FFD (free-form deformation method) is one of the most commonly used parameterisation methods at present. It places the parameterised objects inside the control volume through coordinate system transformation, and controls the control volume through control points, thus realising the deformation control of its internal objects. Firstly, this paper systematically analyses and compares the characteristics and technical requirements of Bernstein, B-spline and NURBS (non-uniform rational b-splines) basic functions that can be adopted by FFD, and uses the minimum number of control points required to achieve the specified control effect threshold to express the control capability. Aiming at the problem of discontinuity at the right end in the actual calculation of B-spline basis function, a method of adding a small epsilon is proposed to solve it. Then, three basic functions are applied to the FFD parameterisation method, respectively, and the differences are compared from two aspects of the accurate expression of the model and the ability of deformation control. It is found that the BFFD (b-spline free-form deformation) approach owns better comprehensive performance when the control points are distributed correctly. In this paper, the BFFD method is improved, and a p-BFFD (reverse solution points based BFFD) method based on inverse solution is proposed to realise the free distribution of control points under the specified topology. Further, for the lifting body configuration, the control points of the p-BFFD method are brought closer to the airframe forming the EDGE-p-BFFD (edge constraints based p-BFFD) method. For the case in this paper, the proposed EDGE-p-BFFD method not only has fairly high parameterisation accuracy, but also reduces the expression error from 1.01E-3 to 1.25E-4, which is nearly ten times. It can also achieve effective lifting body guideline constraints, and has the ability of local deformation adapting to the configuration characteristics. In terms of the proportion of effective control points, the EDGE-p-BFFD method increases the proportion of effective control points from 36.7% to 50%, and the more control points, the more obvious the proportion increase effect. The new method also has better effect on the continuity of geometric deformation. At the same time, this paper introduces the independent deformation method of the upper and lower surfaces based on the double control body frames, which effectively avoids the deformation coupling problem of the simultaneous change of the upper and lower surfaces caused by the movement of control points in the traditional single control framework.

The pulsed jet is a novel and effective active mixing enhancement approach. For the transverse pulsed jet in the supersonic crossflow, the frequency influence is investigated using the three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with the SST k-ω turbulence model. The averaged flow field properties of the pulsed jet are better than those of the steady jet when considering mixing efficiency and jet penetration depth, especially for the case with the pulsed frequency being 50kHz. The flow field structures of the pulsed jet are connected with the time, with periodic wave structures generating in the flow field and moving downstream. The size of the wave structures and its distance are related to the frequency, namely the size and flow distance are relatively small at 50kHz, and it takes some time for the pulsed jet to establish its influence in the full flow field. At low frequencies, the flow field produces large fluctuations, and this may be detrimental to the stable operation of the engine.

Planting patterns have significant effects on rice growth. Nonetheless, little is known about differences in annual crop yield and resource utilization among mechanized rice planting patterns in a rice–wheat cropping system. Field experiments were conducted from 2014 to 2017 using three treatments: pot seedling transplanting for rice and row sowing for wheat (PST-RS), carpet seedling transplanting for rice and row sowing for wheat (CST-RS) and row sowing for both crops (RS-RS). The results showed that, compared with RS-RS, PST-RS and CST-RS prolonged annual crop growth duration by 25–26 and 13–15 days, increased effective accumulated temperature by 399 and 212°C days and increased cumulative solar radiation by 454 and 228 MJ/m2 because of the earlier sowing of rice by 28 and 16 days in PST-RS and CST-RS, respectively. Compared with RS-RS, the annual crop yield of PST-RS and CST-RS increased by 3.1–3.8 and 2.0–2.6 t/ha, respectively, because of the increase in the number of spikelets/kernels per hectare, aboveground biomass, mean leaf area index and grain–leaf ratio. In addition, temperature production efficiency, solar radiation production efficiency and solar radiation use efficiency were higher in PST-RS, followed by CST-RS and RS-RS. These results suggest that mechanized rice planting patterns such as PST-RS increase annual crop production in rice–wheat cropping systems by increasing yield and solar energy utilization.

