Hubei province in China has had the most confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and has reported sustained transmission of the disease. Although Lu'an city is adjacent to Hubei province, its community transmission was blocked at the early stage, and the impact of the epidemic was limited. Therefore, we summarised the overall characteristics of the entire epidemic course in Lu'an to help cities with a few imported cases better contain the epidemic. A total of 69 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 11 asymptomatic carriers were identified in Lu'an during the epidemic from 12 January to 21 February 2020. Fifty-two (65.0%) cases were male, and the median age was 40 years. On admission, 56.5% of cases had a fever as the initial symptom, and pneumonia was present in 89.9% of cases. The mean serial interval and the mean duration of hospitalisation were 6.5 days (95% CI: 4.8–8.2) and 18.2 days (95% CI: 16.8–19.5), respectively. A total of 16 clusters involving 60 cases (17 first-generation cases and 43 secondary cases) were reported during the epidemic. We observed that only 18.9% (7/37) index cases resulted in community transmission during the epidemic in Lu'an, indicating that the scale of the epidemic was limited to a low level in Lu'an city. An asymptomatic carrier caused the largest cluster, involving 13 cases. Spread of COVID-19 by asymptomatic carriers represents an enormous challenge for countries responding to the pandemic.

To investigate the effects of dietary fibre on follicular atresia in pigs fed a high-fat diet, we fed thirty-two prepubescent gilts a basal diet (CON) or a CON diet supplemented with 300 g/d dietary fibre (fibre), 240 g/d soya oil (SO) or both (fibre + SO). At the 19th day of the 4th oestrus cycle, gilts fed the SO diet showed 112 % more atretic follicles and greater expression of the apoptotic markers, Bax and caspase-3, and these effects were reversed by the fibre diet. The abundance of SCFA-producing microbes was decreased by the SO diet, but this effect was reversed by fibre treatment. Concentrations of serotonin and melatonin in the serum and follicular fluid were increased by the fibre diet. Overall, dietary fibre protected against high fat feeding-induced follicular atresia at least partly via gut microbiota-related serotonin–melatonin synthesis. These results provide insight into preventing negative effects on fertility in humans consuming a high-energy diet.

The Antarctic subglacial drilling rig (ASDR) is designed to recover 105 mm-diameter ice cores up to 1400 m depth and 41.5 mm-diameter bedrock cores up to 2 m in length. In order to ensure safe and convenient drilling, drilling auxiliaries are designed to support fieldwork and servicing. These auxiliaries are subdivided into several systems for power supply, drill tripping in the borehole, ice core and chip processing, and drill servicing and maintenance. The required equipment also includes two generators, a drilling winch with a cable, logging winch with a cable, control desk, pipe handler with a fixed clamp, chip chamber vibrator, centrifuge, emergency devices and fitting and electrical tools. Additionally, several environmental protective measures such as a new liquid-tight casing with a thermal casing shoe and a bailing device for recovering drilling fluid from the borehole were designed. Most of the auxiliaries were tested during the summer of 2018–2019 near Zhongshan Station, East Antarctica while drilling to the bedrock to a depth of 198 m.

Drilling to the bedrock of ice sheets and glaciers offers unique opportunities for examining the processes occurring in the bed. Basal and subglacial materials contain important paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental records and provide a unique habitat for life; they offer significant information regarding the sediment deformation beneath glaciers and its effects on the subglacial hydraulic system and geology. The newly developed and tested Antarctic subglacial drilling rig (ASDR) is designed to recover ice and bedrock core samples from depths of up to 1400 m. All of the drilling equipment is installed inside a movable, sledge-mounted, temperature-controlled and wind-protected drilling shelter and workshop. To facilitate helicopter unloading of the research vessel, the shelter and workshop can be disassembled, with individual parts weighing <2–3 tons. The entire ASDR system weighs ~55 tons, including transport packaging. The ASDR is designed to be transported to the chosen site via snow vehicles and would be ready for drilling operations within 2–3 d after arrival. The ASDR was tested during the 2018–2019 summer season near Zhongshan Station, East Antarctica. At the test site, 2-week drilling operations resulted in a borehole that reached bedrock at a depth of 198 m.

