Automated delineation of non-small cell lung cancer: A step toward quantitative reasoning in medical decision science

Quantitative reasoning in medical decision science relies on the delineation of pathological objects. For example, evidence-based clinical decisions regarding lung diseases require the segmentation of nodules, tumors, or cancers. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tends to be large sized, irregularly shaped, and grows against surrounding structures imposing challenges in the segmentation, even for expert clinicians. An automated delineation tool based on spatial analysis was developed and studied on 25 sets of computed tomography scans of NSCLC. Manual and automated delineations were compared, and the proposed method exhibited robustness in terms of the tumor size (5.32–18.24 mm), shape (spherical or irregular), contouring (lobulated, spiculated, or cavitated), localization (solitary, pleural, mediastinal, endobronchial, or tagging), and laterality (left or right lobe) with accuracy between 80% and 99%. Small discrepancies observed between the manual and automated delineations may arise from the variability in the practitioners' definitions of region of interest or imaging artifacts that reduced the tissue resolution.     

基于微气候模拟的武汉居住小区植被降温通风效应研究

在快速城镇化过程中，中国城市边缘区生态安全格局出现了自然生态与人文生态双重破坏的问题，研究基于复合生态平衡、生态空间活化、共建共享共赢的发展目标，提出以自然生态要素识别与敏感度分析、人文生态发展需求分析为基础，以自然与人文生态安全格局分区建构、复合生态空间耦合下的功能化发展指引为核心的城市边缘区生态安全格局重构方法框架，并结合铜陵城市边缘区——东湖地区规划建设展开理论应用与实践探索，为重构城市边缘区生态安全格局提供有益借鉴。     

植物蛋白素肉原料与工艺的研究进展

为缓解肉类供给不足的压力,以营养价值较高的植物蛋白素肉产品替代传统肉类成为食品研究发展的新方向。然而,目前缺少对植物蛋白素肉的产品配方、加工技术、产品品质、消费者态度等的系统综述。因此,该文总结了植物蛋白素肉的组成成分及其对产品品质的影响,分析了植物蛋白素肉在加工过程中所应用的加工技术及在质构、颜色、风味、营养方面的品质现状,进而阐述了植物蛋白素肉的市场接受程度,以期促进植物蛋白素肉科学研究的进一步发展,并促进其产品市场的扩大化。     

Syngas Methanation over Spray‐Granulated Ni/Al2O3 Catalyst in a Laboratory Transport‐Bed Reactor

Syngas methanation in a laboratory transport‐bed reactor has been performed. It was found that the CO conversion over the granular Ni/Al₂O₃ catalyst only slightly increased with the rise of aeration gas velocity for the recycling valve but severely decreased due to decreased gas residence time in the reactor. The effect of increasing the temperature of the recycled catalyst on the CO conversion at atmospheric pressure was also studied. Both the experimental temperature rise along the transport‐bed reactor and the estimated heat balance involving reactions verified the high heat‐transfer efficiency and its technical superiority for syngas methanation.     

Microwave synthesis of worm-like SiC nanowires for thin electromagnetic wave absorbing materials

Thin thickness is always the pursuit of excellent electromagnetic wave absorbing materials. Herein, SiC nanowires with worm-like morphology were synthesized by microwave heating the mixture of expanded graphite and silica. The worm-like SiC nanowires exhibit an excellent microwave absorption ability at a thin thickness. With the filling ratio of SiC nanowires increases in the matrix, the dielectric loss and microwave absorbing ability are significantly enhanced; meanwhile the number of absorption peaks is gradually increased, and the absorption peaks also move toward a thinner thickness. When the nanowires filling ratio was 40?wt%, the minimum reflection loss reached down to ?35.2?dB and the effective absorption (RL?<??10?dB) bandwidth was 1.8?GHz?at a thickness of 1.3?mm. The possible growth mechanism of the worm-like SiC nanowires is that the intermediate reaction gas phases, SiO and CO, were confined in the relatively independent tiny pores of expanded graphite. This resulting in an excessive local gas phase pressure, which causes the nanowire growth direction changes randomly.     

