Nitrate reduction capacity of the oral microbiota is impaired in periodontitis:potential implications for systemic nitric oxide availability

The reduction of nitrate to nitrite by the oral microbiota has been proposed to be important for oral health and results in nitric oxide formation that can improve cardiometabolic conditions. Studies of bacterial composition in subgingival plaque suggest that nitrate-reducing bacteria are associated with periodontal health, but the impact of periodontitis on nitrate-reducing capacity(NRC)and, therefore, nitric oxide availability has not been evaluated. The current study aimed to evaluate how periodontitis affects the NRC of the oral microbiota. First, 16S rRNA sequencing data from five different countries were analyzed, revealing that nitratereducing bacteria were significantly lower in subgingival plaque of periodontitis patients compared with healthy individuals(P < 0.05 in all five datasets with n = 20–82 samples per dataset). Secondly, subgingival plaque, saliva, and plasma samples were obtained from 42 periodontitis patients before and after periodontal treatment. The oral NRC was determined in vitro by incubating saliva with 8 mmol/L nitrate(a concentration found in saliva after nitrate-rich vegetable intake) and compared with the NRC of 15healthy individuals. Salivary NRC was found to be diminished in periodontal patients before treatment(P < 0.05) but recovered to healthy levels 90 days post-treatment. Additionally, the subgingival levels of nitrate-reducing bacteria increased after treatment and correlated negatively with periodontitis-associated bacteria(P < 0.01). No significant effect of periodontal treatment on the baseline saliva and plasma nitrate and nitrite levels was found, indicating that differences in the NRC may only be revealed after nitrate intake. Our results suggest that an impaired NRC in periodontitis could limit dietary nitrate-derived nitric oxide levels, and the effect on systemic health should be explored in future studies.

中心复合设计最优条件选取时四种方法的比较

目的比较三种传统优化方法和遗传算法基于中心复合设计的单目标优化时的特点。方法利用提高木聚糖酶产量的结果,分别用直接法、等高线法、最速上升法、遗传算法寻找最优结果,比较后得出结论。结果直接法、最速上升法、等高线法、遗传算法寻优的木聚糖酶含量分别为27.77UA/ml、23.93UA/ml、47.07UA/ml、51.04UA/ml。结论直接法可在其设计水平上较快找出结果,但不能保证局部或是全局达最优;在星点设计基础上的单目标寻优时等高线法的结果和遗传算法相当,等高线法可观察到部分因素对响应的影响大小,但存在局部最优和主观性较强的不足;最速上升法易陷入局部最优而忽略其他可能最优解。

WSNs基于非均匀分区成簇的多跳路由协议

针对无线传感器网络中节点能量有限和能量空洞问题,提出了一种基于优化簇半径的非均匀分区成簇多跳路由算法(UZCMR)。在分簇时充分考虑节点的能量和地理位置,通过"逐层分区"的方法将整个网络以Sink为中心划分成若干个区域。每个区域中的节点通过最优簇半径进行分簇,同时使用参数使靠近Sink节点的簇的规模小于远离Sink节点的簇,并采用了最小通信代价的多跳路由。试验表明,与低功耗自适应集簇分层型(LEACH)协议相比,UZCMR形成的簇首分布均匀,有效均衡了节点能量消耗,缓解了能量空洞问题,显著延长了网络生命周期,也扩大了协议的适用规模。

层间隔震偏心结构双向地震耦合响应研究

建立双向地震作用下层间隔震双向偏心结构侧扭耦联分析模型;考虑上部结构及下部结构的弹塑性模型,隔震支座采用双向耦合非线性Bouc-wen模型模拟;分析偏心参数对层间隔震双向偏心结构的影响规律;评价双向地震作用下我国抗震规范给出的扭转影响系数静力预测值的准确性。结果表明,双向地震作用下设置中间柔性隔震层可以减小上\,下部结构扭转的耦连效应;下部结构存在双向偏心会对隔震层和下部结构扭转反应带来不利影响;LRB耦合效应对层间隔震地震响应影响较小;当下部结构偏心率较大时现行规范计算扭转系数偏于不安全。

Mitochondrial function and regulation of macrophage sterol metabolism and inflammatory responses

