media. The viscoacoustic prestack RTM is of practical significance because itconsiders the viscosity of the subsurface media. One of the steps of RTM is solving thewave equation and extrapolating the wave field forward and backward; therefore, solvingaccurately and efficiently the wave equation affects the imaging results and the efficiencyof RTM. In this study, we use the optimal time-space domain dispersion high-order finite-difference （FD） method to solve the viscoacoustic wave equation. Dispersion analysis andnumerical simulations show that the optimal time-space domain FD method is more accurateand suppresses the numerical dispersion. We use hybrid absorbing boundary conditions tohandle the boundary reflection. We also use source-normalized cross-correlation imagingconditions for migration and apply Laplace filtering to remove the low-frequency noise.Numerical modeling suggests that the viscoacoustic wave equation RTM has higher imagingresolution than the acoustic wave equation RTM when the viscosity of the subsurface isconsidered. In addition, for the wave field extrapolation, we use the adaptive variable-lengthFD operator to calculate the spatial derivatives and improve the computational efficiencywithout compromising the accuracy of the numerical solution.

Finite-difference calculation of traveltimes based on rectangular grid

To the most of velocity fields, the traveltimes of the first break that seismic waves propagate along rays can be computed on a 2-D or 3-D numerical grid by finite-difference extrapolation. Under ensuring accuracy, to improve calculating efficiency and adaptability, the calculation method of first-arrival traveltime of finite-difference is de- rived based on any rectangular grid and a local plane wavefront approximation. In addition, head waves and scat- tering waves are properly treated and shadow and caustic zones cannot be encountered, which appear in traditional ray-tracing. The testes of two simple models and the complex Marmousi model show that the method has higher accuracy and adaptability to complex structure with strong vertical and lateral velocity variation, and Kirchhoff prestack depth migration based on this method can basically achieve the position imaging effects of wave equation prestack depth migration in major structures and targets. Because of not taking account of the later arrivals energy, the effect of its amplitude preservation is worse than that by wave equation method, but its computing efficiency is higher than that by total Green′s function method and wave equation method.

A truncated implicit high-order finite-difference scheme combined with boundary conditions

In this paper, first we calculate finite-difference coefficients of implicit finite- difference methods （IFDM） for the first and second-order derivatives on normal grids and first- order derivatives on staggered grids and find that small coefficients of high-order IFDMs exist. Dispersion analysis demonstrates that omitting these small coefficients can retain approximately the same order accuracy but greatly reduce computational costs. Then, we introduce a mirrorimage symmetric boundary condition to improve IFDMs accuracy and stability and adopt the hybrid absorbing boundary condition （ABC） to reduce unwanted reflections from the model boundary. Last, we give elastic wave modeling examples for homogeneous and heterogeneous models to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed scheme.

Age-specific differences in the association between prediabetes and cardiovascular diseases in China:A national cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease(CVD)is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide,the global burden of which is rising.It is still unclear the extent to which prediabetes contributes to the risk of CVD in various age brackets among adults.To develop a focused screening plan and treatment for Chinese adults with prediabetes,it is crucial to identify variations in the connection between prediabetes and the risk of CVD based on age.AIM To examine the clinical features of prediabetes and identify risk factors for CVD in different age groups in China.METHODS The cross-sectional study involved a total of 46239 participants from June 2007 through May 2008.A thorough evaluation was conducted.Individuals with prediabetes were categorized into two groups based on age.Chinese atherosclerotic CVD risk prediction model was employed to evaluate the risk of developing CVD over 10 years.Random forest was established in both age groups.SHapley Additive exPlanation method prioritized the importance of features from the perspective of assessment contribution.RESULTS In total,6948 people were diagnosed with prediabetes in this study.In prediabetes,prevalences of CVD were 5(0.29%)in the younger group and 148(2.85%)in the older group.Overall,11.11%of the younger group and 29.59% of the older group were intermediate/high-risk of CVD for prediabetes without CVD based on the Prediction for ASCVD Risk in China equation in ten years.In the younger age group,the 10-year risk of CVD was found to be more closely linked to family history of CVD rather than lifestyle,whereas in the older age group,resident status was more closely linked.CONCLUSION The susceptibility to CVD is age-specific in newly diagnosed prediabetes.It is necessary to develop targeted approaches for the prevention and management of CVD in adults across various age brackets.

