Spatial variation is often encountered when large scale field trials are conducted which can result in biased estimation or prediction of treatment (i.e. genotype) values. An effective removal of spatial variation is ...Spatial variation is often encountered when large scale field trials are conducted which can result in biased estimation or prediction of treatment (i.e. genotype) values. An effective removal of spatial variation is needed to ensure unbiased estimation or prediction and thus increase the accuracy of field data evaluation. A moving grid adjustment (MGA) method, which was proposed by Technow, was evaluated through Monte Carlo simulation for its statistical properties regarding field spatial variation control. Our simulation results showed that the MGA method can effectively account for field spatial variation if it does exist;however, this method will not change phenotype results if field spatial variation does not exist. The MGA method was applied to a large-scale cotton field trial data set with two representative agronomic traits: lint yield (strong field spatial pattern) and lint percentage (no field spatial pattern). The results suggested that the MGA method was able to effectively separate the spatial variation including blocking effects from random error variation for lint yield while the adjusted data remained almost identical to the original phenotypic data. With application of the MGA method, the estimated variance for residuals was significantly reduced (62.2% decrease) for lint yield while more genetic variation (29.7% increase) was detected compared to the original data analysis subject to the conventional randomized complete block design analysis. On the other hand, the results were almost identical for lint percentage with and without the application of the MGA method. Therefore, the MGA method can be a useful addition to enhance data analysis when field spatial pattern exists.展开更多
This paper investigates particle transportation using a numerical model application approach to understand the final fate of suspended sediment particle masses due to a dredging operation in a navigational harbor inle...This paper investigates particle transportation using a numerical model application approach to understand the final fate of suspended sediment particle masses due to a dredging operation in a navigational harbor inlet using PTM (Particle Tracking Model). The investigation applied PTM and simulated particle transportation at a navigational harbor called St Jerome Creek Inlet in Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Maryland District, designed jetties for the inlet, which, when constructed, would minimize dredging requirements from once in a two-year period to once in a ten-year period. In the meantime, due to the frequent dredging requirements of the inlet, there exists a need to understand the fate of the suspended sediments from the dredging operations to assess the environmental impact on the aquatic environment and the coastal community. This study used PTM to simulate the transportation of sediments in a 30-day period during a dredging operation. Ten sediment source locations were selected as possible sites from which dredged materials could be introduced into the flow system. The model output was analyzed to draw conclusions. Results showed that most suspended sediment particle masses moved from their initial site locations and settled along the shoreline, whilst the sediments that found their way out of the inlet system towards the ocean migrated southward and settled approximately 6 miles at the tip of the mainland. The objective of the study is to track sediment particles from a dredging operation. This would be significant in tracking possible contaminants in an aquatic environment for future environmental management decisions.展开更多
Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. He...Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. Heavy metal pollution is mostly produced by urbanization and industry, which threatens ecosystems and human health. Herein, we discuss a sustainable environmental restoration strategy employing phytoremediation for heavy metal pollution, the carcinogenic, mutagenic, and cytotoxic effects of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, mercury, selenium, zinc, arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and silver, which may be fatal. Phytoremediation, which was prioritized, uses plants to remove, accumulate, and depollute pollutants. This eco-friendly method may safely collect, accumulate, and detoxify toxins using plants, making it popular. This study covers phytostabilization, phytodegradation, rhizodegradation, phytoextraction, phytovolatilization, and rhizofiltration. A phytoremediation process’s efficiency in varied environmental circumstances depends on these components’ complex interplay. This paper also introduces developing phytoremediation approaches including microbe-assisted, chemical-assisted, and organic or bio-char use. These advancements attempt to overcome conventional phytoremediation’s limitations, such as limited suitable plant species, location problems, and sluggish remediation. Current research includes machine learning techniques and computer modeling, biostimulation, genetic engineering, bioaugmentation, and hybrid remediation. These front-line solutions show that phytoremediation research is developing towards transdisciplinary efficiency enhancement. We acknowledge phytoremediation’s promise but also its drawbacks, such as site-specific variables, biomass buildup, and sluggish remediation, as well as ongoing research to address them. In conclusion, heavy metal pollution threatens the ecology and public health and must be reduced. Phytoremediation treats heavy metal pollution in different ways. Over time, phytoremediation systems have developed unique ways that improve efficiency. Despite difficulties like site-specificity, sluggish remediation, and biomass buildup potential, phytoremediation is still a vital tool for environmental sustainability.展开更多