The aim of this review is to explore the role of mitochondria in regulating macrophage sterol homeostasis and inflammatory responses within the aetiology of atherosclerosis.Macrophage generation of oxysterol activators of liver X receptors(LXRs),via sterol 27-hydroxylase,is regulated by the rate of flux of cholesterolto the inner mitochondrial membrane,via a complex of cholesterol trafficking proteins.Oxysterols are key signalling molecules,regulating the transcriptional activity of LXRs which coordinate macrophage sterol metabolism and cytokine production,key features influencing the impact of these cells within atherosclerotic lesions.The precise identity of the complex of proteins mediating mitochondrial cholesterol trafficking in macrophages remains a matter of debate,but may include steroidogenic acute regulatory protein and translocator protein.There is clear evidence that targeting either of these proteins enhances removal of cholesterol via LXRα-dependent induction of ATP binding cassette transporters(ABCA1,ABCG1) and limits the production of inflammatory cytokines; interventions which influence mitochondrial structure and bioenergetics also impact on removal of cholesterol from macrophages.Thus,molecules which can sustain or improve mitochondrial structure,the function of the electron transport chain,or increase the activity of components of the protein complex involved in cholesterol transfer,may therefore have utility in limiting or regressing atheroma development,reducing the incidence of coronary heart disease and myocardial infarction.

一种电力电缆的随机电热退化模型（英文）

In this paper a methodology is proposed to model the stochastic electro-thermal degradation accumulation in cables.The cable life and the reliability are predicted by estimating the accumulated electro-thermal degradation during seasonal load cycles.The degradation is considered,in a novel approach,as stochastic in nature due to variations in the manufacturing process of insulation raw material and in operational and environmental conditions.The methodology is based on estimation of life by using combined electro-thermal life model,simulation of degradation accumulation process under electro-thermal stress in each season of the year based on Miner’s cumulative damage theory and reliability prediction from a probabilistic point of view.A case study is demonstrated on 10 k V XLPE cables which are directly buried in the UK and China.Results show that,the electro-thermal life of the cable is 56 and 69 years in China and the UK,respectively at 50%failure probability,or the life of the cable in the UK would be 13 years longer than in China,when other stresses such as mechanical and environmental are also considered and assumed to be the same.

MicroRNA sequences modulating inflammation and lipid accumulation in macrophage “foam” cells: Implications for atherosclerosis

Accumulation of macrophage"foam"cells,laden with cholesterol and cholesteryl ester,within the intima of large arteries,is a hallmark of early"fatty streak"lesions which can progress to complex,multicellular atheromatous plaques,involving lipoproteins from the bloodstream and cells of the innate and adaptive immune response.Sterol accumulation triggers induction of genes encoding proteins mediating the atheroprotective cholesterol efflux pathway.Within the arterial intima,however,this mechanism is overwhelmed,leading to distinct changes in macrophage phenotype and inflammatory status.Over the last decade marked gains have been made in understanding of the epigenetic landscape which influence macrophage function,and in particular the importance of small non-coding micro-RNA(miRNA)sequences in this context.This review identifies some of the miRNA sequences which play a key role in regulating"foam"cell formation and atherogenesis,highlighting sequences involved in cholesterol accumulation,those influencing inflammation in sterol-loaded cells,and novel sequences and pathways which may offer new strategies to influence macrophage function within atherosclerotic lesions.

Self-management of coronary heart disease in older patients after elective percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty

Objective To explore how older patients self-manage their coronary heart disease （CHD） aider undergoing elective percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty （PTCA）. Methods This mixed methods study used a sequential, explanatory design and recruited a convenience sample of patients （n = 93） approximately three months after elective PTCA. The study was conducted in two phases. Quantitative data collected in Phase 1 by means of a self-administered survey were subject to univariate and bivariate analysis. Phase 1 findings in- formed the purposive samplhag for Phase 2 where ten participants were selected from the original sample for an in-depth interview. Qualita- tive data were analysed using thematic analysis. This paper will primarily report the findings from a sub-group of older participants （n = 47） classified as 65 years of age or older. Results 78.7% （n = 37） of participants indicated that they would manage recurring angina symptoms by taking glyceryl trinitrate and 34% （n = 16） thought that resting would help. Regardless of the duration or severity of the symptoms 40.5% （n = 19） would call their general practitioner or an emergency ambulance for assistance during any recurrence of angina symptoms. Older participants weighed less （P = 0.02） and smoked less （P = 0.01） than their younger counterparts in the study. Age did not seem to affect PTCA patients＇ likelihood of altering dietary factors such as fruit, vegetable and saturated fat consumption （P = 0.237）. Conclusions The findings suggest that older people in the study were less likely to know how to correctly manage any recurring angina symptoms than their younger counterparts but they had fewer risk factors for CHD. Age was not a factor that influenced participants＇ likelihood to alter lifestyle factors.

