Swallowable Wireless Capsule Endoscopy: Progress and Technical Challenges

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) offers a feasible noninvasive way to detect the whole gastrointestinal (GI) tract and revolutionizes the diagnosis technology. However, compared with wired endoscopies, the limited working time, the low frame rate, and the low image resolution limit the wider application. The progress of this new technology is reviewed in this paper, and the evolution tendencies are analyzed to be high image resolution, high frame rate, and long working time. Unfortunately, the power supply of capsule endoscope (CE) is the bottleneck. Wireless power transmission (WPT) is the promising solution to this problem, but is also the technical challenge. Active CE is another tendency and will be the next geneion of the WCE. Nevertheless, it will not come true shortly, unless the practical locomotion mechanism of the active CE in GI tract is achieved. The locomotion mechanism is the other technical challenge, besides the challenge of WPT. The progress about the WPT and the active capsule technology is reviewed

MorphTE: Injecting Morphology in Tensorized Embeddings

In the era of deep learning, word embeddings are essential when dealing with text tasks. However, storing and accessing these embeddings requires a large amount of space. This is not conducive to the deployment of these models on resource-limited devices. Combining the powerful compression capability of tensor products, we propose a word embedding compression method with morphological augmentation, Morphologically-enhanced Tensorized Embeddings (MorphTE). A word consists of one or more morphemes, the smallest units that bear meaning or have a grammatical function. MorphTE represents a word embedding as an entangled form of its morpheme vectors via the tensor product, which injects prior semantic and grammatical knowledge into the learning of embeddings. Furthermore, the dimensionality of the morpheme vector and the number of morphemes are much smaller than those of words, which greatly reduces the parameters of the word embeddings. We conduct experiments on tasks such as machine translation and question answering. Experimental results on four translation datasets of different languages show that MorphTE can compress word embedding parameters by about 20 times without performance loss and significantly outperforms related embedding compression methods.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 18 tables. Published at NeurIPS 202

Research on Application of Buckling Restrained Braces in Strengthening of Concrete Frame Structures

This paper examines the application of BRB in strengthening of reinforced concrete frame structures to meet seismic requirements according to Chinese seismic design code. Elastic response spectrum analysis and nonlinear time history analysis are performed by taking a real engineering example that suffers weak first floor irregularity due to added loads and addition of one floor. With the method of equivalent stiffness and displacement-based design method, buckling restrained brace parameters are deduced and are used to model BRB in ETABS using plastic wen model. Three configurations of buckling restrained braces are studied together with ordinary braces. Under elastic state, the relationship between the required cross section area of BRB and ordinary braces is deduced from the formula of calculating elastic bearing capacity where it is shown that the area of the ordinary braces must be 1.25 times that of BRB for ensuring the same performance. The results show that Inverted V brace configuration demonstrated better performance over single brace and V brace configurations and X brace configuration, although not recommended by Chinese code, is simulated and used in this paper and has demonstrated better performance over other configurations, and the further research on the practical use of this brace is recommended. Also, under action of strong earthquakes, by nonlinear time history analysis, buckling restrained braces demonstrated better performance of strengthening the structure and make it meet the requirement of code. Under this same condition, ordinary braces losses their bearing capacity due to excessive buckling

High Temperature and High Speed Digital Image Correlation Method for Dynamical Measurement of Thermal Shock

Most ceramic materials, because of their inherent brittleness, are susceptible to catastrophic failure under conditions of thermal shock. A novel method for measuring the dynamical deformation is proposed by using of high speed digital image correlation in high temperature environment. The nature texture of ceramic materials can be used as speckle while filters and monochrome produced by LED are applied to suppress black-body radiation and enhance the luminous intensity. The light from the heated material can alter the Grayscale of material surface and the recognition for material surface will become more and more difficult with the temperature increase. In order to eliminate the affect of light radiation from high temperature object, an optical filter system is fixed on the lens. This optical filter can cut off almost all light except for the concerned light whose wavelength works for the range of filter and can almost filter the radiation from long wave band at hundreds of degrees Celsius. In our research, we success to conduct the thermal shock measurement with the high speed camera with 5000fps in the environment with the temperature of 1500C

Temperature Sensitivity of Soil Organic Carbon Mineralization along an Elevation Gradient in the Wuyi Mountains, China

We gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments and editing. We also thank Zikun Xu, Xiangen Xu, and Lina Fu for their help with field and lab work.Field help: JW. Conceived and designed the experiments: HR. Performed the experiments: YZ. Analyzed the data: GW XX. Wrote the paper: GW XX.Soil organic carbon (SOC) actively participates in the global carbon (C) cycle. Despite much research, however, our understanding of the temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization is still very limited. To investigate the responses of SOC mineralization to temperature, we sampled surface soils (0–10 cm) from evergreen broad-leaf forest (EBF), coniferous forest (CF), sub-alpine dwarf forest (SDF), and alpine meadow (AM) along an elevational gradient in the Wuyi Mountains, China. The soil samples were incubated at 5, 15, 25, and 35°C with constant soil moisture for 360 days. The temperature sensitivity of SOC mineralization (Q10) was calculated by comparing the time needed to mineralize the same amount of C at any two adjacent incubation temperatures. Results showed that the rates of SOC mineralization and the cumulative SOC mineralized during the entire incubation significantly increased with increasing incubation temperatures across the four sites. With the increasing extent of SOC being mineralized (increasing incubation time), the Q10 values increased. Moreover, we found that both the elevational gradient and incubation temperature intervals significantly impacted Q10 values. Q10 values of the labile and recalcitrant organic C linearly increased with elevation. For the 5–15, 15–25, and 25–35°C intervals, surprisingly, the overall Q10 values for the labile C did not decrease as the recalcitrant C did. Generally, our results suggest that subtropical forest soils may release more carbon than expected in a warmer climate.Yeshttp://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#pee

Clinical Study Intranasal Dexmedetomidine on Stress Hormones, Inflammatory Markers, and Postoperative Analgesia after Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery

Background. A strong ongoing intraoperative stress response can cause serious adverse reactions and affect the postoperative outcome. This study evaluated the effect of intranasally administered dexmedetomidine (DEX) in combination with local anesthesia (LA) on the relief of stress and the inflammatory response during functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). Methods. Sixty patients undergoing FESS were randomly allocated to receive either intranasal DEX (DEX group) or intranasal saline (Placebo group) 1 h before surgery. Stress hormones, inflammatory markers, postoperative pain relief, hemodynamic variables, blood loss, surgical field quality, body movements, and satisfaction were assessed. Results. Plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine, and blood glucose levels were significantly lower in DEX group as were the plasma IL-6 and TNF-levels ( < 0.05). The weighted areas under the curve (AUCw) of the VAS scores were also significantly lower in DEX group at 2-12 h after surgery ( < 0.001). Furthermore, hemodynamic variables, blood loss, body movements, discomfort with hemostatic stuffing, surgical field quality, and satisfaction scores of patients and surgeons were significantly better ( < 0.05) in DEX group. Conclusions. Patients receiving intranasal DEX with LA for FESS exhibited less perioperative stress and inflammatory response as well as better postoperative comfort with hemostatic stuffing and analgesia

A critical role for hepatic protein arginine methyltransferase 1 isoform 2 in glycemic control

Appropriate control of hepatic gluconeogenesis is essential for the organismal survival upon prolonged fasting and maintaining systemic homeostasis under metabolic stress. Here, we show protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1), a key enzyme that catalyzes the protein arginine methylation process, particularly the isoform encoded by Prmt1 variant 2 (PRMT1V2), is critical in regulating gluconeogenesis in the liver. Liver‐specific deletion of Prmt1 reduced gluconeogenic capacity in cultured hepatocytes and in the liver. Prmt1v2 was expressed at a higher level compared to Prmt1v1 in hepatic tissue and cells. Gain‐of‐function of PRMT1V2 clearly activated the gluconeogenic program in hepatocytes via interactions with PGC1α, a key transcriptional coactivator regulating gluconeogenesis, enhancing its activity via arginine methylation, while no effects of PRMT1V1 were observed. Similar stimulatory effects of PRMT1V2 in controlling gluconeogenesis were observed in human HepG2 cells. PRMT1, specifically PRMT1V2, was stabilized in fasted liver and hepatocytes treated with glucagon, in a PGC1α‐dependent manner. PRMT1, particularly Prmt1v2, was significantly induced in the liver of streptozocin‐induced type 1 diabetes and high fat diet‐induced type 2 diabetes mouse models and liver‐specific Prmt1 deficiency drastically ameliorated diabetic hyperglycemia. These findings reveal that PRMT1 modulates gluconeogenesis and mediates glucose homeostasis under physiological and pathological conditions, suggesting that deeper understanding how PRMT1 contributes to the coordinated efforts in glycemic control may ultimately present novel therapeutic strategies that counteracts hyperglycemia in disease settings.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/10/fsb221018-sup-0005-FigS5.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/9/fsb221018-sup-0001-FigS1.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/8/fsb221018-sup-0003-FigS3.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/7/fsb221018-sup-0008-FigS8.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/6/fsb221018-sup-0002-FigS2.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/5/fsb221018_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/4/fsb221018.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/3/fsb221018-sup-0007-FigS7.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/2/fsb221018-sup-0006-FigS6.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163465/1/fsb221018-sup-0004-FigS4.pd