Implementation assessment plans are crucial for clinical trials to achieve their full potential. Without a proactive plan to implement trial results, it can take decades for one-fifth of effective interventions to be adopted into routine care settings. The Veterans Health Administration Office of Research and Development is undergoing a systematic transformation to embed implementation planning in research protocols through the Cooperative Studies Program, its flagship clinical research program. This manuscript has two objectives: 1) to introduce an Implementation Planning Assessment (IPA) Tool that any clinical trialist may use to facilitate post-trial implementation of interventions found to be effective and 2) to provide a case study demonstrating the IPA Tool’s use. The IPA Tool encourages study designers to initially consider rigorous data collection to maximize acceptability of the intervention by end-users. It also helps identify and prepare potential interested parties at local and national leadership levels to ensure, upon trial completion, interventions can be integrated into programs, technologies, and policies in a sustainable way. The IPA Tool can alleviate some of the overwhelming nature of implementation science by providing a practical guide based on implementation science principles for researchers desiring to scale up and spread effective, clinical trial-tested interventions to benefit patients.

Customer churn, which insurance companies use to describe the non-renewal of existing customers, is a widespread and expensive problem in general insurance, particularly because contracts are usually short-term and are renewed periodically. Traditionally, customer churn analyses have employed models which utilise only a binary outcome (churn or not churn) in one period. However, real business relationships are multi-period, and policyholders may reside and transition between a wider range of states beyond that of the simply churn/not churn throughout this relationship. To better encapsulate the richness of policyholder behaviours through time, we propose multi-state customer churn analysis, which aims to model behaviour over a larger number of states (defined by different combinations of insurance coverage taken) and across multiple periods (thereby making use of readily available longitudinal data). Using multinomial logistic regression (MLR) with a second-order Markov assumption, we demonstrate how multi-state customer churn analysis offers deeper insights into how a policyholder’s transition history is associated with their decision making, whether that be to retain the current set of policies, churn, or add/drop a coverage. Applying this model to commercial insurance data from the Wisconsin Local Government Property Insurance Fund, we illustrate how transition probabilities between states are affected by differing sets of explanatory variables and that a multi-state analysis can potentially offer stronger predictive performance and more accurate calculations of customer lifetime value (say), compared to the traditional customer churn analysis techniques.

The great demographic pressure brings tremendous volume of beef demand. The key to solve this problem is the growth and development of Chinese cattle. In order to find molecular markers conducive to the growth and development of Chinese cattle, sequencing was used to determine the position of copy number variations (CNVs), bioinformatics analysis was used to predict the function of ZNF146 gene, real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used for CNV genotyping and one-way analysis of variance was used for association analysis. The results showed that there exists CNV in Chr 18: 47225201-47229600 (5.0.1 version) of ZNF146 gene through the early sequencing results in the laboratory and predicted ZNF146 gene was expressed in liver, skeletal muscle and breast cells, and was amplified or overexpressed in pancreatic cancer, which promoted the development of tumour through bioinformatics. Therefore, it is predicted that ZNF146 gene affects the proliferation of muscle cells, and then affects the growth and development of cattle. Furthermore, CNV genotyping of ZNF146 gene was three types (deletion type, normal type and duplication type) by Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR). The association analysis results showed that ZNF146-CNV was significantly correlated with rump length of Qinchuan cattle, hucklebone width of Jiaxian red cattle and heart girth of Yunling cattle. From the above results, ZNF146-CNV had a significant effect on growth traits, which provided an important candidate molecular marker for growth and development of Chinese cattle.

Background: Eye movements reveal neurodegenerative disease processes due to overlap between oculomotor circuitry and disease-affected areas. Characterizing oculomotor behaviour in context of cognitive function may enhance disease diagnosis and monitoring. We therefore aimed to quantify cognitive impairment in neurodegenerative disease using saccade behaviour and neuropsychology. Methods: The Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative recruited individuals with neurodegenerative disease: one of Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, or cerebrovascular disease. Patients (n=450, age 40-87) and healthy controls (n=149, age 42-87) completed a randomly interleaved pro- and anti-saccade task (IPAST) while their eyes were tracked. We explored the relationships of saccade parameters (e.g. task errors, reaction times) to one another and to cognitive domain-specific neuropsychological test scores (e.g. executive function, memory). Results: Task performance worsened with cognitive impairment across multiple diseases. Subsets of saccade parameters were interrelated and also differentially related to neuropsychology-based cognitive domain scores (e.g. antisaccade errors and reaction time associated with executive function). Conclusions: IPAST detects global cognitive impairment across neurodegenerative diseases. Subsets of parameters associate with one another, suggesting disparate underlying circuitry, and with different cognitive domains. This may have implications for use of IPAST as a cognitive screening tool in neurodegenerative disease.