Machine learning empowered COVID-19 patient monitoring using non-contact sensing:An extensive review

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2),which caused the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic,has affected more than 400 million people worldwide.With the recent rise of new Delta and Omicron variants,the efficacy of the vaccines has become an important question.The goal of various studies has been to limit the spread of the virus by utilizing wireless sensing technologies to prevent human-to-human interactions,particularly for healthcare workers.In this paper,we discuss the current literature on invasive/contact and non-invasive/noncontact technologies(including Wi-Fi,radar,and software-defined radio)that have been effectively used to detect,diagnose,and monitor human activities and COVID-19 related symptoms,such as irregular respiration.In addition,we focused on cutting-edge machine learning algorithms(such as generative adversarial networks,random forest,multilayer perceptron,support vector machine,extremely randomized trees,and k-nearest neighbors)and their essential role in intelligent healthcare systems.Furthermore,this study highlights the limitations related to non-invasive techniques and prospective research directions.

Hepatitis E virus in patients with acute severe liver injury

AIM: To examine the incidence of hepatitis E(HepE) in individuals with acute liver injury severe enough to warrant treatment at a transplant unit.METHODS: Hepatitis E virus(HEV) is an emerging pathogen in developed countries causing severe illness, particularly in immunocompromised patients or those with underlying chronic liver disease. HepE infection isoften under diagnosed, as clinicians can be reluctant to test patients who have not travelled to regions traditionally considered hyperendemic for HepE. There are few data regarding the significance of HEV in patients with very severe acute liver injury in developed countries. Eighty patients with acute severe liver injury attending the Scottish Liver Transplant unit were tested for HEV and anti-HEV IgG and IgM. Severe acute liver injury was defined as a sudden deterioration in liver function confirmed by abnormal liver function tests and coagulopathy or presence of hepatic encephalopathy. Eighty percent of these patients were diagnosed with paracetomol overdose. No patients had a history of chronic or decompensated chronic liver disease at time of sampling. IgG positive samples were quantified against the World Health Organization anti-HEV IgG standard. Samples were screened for HEV viral RNA by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.RESULTS: Four cases of hepatitis E were identified. Three of the four cases were only diagnosed on retrospective testing and were initially erroneously ascribed to drug-induced liver injury and decompensated chronic liver disease, with the cause of the decompensation uncertain. One case was caused by HEV genotype 1 in a traveller returning from Asia, the other three were autochthonous and diagnosed on retrospective testing. In two of these cases(where RNA was detected) HEV was found to be genotype 3, the most prevalent genotype in developed countries. Three patients survived, two of whom had been misdiagnosed as having drug induced liver injury. The fourth patient died from sepsis and liver failure precipitated as a result of hepatitis E infection and previously undiagnosed cirrhosis. Histopathology data to date is limited to mainly that seen for endemic HepE. All patients, with the exception of patient 1, demonstrated characteristics of HepE infection, as seen in previously described locally acquired cases.CONCLUSION: In patients with acute severe liver injury, HEV testing should be part of the initial diagnostic investigation algorithm irrespective of suspected initial diagnosis, age or travel history.

A Crowdsourcing Recommendation that Considers the Influence of Workers

In the context of the continuous development of the Internet,crowdsourcing has received continuous attention as a new cooperation model based on the relationship between enterprises,the public and society.Among them,a reasonably designed recommendation algorithm can recommend a batch of suitable workers for crowdsourcing tasks to improve the final task completion quality.Therefore,this paper proposes a crowdsourcing recommendation framework based on workers’influence(CRBI).This crowdsourcing framework completes the entire process design from task distribution,worker recommendation,and result return through processes such as worker behavior analysis,task characteristics construction,and cost optimization.In this paper,a calculation model of workers’influence characteristics based on the ablation method is designed to evaluate the comprehensive performance of workers.At the same time,the CRBI framework combines the traditional open-call task selection mode,builds a new task characteristics model by sensing the influence of the requesting worker and its task performance.In the end,accurate worker recommendation and task cost optimization are carried out by calculating model familiarity.In addition,for recommending workers to submit task answers,this paper also proposes an aggregation algorithm based on weighted influence to ensure the accuracy of task results.This paper conducts simulation experiments on some public datasets of AMT,and the experimental results show that the CRBI framework proposed in this paper has a high comprehensive performance.Moreover,CRBI has better usability,more in line with commercial needs,and can well reflect the wisdom of group intelligence.

