In this technical note,a novel rating scale(abdominal integral index)was introduced for assessing the conditions of the working laparoscopic space based on linear measurements to select the optimal one or two-stage su...In this technical note,a novel rating scale(abdominal integral index)was introduced for assessing the conditions of the working laparoscopic space based on linear measurements to select the optimal one or two-stage surgical treatment for super-obesity.Patients with the same height and similar BMI values had different rating scale scores,reflecting different conditions of laparoscopic bariatric surgery.The rating scale helps surgeons and patients make a safe option for surgery,depending on the experience of the surgeon and technical laparoscopic conditions.展开更多
Oxide scale formation on a C-steel surface has been investigated using linear heating rates ranging from 0.1℃/min to 10℃/min at high temperatures. The studies on the oxide scale formation at high temperature (650℃)...Oxide scale formation on a C-steel surface has been investigated using linear heating rates ranging from 0.1℃/min to 10℃/min at high temperatures. The studies on the oxide scale formation at high temperature (650℃) at slower heating rate (0.1℃/min) shows that the kinetic regime is linear. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that the scale constituents are significantly influenced by the heating rate. The adherence of the scale was improved by using slower heating rate (0.1℃/min-≤650℃), while above such degree the scale was susceptible to cracking and flaking out of the alloy surface. In fact, the development of oxide growth stresses can cause considerable scale cracking. As well, variation of the crystallite sizes under the aforementioned conditions might affect the scale stacking to the alloy surface. The secondary electron detector images of the oxide scale shows that the scale was imperfectly smooth and there were a number of voids and defects in the scale skin, especially at fast heating rate. This observation could be attributed to defects of the as-received alloy. In general, slower heating rate reduced the defects of the scale and improved its adherence.展开更多
BACKGROUND Autism is the most common clinical developmental disorder in children.The childhood autism rating scale(CARS)and autistic autism behavior checklist(ABC)are the most commonly used assessment scales for diagn...BACKGROUND Autism is the most common clinical developmental disorder in children.The childhood autism rating scale(CARS)and autistic autism behavior checklist(ABC)are the most commonly used assessment scales for diagnosing autism.However,the diagnostic validations and the corresponding cutoffs for CARS and ABC in individuals with suspected autism spectrum disorder(ASD)remain unclear.Furthermore,for suspected ASD in China,it remains unclear whether CARS is a better diagnostic tool than ABC.Also unclear is whether the current cutoff points for ABC and CARS are suitable for the accurate diagnosis of ASD.AIM To investigate the diagnostic validity of CARS and ABC based on a large Chinese sample.METHODS A total of 591 outpatient children from the ASD Unit at Beijing Children’s Hospital between June and November 2019 were identified.First,the Clancy autism behavior scale(CABS)was used to screen out suspected autism from these children.Then,each suspected ASD was evaluated by CARS and ABC.Receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve analysis was used to compare diagnostic validations.We also calculated the area under the curve(AUC)for both CARS and ABC.RESULTS We found that the Cronbach alpha coefficients of CARS and ABC were 0.772 and 0.426,respectively.Therefore,the reliability of the CARS was higher than that of the ABC.In addition,we found that the correlation between CARS and CABS was 0.732.Next,we performed ROC curve analysis for CARS and ABC,which yielded AUC values of 0.846 and 0.768,respectively.The cutoff value,which is associated with the maximum Youden index,is usually applied as a decision threshold.We found that the cutoff values of CARS and ABC were 34 and 67,respectively.CONCLUSION This result indicated that CARS is superior to ABC in the Chinese population with suspected ASD.展开更多
This paper addresses the problem of single-channel speech enhancement in the adverse environment. The critical-band rate scale based on improved multi-band spectral subtraction is investigated in this study for enhanc...This paper addresses the problem of single-channel speech enhancement in the adverse environment. The critical-band rate scale based on improved multi-band spectral subtraction is investigated in this study for enhancement of single-channel speech. In this work, the whole speech spectrum is divided into different non-uniformly spaced frequency bands in accordance with the critical-band rate scale of the psycho-acoustic model and the spectral over-subtraction is carried-out separately in each band. In addition, for the estimation of the noise from