A new, modified version of the cable-suspended Ice and Bedrock Electromechanical Drill (IBED) was designed for drilling in firn, ice, debris-rich ice and rock. The upper part of the drill is almost the same for all drill variants and comprises four sections: cable termination, a slip-ring section, an antitorque system and an electronic pressure chamber. The lower part of the IBED comprises an auger core barrel, reamers, a core barrel for ice/debris-ice drilling and a conventional geological single-tube core barrel or custom-made double-tube core barrel. First, the short and full-scale field versions of the IBED were tested at an outdoor testing stand and a testing facility with a 12.5 m-deep ice well. Then, in the 2018–2019 summer season, the IBED was tested in the field at a site ~12 km south of Zhongshan Station, East Antarctica, and a ~6 cm bedrock core was recovered from a 198 m-deep borehole. A total of 18 d was required to penetrate the ice sheet. The retrieved core samples of blue ice, basal ice and bedrock provided valuable information regarding the Earth's paleo-environment.

In many cases, the efficiency and safety of a drilling project depend on the reliability of the electrical and electronic control system, as the process progresses without visual access of the operator. The electrical and electronic system provides and regulates the power supply for the drill, collects and monitors the drill data during the whole operating process, and sends and receives the control instructions and feedback signals. The entire system is composed of the surface, borehole and software subsystems. The surface subsystem serves for operating the drilling process, transmitting the drilling and environmental data, and supplying power for the drill motor and downhole control system. The borehole subsystem is generally intended for borehole data acquisition, drill motor control, power regulation and communication. The software subsystem is designed for human–computer interaction, data processing and storage, and programming of signal acquisition and transmission of data. The control system of Antarctic subglacial drilling rig was tested during the 2018–2019 summer season near Zhongshan Station, East Antarctica, in the course of drilling to the bedrock at a depth of 198 m. It exhibited a steady and efficient performance without significant system failures.

There has been no study exploring the prognostic values of neutrophil percentage-to-albumin ratio (NPAR). We hypothesised that NPAR is a novel marker of inflammation and is associated with all-cause mortality in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. Patient data were extracted from the MIMIC-III V1.4 database. Only the data for the first intensive care unit (ICU) admission of each patient were used and baseline data were extracted within 24 h after ICU admission. The clinical endpoints were 30-, 90- and 365-day all-cause mortality in critically ill patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. Cox proportional hazards models and subgroup analyses were used to determine the relationship between NPAR and these clinical endpoints. A total of 2166 patients were eligible for this analysis. In multivariate analysis, after adjustments for age, ethnicity and gender, higher NPAR was associated with increased risk of 30-, 90- and 365-day all-cause mortality in critically ill patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. Furthermore, after adjusting for more confounding factors, higher NPAR remained a significant predictor of all-cause mortality (tertile 3 vs. tertile 1: HR, 95% CI: 1.29, 1.04–1.61; 1.41, 1.16–1.72; 1.44, 1.21–1.71). A similar trend was observed in NPAR levels stratified by quartiles. Higher NPAR was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality in critically ill patients with severe sepsis or septic shock.

