Dry wind-tunnel (DWT) flutter test systems model the unsteady distributed aerodynamic force using various electromagnetic exciters. They can be used to test the aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic stability of smart aircraft or high-speed flight vehicles. A new parameterised modelling method at the full system level based on the generalised force equivalence for DWT flutter systems is proposed herein. The full system model includes the structural dynamic model, electromechanical coupling model and fast aerodynamic computation model. An optimisation search method is applied to determine the best locations for measurement and excitation by introducing Fisher’s information matrix. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed system-level numerical DWT modelling method have been validated for a plate aeroelastic model with four exciters/transducers. The effects of key parameters including the number of exciters, the control time delay, the noise interference and the electrical parameters of the electromagnetic exciter model have also been investigated. The numerical and experimental results indicate that the proposed modelling method achieves good accuracy (with deviations of less than 1.5% from simulations and 4.5% from experimental test results for the flutter speed) and robust performance even in uncertain environments with a 10% noise level.

A multicenter study of sharps injuries (SIs) and other blood or body fluid (OBBF) exposures was conducted among 33,156 healthcare workers (HCWs) from 175 hospitals in Anhui, China. In total, 12,178 HCWs (36.7%) had experienced at least 1 SI in the previous 12 months and 8,116 HCWs (24.5%) had experienced at least 1 OBBF exposure during the previous 12 months.

The aim of this study was to explore the frequency and distribution of gene mutations that are related to isoniazid (INH) and rifampin (RIF)-resistance in the strains of the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) in Beijing, China. In this retrospective study, the genotypes of 173 MDR-TB strains were analysed by spoligotyping. The katG, inhA genes and the promoter region of inhA, in which genetic mutations confer INH resistance; and the rpoB gene, in which genetic mutations confer RIF resistance, were sequenced. The percentage of resistance-associated nucleotide alterations among the strains of different genotypes was also analysed. In total, 90.8% (157/173) of the MDR strains belonged to the Beijing genotype. Population characteristics were not significantly different among the strains of different genotypes. In total, 50.3% (87/173) strains had mutations at codon S315T of katG; 16.8% (29/173) of strains had mutations in the inhA promoter region; of them, 5.5% (15/173) had point mutations at −15 base (C→T) of the inhA promoter region. In total, 86.7% (150/173) strains had mutations at rpoB gene; of them, 40% (69/173) strains had mutations at codon S531L of rpoB. The frequency of mutations was not significantly higher in Beijing genotypic MDR strains than in non-Beijing genotypes. Beijing genotypic MDR-TB strains were spreading in Beijing and present a major challenge to TB control in this region. A high prevalence of katG Ser315Thr, inhA promoter region (−15C→T) and rpoB (S531L) mutations was observed. Molecular diagnostics based on gene mutations was a useful method for rapid detection of MDR-TB in Beijing, China.

Hypertension represents one of the most common pre-existing conditions and comorbidities in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. To explore whether hypertension serves as a risk factor for disease severity, a multi-centre, retrospective study was conducted in COVID-19 patients. A total of 498 consecutively hospitalised patients with lab-confirmed COVID-19 in China were enrolled in this cohort. Using logistic regression, we assessed the association between hypertension and the likelihood of severe illness with adjustment for confounders. We observed that more than 16% of the enrolled patients exhibited pre-existing hypertension on admission. More severe COVID-19 cases occurred in individuals with hypertension than those without hypertension (21% vs. 10%, P = 0.007). Hypertension associated with the increased risk of severe illness, which was not modified by other demographic factors, such as age, sex, hospital geological location and blood pressure levels on admission. More attention and treatment should be offered to patients with underlying hypertension, who usually are older, have more comorbidities and more susceptible to cardiac complications.

The strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) with integrated Doppler velocity log (DVL) is widely utilised in underwater navigation. In the complex underwater environment, however, the DVL information may be corrupted, and as a result the accuracy of the Kalman filter in the SINS/DVL integrated system degrades. To solve this, an adaptive Kalman filter (AKF) with measurement noise estimator to provide noise statistical characteristics is generally applied. However, existing methods like moving windows (MW) and exponential weighted moving average (EWMA) cannot adapt to a dynamic environment, which results in unsatisfactory noise estimation performance. Moreover, the forgetting factor has to be determined empirically. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved EWMA (IEWMA) method with adaptive forgetting factor for measurement noise estimation. First, the model for a SINS/DVL integrated system is established, then the MW and EWMA based measurement noise estimators are illustrated. Subsequently, the proposed IEWMA method which is adaptive to the various environments without experience is introduced. Finally, simulation and vehicle tests are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show that the proposed method outperforms the MW and EWMA methods in terms of measurement noise estimation and navigation accuracy.