MEIM:A Multi-Source Software Knowledge Entity Extraction Integration Model

Entity recognition and extraction are the foundations of knowledge graph construction.Entity data in the field of software engineering come from different platforms and communities,and have different formats.This paper divides multi-source software knowledge entities into unstructured data,semi-structured data and code data.For these different types of data,Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory(Bi-LSTM)with Conditional Random Field(CRF),template matching,and abstract syntax tree are used and integrated into a multi-source software knowledge entity extraction integration model(MEIM)to extract software entities.The model can be updated continuously based on user’s feedbacks to improve the accuracy.To deal with the shortage of entity annotation datasets,keyword extraction methods based on Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency(TF-IDF),TextRank,and K-Means are applied to annotate tasks.The proposed MEIM model is applied to the Spring Boot framework,which demonstrates good adaptability.The extracted entities are used to construct a knowledge graph,which is applied to association retrieval and association visualization.

Laser Polishing of Laser Powder Bed Fusion AlSi10Mg Parts—Influence of Initial Surface Roughness on Achievable Surface Quality

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is an Additive Manufacturing technique, which allows production of highly complex solid metal parts with good mechanical properties, compared to conventionally manufactured parts. Nevertheless, the layer-by-layer fabrication process also offers several disadvantages, including a relatively high surface roughness depending on the shape of the component, its position and orientation during the fabrication process. This paper deals with investigations on the surface roughness reduction capability, and residual surface structures by laser polishing of LPBF AlSi10Mg parts under varying initial surface roughness in order to investigate the influence of the surface behavior and initial surface roughness to the achievable surface quality by laser polishing. Hereto test specimens with varying fabrication orientations regarding to the built platform are printed and further polished. Thereby the initial arithmetic roughness varies between 19.2 μm and 8.0 μm. It could be shown that the achievable surface roughness by laser polishing with continuous and pulsed laser radiation is increasing with rising initial roughness, but the relative roughness reduction is almost constant in the range of 95% - 97.5%. The analyzation of the residual roughness structures shows, that the main roughness differences is found in the middle and long structure wavelength regime, which are directly depending on the initial surface structures of 3D printing.

Investigations of Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Masonry Stones and Bricks during Building Cleaning： Part 1. Physical Testing

This series of study focused on analysing and assessing the changes of the physical and chemical characteristics of the surfaces of the masonrystones and bricks during the sandblasting cleaning process by conducting various physical and chemical tests. Seven masonry stones and bricks were adopted, including yellow sandstone, red sandstone, limestone, marble, granite, white clay brick and yellow clay brick. The physical testing included evaluating the cleaning degree, determining the Vickers hardness, and detecting the water absorption. Using a digital imaging analysis method, the greyscale and cleanness were introduced to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of masonry building cleaning and confirmed to be useful and appropriate. The cleanness analysis, together with the hardness and water absorption tests showed that a masonry stone or a brick with a higher cleaning degree corresponded to a brighter and harder stone surface. In general, the physical properties were found to vary largely during the building cleaning.

Coenzyme Q10 as a therapeutic candidate for treating inherited photoreceptor degeneration

Inherited photoreceptor degeneration（IPD）：The human retina is a highly specialised tissue that enables the perception of light across a range of intensities and colours.It covers about65%of the inner surface of the eye and contains three layers of cells：the outer nuclear layer（ONL）containing the cell bodies and nuclei of the light-sensitive rod and cone photoreceptorswhose photopigment-containing outer segments form the photoreceptor layer; the inner nuclear layer （INL） containing bipolar, horizontal and amacrine cells; and the ganglion cell layer （GCL） from which the optic nerve arises. There are two layers of synaptic connections between these three layers： the photoreceptors synapse with second order neurons, mainly bi- polar cells, in the outer plexiform layer （OPL）, while in turn the bipolar cells form connections in the inner plexiform layer （IPL） with ganglion cells. The retinal pigment epithelium （RPE） lies directly behind the photoreceptor layer, is heavily pigmented to reduce scattering of light, and is essential for the nourishment, maintenance and metabolism of photoreceptors.