A three-section pulse forming network (PFN) based on Guillemin type-C circuit was developed to meet the challenge of a compact design, high withstand voltage, and high-quality output waveform with fast rise time, flat-top duration, and 100-ns pulse width. A simplified pulse forming circuit was proposed and studied that includes only three LC-sections connected in parallel, with each section containing an inductor and a capacitor connected in series. The effect of the capacitance deviation on the output waveform was investigated. The simulation results show that when the capacitance deviation exceeds +3%, both the flat top and fall time of the output waveform of single PFN module deteriorate greatly. Fortunately, in a multi-stage PFN-Marx circuit, even if the capacitance deviation exceeds +10%, when the average capacitance of the same LC sections is close to the theoretical value, the output waveform maintains a good quality and is in good agreement with the theoretical prediction. The compact three-section PFN developed during this project has a size of only 360 mm × 342 mm × 65 mm, and a maximum withstand voltage of 120 kV. Sixteen PFN stages were assembled to form a Marx generator with design parameters to provide of an output peak power of 12 GW and a maximum peak current of 15 kA. The tested output waveform agrees well with the theoretical results, having a rise time of 31 ns, a flat-top of 104 ns, and a pulse with of 164 ns.

Altered resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) has been noted in large-scale functional networks in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, identifying consistent abnormalities of functional networks is difficult due to varied methods and results across studies. To integrate rsFC alterations and search for coherent patterns of intrinsic functional network impairments in ADHD, this research conducts a coordinate-based meta-analysis of voxel-wise seed-based rsFC studies comparing rsFC between ADHD patients and healthy controls. A total of 25 datasets from 21 studies including 700 ADHD patients and 580 controls were analyzed. We extracted the coordinates of seeds and between-group effects. Each seed was then categorized into a seed-network by its location within priori 7-network parcellations. Then, pooled meta-analyses were conducted for the default mode network (DMN), frontoparietal network (FPN) and affective network (AN) separately, but not for the ventral attention network (VAN), dorsal attention network (DAN), somatosensory network (SSN) and visual network due to a lack of primary studies. The results showed that ADHD was characterized by hyperconnectivity between the FPN and regions of the DMN and AN as well as hypoconnectivity between the FPN and regions of the VAN and SSN. These findings not only support the triple-network model of pathophysiology associated with ADHD but also extend this model by highlighting the involvement of the SSN and AN in the mechanisms of network interactions that may account for motor hyperactivity and impulsive symptoms.

Three-dimensional nano-mulberries consisting of SnO2 nanoparticles have been successfully anchored onto the surfaces of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) to construct hierarchical hybrids—SnO2@RGO with a one-pot approach. The SnO2 nano-mulberries with different amounts of RGO have been produced for optimizing their composition effect on Li storage performance. Specifically, SnO2@RGO hybrids incorporated with optimized amount of RGO nanosheets (∼20.8%) exhibit highly enhanced capacity of ∼1025 mA h/g at 0.1 A/g and a reversible capacity of 750 mA h/g over 100 cycles at 0.2 A/g. The materials also deliver much better rate performance with average specific capacity of ∼498 mA h/g at 2 A/g in comparison with that of SnO2 nano-mulberries. After cycling for 600 times at 1 A/g, the SnO2@RGO electrodes still maintain high reversible capacity of ∼602 mA h/g, corresponding to 35% of the second cycle and 133% of the 70th discharge capacity.

KRTAP8-1 was the initial high-glycine-tyrosine keratin-associated protein gene recognized in sheep, but little is known about the functional influence of this gene. The current study used polymerase chain reaction-single stranded conformational polymorphism analysis to genotype KRTAP8-1 in 391 Southdown × Merino-cross sheep from six sire-lines. Five previously described variants (named A to E) of KRTAP8-1 were identified with frequencies of 67.0, 14.2, 7.0, 10.7 and 1.0%, respectively. Of the four variants (A, B, C and D) that occurred at a frequency greater than 5%, the presence of C was found to be associated with a reduction in mean fibre curvature (MFC) and the presence of D was associated with an increase in mean staple strength (MSS), whereas the presence of A had a trend of association with reduced MSS. Associations were not identified with other wool traits. These results suggest that variation in KRTAP8-1 affects MSS and MFC, and that KRTAP8-1 has the potential to be used as a genetic marker for improving these traits.