each band, the adaptive noise estimation approach is used and does not require explicit speech silence detection. The noise is estimated and updated by adaptively smoothing the noisy signal power in each band. The smoothing parameter is controlled by a-posteriori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the performance analysis of the proposed algorithm, the objective measures, such as, SNR, segmental SNR, and perceptual evaluations of the speech quality are conducted for the variety of noises at different levels of SNRs. The speech spectrogram and objective evaluations of the proposed algorithm are compared with other standard speech enhancement algorithms and proved that the musical structure of the remnant noise and background noise is better suppressed by the proposed algorithm.展开更多
This article reviews the constructs of stress, appraisal, coping, according to a transactional perspective, and executive function, and presents a stress control rating scale (ECOSTRESS), which design is founded in th...This article reviews the constructs of stress, appraisal, coping, according to a transactional perspective, and executive function, and presents a stress control rating scale (ECOSTRESS), which design is founded in these constructs. This psychometric tool is useful in the assessment of cognitive control of stress, correlated with the function of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It has been validated for its use in the assessment of Portuguese people in situations of stress related to unemployment and economic insufficiency. Also, within the context of the cognitive control of stress, it is highlighted the usefulness of low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA).展开更多
This paper proposes a multi-scale self-recovery(MSSR)approach to protect images against content forgery.The main idea is to provide more resistance against image tampering while enabling the recovery process in a mult...This paper proposes a multi-scale self-recovery(MSSR)approach to protect images against content forgery.The main idea is to provide more resistance against image tampering while enabling the recovery process in a multi-scale quality manner.In the proposed approach,the reference data composed of several parts and each part is protected by a channel coding rate according to its importance.The first part,which is used to reconstruct a rough approximation of the original image,is highly protected in order to resist against higher tampering rates.Other parts are protected with lower rates according to their importance leading to lower tolerable tampering rate(TTR),but the higher quality of the recovered images.The proposed MSSR approach is an efficient solution for the main disadvantage of the current methods,which either recover a tampered image in low tampering rates or fails when tampering rate is above the TTR value.The simulation results on 10000 test images represent the efficiency of the multi-scale self-recovery feature of the proposed approach in comparison with the existing methods.展开更多
The purpose of this study was to propose indicators for grasping autistic characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities who were going to engage in agricultural vocational training. We analyzed the data of ...The purpose of this study was to propose indicators for grasping autistic characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities who were going to engage in agricultural vocational training. We analyzed the data of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) of 44 students at the high school course of a special needs education school who participated in agricultural vocational training. The data were divided into two groups according to the scores of “General Impressions”, one of 15 question items of the CARS: one was the group whose score was 1 (usual), and the other was the group whose scores were 1.5 to 4 (unusual). The results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed significant differences between two groups in eight items including “Relating to People” (p Relating to People” with six other items. As a result, “Relating to People” was considered to be the most effective item to know the participant’s autistic characteristics at a very early stage of training. Eventually, adding two items, “Body Use” and “Imitation” which are necessary to master agricultural tasks, to “Relating to People”, we proposed three indicators.展开更多
