162 research outputs found
Wang Meng and contemporary Chinese literature: the vicissitudes of a committed writer
Get PDFThis thesis examines the way Wang Meng has developed as a writer from the 1950s to the 1990s in the context of New China's political and literary background. It looks at the compromises he was forced to make between his political beliefs in the Communist Party and his chosen role as a professional writer. After his disastrous early foray into what was deemed to be unacceptable political criticism with The Young Newcomer in the Organisation Department in the 1950s, when the opportunity came to start publishing again in the late 1970s he was boldly innovative in style, helping to transform New Period literature, but conservative in content, sticking to politically acceptable topics. It was only with Hard Porridge in 1989 that he ventured again, and very successfully, into political comment. There is no outstanding leading writer in contemporary China, but Wang Meng is a leading contender for the title
sj-doc-1-ict-10.1177_15347354241229414 – Supplemental material for Effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine “Fuzheng Qingdu Decoction” on Autonomic Function and Cancer-Related Symptoms in Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer undergoing Chemotherapy: A Controlled Trial
No full textSupplemental material, sj-doc-1-ict-10.1177_15347354241229414 for Effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine “Fuzheng Qingdu Decoction” on Autonomic Function and Cancer-Related Symptoms in Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer undergoing Chemotherapy: A Controlled Trial by Chengjia Yuan, Shuang Wu, Yang Wu, Cuiling Tian, Zaichuan Wang and Xiaochun Zhang in Integrative Cancer Therapies</p
Development of registration methods for cardiovascular anatomy and function using advanced 3T MRI, 320-slice CT and PET imaging
Get PDFDifferent medical imaging modalities provide complementary anatomical and
functional information. One increasingly important use of such information is in
the clinical management of cardiovascular disease. Multi-modality data is helping
improve diagnosis accuracy, and individualize treatment. The Clinical Research
Imaging Centre at the University of Edinburgh, has been involved in a number
of cardiovascular clinical trials using longitudinal computed tomography (CT) and
multi-parametric magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. The critical image processing
technique that combines the information from all these different datasets is known
as image registration, which is the topic of this thesis. Image registration, especially
multi-modality and multi-parametric registration, remains a challenging field in
medical image analysis. The new registration methods described in this work were
all developed in response to genuine challenges in on-going clinical studies. These
methods have been evaluated using data from these studies.
In order to gain an insight into the building blocks of image registration methods,
the thesis begins with a comprehensive literature review of state-of-the-art algorithms.
This is followed by a description of the first registration method I developed to help
track inflammation in aortic abdominal aneurysms. It registers multi-modality and
multi-parametric images, with new contrast agents. The registration framework uses a
semi-automatically generated region of interest around the aorta. The aorta is aligned
based on a combination of the centres of the regions of interest and intensity matching.
The method achieved sub-voxel accuracy.
The second clinical study involved cardiac data. The first framework failed to
register many of these datasets, because the cardiac data suffers from a common
artefact of magnetic resonance images, namely intensity inhomogeneity. Thus I
developed a new preprocessing technique that is able to correct the artefacts in the
functional data using data from the anatomical scans. The registration framework,
with this preprocessing step and new particle swarm optimizer, achieved significantly
improved registration results on the cardiac data, and was validated quantitatively
using neuro images from a clinical study of neonates. Although on average
the new framework achieved accurate results, when processing data corrupted
by severe artefacts and noise, premature convergence of the optimizer is still a
common problem. To overcome this, I invented a new optimization method, that
achieves more robust convergence by encoding prior knowledge of registration. The
registration results from this new registration-oriented optimizer are more accurate
than other general-purpose particle swarm optimization methods commonly applied
to registration problems.
