Objective:To explore the application and treatment efficacy of less invasive surfactant administration (LISA) and nasal high-frequency oscillation ventilation (nHFOV) in very low and extremely low birth weight preterm infants with neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (NRDS).Methods:A total of 85 very low and extremely low birth weight preterm infants with gestational age ranging between 27-32 weeks who were diagnosed with NRDS in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from July 2018 to October 2019 were enrolled.After being stratified by gestational age of >27-29 weeks, >29-30 weeks, >30-31 weeks, >31-32 weeks, the neonates were divided into the LISA group (40 cases) and the intubation-surfactant-extubation (INSURE) group (45 cases) by the random envelope method.The LISA group was subdivided into the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) group (25 cases) and the nHFOV group (15 cases) by the same method.The patients in the INSURE group were infused with pulmonary surfactant (PS) through the endotracheal tube under positive airway pressure, and then treated with CPAP after extubation.The patients in the LISA group were first treated with CPAP and injected with PS through the gastric tube.After removing the gastric tube, the patients in the CPAP group were given CPAP-assisted ventilation, while the patients in the nHFOV group were given nHFOV-assisted ventilation or mechanical ventilation if nHFOV-assisted ventilation failed.The feasibility of LISA technology and nHFOV was observed, and the adverse reactions, mechanical ventilation, oxygen duration, hospital stay and the incidence of NRDS complications in different groups of the patients were compared.Results:(1) The mechanical ventilation rate (5.0% vs.22.2%), the incidence of broncho-pulmonary dysplasia (BPD) (20.0% vs.42.2%) and the incidence of periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) (12.5% vs.42.2%) in the LISA group were significantly lower than those in the INSURE group (all P<0.05). There were no statistically significant differences in total oxygen duration, hospitalization duration, intraventricular he-morrhage (IVH), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) between the LISA group and the INSURE group (all P>0.05). (2) There was no significant difference in adverse reactions between the LISA group and the INSURE group as well as between the CPAP group and the nHFOV group (all P>0.05). (3) The younger the gestational age at birth, the higher the incidence of NRDS complications.Patients in the LISA group had a lower incidence of NPDS complications than patients of the same gestational age in the INSURE group, but the diffe-rence was not statistically significant (all P>0.05). (4) There was no significant difference in the mechanical ventilation rate and the incidence of BPD, IVH, PVL, NEC and ROP complications between the CPAP group and the nHFOV group (all P>0.05). Conclusions:In the treatment of very low and extremely low birth weight preterm infants with NRDS at the gestational age of 27-32 weeks, LISA technology is a safe and effective PS delivery method, which can reduce the mechanical ventilation rate and the incidence of BPD and PVL.The nHFOV can be used as an initial model for respiratory support of NRDS preterm infants with very low and ultra-low birth weight.LISA combined with nHFOV is applicable to the treatment of preterm infants with NRDS.

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic nematode that needs to develop in different hosts in different larval stages. Freshwater snails, such as Pomacea canaliculata, are the intermediate host, and rats are the definitive host. Periodic shedding of the cuticle (moulting) is an important biological process for the survival and development of the parasite in the intermediate and definitive hosts. However, there are few studies on the cuticle alterations between different stages of this parasite. In this study, we observed the ultrastructural appearance and changes of the cuticle of the 2nd/3rd stage larvae (L2/L3) and the 3rd/4th stage larvae (L3/L4) using a scanning electron microscope. We also first divided L2/L3 into late L2 and early L3. The late L2 lacked alae, but possessed a pull-chain-like fissure. Irregular alignment of spherical particles on the cuticle were noted compared to the L3. Alae appeared in the early L3. The old cuticle turned into a thin film-like structure which adhered to the new cuticle, and spherical particles were seen regularly arranged on the surface of this structure. Regular rectangular cavities were found on the surface of L3/L4. The caudal structure of L3/L4 was much larger than that of L3, but caudal inflation, such as seen in L4, was not observed. These results are the first to reveal the ultrastructural changes of the cuticle of A. cantonensis before and after moulting of L2/L3 and L3/L4.
Angiostrongylus cantonensis/*physiology/*ultrastructure ; Animals ; Larva/physiology/ultrastructure ; Microscopy, Electron, Scanning ; *Molting

A new method of automatic detection of brain lesion based on wavelet feature vector of CT images has been proposed in the present paper. Firstly, we created training samples by manually segmenting normal CT images into gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid sub images. Then, we obtained the cluster centers using FCM clustering algorithm. When detecting lesions, the CT images to be detected was automatically segmented into sub images, with a certain degree of over-segmenting allowed under the premise of ensuring accuracy as much as possible. Then we extended these sub images and extracted the features to compute the distances with the cluster centers and to determine whether they belonged to the three kinds of normal samples, or, otherwise, belonged to lesions. The proposed method was verified by experiments.
Automatic Data Processing ; methods ; Brain ; diagnostic imaging ; Brain Neoplasms ; diagnostic imaging ; Humans ; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Intracranial Hemorrhages ; diagnostic imaging ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; methods ; Wavelet Analysis

Primary pigmented nodular adrenal disease (PPNAD) is a kind of autosomal dominant inherited disease. Patient in the study presented with Cushing's syndrome, and clinical and pathological diagnosis of PPNAD was confirmed. It is now confirmed that there are two relevant genes and their mutations may lead to PPNAD. This study showed no mutations in the patient, surpecting if there would be an alternative mechanism or a new gene in playing the role.