Numerical modeling of wave equation by a truncated high-order finite-difference method

Finite-difference methods with high-order accuracy have been utilized to improve the precision of numerical solution for partial differential equations. However, the computation cost generally increases linearly with increased order of accuracy. Upon examination of the finite-difference formulas for the first-order and second-order derivatives, and the staggered finite-difference formulas for the first-order derivative, we examine the variation of finite-difference coefficients with accuracy order and note that there exist some very small coefficients. With the order increasing, the number of these small coefficients increases, however, the values decrease sharply. An error analysis demonstrates that omitting these small coefficients not only maintain approximately the same level of accuracy of finite difference but also reduce computational cost significantly. Moreover, it is easier to truncate for the high-order finite-difference formulas than for the pseudospectral for- mulas. Thus this study proposes a truncated high-order finite-difference method, and then demonstrates the efficiency and applicability of the method with some numerical examples.

Irregular surface seismic forward modeling by a body-fitted rotated–staggered-grid finite-difference method

Finite-difference(FD) methods are widely used in seismic forward modeling owing to their computational efficiency but are not readily applicable to irregular topographies. Thus, several FD methods based on the transformation to curvilinear coordinates using body-fitted grids have been proposed, e.g., stand staggered grid(SSG) with interpolation, nonstaggered grid, rotated staggered grid(RSG), and fully staggered. The FD based on the RSG is somewhat superior to others because it satisfies the spatial distribution of the wave equation without additional memory and computational requirements; furthermore, it is simpler to implement. We use the RSG FD method to transform the firstorder stress–velocity equation in the curvilinear coordinates system and introduce the highprecision adaptive, unilateral mimetic finite-difference(UMFD) method to process the freeboundary conditions of an irregular surface. The numerical results suggest that the precision of the solution is higher than that of the vacuum formalism. When the minimum wavelength is low, UMFD avoids the surface wave dispersion. We compare FD methods based on RSG, SEM, and nonstaggered grid and infer that all simulation results are consistent but the computational efficiency of the RSG FD method is higher than the rest.

A method of solving the stiffness problem in Biot＇s poroelastic equations using a staggered high-order finite-difference

In modelling elastic wave propagation in a porous medium, when the ratio between the fluid viscosity and the medium permeability is comparatively large, the stiffness problem of Blot＇s poroelastic equations will be encountered. In the paper, a partition method is developed to solve the stiffness problem with a staggered high-order finite-difference. The method splits the Biot equations into two systems. One is stiff, and solved analytically, the other is nonstiff, and solved numerically by using a high-order staggered-grid finite-difference scheme. The time step is determined by the staggered finite-difference algorithm in solving the nonstiff equations, thus a coarse time step may be employed. Therefore, the computation efficiency and computational stability are improved greatly. Also a perfect by matched layer technology is used in the split method as absorbing boundary conditions. The numerical results are compared with the analytical results and those obtained from the conventional staggered-grid finite-difference method in a homogeneous model, respectively. They are in good agreement with each other. Finally, a slightly more complex model is investigated and compared with related equivalent model to illustrate the good performance of the staggered-grid finite-difference scheme in the partition method.