The incidence of Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease (MACPD) has been globally increasing. The present study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of clinical characteristics and treatment response among ...The incidence of Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease (MACPD) has been globally increasing. The present study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of clinical characteristics and treatment response among patients in the Amazon region of Brazil and conduct a retrospective cohort study at a prominent referral hospital in the State of Par, Brazil, from 2012 to 2020. The M. avium group represented 58.9% of cases, followed by M. intracellulare (35.7%), M. colombiense (3.6%), and M. chimaera (1.8%). The majority of patients (73.2%) were female and with an average age of 63 years. Primary clinical manifestations included persistent cough and sputum production. The Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) averaged 2.47, with 36.3% of patients having a CCI score equal to higher than 3. Notably, over 70% of patients had received treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis before initiating treatment for MAC infection. The fibrocavitary radiologic form was the most prevalent (55.4%), frequently exhibiting a bilateral distribution (53.6%). Antimicrobial susceptibility revealed a significant prevalence of MAC resistance to drugs in the therapeutic regimen. Despite this, most of the patients experienced clinical improvement (50%). In conclusion, this study highlights a higher prevalence of MAC infections among middle-aged women, with a history of pulmonary tuberculosis treatment and presenting the fibrocavitary radiological form was predominant.展开更多
Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fung...Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fungal and bacterial pathogens. These pathogens can cause significant quantitative and qualitative losses from harvest to consumption during the handling and storage processes. Chemical fungicides are commonly used but are likely to leave residues on the produce, rendering short shelf-life produce, such as berries, unsuitable for human consumption. Identifying eco-friendly methods to control post-harvest disease is, therefore, of utmost importance. The presence of antifungal constituents in the roots of Poncirus trifoliata extracts was detected by thin layer chromatography-based bioautography. The active constituents were isolated and identified by bioautography assay-guided fractionation using flash chromatography followed by spectroscopic techniques. In this study, xanthoxyletin, demethylsuberosin, dentatin, nordentatin, ponfolin, and clausarin were isolated from the root extracts. The antifungal activity of these compounds was moderate to weak compared to the commercial fungicide captan. This study reports the isolation and identification of natural compounds from Poncirus trifoliata that exhibited antifungal activity against Colletotrichum fragariae and Botrytis cinerea, two major post-harvest pathogens.展开更多
In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuti...In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuting operators. Addressing this issue, a nonstandard unitary transformation technique is highlighted here with new perspective. In a spirit of “quantum” series expansions, the transition probabilities between initial and final states, such as displaced, squeezed and other nonlinearly transformed coherent states are obtained both numerically and analytically. This paper concludes that, although this technique is novel, its implementations for more extended systems are needed.展开更多
The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique...The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique where the Liouville space is briefly expanded with an additional (virtual) space only within ultrashort subintervals. This tremendously reduces the cost of time-consuming calculations. We implement our technique for an example of a charged particle in both harmonic and anharmonic potentials. The temporal evolutions of the probability for the particle being in the ground state are obtained numerically and compared to the analytical solutions. We further discuss the physics insight of this technique based on a thought-experiment. Successive processes intrinsically “hitchhiking” via virtual space in discrete ultrashort time duration, are the hallmark of our technique. We believe that this technique has potential for solving numerous problems which often pose a challenge when using the traditional approach based on time-ordered exponentials.展开更多
This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, th...This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, the already existing semantic segmentation methods for building detection work on the imagery of developed world, where the buildings are highly structured and there is a clearly distinguishable space present between the building instances, the same methods do not work as effectively on the developing world where there is often no clear differentiable spaces between instances of building thus reducing the number of detected instances. Hence as a noble approach, we have added building contours as new class along with building segmentation data, and detected the building contours and the inner building regions, hence giving the precise number of buildings existing in the input imagery especially in the convoluted areas where the boundary between the buildings are often hard to determine even for human eyes. Breaking down the building data into multi-class data increased the building detection precision and recall. This is useful in building detection where building instances are convoluted and are difficult for bare instance segmentation to detect all the instances.展开更多
Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of...Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults. Methods: Five databases/search engines were searched. Studies comparing different types of resistance exercise interventions versus a non-exercised control group on handgrip strength were included. The available data did not allow us to conduct the pre-planned meta-analyses;therefore, only descriptive statistics were performed to summarize the data. Results: Twenty studies (17 randomized and three non-randomized controlled trials) were included, most of which were conducted in older adults. Twelve studies reported no significant difference in the change in handgrip strength between the resistance training and control groups. Two studies showed increases in handgrip strength in the resistance training group compared with the control group. Other studies included results for multi-training groups or left/right hands and found increasing handgrip strength compared to controls, but only in one training group or one hand. Overall, the randomized and non-ran-domized clinical trials presented moderate risk of bias. Conclusions: Due to the lack of low risk-of-bias randomized controlled trials of young and middle-aged adults, different training protocols, and small sample sizes, the existing evidence appears insufficient to support resistance training for increasing handgrip strength in healthy adults. Future studies may seek to discern the optimal way to develop and employ resistance training to improve hand-grip strength.展开更多
Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standar...Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standard-of-care medical treatments, including the antihistamines hydroxyzine or cimetidine, and procedures. Herein we report a physician-sponsored proof-of-principle case series of four adult female patients with chronic painful bladder and frequent urination, who were treated once daily with a low dose H1 + H2 histamine receptor antagonist combination. Materials and Methods: Four adult females with Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome were treated once daily with a compounded oral dosage form containing the H1 receptor antagonist-cetirizine 8 mg in combination with the H2 receptor antagonist-famotidine 22 mg. The case series consists of a retrospective review of the symptom severity prior to versus following H1 + H2 treatment. Results and Conclusions: The once daily dual histamine receptor antagonist therapy substantially reduced the pain and urination frequency, and prophylactically maintained all four patients long-term with substantially reduced disease severity. The reduction in symptom severity was achieved at amounts that do not exceed the US FDA approved and exceptionally safe daily doses for the two over-the-counter monotherapies. This case series provides proof-of-principle evidence that a dual antihistamine combination of cetirizine plus famotidine effectively treated and maintained female patients, who were previously refractory to standard-of-care medications and/or procedures.展开更多
文摘Spatial variation is often encountered when large scale field trials are conducted which can result in biased estimation or prediction of treatment (i.e. genotype) values. An effective removal of spatial variation is needed to ensure unbiased estimation or prediction and thus increase the accuracy of field data evaluation. A moving grid adjustment (MGA) method, which was proposed by Technow, was evaluated through Monte Carlo simulation for its statistical properties regarding field spatial variation control. Our simulation results showed that the MGA method can effectively account for field spatial variation if it does exist;however, this method will not change phenotype results if field spatial variation does not exist. The MGA method was applied to a large-scale cotton field trial data set with two representative agronomic traits: lint yield (strong field spatial pattern) and lint percentage (no field spatial pattern). The results suggested that the MGA method was able to effectively separate the spatial variation including blocking effects from random error variation for lint yield while the adjusted data remained almost identical to the original phenotypic data. With application of the MGA method, the estimated variance for residuals was significantly reduced (62.2% decrease) for lint yield while more genetic variation (29.7% increase) was detected compared to the original data analysis subject to the conventional randomized complete block design analysis. On the other hand, the results were almost identical for lint percentage with and without the application of the MGA method. Therefore, the MGA method can be a useful addition to enhance data analysis when field spatial pattern exists.
文摘This paper investigates particle transportation using a numerical model application approach to understand the final fate of suspended sediment particle masses due to a dredging operation in a navigational harbor inlet using PTM (Particle Tracking Model). The investigation applied PTM and simulated particle transportation at a navigational harbor called St Jerome Creek Inlet in Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Maryland District, designed jetties for the inlet, which, when constructed, would minimize dredging requirements from once in a two-year period to once in a ten-year period. In the meantime, due to the frequent dredging requirements of the inlet, there exists a need to understand the fate of the suspended sediments from the dredging operations to assess the environmental impact on the aquatic environment and the coastal community. This study used PTM to simulate the transportation of sediments in a 30-day period during a dredging operation. Ten sediment source locations were selected as possible sites from which dredged materials could be introduced into the flow system. The model output was analyzed to draw conclusions. Results showed that most suspended sediment particle masses moved from their initial site locations and settled along the shoreline, whilst the sediments that found their way out of the inlet system towards the ocean migrated southward and settled approximately 6 miles at the tip of the mainland. The objective of the study is to track sediment particles from a dredging operation. This would be significant in tracking possible contaminants in an aquatic environment for future environmental management decisions.
