The Clinical Characteristic and Management of Patients with Nocardiosis in a Tertiary Hospital in China

Liu Peilin,Wang Zhiqian,Jian Zijuan,Liu Xuan,Li Yanming,Yan Qun,Zhong Baiyun,Liao Mengting,Liang Xianghui,Liu Wenen 한국미생물·생명공학회 2023 Journal of microbiology and biotechnology Vol.33 No.5

Nocardiosis is an uncommon opportunistic bacterial infection which becomes a significant health problem due to its increasing incidence and high mortality rate. However, many nocardiosis patients are underdiagnosed by physicians. To summarize the clinical characteristics and management of nocardiosis would help with better diagnosis and prognosis of nocardiosis. This retrospective study was conducted based on the medical records of nocardiosis patients between January 2015 and December 2021 in a tertiary hospital in China. Overall, 44 nocardiosis patients with 54 specimens were included. The patients consisted of 26 males and 18 females with a mean age of 50.4 ± 13.2 years. Among 44 patients, 26 (59.1%) were previously given immunosuppressive therapy. Connective tissue diseases (CTDs) were the most common underlying disease (16/44). The most frequent infection sites were the lungs (17/44) and skin or soft tissues (8/44). Common symptoms included cough (23/44), expectoration (18/44), fever (15/44), and subcutaneous abscesses (15/44). Forty-five out of 54 specimens (83.3%) required over 48 hours of culture time for nocardiosis detection. Thirty-six patients were cured or improved, 5 patients were discharged from the hospital due to poor prognosis, and 1 patient died. The average diagnosis time of poor prognosis cases was 19.7 days, which was significantly longer than those of improved or cured patients (7.3 days). Immunosuppressed patients comprise a large part of nocardiosis cases, which is worth attention in clinical practice. Early diagnosis, specifically through prolonged cultivation time of specimen, could help achieve better prognosis of nocardiosis patients.

Autogenous Shrinkage and Crack Resistance of Carbon Nanotubes Reinforced Cement‑Based Materials

Yanming Liu,Tao Shi,Yujing Zhao,Yuan Gu,Zhifang Zhao,Jiabin Chen,Bingmiao Zheng,Shichong Shi 한국콘크리트학회 2020 International Journal of Concrete Structures and M Vol.14 No.5

Cracking caused by shrinkage deformation of cement-based materials at early age is a major problem leading to material failure in restrained conditions. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are incorporated into cement-based materials, and the autogenous shrinkage and crack resistance of the new composite materials obtained by linear shrinkage and ring tests are studied to solve the destruction of the materials caused by the shrinkage of cement-based materials. The results showed that addition of CNTs significantly inhibited the autogenous shrinkage of cement-based materials with maximum reduction rate above 40%. CNTs also significantly improved the cracking resistance of cement-based materials. The optimal effect was noticed at CNTs content of 0.1 wt%. The incorporation of CNTs not only inhibits the autogenous shrinkage of cement-based materials, but also inhibits the drying shrinkage of cement-based materials to some extent. Therefore, carbon nanotubes have the potential to solve the destruction of materials caused by shrinkage of cement-based materials.

Removal of Pb2+ from the aqueous solution by tartrate intercalated layered double hydroxides

Yanming Shen,Xiaolei Zhao,Xi Zhang,Shifeng Li,Dongbin Liu,Lihui Fan 한국화학공학회 2016 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.33 No.1

Adsorption of Pb2+ ion by a tartrate intercalated MgAl layered double hydroxides (MgAl-TA LDHs) was studied. The adsorption isotherms and kinetics were investigated as a function of various experimental parameters using batch adsorption experiments. The results indicated that the adsorption isotherm was well described by Sips model. The kinetic adsorption data were fitted well to the pseudo-second-order kinetic equation. The adsorption of Pb2+ was controlled mainly by the chemical process combined with intraparticle diffusion. Parameters of adsorption thermodynamic suggested that the interaction of Pb2+ adsorbed by MgAl-TA LDHs adsorbents was thermodynamically spontaneous and endothermic.

