Sustainable phenolic thermosets coatings derived from urushiol

The over-exploitation of finite fossil resources and/or the increased environmental and sustainable awareness inspire scientists and technologists to search for inexpensive alternatives from renewable chemicals. Phenol formaldehyde (PF) resins, the oldest type of synthetic polymers with good mechanical properties and heat resistance, are widely used in the production of coatings, laminates, molding compositions, and glues. Here, biobased urushiol-derived PF resins were synthesized from the alkali-catalyzed reaction between urushiol and formaldehyde. The chemical compositions and molecular structures of resole resins were characterized by carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and their curing behaviors were studied by differential scanning calorimetry. The as-prepared urushiol-derived resole resins had methylol (Ph−CH₂OH), ortho- and para-hemiformal groups (Ph−CH₂OCH₂OH), and the para−para/ortho−para/ortho−ortho links of methylene groups (Ph−CH₂−Ph), whereas the resole resins had low curing temperatures at about 100–113°C. Additionally, given the long side alkyl group moiety on the aromatic rings of urushiol, the films of cured urushiol-derived resole resins had low glass transition temperatures of 132 ± 2°C. Furthermore, the as-prepared urushiol-derived coatings exhibited excellent physical and mechanical properties.     

中国传统饮食文化融入食育路径研究

为国民身体素质、探索具有中国特色的现代食育之路，必须深入分析与探索中国饮食文化中的食育理念。文章以传统饮食文化为出发点和落脚点，概括出医食同源、饮食有节、饮食有礼等先进的食育观点。分析传统饮食与现代食育的关系，认为食育是弘扬传统饮食文化的重要途径，传统饮食文化是发展现代食育的基础。但探索现代食育仍面临着西方快餐文化冲击和国民食育进程缓慢等困境，必须采取强化国民食育意识、加强食育法制建设、健全食育教育体系、推进食育试点工作等措施促进中国传统饮食文化融入食育体系建设，真正探索具有中国特色的食育之路。     

结合注意力的3D卷积网络脑胶质瘤分割算法

为了提升脑胶质瘤分割精度，提出一种结合注意力机制的3D卷积神经网络算法。输入3个不同尺度的图像块，经过9个卷积层和1个分类层后得到3个不同的分类结果，将分类结果与注意力学习到的权重相乘并逐体素相加得到输出。此外该算法采用了一种混合Dice损失函数与Focal损失函数的超参数损失函数。实验表明，该算法的Dice系数在整体区域、核心区域以及增强区域分别达到了95.31%、80.12%、82.25%。与已有的一种脑胶质瘤分割算法deepmedic相比，整体区域、核心区域以及增强区域的Dice系数分别提升了3%、2%、6%。在脑胶质瘤分割方面，具有重要的临床意义。     

基于卷积神经网络的单目深度估计

针对利用深度学习方法对街道图像进行深度估计，提出采用语义分割的方法解决深度图出现边界模糊等问题；估计深度通过左右视角图生成视差图进行无监督的训练。在网络模型中添加语义分割层，采取多个空洞卷积并行的结构增加感受野，同时减少了图像下采样的次数，降低了由于下采样带来的信息损失，使得的结果更加准确。这也是在深度估计中首次与空洞卷积相结合增加准确率。通过对KITTI街道数据集进行训练，与现有结果相比，除了增加检测准确性，降低错误率之外，使得效果图中的物体更加清晰，并且在效果图中还保留了一些原模型中被忽视掉的细节信息，将原始图像更加完整的表现出来。     

Olfactory responses of Stegobium paniceum to different Chinese medicinal plant materials and component analysis of volatiles

Stegobium paniceum (L.) (Coleoptera: Anobiidae) is among the major pests of stored products, causing great damage to stored Chinese medicinal plant materials (CMPMs) in China. Effective control strategies are urgently needed. The aim of this study was to explore the role of volatile organic compounds in the host preference of S. paniceum. First, the olfactory behavioral responses of S. paniceum adults to volatiles from four CMPMs (Panax notoginseng, Angelica sinensis, Gastrodia elata, and Peucedanum praeruptorum) were tested in Y-tube olfactometer experiments. Then, the volatile composition of these plant materials were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). S. paniceum showed significant preferences for volatiles from the four CMPMs, compared with clean air (CA). When S. paniceum was presented with choices among different CMPMs, it showed the strongest preference for P. notoginseng, followed by A. sinensis, then G. elata, and P. praeruptorum. GC-MS analysis identified 43, 34, 28 and 60 components in the volatile profiles of P. notoginseng, A. sinensis, G. elata, and P. praeruptorum, respectively. Falcarinol (14.4%), 3-n-butyl phthalide (78.7%), p-cresol (40.1%), and β-pinene (29.1%) were the most abundant components of the volatiles of P. notoginseng, A. sinensis, G. elata, and P. praeruptorum, respectively. The olfactory responses of S. paniceum to the four CMPMs demonstrated that host-related volatiles play an important role in the host-searching process by adult beetles. This information will be useful for the development of safe and effective trapping strategies for this pest.     