Objective： To study the significance of dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of Alzheimer＇ s disease（AD）. Methods： Probable AD patients（118 cases） diagnosed according to NINCDS-ADRDA criteria and the normal ...Objective： To study the significance of dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of Alzheimer＇ s disease（AD）. Methods： Probable AD patients（118 cases） diagnosed according to NINCDS-ADRDA criteria and the normal controls（100 cases） were examined with a battery of neuropsychological tests and the dementia severity of AD patients was determined with clinical dementia rating （CDR）. Changed neuropsychological characteristics of different AD dementia severities were analyzed. The discriminant analysis and ROC curve analysis were perfomed to analyze the specificity, the sensitivity, and the general accuracy of various dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of AD, and the area under the ROC curve. Results： The total cognition function in mild （CDR = 1 ）, moderate（CDR = 2） and severe stages（CDR=3） of AD had an obvious trend of continuous decline, with the MMSE values 17.44±2.64, 13.90±4.32, and 5.50 ± 3.90 respectively. The trend of decline of the verbal fluency function in AD was same as that of total cognition function. The visuospatial function was reduced in early stage of AD （CDR = 1 ） and completely lost in moderate and severe AD. Delay memory function began to show decline in the early stage of AD, and the decline turned apparent in moderate and severe AD. Immediate memory function showed unchanged in early stage of AD, while showed decline in moderate AD, and the decline became very quick in severe AD. The impairment of daily living ability and social activity function developed with the severity degree of AD. But the decline of social activity function was very quick in moderate stage of AD. In general, the leading scale to diagnose AD was FOM, followed by RVR, POD, MMSE, BD,ADL and DS. When MMSE was combined with one or more of FOM, RVR, BD, DS, the general accuracy in distinguishing AD from the normal controls was improved. Conclusion： Neuropsychological test is useful in the diagnosis of AD, especially in the early stage. The validity is improved when dementia rating scales are combined correctly.展开更多
Many tree planting programmes have long been initiated to increase forest cover to mitigate the effects of global climate change.Successful planting requires careful planning at the project level,including using suita...Many tree planting programmes have long been initiated to increase forest cover to mitigate the effects of global climate change.Successful planting requires careful planning at the project level,including using suitable species with favourable traits.However,there is a paucity of improvement data for tropical tree species.An experimental common garden of Shorea leprosula was established to study traits related to growth performance which are key factors in planting success.Seedlings of S.leprosula were collected from nine geographical forest reserves.To study the effects of genetic variation,seedlings were planted in a common environment following a randomized complete block design.From performance data collected 2017‒2019,one population showed the highest coefficient for relative height growth,significantly higher than most of the other populations.Interestingly,this population from Beserah also exhibited the lowest coefficient for scale insect infestation.This study provides preliminary results on growth performance and susceptibility to scale insect infestation in S.leprosula and the first common garden experiment site conducted on dipterocarp species.It lays a foundation for future genome-wide studies.展开更多
The indicator of social financing scale(SFS)has become a new intermediate target for China’s socioeconomic regulation since 2011,which has a better tracking performance on important economic indicators such as CPI an...The indicator of social financing scale(SFS)has become a new intermediate target for China’s socioeconomic regulation since 2011,which has a better tracking performance on important economic indicators such as CPI and is also the new intermediate target of monetary policy used by China’s central bank to replace M2 at present.So,is there an impact of the social financing scale on another important economic indicator,the RMB exchange rate?This paper conducted an OLS regression analysis of the time series data of social financing scale and the nominal effective exchange rate(NEER)of RMB for a total of 61 months from October 2016 to October 2021 and find that SFS has a significant positive impact on the exchange rate of RMB.This result means that the expansion of SFS will lead to the appreciation of RMB.In addition,the paper fills the research gap on the combination of SFS and RMB exchange rate,and suggests that mechanisms such as monetary policy or domestic interest rates may be responsible for this correlation at the theoretical level.展开更多
