Error Compensation Method for Pedestrian Navigation System Based on Low-Cost Inertial Sensor Array.

In the pedestrian navigation system, researchers have reduced measurement errors and improved system navigation performance by fusing measurements from multiple low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) arrays. Unfortunately, the current data fusion methods for inertial sensor arrays ignore the system error compensation of individual IMUs and the correction of position information in the zero-velocity interval. Therefore, these methods cannot effectively reduce errors and improve accuracy. An error compensation method for pedestrian navigation systems based on a low-cost array of IMUs is proposed in this paper. The calibration method for multiple location-free IMUs is improved by using a sliding variance detector to segment the angular velocity magnitude into stationary and motion intervals, and each IMU is calibrated independently. Compensation is then applied to the velocity residuals in the zero-velocity interval after zero-velocity update (ZUPT). The experimental results show a significant improvement in the average noise performance of the calibrated IMU array, with a 3.01-fold increase in static noise performance. In the closed-loop walking experiment, the average horizontal position error of a single calibrated IMU is reduced by 27.52% compared to the uncalibrated IMU, while the calibrated IMU array shows a 2.98-fold reduction in average horizontal position error compared to a single calibrated IMU. After compensating for residual velocity, the average horizontal position error of a single IMU is reduced by 0.73 m, while that of the IMU array is reduced by 64.52%.

Comprehensive assessment of health and ecological risk of cadmium in agricultural soils across China: A tiered framework.

Soil cadmium (Cd) contamination has been increasingly serious in agricultural land across China, posing unexpected risks to human health concerning crop safety and terrestrial ecosystems. This study collected Cd concentration data from 3388 soil sites in agricultural regions. To assess the Cd risk to crop safety, a comprehensive sampling investigation was performed to develop reliable Soil Plant Transfer (SPT) model. Eco-toxicity tests with representative soils and organism was conducted to construct the Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) for ecological risk assessment. Then, a tiered framework was applied based on Accumulation index, deterministic method (Hazard quotient), and probabilistic assessment (Monte Carlo and Joint Probability Curve). The results revealed the widespread Cd enrichment in agricultural soils, mainly concentrated in Central, Southern, and Southwest China. Risk assessments demonstrated the greater risks related to crop safety, while the ecological risks posed by soil Cd were manageable. Notably, agricultural soils in southern regions of China exhibited more severe risks to both crop safety and soil ecosystem, compared to other agricultural regions. Furthermore, tiered methodology proposed here, can be adapted to other trace elements with potential risks to crop safety and terrestrial ecosystem.

Exploration of Damage Identification Method for a Large-Span Timber Lattice Shell Structure in Taiyuan Botanical Garden based on Structural Health Monitoring.

Large-span spatial lattice structures generally have characteristics such as incomplete modal information, high modal density, and high degrees of freedom. To address the problem of misjudgment in the damage detection of large-span spatial structures caused by these characteristics, this paper proposed a damage identification method based on time series models. Firstly, the order of the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model was selected based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC). Then, the long autoregressive method was used to estimate the parameters of the ARMA model and extract the residual sequence of the autocorrelation part of the model. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) was introduced to reduce the dimensionality of the model while retaining the characteristic values. Finally, the Mahalanobis distance (MD) was used to construct the damage sensitive feature (DSF). The dome of Taiyuan Botanical Garden in China is one of the largest non-triangular timber lattice shells worldwide. Relying on the structural health monitoring (SHM) project of this structure, this paper verified the effectiveness of the damage identification model through numerical simulation and determined the damage degree of the dome structure through SHM measurement data. The results demonstrated that the proposed damage identification method can effectively identify the damage of large-span timber lattice structures, locate the damage position, and estimate the degree of damage. The constructed DSF had relatively strong robustness to small damage and environmental noise and has practical application value for SHM in engineering.