In summary, this thesis describes a series of novel developments to an image
registration framework, aimed to improve accuracy, robustness and speed. The
resulting registration framework was applied to, and validated by, different types of
images taken from several ongoing clinical trials. In the future, this framework could
be extended to include more diverse transformation models, aided by new machine
learning techniques. It may also be applied to the registration of other types and
modalities of imaging data
Austenian Spirit in Chinese Comedy of Manners: Discovering a Neglected Female Influence on Qian Zhongshu
No full textAs soon as the play Forging the Truth (Nongzhen chengjia, 1943) written by the Chinese scholar Yang Jiang (1911-2016) premiered during World War II, critics considered the work to be the second milestone of the Chinese comedy of manners. This comment is unsurprising since Yang had a longstanding scholarly interest in the British comedy of manners tradition, especially those by Jane Austen (1775-1817). Also an academic and writer, Yang’s husband, Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998), after watching the play, began writing his only published novel, Fortress Besieged (1947). Given Qian’s inseparable fellowship with Yang Jiang, his irrefutable grounding in Chinese and European arts and letters, and exploration of how marriage impacts the individual in the novel, one wonders why scholars have not recognised even one female author among his source influences. This article establishes a link between Austen and Qian by integrating biographical accounts, a scholarship work Yang had done, and close readings of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Yang Jiang’s Nongzhen chengjia, and Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged. By looking at their adaptations of the comedy of manners genre, this article expands on a common quality the three works all share: the duality of playful irony and intelligent compassion
Dendrothrips octosparsus Wang & Mound & Tong 2019, sp. n.
No full textDendrothrips octosparsus sp. n. (Figs 8, 10, 23, 26, 37, 40, 47–48, 63–64) Female: Body mainly brown (Fig. 63), abdominal tergites V–VI paler with 2 pairs of brown spots on lateral thirds (Fig. 23), tergites VIII–X slightly paler than VII. Antennal segments I–II and VI–VIII brown, III–V paler (Fig. 47); fore wing brown with 3 pale areas: basal fifth (with brown spots at extreme base), medially and sub-apically; clavus pale with base shaded; legs brown but tarsi yellow. Head (Fig. 8) about 2.5 times as wide as long, ocellar triangle reticulate with dots; ocellar setae minute, pair II situated lateral to fore ocellus, pair III in front of hind ocelli; frons covered with vermiform wrinkles, with 2 pairs of stout setae near bases of antennae; maxillary palps 2-segmented. Antennae 8-segmented, segment II with transverse striae, III–IV with forked sense cone, VI with inner long sense cone arising near medial of segment and extending to apex of VIII; microtrichia rows present on segments III–VI. Pronotum (Fig.10) 2.2–2.6 times as wide as long, sculptured with transverse reticles bearing strong granules, median reticles indistinct and all setae minute. Mesonotum (Fig. 26) with transverse anastomosing striae bearing few dots, median setae situated medially; metanotum with dots in median reticles, with wrinkles in lateral reticles. Fore wing without uniform microtrichia, first vein with 14–20 minute setae, second vein with one seta in subapical brown area or without setae. Abdominal tergites with complex sculpture (Fig. 23), tergites II–IV & VII sculptured with reticles bearing inner dots, but anterior reticles transverse with fewer inner dots; tergites V–VI anteriorly with dots in transverse reticles, posteriorly with tubercles on yellow areas and dots on brown areas; tergite VIII laterally reticulate with granules or ridges, posterior margin with comb of microtrichia; tergite IX laterally with microtrichia on striae, posteromarginal setae S1 almost as long as S2; IX–X with microtrichia on posterior half. Sternites reticulate with longitudinal linear markings; sternites II–III with 2 pairs of marginal setae, sternites IV–VI with 3 pairs of marginal setae, S1 & S2 situated on posterior margin, S3 generally in front of posterior margin; sternite