The effect of rating scales and test parts of body on the fabric-evoked prickle evaluation results are studied by carrying out subjective evaluation tests under controlled environment conditions (24±1)℃,(65±...The effect of rating scales and test parts of body on the fabric-evoked prickle evaluation results are studied by carrying out subjective evaluation tests under controlled environment conditions (24±1)℃,(65±5) %RH. Ten college female students aged about 20 were chosen as the subjects, who have participated a preliminary training on subjective prickle evaluation. The prickle of a range of 9 light-weight worsted woven wool and wool blend fabrics and a cotton fabric were tested by using a 15 rating scale and using a 010 rating scale respectively at different test parts of body respectively such as forearm, upper arm ball and neck back. The test results were statistically analyzed. It is found that there is a significant correlation coefficient between the evaluation results of using the 15 rating scale and of using the 010 rating scale. It is also found that there are highly significant correlation coefficients between the evaluation results of using the forearm prickle test and the neck back prickle test, between the evaluation results of using the neck back prickle test and the upper arm ball prickle test, and between the evaluation results of using the forearm prickle test and the upper arm ball prickle test. It is suggested that the forearm prickle test is preferable in evaluating fabric-evoked prickle for its convenience and sensitivity.展开更多
基于心率变异性(HRV)的特征分析,提出一种患者阵发性房颤(PAF)发作的预测系统方法。首先,基于一种新的自适应滤波技术逐次平滑滤波并粗粒化HRV后,采用熵量化HRV在多个自适应尺度的复杂性特征;其次,特征经MinMax归一化和序列前向选择特...基于心率变异性(HRV)的特征分析,提出一种患者阵发性房颤(PAF)发作的预测系统方法。首先,基于一种新的自适应滤波技术逐次平滑滤波并粗粒化HRV后,采用熵量化HRV在多个自适应尺度的复杂性特征;其次,特征经MinMax归一化和序列前向选择特征子集,输入支持向量机识别HRV类型,预测PAF发作。经50例时长5 min HRV序列集的五折交叉验证,得到最优预测结果为:准确率98%,敏感性100%,特异性96%,性能表现优越。另外,实验表明远离和紧随PAF时的HRV复杂性特征值在不同频率段内,分别具有不同的显著变化(P<0.05),反映受试者神经系统调节心脏节律改变,以及调控机体、应激等适应外界环境变化能力的下降。展开更多
文摘In this technical note,a novel rating scale(abdominal integral index)was introduced for assessing the conditions of the working laparoscopic space based on linear measurements to select the optimal one or two-stage surgical treatment for super-obesity.Patients with the same height and similar BMI values had different rating scale scores,reflecting different conditions of laparoscopic bariatric surgery.The rating scale helps surgeons and patients make a safe option for surgery,depending on the experience of the surgeon and technical laparoscopic conditions.
文摘Oxide scale formation on a C-steel surface has been investigated using linear heating rates ranging from 0.1℃/min to 10℃/min at high temperatures. The studies on the oxide scale formation at high temperature (650℃) at slower heating rate (0.1℃/min) shows that the kinetic regime is linear. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that the scale constituents are significantly influenced by the heating rate. The adherence of the scale was improved by using slower heating rate (0.1℃/min-≤650℃), while above such degree the scale was susceptible to cracking and flaking out of the alloy surface. In fact, the development of oxide growth stresses can cause considerable scale cracking. As well, variation of the crystallite sizes under the aforementioned conditions might affect the scale stacking to the alloy surface. The secondary electron detector images of the oxide scale shows that the scale was imperfectly smooth and there were a number of voids and defects in the scale skin, especially at fast heating rate. This observation could be attributed to defects of the as-received alloy. In general, slower heating rate reduced the defects of the scale and improved its adherence.
文摘BACKGROUND Autism is the most common clinical developmental disorder in children.The childhood autism rating scale(CARS)and autistic autism behavior checklist(ABC)are the most commonly used assessment scales for diagnosing autism.However,the diagnostic validations and the corresponding cutoffs for CARS and ABC in individuals with suspected autism spectrum disorder(ASD)remain unclear.Furthermore,for suspected ASD in China,it remains unclear whether CARS is a better diagnostic tool than ABC.Also unclear is whether the current cutoff points for ABC and CARS are suitable for the accurate diagnosis of ASD.AIM To investigate the diagnostic validity of CARS and ABC based on a large Chinese sample.METHODS A total of 591 outpatient children from the ASD Unit at Beijing Children’s Hospital between June and November 2019 were identified.First,the Clancy autism behavior scale(CABS)was used to screen out suspected autism from these children.Then,each suspected ASD was evaluated by CARS and ABC.Receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve analysis was used to compare diagnostic validations.We also calculated the area under the curve(AUC)for both CARS and ABC.RESULTS We found that the Cronbach alpha coefficients of CARS and ABC were 0.772 and 0.426,respectively.Therefore,the reliability of the CARS was higher than that of the ABC.In addition,we found that the correlation between CARS and CABS was 0.732.Next,we performed ROC curve analysis for CARS and ABC,which yielded AUC values of 0.846 and 0.768,respectively.The cutoff value,which is associated with the maximum Youden index,is usually applied as a decision threshold.We found that the cutoff values of CARS and ABC were 34 and 67,respectively.CONCLUSION This result indicated that CARS is superior to ABC in the Chinese population with suspected ASD.