This study aimed at estimating the transmissibility of hepatitis C. The data for hepatitis C cases were collected in six districts in Xiamen City, China from 2004 to 2018. A population-mixed susceptible-infectious-chronic-recovered (SICR) model was used to fit the data and the parameters of the model were calculated. The basic reproduction number (R0) and the number of newly transmitted cases by a primary case per month (MNI) were adopted to quantitatively assess the transmissibility of hepatitis C virus (HCV). Eleven curve estimation models were employed to predict the trends of R0 and MNI in the city. The SICR model fits the reported HCV data well (P < 0.01). The median R0 of each district in Xiamen is 0.4059. R0 follows the cubic model curve, the compound curve and the power function curve. The median MNI of each district in Xiamen is 0.0020. MNI follows the cubic model curve, the compound curve and the power function curve. The transmissibility of HCV follows a decreasing trend, which reveals that under the current policy for prevention and control, there would be a high feasibility to eliminate the transmission of HCV in the city.

We propose a nonparametric test of significant variables in the partial derivative of a regression mean function. The derivative is estimated by local polynomial estimation and the test statistic is constructed through a variation-based measure of the derivative in the direction of variables of interest. We establish the asymptotic null distribution of the test statistic and demonstrate that it is consistent. Motivated by the null distribution, we propose a wild bootstrap test, and show that it exhibits the same null distribution, whether the null is valid or not. We perform a Monte Carlo study to demonstrate its encouraging finite sample performance. An empirical application is conducted showing how the test can be applied to infer certain aspects of regression structures in a hedonic price model.

To improve the stability of Cs2SnCl6 under aqueous/moisture environments, we applied a concept of artificial passivation by depositing a protective TiO2 coating of 10 nm on the surface of Cs2SnCl6. Static leaching experiments results indicate that the initial release rates of Cs+ and Cl− are decreased by 20–30 times with TiO2 coating, suggesting its possibility to improve the short-term water/environmental stability of Cs2SnCl6. An amorphous-to-crystalline phase transition in TiO2 film was observed, possibly resulting in degradation of Cs2SnCl6. However, the crystalline TiO2 film still remains after 21 days water exposure and can still act as an effective passivation layer to reduce the release rates of Cs+ and Cl- by as much as about 17 and 7 times, respectively, relative to static leaching without artificial coatings. Therefore, the water/environmental stability of metal halide perovskite Cs2SnCl6, which is a highly soluble molecular salt, can be enhanced by the nanoscale TiO2 coating as an artificial passivation film.

Cysticercosis caused by the metacestode larval stage of Taenia hydatigena formerly referred to as Cysticercus tenuicollis is a disease of veterinary importance that constitutes a significant threat to livestock production worldwide, especially in endemic regions due to condemnation of visceral organs and mortality rate of infected young animals. While the genetic diversity among parasites is found to be potentially useful in many areas of research including molecular diagnostics, epidemiology and control, that of T. hydatigena across the globe remains poorly understood. In this study, analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of adult worms and larval stages of T. hydatigena isolated from dogs, sheep and a wild boar in China showed that the population structure consists of two major haplogroups with very high nucleotide substitutions involving synonymous and non-synonymous changes. Compared with other cestodes such as Echinococcus spp., the genetic variation observed between the haplogroups is sufficient for the assignment of major haplotype or genotype division as both groups showed a total of 166 point-mutation differences between the 12 mitochondrial protein-coding gene sequences. Preliminary analysis of a nuclear protein-coding gene (pepck) did not reveal any peculiar changes between both groups which suggests that these variants may only differ in their mitochondrial makeup.

Forecasting the epidemics of the diseases is very valuable in planning and supplying resources effectively. This study aims to estimate the epidemiological trends of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevalence and mortality using the advanced α-Sutte Indicator, and its prediction accuracy level was compared with the most frequently adopted autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) method. Time-series analysis was performed based on the total confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 in the world, Brazil, Peru, Canada and Chile between 27 February 2020 and 30 June 2020. By comparing the prediction reliability indices, including the root mean square error, mean absolute error, mean error rate, mean absolute percentage error and root mean square percentage error, the α-Sutte Indicator was found to produce lower forecasting error rates than the ARIMA model in all data apart from the prevalence testing set globally. The α-Sutte Indicator can be recommended as a useful tool to nowcast and forecast the COVID-19 prevalence and mortality of these regions except for the prevalence around the globe in the near future, which will help policymakers to plan and prepare health resources effectively. Also, the findings of our study may have managerial implications for the outbreak in other countries.