ELASTIC WAVEFIELD CALCULATION FOR HETEROGENEOUS ANISOTROPIC POROUS MEDIA USING THE 3-D IRREGULAR-GRID FINITE-DIFFERENCE

Basedonthe first-order Biot-equation with simplified coefficients,astaggered irregu- lar-grid finite difference method(FDM)is developed to simulate elastic wave propagation in 3-D heterogeneous anisotropic porous media.The ‘slow’P wave in porous media wave simulation is highly dispersive.Finer grids are needed to get a precise wavefield calculation for models with curved interface and complex geometric structure.Fine grids in a global model greatly increase computation costs of regular grids scheme.Irregular fine or coarse grids in local fields not only cost less computing time than the conventional velocity-stress FDM,but also give a more accu- rate wavefield description.A dispersion analysis of the irregular-grid finite difference operator has confirmed the stability and high efficiency.The absorbing boundary condition is used to elimi- nate artificial reflections.Numerical examples show that this new irregular-grid finite difference method is of higher performance than conventional methods using regular rectangular grids in simulating elastic wave propagation in heterogeneous anisotropic porous media.

A novel incompressible finite-difference lattice Boltzmann equation for particle-laden flow

In this paper, we propose a novel incompressible finite-difference lattice Boltzmann Equation （FDLBE）. Because source terms that reflect the interaction between phases can be accurately described, the new model is suitable for simulating two-way coupling incompressible multiphase flow The 2-D particle-laden flow over a backward-facing step is chosen as a test case to validate the present method. Favorable results are obtained and the present scheme is shown to have good prospects in practical applications.

An Optimal Spatial Finite-Difference Operator which ReducesTruncation Error to a Minimum

Highly accurate spatial discretization is essentially required to perform numerical climate and weather prediction. The difference between the differential and the finite-difference operator is however a primitive error source in the numerics. This paper presents an optimization of centered finite-difference operator based on the principle of constrained cost function, which can reduce the truncation error to minimum. In the optimization point of view, such optimal operator is in fact an attempt to minimize spatial truncation er-rors in atmospheric modeling, in a simple way and indeed a quite innovative way to implement Variational Continuous Assimilation (VCA) technique. Furthermore, the optimizing difference operator is consciously designed to be meshing-independent, so that it can be used for most Arakawa-mesh configurations, such as un-staggered (Arakawa-A) or com-monly staggered (Arakawa-B, Arakawa-C, Arakawa-D) mesh. But for the calibration purpose, the pro-posed operator is implemented on an un-staggered mesh in which the truncation oscillation is mostly ex-cited, and it thus makes a severe and indeed a benchmark test for the proposed optimal scheme. Both theo-retical investigation and practical modeling indicate that the aforementioned numerical noise can be significantly eliminated.

Finite-Difference Solution of the Helmholtz Equation Based on Two Domain Decomposition Algorithms

In this paper, wave simulation with the finite difference method for the Helmholtz equation based on the domain decomposition method is investigated. The method solves the problem by iteratively solving subproblems defined on smaller subdomains. Two domain decomposition algorithms both for nonoverlapping and overlapping methods are described. More numerical computations including the benchmark Marmousi model show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. This method can be expected to be used in the full-waveform inversion in the future.

Extraction of Acoustic Normal Mode Depth Functions Using Range-Difference Method with Vertical Linear Array Data

Data-derived normal mode extraction is an effective method for extracting normal mode depth functions in the absence of marine environmental data.However,when the corresponding singular vectors become nonunique when two or more singular values obtained from the cross-spectral density matrix diagonalization are nearly equal,this results in unsatisfactory extraction outcomes for the normal mode depth functions.To address this issue,we introduced in this paper a range-difference singular value decomposition method for the extraction of normal mode depth functions.We performed the mode extraction by conducting singular value decomposition on the individual frequency components of the signal's cross-spectral density matrix.This was achieved by using pressure and its range-difference matrices constructed from vertical line array data.The proposed method was validated using simulated data.In addition,modes were successfully extracted from ambient noise.