VII with S2 & S 3 in front of posterior margin, 1 pair of minute anterolateral pores in front of S2, 2 pairs of minute setae on posterior margin situated on either side of S2 (Fig. 37). Measurements (holotype female in microns). Total distended body length 880. Head length (width) 60 (150); eye length (width) 50 (35). Pronotum length (width) 75 (180). Length of antenna 170; length (width) of antennal segments I 17 (21), II 25 (27), III 33 (19), IV 30 (19), V 25 (16), VI 20 (11), VII 10 (5) and VIII 10 (4). Fore wing length 650. Male: Smaller and paler (Fig. 64), abdomen more slender. Head, thorax and lateral areas of abdominal tergites II–IV brown, tergite VII (and sometimes anterior of tergite V) pale brown, tergites V–VI and VIII–X pale yellow; antennae almost brown (Fig. 48); legs brown with tarsi yellow; fore wing brown with basal quarter and median 1/8 pale. Abdominal tergites II–IV & VII sculptured with reticles bearing inner granules, tergites V–VI with short longitudinal lines in reticles (Fig. 40). Measurements (paratype male in microns). Total distended body length 750. Head length (width) 50 (125); eye length (width) 50 (35). Pronotum length (width) 65 (145). Length of antenna 160; length (width) of antennal segments I 14 (19), II 26 (22), III 33 (16), IV 26 (17), V 27 (15), VI 17 (11), VII 8 (5), VIII 9 (3). Fore wing length 475. Material examined. Holotype female (in SCAU): CHINA, Shandong, Zhangqiu, Baimai Springs Park (36°43'10"N, 117°31'56"E), collected from leaves of Ligustrum sp. [Oleaceae], 2.viii.2016 (Zhaohong Wang). Paratypes (in SCAU): 30 females and 9 males collected with holotype (with one female and 1 male in ANIC). Shaanxi, Xi’an, Yangling (34°16'N, 108°04'E), 2 females from Ligustrum quihoui, 10.vi.2012 (Majid Mirab-balou). Sichuan: Chengdu, Chengjia (30°10′N, 103 103° °22 22′ ′E E)),, 14 femalesfromL. quihoui, 3.ix.2015 (Zhaoyun Lü). Chongqing, Dazu, Shuangqiao (29°29'N, 105°46'E), 6 females, host unknown, 26.vii.2016 (Jie Jiang). Hubei, Huanggang, Huanggang Normal University (30°26'N, 114°56'E), 11 females from L. vicaryi, 22.vi.2014 (Chao Zhao). Hunan, Yanling, Shennonggu National Nature Reserve (26°30'N, 113°59'E), 1 female 2 males from shrub, 25. viii. 2015 (Zhaohong Wang); Yiyang, Datonghu Twon (29°11′39″N, 112°37′23″E), 25 females collected from Osmanthus fragrans, 7.xi.2016 (Xiaoli Tong); Chaling County, Yunyangshan National Forest Park (26°47'58"N, 113°30'18"E), 12 females 2 males from leaves of Ligustrum sp., 8.viii.2017 (Zhaohong Wang). Jiangxi, Jiujiang, Mt. Lushan (29°33'N, 115 115° °59 59' 'E E)),, 2 femalesfemalesfemales 4 malesmalesmales fromfromfrom L. sinense, 9.xi.2015 (Xiaoli Tong). Guangxi, Hezhou, Guposhan National Forest Park (24°59′55″N, 111°56′73″E), 7 females from Ligustrum sp., 17.ix.2015 (Chao Zhao). Distribution: China (Shandong, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guangxi). Host plants: Ligustrum quihoui, L. sinense, L. vicaryi, Ligustrum sp.; Osmanthus fragrans [Oleaceae]. Etymology. Specific epithet octosparsus is derived from Latin octo (eight) and sparsus (spot), refers to the abdominal tergites V–VI with eight brown spots. Comments. This species shares morphological affinity with members of cibarius species group in sculpture of body and fore wing surface, and in this group, it is particularly similar to latimaculatus, but can be distinguished by the following combination: (1) tergites V–VI paler than tergites IV and VII, with two pairs of lateral brown spots (Fig. 23), while in latimaculatus, tergites IV–VI paler than III and VII (Fig. 20); (2) female fore wing with sub-basal area dark brown, hind vein has 0–1 setae (vs. female fore wing of latimaculatus sub-basal brown band with paler area medially, hind vein with 3–5 setae); (3) male fore wing brown at apical 1/3 (vs. male fore wing pale sub-apically); (4) male abdominal tergites V–VI with short longitudinal lines in reticles (Fig. 40) (vs. tergites V–VI with tubercles, Fig. 39). Specimens in different populations from several provinces in China show few variations, the color pasterns of fore wing and tergites are consistent among populations.Published as part of Wang, Zhaohong, Mound, Laurence A. & Tong, Xiaoli, 2019, Character state variation within Dendrothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) with a revision of the species from China, pp. 231-248 in Zootaxa 4590 (2) on pages 244-246, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4590.2.2, http://zenodo.org/record/265186