Although topographic mapping missions and geological surveys carried out by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are becoming increasingly prevalent, the lack of precise navigation in these scenarios still limits their application. This paper deals with the problems of long-term underwater navigation for AUVs and provides new mapping techniques by developing a Bathymetric Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (BSLAM) method based on graph SLAM technology. To considerably reduce the calculation cost, the trajectory of the AUV is divided into various submaps based on Differences of Normals (DoN). Loop closures between submaps are obtained by terrain matching; meanwhile, maximum likelihood terrain estimation is also introduced to build weak data association within the submap. Assisted by one weight voting method for loop closures, the global and local trajectory corrections work together to provide an accurate navigation solution for AUVs with weak data association and inaccurate loop closures. The viability, accuracy and real-time performance of the proposed algorithm are verified with data collected onboard, including an 8 km planned track recorded at a speed of 4 knots in Qingdao, China.

This paper introduces recent activities on Marx-based compact repetitive pulsed power generators at the Institute of Applied Electronics (IAE), China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), over the period 2010–2018. A characteristic feature of the generators described is the use of a simplified bipolar charged Marx circuit, in which the normal isolation resistors or inductors to ground are removed to make the circuit simpler. Several pulse-forming modules developed to generate a 100 ns square wave output are introduced, including thin-film dielectric lines of different structures, a pulse-forming line based on a Printed Circuit Board, and non-uniform pulse-forming networks. A compact repetitive three-electrode spark gap switch with low-jitter, high-voltage, and high-current was developed and is used in the generators. A positive and negative series resonant constant current power supply with high precision and high power is introduced. As an important part of the repetitive pulse power generator, a lower jitter pulse trigger source is introduced. Several typical high-power repetitive pulsed power generators developed at IAE are introduced including a 30 GW low-impedance Marx generator, a compact square-wave pulse generator based on Kapton-film dielectric Blumlein line, a 20 GW high pulse-energy repetitive PFN-Marx generator, and a coaxial Marx generator based on ceramic capacitors. The research of key technologies and their development status are discussed, which can provide a reference for the future development and application of miniaturization of compact and repetitive Marx generators.

Compared with commercial polyolefin membranes, polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membrane prepared by electrostatic spinning has higher porosity, electrolyte uptake, thermal stability, and lithium-ion conductivity, etc. However, poor mechanical performance has largely limited the application of electrospun PAN separators. In this study, PAN/polyimide (PI) composite membrane is prepared by electrostatic spinning to improve the mechanical and electrochemical performances. Scanning electron microscopy, thermal analysis method, and electrochemical methods were used for evaluation of the electrospun composite membrane. The results show that the composite membrane possesses good thermal stability and exhibits better mechanical performance than pristine PAN membrane (increasing by 1.1 times in tension strength). The addition of PI can increase porosity and fluid absorption rate obviously. In addition, the composite membrane has high ionic conductivity (18.77 × 10−4 S/cm), wide electrochemical window (about 4.0 V), and excellent cycling performance. It can retain a discharge specific capacity of 153 mA h/g even after 50 cycles at 0.5 C. The electrospun PAN/PI membrane may be a promising candidate for lithium-ion battery separators.

In this paper, we reported both the experimental demonstration and theoretical analysis of a Raman fiber laser based on a master oscillator–power amplifier configuration. The Raman fiber laser adopted the dual-wavelength bidirectional pumping configuration, utilizing 976 nm laser diodes and 1018 nm fiber lasers as the pump sources. A 60-m-long $25/400~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ ytterbium-doped fiber was used to convert the power from 1070 to 1124 nm, realizing a maximum power output of 3.7 kW with a 3 dB spectral width of 6.8 nm. Moreover, we developed a multi-frequency model taking into consideration the Raman gain spectrum and amplified spontaneous emission. The calculated spectral broadening of both the forward and backward laser was in good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, a 1.5 kW, 1183 nm second-order Raman fiber laser was further experimentally demonstrated by the addition of a 70-m-long germanium-doped passive fiber.