文摘Current globalization trends and important breakthroughs globally need a complete study of heavy metal contamination, its causes, its impacts on human and environmental health, and different remediation strategies. Heavy metal pollution is mostly produced by urbanization and industry, which threatens ecosystems and human health. Herein, we discuss a sustainable environmental restoration strategy employing phytoremediation for heavy metal pollution, the carcinogenic, mutagenic, and cytotoxic effects of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, mercury, selenium, zinc, arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and silver, which may be fatal. Phytoremediation, which was prioritized, uses plants to remove, accumulate, and depollute pollutants. This eco-friendly method may safely collect, accumulate, and detoxify toxins using plants, making it popular. This study covers phytostabilization, phytodegradation, rhizodegradation, phytoextraction, phytovolatilization, and rhizofiltration. A phytoremediation process’s efficiency in varied environmental circumstances depends on these components’ complex interplay. This paper also introduces developing phytoremediation approaches including microbe-assisted, chemical-assisted, and organic or bio-char use. These advancements attempt to overcome conventional phytoremediation’s limitations, such as limited suitable plant species, location problems, and sluggish remediation. Current research includes machine learning techniques and computer modeling, biostimulation, genetic engineering, bioaugmentation, and hybrid remediation. These front-line solutions show that phytoremediation research is developing towards transdisciplinary efficiency enhancement. We acknowledge phytoremediation’s promise but also its drawbacks, such as site-specific variables, biomass buildup, and sluggish remediation, as well as ongoing research to address them. In conclusion, heavy metal pollution threatens the ecology and public health and must be reduced. Phytoremediation treats heavy metal pollution in different ways. Over time, phytoremediation systems have developed unique ways that improve efficiency. Despite difficulties like site-specificity, sluggish remediation, and biomass buildup potential, phytoremediation is still a vital tool for environmental sustainability.
文摘The incidence of Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease (MACPD) has been globally increasing. The present study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of clinical characteristics and treatment response among patients in the Amazon region of Brazil and conduct a retrospective cohort study at a prominent referral hospital in the State of Par, Brazil, from 2012 to 2020. The M. avium group represented 58.9% of cases, followed by M. intracellulare (35.7%), M. colombiense (3.6%), and M. chimaera (1.8%). The majority of patients (73.2%) were female and with an average age of 63 years. Primary clinical manifestations included persistent cough and sputum production. The Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) averaged 2.47, with 36.3% of patients having a CCI score equal to higher than 3. Notably, over 70% of patients had received treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis before initiating treatment for MAC infection. The fibrocavitary radiologic form was the most prevalent (55.4%), frequently exhibiting a bilateral distribution (53.6%). Antimicrobial susceptibility revealed a significant prevalence of MAC resistance to drugs in the therapeutic regimen. Despite this, most of the patients experienced clinical improvement (50%). In conclusion, this study highlights a higher prevalence of MAC infections among middle-aged women, with a history of pulmonary tuberculosis treatment and presenting the fibrocavitary radiological form was predominant.
文摘Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet, providing humans with vitamins, phytonutrients, and minerals. They are significantly vulnerable, however, to post-harvest diseases caused by numerous fungal and bacterial pathogens. These pathogens can cause significant quantitative and qualitative losses from harvest to consumption during the handling and storage processes. Chemical fungicides are commonly used but are likely to leave residues on the produce, rendering short shelf-life produce, such as berries, unsuitable for human consumption. Identifying eco-friendly methods to control post-harvest disease is, therefore, of utmost importance. The presence of antifungal constituents in the roots of Poncirus trifoliata extracts was detected by thin layer chromatography-based bioautography. The active constituents were isolated and identified by bioautography assay-guided fractionation using flash chromatography followed by spectroscopic techniques. In this study, xanthoxyletin, demethylsuberosin, dentatin, nordentatin, ponfolin, and clausarin were isolated from the root extracts. The antifungal activity of these compounds was moderate to weak compared to the commercial fungicide captan. This study reports the isolation and identification of natural compounds from Poncirus trifoliata that exhibited antifungal activity against Colletotrichum fragariae and Botrytis cinerea, two major post-harvest pathogens.
文摘In quantum optics, unitary transformations of arbitrary states are evaluated by using the Taylor series expansion. However, this traditional approach can become cumbersome for the transformations involving non-commuting operators. Addressing this issue, a nonstandard unitary transformation technique is highlighted here with new perspective. In a spirit of “quantum” series expansions, the transition probabilities between initial and final states, such as displaced, squeezed and other nonlinearly transformed coherent states are obtained both numerically and analytically. This paper concludes that, although this technique is novel, its implementations for more extended systems are needed.
