[Near-infrared spectra combining with CARS and SPA algorithms to screen the variables and samples for quantitatively determining the soluble solids content in strawberry].

In using spectroscopy to quantitatively or qualitatively analyze the quality of fruit, how to obtain a simple and effective correction model is very critical for the application and maintenance of the developed model. Strawberry as the research object, this research mainly focused on selecting the key variables and characteristic samples for quantitatively determining the soluble solids content. Competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) algorithm was firstly proposed to select the spectra variables. Then, Samples of correction set were selected by successive projections algorithm (SPA), and 98 characteristic samples were obtained. Next, based on the selected variables and characteristic samples, the second variable selection was performed by using SPA method. 25 key variables were obtained. In order to verify the performance of the proposed CARS algorithm, variable selection algorithms including Monte Carlo-uninformative variable elimination (MC-UVE) and SPA were used as the comparison algorithms. Results showed that CARS algorithm could eliminate uninformative variables and remove the collinearity information at the same time. Similarly, in order to assess the performance of the proposed SPA algorithm for selecting the characteristic samples, SPA algorithm was compared with classical Kennard-Stone algorithm Results showed that SPA algorithm could be used for selection of the characteristic samples in the calibration set. Finally, PLS and MLR model for quantitatively predicting the SSC (soluble solids content) in the strawberry were proposed based on the variables/samples subset (25/98), respectively. Results show that models built by using the 0.59% and 65.33% information of original variables and samples could obtain better performance than using the ones obtained by using all information of the original variables and samples. MLR model was the best with R(pre)2 = 0.9097, RMSEP=0.3484 and RPD = 3.3278.

[Application of characteristic NIR variables selection in portable detection of soluble solids content of apple by near infrared spectroscopy].

In order to detect the soluble solids content(SSC)of apple conveniently and rapidly, a ring fiber probe and a portable spectrometer were applied to obtain the spectroscopy of apple. Different wavelength variable selection methods, including unin- formative variable elimination (UVE), competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) and genetic algorithm (GA) were pro- posed to select effective wavelength variables of the NIR spectroscopy of the SSC in apple based on PLS. The back interval LS- SVM (BiLS-SVM) and GA were used to select effective wavelength variables based on LS-SVM. Selected wavelength variables and full wavelength range were set as input variables of PLS model and LS-SVM model, respectively. The results indicated that PLS model built using GA-CARS on 50 characteristic variables selected from full-spectrum which had 1512 wavelengths achieved the optimal performance. The correlation coefficient (Rp) and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) for prediction sets were 0.962, 0.403°Brix respectively for SSC. The proposed method of GA-CARS could effectively simplify the portable detection model of SSC in apple based on near infrared spectroscopy and enhance the predictive precision. The study can provide a reference for the development of portable apple soluble solids content spectrometer.

[Effectively predicting soluble solids content in apple based on hyperspectral imaging].

It is very important to extract effective wavelengths for quantitative analysis of fruit internal quality based on hyperspectral imaging. In the present study, genetic algorithm (GA), successive projections algorithm (SPA) and GA-SPA combining algorithm were used for extracting effective wavelengths from 400-1 000 nm hyperspectral images of Yantai "Fuji" apples, respectively. Based on the effective wavelengths selected by GA, SPA and GA-SPA, different models were built and compared for predicting soluble solids content (SSC) of apple using partial least squares (PLS), least squared support vector machine (LS-SVM) and multiple linear regression (MLR), respectively. A total of 160 samples were prepared for the calibration (n = 120) and prediction (n = 40) sets. Among all the models, the SPA-MLR achieved the best results, where Rp(2), RMSEP and RPD were 0.950 1, 0.308 7 and 4.476 6 respectively. Results showed that SPA can be effectively used for selecting the effective wavelengths from hyperspectral data. And, SPA-MLR is an optimal modeling method for prediction of apple SSC. Furthermore, less effective wavelengths and simple and easily-interpreted MLR model show that the SPA-MLR model has a great potential for online detection of apple SSC and development of a portable instrument.

Dynamics of a malaria infection model with time delay.