Molecular detection and identification of Rickettsia in psocids collected from herbs

The aims of this study were to assess the psocids that potentially carry Rickettsia and to characterize Rickettsia species. We collected booklice from dried fragments of Chinese medicinal herbs for retail. Species identification and Rickettsia detection were performed by using nondestructive DNA extraction method and PCR. Of the 224 booklice samples collected, the following species were identified: Liposcelis pearmani (50.89%), L. bostrychophila (25.89%) and L. entomophila (23.21%). Twenty-four samples were found to be positive for Rickettsia (10.71%, 24/224), and the number of Rickettsia-positive samples per species was as follows: L. pearmani (n = 10), L. bostrychophila (n = 8) and L. entomophila (n = 6). The phylogenetic tree revealed that the rickettsial agents found in booklice cluster along with Rickettsia felis belong to the spotted fever group (SFG). Mixed booklice contamination occurs in herbal fragments. The presence of Rickettsia-infected booklice suggests that there is a risk of louse-borne rickettsioses to humans in contact with herbs. These findings can contribute to the development of a disease control program that assists relevant practitioners and promotes public health.     

基于机器视觉的运煤车车号识别技术研究

在铁路运煤装车过程中为了快速、准确地识别车号,提出一种基于机器视觉的运煤车车号识别技术。将连通区域提取与投影分割法结合,实现车号的粗定位、细分割,并对图像中的断裂字符进行二次分割,构建了基于BP神经网络的分类模型进行车号识别,提升了煤炭装车的效率和精度。     

The role of Persian-language word exercise games in improving spelling of students with dyslexia: Word exercise games in improving spelling

Children with dyslexia have reduced sensitivity to phonological sounds and words, and this deficiency in lexical processing causes many problems for them. Word exercise games based on phonological awareness have emphasized the mistakes of students with dyslexia, attempting to help children avoid these mistakes. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Persian-language word exercise games on the spelling of students with dyslexia. The design of the present study was quasi-experimental, with a pretest and posttest of an experimental group and a control group. Participants were 30 students with dyslexia from second grade to fifth grade in elementary schools in Bojnord, who completed the spelling test as a pretest and posttest. The experimental group played eleven 40-min sessions of word exercise games. The results showed that the word exercise programme improved the spelling of the children with dyslexia. This suggests that basing training on the phonological mistakes of students with dyslexia and using the word exercise games can improve their spelling.     

R2D2: A scalable deep learning toolkit for medical imaging segmentation

Deep learning has gained a significant popularity in recent years thanks to its tremendous success across a wide range of relevant fields of applications, including medical image analysis domain in particular. Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) based medical applications have been providing powerful solutions and revolutionizing medicine, efficiently training of CNNs models is a tedious and challenging task. It is a computationally intensive process taking long time and rare system resources, which represents a significant hindrance to scientific research progress. In order to address this challenge, we propose in this article, R2D2, a scalable intuitive deep learning toolkit for medical imaging semantic segmentation. To the best of our knowledge, the present work is the first that aims to tackle this issue by offering a novel distributed versions of two well-known and widely used CNN segmentation architectures [ie, fully convolutional network (FCN) and U-Net]. We introduce the design and the core building blocks of R2D2. We further present and analyze its experimental evaluation results on two different concrete medical imaging segmentation use cases. R2D2 achieves up to 17.5× and 10.4× speedup than single-node based training of U-Net and FCN, respectively, with a negligible, though still unexpected segmentation accuracy loss. R2D2 offers not only an empirical evidence and investigates in-depth the latest published works but also it facilitates and significantly reduces the effort required by researchers to quickly prototype and easily discover cutting-edge CNN configurations and architectures.     

Examining the role of regional culture and geographical distances on the representation of unfamiliar foods in a continental-size country

This study provides an experimental-exploratory investigation about the role of regional culture and Euclidean distances on the consumers’ representation of edible insects in Brazil, a country with an extensive geographical surface. Seven hundred and eighty participants were recruited on the streets of eight cities from different Brazilian states: Manaus in Amazonas; Porto Velho in Rondônia; Macapá in Amapá; Cuiabá in Mato Grosso; Aracaju in Sergipe; Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro; Campinas in São Paulo; and Santa Maria in Rio Grande do Sul. These participating cities were considered from their cultural identity differences and geographical distances. Through a continual restricted word association task, participants were instructed to promptly verbalize the first five terms that came to their minds when stimulated with the expression “food made with edible insects”. Following, they had to score the valence of each term they produced. The dictionaries produced in each city were compared and classified into groups using the Ellegård’s index. Each group presented distinct ways of expression and attitude with respect to the inductive expression. Basically, Brazil was divided into two main groups according to their representation of edible insects: one consisted by the cities situated near the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, which present a cultural formation influenced by the European immigrants; and the other comprised the cities from the continental region that have strong cultural influence from the Amerindians. Thus, the cultural formation was more decisive to explain the similar representations among the cities than their geographical proximity. Given that, to effectively introduce a novel food in a country with varied regional culture, the marketing strategy should be focused on the values and beliefs of their culture subgroups instead of a single strategy for the whole country.