Nickel-coated carbon nanotubes (Ni-CNTs) were achieved by electroless plating. Laser cladded IN718 and IN718 with 10, 30, and 50 wt% additions of Ni-CNTs were fabricated. The structural evolution of CNTs in the laser-deposited layers was studied; the microstructure, tensile, and wear properties of the laser-cladded alloys were characterized. The results show that CNTs in the laser-deposited layers are mostly transformed to carbon nanoproducts (CNPs) in the forms of graphene nanosheets, graphene fragments, carbon nanoribbons, and diamond-like nanoparticles by unzipping, interbonding, collapsing, and curvature of CNTs. The interdendritic Laves phase formation is dramatically depressed due to the addition of Ni-CNTs, but the excess addition of the Ni-CNTs can undesirably increase the formation of NbC. The addition of Ni-CNTs effectively improves the tensile and wear properties. The most superior tensile and wear properties are achieved in the layers with 30 and 50 wt% additions of Ni-CNTs, respectively. The generation of intermetallic phase and CNPs are revealed to be two dominant effects both on the tensile and wear properties of the laser-cladded alloys.

Disorder of hepatic glucose metabolism is the characteristic of late-pregnant sows. The purpose of our study was to look into the mechanism of garcinol on the improvement of hepatic gluconeogenic enzyme in late-pregnant sows. Thirty second- and third-parity sows (Duroc × Yorkshire × Landrace, n 10/diet) were fed a basal diet (control) or that diet supplemented with 100 mg/kg (Low Gar) or 500 mg/kg (High Gar) garcinol from day 90 of gestation to the end of farrowing. The livers were processed to measure enzymatic activity. Hepatocytes from pregnant sows were transfected with P300/CBP-associating factor (PCAF) small interfering RNA (siRNA) or treated with garcinol. Dietary garcinol had no effect on average daily feed intake, body weight (BW), backfat and BW gain of late-pregnant sows. Garcinol promoted plasma glucose levels in pregnant sows and newborn piglets. Garcinol up-regulated hepatic gluconeogenic enzyme expression and decreased PCAF activity. Garcinol had no effect on the expression of PPAR-γ co-activator 1α (PGC-1α) and Forkhead box O1 (FOXO1) but significantly increased their activity and decreased their acetylation in late-pregnant sows. Transfection of PCAF siRNA to hepatocytes of pregnant sows increased PGC-1α and FOXO1 activities. Furthermore, in hepatocytes of pregnant sows, garcinol treatment also up-regulated the activities of PGC-1α and FOXO1 and inhibited the acetylation of PGC-1α and FOXO1. Garcinol improves hepatic gluconeogenic enzyme expression in late-pregnant sows, and this may be due to the mechanism of down-regulating the acetylation of PGC-1α and FOXO1 induced by PCAF in isolated hepatocytes.

The flow topology and leading-edge vortex (LEV) formation and detachment mechanism of a pitching and plunging flat plate are experimentally investigated in this study. Focus is placed on three novel aspects. First, to examine the differences between start-up and cyclic motions, the flow fields of one-shot experiments are compared to cyclic cases. The results show that the start cycle has very limited effect on the cyclic LEV development and flow topology evolution. Next, the influence of the maximum effective angle of attack on the LEV development in cyclic motion is introduced. Different secondary structures that lead to the detachment of LEV are found with variation of maximum effective angle of attack. Depending on the leading-edge shear-layer angle, three different flow topologies develop on the plate: quasi-steady development, boundary-layer eruption and secondary vortex formation. Which of these three topological scenarios occurs depends entirely on the maximum effective angle of attack. A vortex Reynolds number based on the transition time of the leading-edge shear-layer angle is defined to quantitatively assess which of the flow topologies will appear. Finally, a simplified model to describe the observed LEV growth is proposed, based on the assumptions that the velocity is constant at the outer vortex boundary and that the vortex boundary is a circular arc starting from the leading edge. The LEV circulation growth is found to increase linearly with the combination of the effective inflow velocity and the effective angle of attack.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome. Recent evidence has suggested the protective effects of honey consumption against the metabolic syndrome, but the association between honey intake and NAFLD is still unclear. We investigated how the consumption frequency of honey was associated with NAFLD in the general population. This was a cross-sectional study of 21 979 adults aged 20–90 years. NAFLD was diagnosed based on the ultrasound-diagnosed fatty liver without significant alcohol intake and other liver diseases. Diet information, including consumption frequency of honey, was assessed by a validated 100-item FFQ. OR with 95 % CI were calculated by the binary logistic regression model, adjusting for confounding factors identified by the directed acyclic graph. Overall, 6513 adults (29·6 %) had NAFLD. Compared with participants consuming ≤1 time/week of honey, the multivariable OR of NAFLD were 0·86 (95 % CI 0·77, 0·97) for 2–6 times/week and 1·10 (95 % CI 0·95, 1·27) for ≥1 times/d (Pfor trend = 0·90). The results were generally similar in subgroups of BMI at a cut-point of 24·0 kg/m2 (Pfor interaction = 0·10). In this large-scale study, consuming honey 2–6 times/week was inversely associated with NAFLD, whereas consuming honey ≥1 times/d had no association with NAFLD. These results need replication in other large-scale prospective studies.