In this paper, a new mathematical model (a system of delay differential equation) is proposed to describe dynamical behaviors of malaria in an infected host with red blood cells (RBCs), infected red blood cells (iRBCs) and immune factors. The basic reproduction number R0 of the malaria infection is derived. If R0≤1, the uninfected equilibrium E0 is globally asymptotically stable. If R0>1, there exists two kinds of infection equilibria. The conditions of these equilibria with respect to the existence, stability and uniform persistence are given. Furthermore, fluctuations occur when the model undergoes Hopf bifurcation, and periodic solution appears near the positive equilibrium. The direction and stability of Hopf bifurcation are also obtained by applying the center manifold method and the normal form theory. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the theoretical results.

A mathematical model of oncolytic virotherapy with time delay.

Oncolytic virotherapy is an emerging treatment modality which uses replication-competent viruses to destroy cancers without causing harm to normal tissues. By the development of molecular biotechnology, many effective viruses are adapted or engineered to make them cancer-specific, such as measles, adenovirus, herpes simplex virus and M1 virus. A successful design of virus needs a full understanding about how viral and host parameters influence the tumor load. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model on the oncolytic virotherapy incorporating viral lytic cycle and virus-specific CTL response. Thresholds for viral treatment and virus-specific CTL response are obtained. Different protocols are given depending on the thresholds. Our results also support that immune suppressive drug can enhance the oncolytic effect of virus as reported in recent literature.

Establishing Wolbachia in the wild mosquito population: The effects of wind and critical patch size.

Releasing mosquitoes with Wolbachia into the wild mosquito population is becoming the very promising strategy to control mosquito-borne infections. To investigate the effects of wind and critical patch size on the Wolbachia establishment in the wild mosquito population, in this paper, we propose a diffusion-reaction-advection system in a heterogeneous environment. By studying the related eigenvalue problems, we derive various conditions under which Wolbachia can fully establish in the entire wild mosquito population. Our findings may provide some useful insights on designing practical releasing strategies to control the mosquito population.

Dynamics of a reaction-diffusion SIRI model with relapse and free boundary.

This paper is concerned with the free boundary problem for a reaction-diffusion SIRI model with relapse and bilinear incidence rate. After studying the (global) existence and uniqueness of solutions, we provide some sufficient conditions on the disease spreading-vanishing dichotomies for both cases with and without relapse.

Interventions for treating displaced midshaft clavicular fractures: a Bayesian network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Displaced midshaft clavicle fractures are frequent injuries. There are 3 treatment methods including conservative treatment, plate fixation, and intramedullary pin fixation. However, which is the best treatment remains a topic of debate.To establish the optimum treatment for displaced midshaft clavicular fractures, we did a network meta-analysis to compare 3 treatments in terms of postoperative nonunion and infection.We searched PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Embase for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) until the end of October 2014. Two investigators independently reviewed the abstract and full text of eligible studies and extracted information. We used WinBUGS 1.4 (Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's, London) to perform our Bayesian network meta-analysis. We used the graphical tools in STATA12 (StataCorp, Texas) to present the results of statistical analyses of WinBUGS14. Nonunion and infection were presented as odd ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). We also presented the results using surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA). A higher SUCRA value suggests better results for respective treatment method.Thirteen RCTs were included in our network meta-analysis, with a total of 894 patients randomized to receive 1 of 3 treatments. Nonunion rates were 0.9%, 2.4%, and 11.4% for intramedullary pin fixation, plate fixation, and conservative method, respectively. Nonunion occurred more commonly in patients treated with conservative method than in patients treated with either plate fixation (OR, 0.18; 95% CI, 0.05-0.46) or intramedullary pin fixation (OR, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.01-0.50). There was no significant difference between plate and intramedullary pin fixation in nonunion (OR, 3.64; 95% CI, 0.31-17.27). Furthermore, SUCRA probabilities were 87.8%, 62.0%, and 0.2% for intramedullary pin fixation, plate fixation, and conservative method, respectively. Infection rates were 3.6% and 3.9% for intramedullary pin fixation and plate fixation, respectively. There was no significant difference between plate and intramedullary pin fixation in infection (OR, 3.64; 95% CI, 0.31-17.27). SUCRA probabilities were 46.5% and 8.5% for intramedullary pin and plate fixation, respectively.Our network meta-analysis suggested that intramedullary pin fixation is the optimum treatment method for displaced midshaft clavicle fracture because of the low probabilities of nonunion and infection.