Analysis of Interference with WPT Mobile and Portable Devices That Use NFC

Yanming Cheng,Ilkyoo Lee,Cheng Liu,Jing Niu 대한전자공학회 2019 IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing & Computing Vol.8 No.5

Currently, interest in wireless power transfer (WPT) is increasing for mobile- and portable-device applications. It is necessary to analyze the interference between WPT chargers and other wireless devices for the efficient use of frequency resources. In this paper, the impact of a WPT charger for a cellular phone and a near field communication (NFC) device is analyzed by using the minimum coupling loss (MCL) method and the Monte Carlo (MC) method. As a result, the difference in the maximum allowed transmitting power of a WPT charger is obtained based on different numbers of WPT chargers in order to protect NFC devices without a protection distance between them and the WPT charger. The analysis approach and results are expected to be used as a guideline to investigate the coexistence of low-power devices.

Job-aware Network Scheduling for Hadoop Cluster

( Wen Liu ),( Zhigang Wang ),( Yanming Shen ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2017 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.11 No.1

In recent years, data centers have become the core infrastructure to deal with big data processing. For these big data applications, network transmission has become one of the most important factors affecting the performance. In order to improve network utilization and reduce job completion time, in this paper, by real-time monitoring from the application layer, we propose job-aware priority scheduling. Our approach takes the correlations of flows in the same job into account, and flows in the same job are assigned the same priority. Therefore, we expect that flows in the same job finish their transmissions at about the same time, avoiding lagging flows. To achieve load balancing, two approaches (Flow-based and Spray) using ECMP (Equal-Cost multi-path routing) are presented. We implemented our scheme using NS-2 simulator. In our evaluations, we emulate real network environment by setting background traffic, scheduling delay and link failures. The experimental results show that our approach can enhance the Hadoop job execution efficiency of the shuffle stage, significantly reduce the network transmission time of the highest priority job.

Risk Factors of Rehemorrhage in Postoperative Patients with Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage : A Case-Control Study

Ren, Yanming,Zheng, Jun,Liu, Xiaowei,Li, Hao,You, Chao The Korean Neurosurgical Society 2018 Journal of Korean neurosurgical society Vol.61 No.1

Objective : Rehemorrhage is the most severe complication of postoperative patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage. The aim of the present study was to assess independent predictors of rehemorrhage and find the possibility of preventing rehemorrhage in postoperative patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH). Methods : Medical records of 263 postoperative patients with sICH from our Hospital were reviewed. The relationships between rehemorrhage and parameters were examined by univariate and multivariate analyses. The parameters include time from onset to surgery, hematologic paremeters, neuroimaging characteristics, level and variability of systolic blood pressure, medical histories, operation duration, and blood loss. In addition, relationship between rehemorrhage and clinical outcome were analyzed by using multivariate analyses. Results : Thirty-five (13.31%) patients experienced rehemorrhage after operation. Multivariate analyses indicated that the following factors were independently associated with rehemorrhage : history of diabetes mellitus (odds ratio [OR], 2.717; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.005-7.346; p=0.049), and midline shift (for every 1 mm increase, OR, 1.117; 95% CI, 1.029-1.214; p=0.009). Rehemorrhage was an independent risk factor of poor functional outcome (OR, 3.334; 95% CI, 1.094-10.155; p=0.034). Conclusion : Our finding revealed that history of diabetes mellitus and admission midline shift were possibly associated with rehemorrhage in postoperative patients with sICH.

Calcined Attapulgite Clay as Supplementary Cementing Material: Thermal Treatment, Hydration Activity and Mechanical Properties

Tao Shi,Yanming Liu,Yanlin Zhang,Yingjia Lan,Qifan Zhao,Yujing Zhao,Haobo Wang 한국콘크리트학회 2022 International Journal of Concrete Structures and M Vol.16 No.2

The present paper studied the effects of calcination temperatures (200–800 °C) on the appearance, mineral composition, and active SiO2 content in attapulgite and investigated the effects of attapulgite before and after calcination on the chemically bonded water content, the degree of reaction of cement paste, and the mechanical properties such as the flexural strength, compressive strength, and splitting-tensile strength of cement mortar. The results indicate that the calcination temperature changes the mineral composition of attapulgite, thereby affecting the hydration activity of cement-based materials. The attapulgite calcined at 500 °C (AT500) has the best enhancement on the hydration activity of cement-based materials. The calcination at 500 °C is most beneficial to the dissolution of SiO2, and the content of SiO2 reaches 20.96%. The contents of chemically bonded water in the samples incorporated with calcined attapulgite reduced and that of the samples incorporated with AT500 at 28 d is the same as that of the control group. The reaction degree of AT500 is 78.61% at 28 days. Calcined attapulgite clay can reduce the energy consumption of the cement industry and promote the sustainable development of attapulgite clay.