Therapeutic potential of translocatorprotein ligands for age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration:Agerelated macular degeneration(AMD)is a retinal degenerative disorder,characterized by the irreversible loss of the central vision during ageing.This chronic,progressive disease has been estimated to currently affect around 196 million people worldwide and will increase to 288 million in 2040(Wong,et al.,2014).Early AMD is defined by the presence of drusen underneath the retinal pigment epithelial(RPE)layer.Late AMD can be divided into two groups,"wet AMD"and"dry AMD",depending on the underlying clinical features.

Mutagenic Potential of Medicinal Polyherbal Preparations

Extracts of twelve medicinal polyherbal preparations in powder form sold at retail shops were tested for mutagenicity using Ames in vitro test. Five of the polyherbal preparations were found to be mutagenic (p ≤ 0.05) at 250 μg/ml. Two mutagenic preparations comprised of traditionally used medicinal plants with no mutagenicity property being reported. However, one polyherbal preparation which contained one mutagenic plant was found not mutagenic. Under the conditions of this study, it can be concluded that some polyherbal preparations were potentially mutagenic and mutagenicity of polyherbal preparation cannot always be deduced from the mutagenicity status of each individual plant components of the polyherbal preparations.

Tube-based Model Reference Adaptive Control for Vibration Suppression of Active Suspension Systems

Dear editor,With the developments of industrial automation in recent years,vehicle suspension systems have received a great deal of attention in industry and academia due to their critical role in the chassis performance of vehicles[1].The suspension system is expected to guarantee the vehicle’s maneuverability and provide satisfactory ride comfort by absorbing the vibrations arising from the road surface excitations and ensuring road-holding capability and suspension safety.Motivated by the desirable performance of the model reference adaptive control(MRAC)approach,various literature studies have investigated its performance in diverse linear and nonlinear practical systems[2].

P&T-Inf: A Result Inference Method for Context-Sensitive Tasks in Crowdsourcing

Context-Sensitive Task(CST)is a complex task type in crowdsourc-ing,such as handwriting recognition,route plan,and audio transcription.The current result inference algorithms can perform well in simple crowd-sourcing tasks,but cannot obtain high-quality inference results for CSTs.The conventional method to solve CSTs is to divide a CST into multiple independent simple subtasks for crowdsourcing,but this method ignores the context correlation among subtasks and reduces the quality of result inference.To solve this problem,we propose a result inference algorithm based on the Partially ordered set and Tree augmented naive Bayes Infer(P&T-Inf)for CSTs.Firstly,we screen the candidate results of context-sensitive tasks based on the partially ordered set.If there are parallel candidate sets,the conditional mutual information among subtasks containing context infor-mation in external knowledge(such as Google n-gram corpus,American Contemporary English corpus,etc.)will be calculated.Combined with the tree augmented naive(TAN)Bayes model,the maximum weighted spanning tree is used to model the dependencies among subtasks in each CST.We collect two crowdsourcing datasets of handwriting recognition tasks and audio transcription tasks from the real crowdsourcing platform.The experimental results show that our approach improves the quality of result inference in CSTs and reduces the time cost compared with the latest methods.

The Measurement of the Software Ecosystem’s Productivity with GitHub

Software productivity has always been one of the most critical metrics for measuring software development.However,with the open-source community(e.g.,GitHub),new software development models are emerging.The traditional productivity metrics do not provide a comprehensive measure of the new software development models.Therefore,it is necessary to build a productivity measurement model of open source software ecosystem suitable for the open-source community’s production activities.Based on the natural ecosystem,this paper proposes concepts related to the productivity of open source software ecosystems,analyses influencing factors of open source software ecosystem productivity,and constructs a measurement model using these factors.Model validation experiments show that the model is compatible with a large portion of open source software ecosystems in GitHub.This study can provide references for participants of the open-source software ecosystem to choose proper types of ecosystems.The study also provides a basis for ecosystem health assessment for researchers interested in ecosystem quality.