Grey system theory was applied in analysis of Electroencephalogram (EEG) to extract features of driving fatigue in this study. Model GM(1,1) was built for EEG collected during simulative driving experiments. At the same time, the data of steering wheel movements and subjective fatigue level were analyzed as reference. The results of experiments reveal that the co-deviation of Model GM(1,1) parameter a and b, cov(a,b), coincides with the standard deviation of steering wheel movements. This indicates that Grey system theory is effective for EEG analysis and the parameters of GM(1,1) can well reflect the change of driving fatigue.
Adult ; Automobile Driving ; psychology ; Computer Simulation ; Electroencephalography ; methods ; Fatigue ; physiopathology ; Humans ; Male ; Models, Theoretical

This paper is devoted to predicting the transmembrane helices in proteins by statistical modeling. A novel segment-training algorithm for Hidden Markov modeling based on the biological characters of transmembrane proteins has been introduced into training and predicting the topological characters of transmembrane helices such as location and orientation. Compared to the standard Balm-Welch training algorithm, this algorithm has lower complexity while prediction performance is better than or at least comparable to other existing methods. With a 10-fold cross-validation test on a database containing 160 transmembrane proteins, an HMM model trained with this algorithm outperformed two other prediction methods: TMHMM and MEMSTAT; the novel method was validated by its prediction sensitivity (97.0%) and correct location (91.3%). The results showed that this algorithm is an efficient and a reasonable supplement to modeling and prediction of transmembrane helices.
Algorithms ; Data Interpretation, Statistical ; Mathematical Computing ; Membrane Proteins ; chemistry ; Models, Statistical ; Protein Conformation

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is fit for studies on the long-range exponential correlations of non-stationary time serial. In this paper, for elucidating the characteristics of different sleep stages, DFA is adopted to analyze the physiological data collected during sleep. The parameters such as electroencephalogram (EEG), R-R interval sequence and stroke volume (SV) are analyzed, and the scaling exponent a is calculated. The experimental results reveal that the values of a differ much in different sleep stages,that the rules of EEG and SV are alike, that alpha increases with the deepening of sleep, but in inverse for R-R interval sequence that alpha decreases with the deepening of sleep. These indicate that the method of DFA is practical in the analysis of physiological parameters.
Data Interpretation, Statistical ; Electrocardiography ; statistics & numerical data ; Electroencephalography ; statistics & numerical data ; Humans ; Polysomnography ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Sleep Stages ; physiology

In order to study event-related desynchronization (ERD) related to voluntary movement, we designed two experiments. In the first experiment, untrained subjects were required to imagine the action of typing with left or right index finger for about 1 second before real action, whereas they were required to type instantly after instruction in the second experiment. By analyzing spontaneous EEG signals between the instruction and the action, we predicted which finger was used. The prediction accuracy in the first experiment fell from 85% to 71% with the progress of experiment, the average accuracy being 78%, whereas the prediction result was almost random guess in the second experiment. The results demonstrate that (1) ERD patterns are significantly affected by the effective duration of motion imagination, (2) unconscious reduction of this duration can decrease the prediction accuracy. Therefore, when designing subsequent BCI experiments, we should devote our attention to the question of how to keep the effective duration of motion imagination.
Brain ; physiology ; Cortical Synchronization ; Electroencephalography ; Humans ; Man-Machine Systems ; Task Performance and Analysis ; User-Computer Interface

Some noises still exist in the single-trial averaged visual evoked potentials (VEP), so further extraction of the above results is of significance. Independent component analysis (ICA)can separate the sources from their mixtures and make the output statistically as independent as possible; it can remove noises effectively. In this paper, the principle, experiment analyses and results of ICA based on quasi-Newton iteration rule for VEP feature extraction are introduced, It is compared with the fixed-point FastICA algorithm. The experiment results show that the provided algorithm may reinforce signals effectively and extract distinct P300 from the single-trial averaged VEP. It is of good applicability.
Algorithms ; Event-Related Potentials, P300 ; physiology ; Evoked Potentials, Visual ; physiology ; Humans ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; methods ; Principal Component Analysis ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted

The high frame rate (HFR) ultrasonic imaging system, which is developed with limited diffraction beams, constructs images at a high frame rate. However the rectangular imaging area, to some extent, restricts the far field imaging information. At the same time, because of one transmission for constructing image, the system suffers from low SNR. In this paper we present a computationally efficient method to construct sector mode image and to increase the SNR in HFR system. The method uses Golay complementary sequence as excitation to realize two transmission events. Each event simultaneously transmits two plane waves with different transmission angle. Then the received echo signals related to different angle are separated according to orthogonality of Golay complementary sequence and used to construct two images of different area by HFR method. Finally the two images are synthesized to one frame of sector mode image.
Image Enhancement ; methods ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Imaging, Three-Dimensional ; methods ; Ultrasonography ; methods