Individual differences determine the morphogenesis pattern and reproductive uniqueness of the invasive green macroalga,implications for its habitat adaptation

The marine green algae genus Chaetomorpha is a common source of“green tide”and is widespread on coasts around the world.In this study,based on invasive Chaetomorpha valida collected from the Shandong Peninsula,the morphogenesis and reproductive characteristics of two strains that are morphologically different from each other,were observed using experimental biology methods.The main results are as follows:(1)significant difference in the size of reproductive cells produced by Strains 1 and 2;(2)gametes produced by Strain 2 are isogamous and same gametangial during the binding process of gametes,whereas those of Strain 1 are isogamous but hetero-cystic;(3)progeny from Strain 1 has rhizoidal holdfast,whereas that of Strain 2 has discoid holdfast;(4)gametophytic“branching”was found in Strain 1.These results could validate the high phenotypic plasticity of macroalgae and offered an interpretation of habitat adaptation.Furthermore,this study innovatively provided fundamental research on the selection of macroalgal traits and explored competitive strategies for the dominant survival of macroalgae from a new perspective.

Edge modes in finite-size systems with different edge terminals

We investigate the behavior of edge modes in the presence of different edge terminations and long-range(LR)hopping.Here,we mainly focus on such model crystals with two different types of structures(type I:“…-P-Q-P-Q-…”and type II:“…=P-Q=P-Q=…”),where P and Q represent crystal lines(CLs),while the symbols“-”and“=”denote the distance between the nearest neighbor(NN)CLs.Based on the lattice model Hamiltonian with LR hopping,the existence of edge modes is determined analytically by using the transfer matrix method(TMM)when different edge terminals are taken into consideration.Our findings are consistent with the numerical results obtained by the exact diagonalization method.We also notice that edge modes can exhibit different behaviors under different edge terminals.Our result is helpful in solving novel edge modes in honeycomb crystalline graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides with different edge terminals.

Full-vectorial finite-difference beam propagation method based on the modified alternating direction implicit method

A modified alternating direction implicit algorithm is proposed to solve the full-vectorial finite-difference beam propagation method formulation based on H fields. The cross-coupling terms are neglected in the first sub-step, but evaluated and doubly used in the second sub-step. The order of two sub-steps is reversed for each transverse magnetic field component so that the cross-coupling terms are always expressed in implicit form, thus the calculation is very efficient and stable. Moreover, an improved six-point finite-difference scheme with high accuracy independent of specific structures of waveguide is also constructed to approximate the cross-coupling terms along the transverse directions. The imaginary-distance procedure is used to assess the validity and utility of the present method. The field patterns and the normalized propagation constants of the fundamental mode for a buried rectangular waveguide and a rib waveguide are presented. Solutions are in excellent agreement with the benchmark results from the modal transverse resonance method.

Finite-difference time-domain studies of low-frequency stop band in superconductor-dielectric superlattice

The transmission coefficients of electromagnetic （EM） waves due to a superconductor-dielectric superlattice are numerically calculated. Shift operator finite difference time domain （SO-FDTD） method is used in the analysis. By using the SO-FDTD method, the transmission spectrum is obtained and its characteristics are investigated for different thicknesses of superconductor layers and dielectric layers, from which a stop band starting from zero frequency can be apparently observed. The relation between this low-frequency stop band and relative temperature, and also the London penetration depth at a superconductor temperature of zero degree are discussed, separately. The low-frequency stop band properties of superconductor-dielectric superlattice thus are well disclosed.

Differential pressure difference based altitude control of a stratospheric satellite

An autonomous altitude adjustment system for a stratospheric satellite(StratoSat)platform is proposed.This platform consists of a helium balloon,a ballonet,and a two-way blower.The helium balloon generates lift to balance the platform gravity.The two-way blower inflates and deflates the ballonet to regulate the buoyancy.Altitude adjustment is achieved by tracking the differential pressure difference(DPD),and a threshold switching strategy is used to achieve blower flow control.The vertical acceleration regulation ability is decided not only by the blower flow rate,but also by the designed margin of pressure difference(MPD).Pressure difference is a slow-varying variable compared with altitude,and it is adopted as the control variable.The response speed of the actuator to disturbance can be delayed,and the overshoot caused by the large inertia of the platform is inhibited.This method can maintain a high tracking accuracy and reduce the complexity of model calculation,thus improving the robustness of controller design.