Weapon target allocation (WTA) is an effective method to solve the battlefield fire optimisation problem, which plays an important role in intelligent automated decision-making. We researched the multitarget allocation problem to maximise the attack effectiveness when multiple interceptors cooperatively attack multiple ground targets. Firstly, an effective and reasonable fitness function is established, based on the situation between the interceptors and targets, by comprehensively considering the relative range, relative angle, speed, capture probability and radiation source matching performance and thoroughly evaluating them based on the advantage of the attack effectiveness. Secondly, the optimisation performance of the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm is adaptively improved. We propose an adaptive simulated annealing-particle swarm optimisation (SA-PSO) algorithm by introducing the simulated annealing algorithm into the adaptive PSO algorithm. The proposed algorithm can enhance the convergence speed and overcome the disadvantage of the PSO algorithm easily falling into a local extreme point. Finally, a simulation example is performed in a scenario where ten interceptors cooperate to attack eight ground targets; comparative experiments are conducted between the adaptive SA-PSO algorithm and PSO algorithm. The simulation results indicate that the proposed adaptive SA-PSO algorithm demonstrates great performance in convergence speed and global optimisation capabilities, and a maximised attack effectiveness can be guaranteed.

Supported by (1) medical research grants CMRPG3C0041/42 from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and NRRPG2H0031 from Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan to Chemin Lin (2) NMRPG3G6031/32 from Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan to Shwu-Hua, Lee (3) the KKHo International Charitable Foundation to Tatia Lee.

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is a disease with a high case-fatality rate that is caused by infection with the SFTS virus (SFTSV). Five electronic databases were systematically searched to identify relevant articles published from 1 January 2011 to 1 December 2019. The pooled rates with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated by a fixed-effect or random-effect model analysis. The results showed that 92 articles were included in this meta-analysis. For the confirmed SFTS cases, the case-fatality rate was 0.15 (95% CI 0.11, 0.18). Two hundred and ninety-six of 1384 SFTS patients indicated that they had been bitten by ticks and the biting rate was 0.21 (95% CI 0.16, 0.26). The overall pooled seroprevalence of SFTSV antibodies among the healthy population was 0.04 (95% CI 0.03, 0.05). For the overall seroprevalence of SFTSV in animals, the seroprevalence of SFTSV was 0.25 (95% CI 0.20, 0.29). The infection rate of SFTSV in ticks was 0.08 (95% CI 0.05, 0.11). In conclusion, ticks can serve as transmitting vectors of SFTSVs and reservoir hosts. Animals can be infected by tick bites, and as a reservoir host, SFTSV circulates continuously between animals and ticks in nature. Humans are infected by tick bites and direct contact with patient secretions.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Recent studies indicate B cells are involved in dermal fibroblast activation and collagen deposition in the skin. However, B cell distribution in epidermal and dermal layers is unknown. Here, We aim to characterize the distribution of B cells residing in normal skin and keloidal scars. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: One abdominal normal skin sample and two keloid samples (ear and shoulder) were obtained from the University of Colorado Biorepository Core Facility and from the Plastic Surgery Clinics. Five micron sections from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples were prepared for multiplex fluorescence immunohistochemistry by the Human Immunology & Immunotherapy Initiative. We stained for CD20+, CD19+, and DAPI. Slides were imaged using Vectra®3 scanning system from PerkinElmer. Images were analyzed in InForm®Tissue Finder, phenotpr, phenoptrReports by Akoya biosciences. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We found a significant increase in the percentage of CD20+ and CD19+ B cells in keloid skin compared to normal skin tissue (14.50% and 14.20% vs 6.47% and 7.56% of the total cells), respectively. Interestingly, we found that in the epidermis of keloid skin CD20+ cell were more abundant (14.46%) whereas in the epidermis normal skin CD20+ cells were less predominant (5.14%). In the dermis of keloid skin, CD20+ and CD19+ were in equal proportions (13%) whereas in normal skin CD19+ cells were more predominant (10.44%) compared to CD20+ cells (7.04%). Dual positive B cells, CD19+/CD20+ cells, were more abundant in keloid dermis (11.06%) compared to normal skin dermis (1.24%). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: B cells are involved in fibroblast activation in diseases such as scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis. With the increase of CD19+/CD20+ B cells in keloids, the role of B cells in keloid pathogenesis warrants further study. CD27 staining may determine if these are activated or follicular B cells.