Health economic evaluation of noninvasive prenatal testing and serum screening for down syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Down syndrome (DS), also known as trisomy 21 (T21), is the most common genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability. There are two methods commonly used for prenatal testing of DS: serum screening (SS) for biomarkers in maternal serum and noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for aneuploidy by cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in maternal plasma. However, cost-effectiveness analyses of these two methods are mostly based on data derived from simulations with various models, with theoretical values calculated. In this study, we statistically analyzed clinical DS screening data and pregnancy outcomes during the follow-up of pregnant women in Zhuhai City, China. The economics of the two mainstream prenatal DS screening methods was evaluated from a public health perspective. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed on the data of 17,363 pregnant women who received SS and NIPT during gestation in Zhuhai from 2018 to 2019, and a cost-effectiveness analysis was performed with four screening strategies. In strategy I, all pregnant women received SS, and those with T21 risk ≥1/270 had invasive prenatal diagnosis (IPD). In strategy II, all pregnant women received SS, those with T21 risk ≥ 1/270 had IPD, and those with 1/270 > T21 risk ≥ 1/1,000 had NIPT; then, women at high risk based on NIPT also had IPD. In strategy III, all pregnant women received SS, and those with T21 risk ≥1,000 had NIPT; then, women at high risk based on NIPT results had IPD. In strategy IV, all pregnant women received NIPT and those at high risk based on NIPT results had IPD. Finally, to assess the cost and effectiveness of DS screening, the total costs were calculated as the sum of screening and diagnosis as well as the direct and indirect economic burden during the average life cycle of DS patients. RESULTS: A total of 22 of the 17,363 (1/789) pregnant women had DS, of which only one woman was over 35 years of age. SS detected 1,024 cases at high risk of T21 (≥1/270), 8 cases were true positive, with a positive predictive value of 0.78% and a detection rate of 36.4%. NIPT detected 27 cases at high risk of T21 (Z ≥ 3) and 22 cases of DS, with a positive predictive value of 81.5% and a detection rate of 100%. Strategy I had the largest total cost of 65.54 million CNY, strategy II and III had similar total costs of 40 million CNY, and strategy IV had the lowest total cost of 14.91 million CNY. By comparison, the screening strategy with NIPT alone had the highest health economic value for DS. CONCLUSIONS: SS was greatly affected by nuchal translucency and the accuracy of gestational age measured by ultrasonography. Unstandardized ultrasonography was an important reason for the low DS detection rate with SS. The influence of interfering factors on NIPT was much lower than in SS. NIPT can be used as an alternative to SS and as a primary screening strategy of prenatal DS screening for secondary prevention and control of birth defects. NIPT greatly decreased the frequency of IPD and the miscarriages associated with IPD, saved the limited medical and health resources, and greatly increased DS detection rate. Therefore, NIPT has great social and economic benefits.

Low-cost compressive sensing imaging based on spectrum-encoded time-stretch structure.

A low-cost compressive sensing imaging (CSI) system based on spectrum-encoded time-stretch (SETS) structure involving cascaded Mach-Zehnder Interferometers (MZIs) for spectral domain random mixing (also known as the optical random pattern generator) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A proof-of-principle simulation and experiment is performed. A mode-locked laser with a repetition rate of 50MHz and low-cost cascaded MZIs as the key devices enable fast CSI system. Data compression ratio from 6% to 25% are obtained using proposed CSI based SETS system. The proposed design solves the big data issue in the traditional time-stretch system. It has great potential in fast dynamic phenomena with low-cost and easy-access components.

A novel neuroimaging assessment of predictive risk factors associated with intraoperative massive hemorrhage in intracranial solid hemangioblastoma.