Intercalation of 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone-5-sulfonate anion into Zn/Al layered double hydroxides for UV absorption properties

Shifeng Li,Yanming Shen,Min Xiao,Dongbin Liu,Lihui Fan,Keke Wu 한국공업화학회 2014 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol.20 No.4

Zn/Al-layered double hydroxides (LDHs) containing the organic anion of 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone-5-sulfonate (DHBS) have been synthesized by co-precipitation method. Surface, structural, thermal and absorption properties of the ZnAl-DHBS-LDHs nanohybrids were characterized by BET analysis, scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis and UV–visible spectroscopy. The results revealed that organic UV absorbent-DHBS has been intercalated into the interlayer spaces of ZnAl-LDHs and the intercalation of DHBS in LDHs interlayer galleries resulted to higher thermal stability and better UV absorption ability; these show that the hybrid ZnAl-DHBS-LDHs phase has potential applications as a UV absorber.

Encapsulation of 2,4-Dihydroxybenzophenone into Dodecylbenzenesulfonate Modified Layered Double Hydroxide for UV Absorption Properties

Shifeng Li,Yanming Shen,Dongbin Liu,Lihui Fan,Keke Wu 대한화학회 2014 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.35 No.2

New organic-inorganic composite of 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone (BP-1) encapsulation into dodecylbenzenesulfonate (DBS) modified layered double hydroxide (LDH) was successfully prepared. The surface, structural, thermal and absorption properties of the BP-1/DBS-LDH nanohybrid was characterized by BET analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and diffuse reflectance UV-Vis absorbance spectra (DRUV-vis). The interlayer configuration of composite and the adsorption mechanism of BP-1 on MgAl-DBS-LDH were discussed. It was suspected that DBS anions located in the form of monolayer arrangement with a 75° anti parallel angle between dodecylbenzenesulfonate chain axis. The diffuse reflectance UV-Vis absorbance results revealed that the UV absorbing wavelength of BP-1/DBS-LDH evidently extends to about 400 nm, which shows that the BP-1/DBS-LDH has the potential application as a UV absorber.

A new small molecule acceptor based on indaceno[2,1-b:6,5-b’]dithiophene and thiophene-fused ending group for fullerene-free organic solar cells

Xie, Dongjun,Liu, Tao,Lee, Tack Ho,Gao, Wei,Zhong, Cheng,Huo, Lijun,Luo, Zhenghui,Wu, Kailong,Xiong, Wentao,Kim, Jin Young,Choi, Hyosung,Sun, Yanming,Yang, Chuluo Elsevier 2018 Dyes and pigments Vol.148 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>A new small molecule acceptor of IDTCN with indaceno[2,1-b:6,5-b’]dithiophene as electron-donating core and CPTCN (2-(6-oxo-5,6-dihydro-4H-cyclopenta[<I>c</I>]thiophen-4-lidene)malononitrile) as electron-withdrawing end-capping group was synthesized and investigated in organic solar cells. The IDTCN shows strong and broad absorption with a high extinction coefficient and appropriate energy levels matching with wide bandgap donor polymer. The best device based on PBT1-EH:IDTCN exhibits an open circuit voltage (<I>V</I> <SUB>oc</SUB>) of 0.93 V, a short circuit current (<I>J</I> <SUB>sc</SUB>) of 13.31 mA/cm<SUP>2</SUP>, a FF of 0.702, achieving a PCE of 8.69%.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> A thiophene-fused electron-withdrawing group is used as end group for small molecule acceptors. </LI> <LI> The OPV devices achieve high power conversion efficiencies of up to 8.69% with a high fill factor of 0.702. </LI> <LI> IDTCN in neat film tend to form unusual isotropic orientation instead of face-on orientation. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>