Pseudouridine synthase 7 impacts Candida albicans rRNA processing and morphological plasticity

RNA can be modified in over 100 distinct ways, and these modifications are critical for function. Pseudouridine synthases catalyse pseudouridylation, one of the most prevalent RNA modifications. Pseudouridine synthase 7 modifies a variety of substrates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae including tRNA, rRNA, snRNA, and mRNA, but the substrates for other budding yeast Pus7 homologues are not known. We used CRISPR-mediated genome editing to disrupt Candida albicans PUS7 and find absence leads to defects in rRNA processing and a decrease in cell surface hydrophobicity. Furthermore, C. albicans Pus7 absence causes temperature sensitivity, defects in filamentation, altered sensitivity to antifungal drugs, and decreased virulence in a wax moth model. In addition, we find C. albicans Pus7 modifies tRNA residues, but does not modify a number of other S. cerevisiae Pus7 substrates. Our data suggests C. albicans Pus7 is important for fungal vigour and may play distinct biological roles than those ascribed to S. cerevisiae Pus7.     

Food uses of pineapple waste and by-products: a review

Waste from fruits and vegetable processing industry is produced in large quantities worldwide and it contains high levels of lignocellulose, fibre, sugar, bioactive and functional compounds. Their utilisation has become one of the main important and challengeable aspects due to the generation of large quantities of by-products including peels, seeds, leaves and unused flesh in different steps of processing chain. Many researches have validated the waste utilisation as novel, low-cost, economical and natural sources of dietary fibre, antioxidants, pectin, enzymes, organic acids, food additives, essential oils, etc. through different methods of extractions, purifications and fermentations. Though, obtaining these by-products from such a variable substrate requires an understanding of the composition of the polysaccharides and their associations within the overall substrate. Focus on the pineapple fruit, scientific and technological studies have already highlighted and confirmed the potential of better and more profitable markets for pineapple wastes. This review is first of all the collection of previous reports about valorisation of food processing waste, deepening the possibilities of pineapple waste utilisation and to promote the integral exploitation of the by-products rich in bioactive compounds, even as multifunctional food ingredients. More in detail, this review aims at identifying those processes that can be implemented even in disadvantaged areas by means of technologies that allow recovering waste directly on site, thus reducing pollution and providing ingredients/food products with high nutritional values that could be integrated into the diet.     

计算机辅助汉字书写教学技术研究综述

传统的汉字书写教学方法具有一定的局限性，为此人们开始关注计算机辅助的汉字书写教学技术。它主要研究汉字书写规范的智能化、自动化评判方法以及可视化的反馈形式。对近20年来计算机辅助汉字书写教学技术的发展情况进行了综述；详细介绍了数字化展示、书写评判、水平评测等几个研究分支的特点、关键问题以及主要成果；结合相关技术的发展和需求的变化，提出了汉字书写数字化教学技术在未来的发展方向。     

Model-Based Design Space Exploration for FPGA-based Image Processing Applications Employing Parameterizable Approximations

The increasing demand for low power consumption and high computational performance is outpacing available technological improvements in embedded systems. Approximate computing is a novel design paradigm trying to bridge this gap by leveraging the inherent error resilience of certain applications and trading in quality to achieve reductions in resource usage. Numerous approximation methods have emerged in this research field. While these methods are commonly demonstrated in isolation, their combination can increase the achieved benefits in complex systems. However, the propagation of errors throughout the system necessitates a global optimization of parameters, leading to an exponentially growing design space. Additionally, the parameterization of approximated components must consider potential cross-dependencies between them. This work proposes a systematic approach to integrate and optimally configure parameterizable approximate components in FPGA-based applications, focusing on low-level but high-bandwidth image processing pipelines. The design space is explored by a multi-objective genetic algorithm which takes parameter dependencies between different components into account. During the exploration, appropriate models are used to estimate the quality-resource trade-off for probed solutions without the need for time-consuming synthesis. We demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on two image processing applications that employ multiple approximations. The experimental results show that the proposed methods are able to produce a wide range of Pareto-optimal solutions, offering various choices regarding the desired quality-resource trade-off.