BACKGROUND: A solid hemangioblastoma (SH) is a benign and highly vascularized tumor. Microsurgical treatment of SH is still challenging due to excessive intraoperative bleeding. METHODS: Sixty-six consecutive patients with SH were retrospectively analyzed. The volume of intraoperative blood loss (IBL) and the features detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were evaluated by a neurosurgeon and multiple neuroradiologists. RESULTS: Four striking MRI features-peritumoral edema, the flow-void effect, large draining veins, and a visible feeding artery-were related to excessive IBL. Regarding the weighted values of these risk factors, the flow-void effect was the factor most significantly correlated with IBL (P<0.01, R=0.418). The feeding artery also contributed substantially to excessive IBL (P<0.05, R=0.412). The next most influential factor was the presence of large draining veins (P<0.05, R=0.350), followed by peritumoral edema (P<0.05, R=0.308). The four major risk factors-the flow-void effect, feeding arteries, large draining veins, and peritumoral edema-were assigned point values of 3, 3, 2, and 1, respectively, for a maximum total score of 9 points. A higher total score indicates that a higher volume of bleeding is more likely to occur during surgery. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports the potential neuroimaging-based risk factors leading to abundant IBL in SH by neuroimaging assessment. The study proposes a novel scoring system to predict IBL, potentially decreasing the risk involved in the surgical treatment of SH.

Comprehensive assessment of microbial aggregation characteristics of activated sludge bioreactors using fuzzy clustering analysis.

Understanding microbial aggregation dynamics in response to the often violent environmental fluctuations is important for activated sludge wastewater biotreatment practice, yet remains poorly understood. We investigated microbial aggregation process of an activated sludge reactor in response to various operating conditions of resource limitations, disinfectant and pH stresses, and quantified aggregation characteristics by employing a fuzzy clustering analysis (FCA) method. The results revealed that the FCA provided a means for comprehensive assessment of microbial aggregation dynamics of the bioreactor relying solely on simple parameter estimation. Proper disinfectant stress (of NaClO 1.00% or 2.00%) is a promising strategy to improve the comprehensive performance of microbial aggregation and sludge settleability. Nitrogen- (of C/N ratio > 40) and dissolved oxygen-limitations (of DO < 0.2 mg/L) had medium influence on the comprehensive performance of the activated sludge system, while little impacts for acidic and alkaline conditions. These quantitative estimations offer insights into the underlying bio-physicochemical processes of an activated sludge bioreactor in response to practical fluctuations that is often beyond typical assessment practice. In addition, it may represent a step towards uncoupling the complex biophysical interactions that is essential for optimized designing and proper engineering practice of biological wastewater treatment reactors.

Clinical evaluation and cost-effectiveness analysis of serum tumor markers in lung cancer.

The detection of serum tumor markers is valuable for the early diagnosis of lung cancer. Tumor markers are frequently used for the management of cancer patients. However, single markers are less efficient but marker combinations increase the cost, which is troublesome for clinics. To find an optimal serum marker combination panel that benefits the patients and the medical management system as well, four routine lung cancer serum markers (SCCA, NSE, CEA, and CYFRA21-1) were evaluated individually and in combination. Meanwhile, the costs and effects of these markers in clinical practice in China were assessed by cost-effectiveness analysis. As expected, combinations of these tumor markers improved their sensitivity for lung cancer and different combination panels had their own usefulness. NSE + CEA + CYFRA21-1 was the optimal combination panel with highest Youden's index (0.64), higher sensitivity (75.76%), and specificity (88.57%), which can aid the clinical diagnosis of lung cancer. Nevertheless, the most cost-effective combination was SCCA + CEA, which can be used to screen the high-risk group.

Molecular characterization of the measles virus genotypes in JiLin Province, China.

Measles remains a severe global health threat, and nearly 30 million new cases are reported annually. Although many studies have analyzed measles viruses (MV) at the epidemiologic and phylogenetic levels, no study has yet to integrate these two types of data. To this end, we isolated 16 wild-type MV strains China's Jilin province. The MV genotype H1 was the most prevalent strain. After sequencing the nucleoprotein (N) genes of these strains, a maximum clade credibility tree was constructed by the bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method using 450 MV strains from GenBank with epidemiological information. The MV N gene evolution rate was 1.127E-3. Analysis of the time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for genotypes A/B/C/G/H revealed that genotypes D and B had the largest and smallest TMRCA (45.86 and 26.63, respectively). The highest level of genetic diversity for the MV N gene occurred around the year 2000. Here in this study, we uncovered the MV genotypes circulating in China's Jilin Province and estimated the epidemiologic and phylogenetic relationship for the six different genotypes of MV.