文摘This paper addresses the problem of single-channel speech enhancement in the adverse environment. The critical-band rate scale based on improved multi-band spectral subtraction is investigated in this study for enhancement of single-channel speech. In this work, the whole speech spectrum is divided into different non-uniformly spaced frequency bands in accordance with the critical-band rate scale of the psycho-acoustic model and the spectral over-subtraction is carried-out separately in each band. In addition, for the estimation of the noise from each band, the adaptive noise estimation approach is used and does not require explicit speech silence detection. The noise is estimated and updated by adaptively smoothing the noisy signal power in each band. The smoothing parameter is controlled by a-posteriori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the performance analysis of the proposed algorithm, the objective measures, such as, SNR, segmental SNR, and perceptual evaluations of the speech quality are conducted for the variety of noises at different levels of SNRs. The speech spectrogram and objective evaluations of the proposed algorithm are compared with other standard speech enhancement algorithms and proved that the musical structure of the remnant noise and background noise is better suppressed by the proposed algorithm.
文摘This article reviews the constructs of stress, appraisal, coping, according to a transactional perspective, and executive function, and presents a stress control rating scale (ECOSTRESS), which design is founded in these constructs. This psychometric tool is useful in the assessment of cognitive control of stress, correlated with the function of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It has been validated for its use in the assessment of Portuguese people in situations of stress related to unemployment and economic insufficiency. Also, within the context of the cognitive control of stress, it is highlighted the usefulness of low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA).
文摘This paper proposes a multi-scale self-recovery(MSSR)approach to protect images against content forgery.The main idea is to provide more resistance against image tampering while enabling the recovery process in a multi-scale quality manner.In the proposed approach,the reference data composed of several parts and each part is protected by a channel coding rate according to its importance.The first part,which is used to reconstruct a rough approximation of the original image,is highly protected in order to resist against higher tampering rates.Other parts are protected with lower rates according to their importance leading to lower tolerable tampering rate(TTR),but the higher quality of the recovered images.The proposed MSSR approach is an efficient solution for the main disadvantage of the current methods,which either recover a tampered image in low tampering rates or fails when tampering rate is above the TTR value.The simulation results on 10000 test images represent the efficiency of the multi-scale self-recovery feature of the proposed approach in comparison with the existing methods.
文摘The purpose of this study was to propose indicators for grasping autistic characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities who were going to engage in agricultural vocational training. We analyzed the data of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) of 44 students at the high school course of a special needs education school who participated in agricultural vocational training. The data were divided into two groups according to the scores of “General Impressions”, one of 15 question items of the CARS: one was the group whose score was 1 (usual), and the other was the group whose scores were 1.5 to 4 (unusual). The results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed significant differences between two groups in eight items including “Relating to People” (p Relating to People” with six other items. As a result, “Relating to People” was considered to be the most effective item to know the participant’s autistic characteristics at a very early stage of training. Eventually, adding two items, “Body Use” and “Imitation” which are necessary to master agricultural tasks, to “Relating to People”, we proposed three indicators.
文摘Objective： To study the significance of dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of Alzheimer＇ s disease（AD）. Methods： Probable AD patients（118 cases） diagnosed according to NINCDS-ADRDA criteria and the normal controls（100 cases） were examined with a battery of neuropsychological tests and the dementia severity of AD patients was determined with clinical dementia rating （CDR）. Changed neuropsychological characteristics of different AD dementia severities were analyzed. The discriminant analysis and ROC curve analysis were perfomed to analyze the specificity, the sensitivity, and the general accuracy of various dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of AD, and the area under the ROC curve. Results： The total cognition function in mild （CDR = 1 ）, moderate（CDR = 2） and severe stages（CDR=3） of AD had an obvious trend of continuous decline, with the MMSE values 17.44±2.64, 13.90±4.32, and 5.50 ± 3.90 respectively. The trend of decline of the verbal fluency function in AD was same as that of total cognition function. The visuospatial function was reduced in early stage of AD （CDR = 1 ） and completely lost in moderate and severe AD. Delay memory function began to show decline in the early stage of AD, and the decline turned apparent in moderate and severe AD. Immediate memory function showed unchanged in early stage of AD, while showed decline in moderate AD, and the decline became very quick in severe AD. The impairment of daily living ability and social activity function developed with the severity degree of AD. But the decline of social activity function was very quick in moderate stage of AD. In general, the leading scale to diagnose AD was FOM, followed by RVR, POD, MMSE, BD,ADL and DS. When MMSE was combined with one or more of FOM, RVR, BD, DS, the general accuracy in distinguishing AD from the normal controls was improved. Conclusion： Neuropsychological test is useful in the diagnosis of AD, especially in the early stage. The validity is improved when dementia rating scales are combined correctly.