文摘The traditional simulations may occasionally turn out to be challenging for the quantum dynamics, particularly those governed by the nonlinear Hamiltonians. In this work, we introduce a nonstandard iterative technique where the Liouville space is briefly expanded with an additional (virtual) space only within ultrashort subintervals. This tremendously reduces the cost of time-consuming calculations. We implement our technique for an example of a charged particle in both harmonic and anharmonic potentials. The temporal evolutions of the probability for the particle being in the ground state are obtained numerically and compared to the analytical solutions. We further discuss the physics insight of this technique based on a thought-experiment. Successive processes intrinsically “hitchhiking” via virtual space in discrete ultrashort time duration, are the hallmark of our technique. We believe that this technique has potential for solving numerous problems which often pose a challenge when using the traditional approach based on time-ordered exponentials.
文摘This paper studies the effect of breaking single-class building data into multi-class building data for semantic segmentation under end-to-end architecture such as UNet, UNet++, DeepLabV3, and DeepLabv3+. Although, the already existing semantic segmentation methods for building detection work on the imagery of developed world, where the buildings are highly structured and there is a clearly distinguishable space present between the building instances, the same methods do not work as effectively on the developing world where there is often no clear differentiable spaces between instances of building thus reducing the number of detected instances. Hence as a noble approach, we have added building contours as new class along with building segmentation data, and detected the building contours and the inner building regions, hence giving the precise number of buildings existing in the input imagery especially in the convoluted areas where the boundary between the buildings are often hard to determine even for human eyes. Breaking down the building data into multi-class data increased the building detection precision and recall. This is useful in building detection where building instances are convoluted and are difficult for bare instance segmentation to detect all the instances.
文摘Background: Although handgrip strength is a biomarker for morbidity/mor-tality, there is lack of evidence on the effects of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults of all ages. Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of resistance training on handgrip strength in healthy adults. Methods: Five databases/search engines were searched. Studies comparing different types of resistance exercise interventions versus a non-exercised control group on handgrip strength were included. The available data did not allow us to conduct the pre-planned meta-analyses;therefore, only descriptive statistics were performed to summarize the data. Results: Twenty studies (17 randomized and three non-randomized controlled trials) were included, most of which were conducted in older adults. Twelve studies reported no significant difference in the change in handgrip strength between the resistance training and control groups. Two studies showed increases in handgrip strength in the resistance training group compared with the control group. Other studies included results for multi-training groups or left/right hands and found increasing handgrip strength compared to controls, but only in one training group or one hand. Overall, the randomized and non-ran-domized clinical trials presented moderate risk of bias. Conclusions: Due to the lack of low risk-of-bias randomized controlled trials of young and middle-aged adults, different training protocols, and small sample sizes, the existing evidence appears insufficient to support resistance training for increasing handgrip strength in healthy adults. Future studies may seek to discern the optimal way to develop and employ resistance training to improve hand-grip strength.
文摘Purpose: Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome is an inflammatory disorder of the bladder, for which histamine has been implicated in the pathogenesis of the disease. The condition is often refractory to standard-of-care medical treatments, including the antihistamines hydroxyzine or cimetidine, and procedures. Herein we report a physician-sponsored proof-of-principle case series of four adult female patients with chronic painful bladder and frequent urination, who were treated once daily with a low dose H1 + H2 histamine receptor antagonist combination. Materials and Methods: Four adult females with Interstitial cystitis/Bladder pain syndrome were treated once daily with a compounded oral dosage form containing the H1 receptor antagonist-cetirizine 8 mg in combination with the H2 receptor antagonist-famotidine 22 mg. The case series consists of a retrospective review of the symptom severity prior to versus following H1 + H2 treatment. Results and Conclusions: The once daily dual histamine receptor antagonist therapy substantially reduced the pain and urination frequency, and prophylactically maintained all four patients long-term with substantially reduced disease severity. The reduction in symptom severity was achieved at amounts that do not exceed the US FDA approved and exceptionally safe daily doses for the two over-the-counter monotherapies. This case series provides proof-of-principle evidence that a dual antihistamine combination of cetirizine plus famotidine effectively treated and maintained female patients, who were previously refractory to standard-of-care medications and/or procedures.
