Effects of different thermal sterilization conditions on the quality of ready-to-eat shrimp based on specific sterilization intensity.

The effects of different thermal sterilization conditions on the quality and digestibility of ready-to-eat (RTE) shrimp were investigated. Compared with the high-temperature (121 °C) and short-time (6 min and 8 min) sterilization, the low-temperature (110 and 115 °C) and long-time (>20 min) sterilization significantly promoted the Maillard and browning reactions and changed the color of the RTE-shrimp. The high sterilization temperature promoted shrimp protein oxidation, resulting in increased carbonyl group, disulfide bond, and free radical content, while the free sulfhydryl group content decreased. This oxidation and tissue destruction at high temperature led to reduced texture properties and altered water distribution within the shrimp's muscles. However, sterilized shrimp exhibited superior digestive properties in an in vitro simulated digestion experiment. High-temperature and short-time sterilization is more effective in mitigating the quality deterioration of RTE-shrimp compared to low-temperature and long-time sterilization.

Effects of exercise by type and duration on quality of life in patients with digestive system cancers: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: There is scant evidence regarding the effects of exercise type and duration on quality of life (QoL) in digestive system cancer (DSC) survivors. We aim to investigate the optimal type and duration of exercise to improve QoL for DSC survivors through a systematic review and network meta-analysis. METHODS: A systematic literature search of PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science was performed. Eligibility for study inclusion was limited to studies that were randomized controlled trials involving all kinds of exercise in adult patients with DSCs, and the comparator was in standard care or other types of exercise. The primary outcome was QoL, including general health, physical health, mental health, and role function. Secondary outcomes included cancer-related symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and duration of hospital stay. The network meta-analyses were performed using a random-effect model. RESULTS: The analysis included 32 eligible articles and a total of 2558 participants. Our primary outcome indicated that short-term aerobic exercise significantly enhanced general health (standardized mean difference (SMD) = 0.66, 95% credible intervals (CrIs): 0.05 to 1.30), and also contributed to a better mental health (SMD = 0.38, 95%CrI: -0.05 to 0.81) and role function (SMD = 0.48, 95%CrI: -0.27 to 1.20). Although without significant changes, short-term resistance exercise tended to increase the physical health of patients with DSCs (SMD = 0.69, 95%CrI: -0.07 to 1.50) and effective in alleviating fatigue (SMD = -0.77, 95%CrI: -1.50 to 0.01). Short-term aerobic exercise was related to a lower score of insomnia (SMD = -1.20, 95%CrI: -2.40 to 0.06), depression (SMD = -0.51, 95%CrI: -1.50 to 0.45), and anxiety (SMD = -0.45, 95%CrI: -1.30 to 0.34). All types of exercise related to a trend of declined hospital stays (-0.87 to -5.00 day). Long-term resistance exercise, however, was negatively associated with general health (SMD = -0.33, 95%CrI: -1.70 to 1.00), physical health (SMD = -0.18, 95%CrI: -1.30 to 0.90), and role function (SMD = -1.20, 95%CrI: -2.50 to 0.11). CONCLUSION: This study suggests that short-term aerobic exercise, with or without resistance exercise programs, enhances QoL (especially for general health) as well as relieves cancer-related symptoms for DSC survivors, while long-term resistance exercise may have negative effects, and thus should be adopted cautiously. These results provide important evidence for the management of DSCs.

Seizure Detection and Prediction by Parallel Memristive Convolutional Neural Networks.

During the past two decades, epileptic seizure detection and prediction algorithms have evolved rapidly. However, despite significant performance improvements, their hardware implementation using conventional technologies, such as Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS), in power and area-constrained settings remains a challenging task; especially when many recording channels are used. In this paper, we propose a novel low-latency parallel Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture that has between 2-2,800x fewer network parameters compared to State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) CNN architectures and achieves 5-fold cross validation accuracy of 99.84% for epileptic seizure detection, and 99.01% and 97.54% for epileptic seizure prediction, when evaluated using the University of Bonn Electroencephalogram (EEG), CHB-MIT and SWEC-ETHZ seizure datasets, respectively. We subsequently implement our network onto analog crossbar arrays comprising Resistive Random-Access Memory (RRAM) devices, and provide a comprehensive benchmark by simulating, laying out, and determining hardware requirements of the CNN component of our system. We parallelize the execution of convolution layer kernels on separate analog crossbars to enable 2 orders of magnitude reduction in latency compared to SOTA hybrid Memristive-CMOS Deep Learning (DL) accelerators. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of non-idealities on our system and investigate Quantization Aware Training (QAT) to mitigate the performance degradation due to low Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC)/Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) resolution. Finally, we propose a stuck weight offsetting methodology to mitigate performance degradation due to stuck [Formula: see text] memristor weights, recovering up to 32% accuracy, without requiring retraining. The CNN component of our platform is estimated to consume approximately 2.791 W of power while occupying an area of 31.255 mm2 in a 22 nm FDSOI CMOS process.

Learning from imbalanced COVID-19 chest X-ray (CXR) medical imaging data.