基金supported by the Government of Malaysia under the 10th and 11th Malaysia Plan.
文摘Many tree planting programmes have long been initiated to increase forest cover to mitigate the effects of global climate change.Successful planting requires careful planning at the project level,including using suitable species with favourable traits.However,there is a paucity of improvement data for tropical tree species.An experimental common garden of Shorea leprosula was established to study traits related to growth performance which are key factors in planting success.Seedlings of S.leprosula were collected from nine geographical forest reserves.To study the effects of genetic variation,seedlings were planted in a common environment following a randomized complete block design.From performance data collected 2017‒2019,one population showed the highest coefficient for relative height growth,significantly higher than most of the other populations.Interestingly,this population from Beserah also exhibited the lowest coefficient for scale insect infestation.This study provides preliminary results on growth performance and susceptibility to scale insect infestation in S.leprosula and the first common garden experiment site conducted on dipterocarp species.It lays a foundation for future genome-wide studies.
文摘The indicator of social financing scale(SFS)has become a new intermediate target for China’s socioeconomic regulation since 2011,which has a better tracking performance on important economic indicators such as CPI and is also the new intermediate target of monetary policy used by China’s central bank to replace M2 at present.So,is there an impact of the social financing scale on another important economic indicator,the RMB exchange rate?This paper conducted an OLS regression analysis of the time series data of social financing scale and the nominal effective exchange rate(NEER)of RMB for a total of 61 months from October 2016 to October 2021 and find that SFS has a significant positive impact on the exchange rate of RMB.This result means that the expansion of SFS will lead to the appreciation of RMB.In addition,the paper fills the research gap on the combination of SFS and RMB exchange rate,and suggests that mechanisms such as monetary policy or domestic interest rates may be responsible for this correlation at the theoretical level.
文摘The effect of rating scales and test parts of body on the fabric-evoked prickle evaluation results are studied by carrying out subjective evaluation tests under controlled environment conditions (24±1)℃,(65±5) %RH. Ten college female students aged about 20 were chosen as the subjects, who have participated a preliminary training on subjective prickle evaluation. The prickle of a range of 9 light-weight worsted woven wool and wool blend fabrics and a cotton fabric were tested by using a 15 rating scale and using a 010 rating scale respectively at different test parts of body respectively such as forearm, upper arm ball and neck back. The test results were statistically analyzed. It is found that there is a significant correlation coefficient between the evaluation results of using the 15 rating scale and of using the 010 rating scale. It is also found that there are highly significant correlation coefficients between the evaluation results of using the forearm prickle test and the neck back prickle test, between the evaluation results of using the neck back prickle test and the upper arm ball prickle test, and between the evaluation results of using the forearm prickle test and the upper arm ball prickle test. It is suggested that the forearm prickle test is preferable in evaluating fabric-evoked prickle for its convenience and sensitivity.
文摘基于心率变异性(HRV)的特征分析,提出一种患者阵发性房颤(PAF)发作的预测系统方法。首先,基于一种新的自适应滤波技术逐次平滑滤波并粗粒化HRV后,采用熵量化HRV在多个自适应尺度的复杂性特征;其次,特征经MinMax归一化和序列前向选择特征子集,输入支持向量机识别HRV类型,预测PAF发作。经50例时长5 min HRV序列集的五折交叉验证,得到最优预测结果为:准确率98%,敏感性100%,特异性96%,性能表现优越。另外,实验表明远离和紧随PAF时的HRV复杂性特征值在不同频率段内,分别具有不同的显著变化(P<0.05),反映受试者神经系统调节心脏节律改变,以及调控机体、应激等适应外界环境变化能力的下降。