The trendy task of digital medical image analysis has been continually evolving. It has been an area of prominent and growing importance from both research and deployment perspectives. Nonetheless, it is necessary to realize that the use of algorithms, methodology, as well as the source of medical image data, must be strictly scrutinized. As the COVID-19 pandemic has been gripping much of the world recently, there has been much efforts gone into developing affordable testing for the masses, and it has been shown that the established and widely available chest X-rays (CXR) images may be used as a screening criteria for assistive diagnosis purpose. Thanks to the dedicated work by various individuals and organizations, publicly available CXR of COVID-19 subjects are available for analytic usage. We have also provided a publicly available CXR dataset on the Kaggle platform. As a case study, this paper presents a systematic approach to learn from a typically imbalanced set of CXR images, which consists of a limited number of publicly available COVID-19 images. Our results show that we are able to outperform the top finishers in a related Kaggle multi-class CXR challenge. The proposed methodology should be able to help guide medical personnel in obtaining a robust diagnosis model to discern COVID-19 from other conditions confidently.

The difference in prolonged continuous and intermittent Pringle maneuver during complex hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma patients with chronic liver disease: A retrospective cohort study.

PURPOSE: To explore the differences between prolonged continuous Pringle maneuver (CPM) and prolonged intermittent Pringle maneuver (IPM) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), who underwent complex hepatectomy. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study performed between June 2014 and May 2016 included 142 patients who underwent complex hepatectomy for HCC and concomitant chronic liver disease but with good liver function. Patients were categorized into CPM (n = 69) and IPM groups (n = 73). The differences in these aspects were compared between the two groups which include operation time, intraoperative bleeding, perioperative transfusion, postoperative complications, liver function injury, postoperative overall survival (OS), and tumor recurrence. RESULTS: The cumulative clamping time, operation time, intraoperative bleeding, and perioperative transfusion rates were 38.0, 132 min, 300 ml, and 17.4% in CPM and 40.0, 145 min, 400 ml, and 32.9% in IPM, respectively. There were significant intergroup differences in operation time (p = 0.018), intraoperative bleeding (p < 0.001), and perioperative transfusion rates (p = 0.034). Besides, the postoperative complications and postoperative liver function injury of the CPM group were better than those of IPM. There was no significant intergroup difference in OS (p = 0.908) and tumor recurrence (p = 0.671) between two groups. CONCLUSION: Compared with IPM, CPM with a cumulative clamping time between 30 and 50 min can shorten operation time, reduce intraoperative bleeding and perioperative transfusion, and reduce postoperative complications and postoperative liver function injury in patients who underwent complex hepatectomy for HCC and concomitant liver disease but with good liver function. There was no significant difference in OS and tumor recurrence between two groups.

Facile fabrication of flower-like MnO2 hollow microspheres as high-performance catalysts for toluene oxidation.

A facile and robust interface reaction method for controllable synthesis of hierarchically structured flower-like MnO2 hollow microspheres was developed at a low cost. With MnCO3 microspheres as homologous templates, KMnO4 was used to conduct redox reactions with the surface layer of the MnCO3 microspheres to form porous flower-like MnO2. Then, the internal template was removed by HCl etching to obtain flower-like MnO2 hollow microspheres. HCl plays the dual role of removing the template and generating oxygen vacancies through acid etching. The as-prepared flower-like MnO2 hollow microspheres exhibited excellent low-temperature catalytic activity for toluene oxidation owing to the desirable features of a high specific surface area, abundant oxygen vacancies, high content of Mn4+, a high number of acidic sites and a strong acidity. This work provides a new strategy for the facile construction of high-performance volatile organic compounds oxidation catalysts with industrial application prospects.

A novel NAC transcription factor, MdNAC42, regulates anthocyanin accumulation in red-fleshed apple by interacting with MdMYB10.

Anthocyanin pigmentation is an important consumption trait of apple (Malus domestica Borkh.). In this study, we focused on the identification of NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2 and CUC2) proteins involved in the regulation of anthocyanin accumulation in apple flesh. A group of MdNACs was selected for comparison of expression patterns between the white-fleshed cultivar 'Granny Smith' and red-fleshed 'Redlove'. Among them, MdNAC42 was screened, which exhibited a higher expression level in red-fleshed than in white-fleshed fruit, and has a positive correlation with anthocyanin content as fruits ripened. Moreover, overexpression of MdNAC42 in apple calli resulted in the up-regulation of flavonoid pathway genes, including MdCHS, MdCHI, MdF3H, MdDFR, MdANS and MdUFGT, thereby increasing the accumulation of anthocyanins, which confirmed the roles of MdNAC42 in anthocyanin biosynthesis. Notably, MdNAC42 was demonstrated to have an obvious interaction with MdMYB10 either in vitro or in vivo by yeast two-hybrid combined with bimolecular fluorescence complementation, further suggesting that MdNAC42 is an important part of the regulatory network controlling the anthocyanin pigmentation of red-fleshed apples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report identifying the MdNAC gene as related to anthocyanin accumulation in red-fleshed apples. This study provides valuable information for improving the regulatory model of anthocyanin biosynthesis in apple fruit.

WITHDRAWN: Prognostic biomarker AASS suppresses proliferation, migration and predicts a good survival of hepatocellular carcinoma in vivo and in vitro.

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