Unsupervised image registration towards enhancing performance and explainability in cardiac and brain image analysis
Get PDFMagnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) typically recruits multiple sequences (defined here as “modalities”). As each modality is designed to offer different anatomical and functional clinical information, there are evident disparities in the imaging content across modalities. Inter- and intra-modality affine and non-rigid image registration is an essential medical image analysis process in clinical imaging, as for example before imaging biomarkers need to be derived and clinically evaluated across different MRI modalities, time phases and slices. Although commonly needed in real clinical scenarios, affine and non-rigid image registration is not extensively investigated using a single unsupervised model architecture. In our work, we present an unsupervised deep learning registration methodology that can accurately model affine and non-rigid transformations, simultaneously. Moreover, inverse-consistency is a fundamental inter-modality registration property that is not considered in deep learning registration algorithms. To address inverse consistency, our methodology performs bi-directional cross-modality image synthesis to learn modality-invariant latent representations, and involves two factorised transformation networks (one per each encoder-decoder channel) and an inverse-consistency loss to learn topology-preserving anatomical transformations. Overall, our model (named “FIRE”) shows improved performances against the reference standard baseline method (i.e., Symmetric Normalization implemented using the ANTs toolbox) on multi-modality brain 2D and 3D MRI and intra-modality cardiac 4D MRI data experiments. We focus on explaining model-data components to enhance model explainability in medical image registration. On computational time experiments, we show that the FIRE model performs on a memory-saving mode, as it can inherently learn topology-preserving image registration directly in the training phase. We therefore demonstrate an efficient and versatile registration technique that can have merit in multi-modal image registrations in the clinical setting
Influence of Ni and Mn on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Coarse Grain Heat Affected Zone in Low Carbon Microalloyed Steel
No full textA Gleeble simulation of the coarse grain heat affected zone (CGHAZ) with two different heat inputs (20 and 30 kJ/cm) welding was performed on low carbon steels with different Ni and Mn contents to investigate the effect of Ni and Mn addition on toughness and microstructure evolution. The results indicated that Ni and Mn have considerable effect on variation of the microstructure and mechanical properties, but this effect is associated with heat input. With increasing Ni content the amount of granular bainite decreased and acicular ferrite or lower bainite increased under the condition of 30 kJ/cm heat input, and this effect was not obvious with the heat input of 20 kJ/cm though the prior austenite grain size was increased by the Ni addition. The effect of Mn (with 2.0% Ni content) was mainly to promote the formation of martensite structures. The impact toughness at -20 °C was shown a good and stable value unrelated to Ni content with the heat input of 20 kJ/cm, while it had a significant rise from 15 J to 39 J on increasing Ni content from 2.0% to 3.0% with the heat input of 30 kJ/cm. The lowest impact energy was obtained at a very high level of Mn (i.e. 2.0% Ni-2.5% Mn). Thorough investigation of fracture surface of the simulated specimens, after impact test, and combined with the microstructure observation, elucidated that the formation of martensite even coalesced/massive martensite, deteriorated toughness. Based on hardness and impact resistance, the optimum levels of Mn and Ni were suggested to be 1.5% and 2.0-3.0%, respectively
Characterization of the Multi-Pass Weld Metal and the Effect of Post-Weld Heat Treatment on Its Microstructure and Toughness
No full text
Development of a Finite Element Model for the HAZ Temperature Field in Longitudinal Welding of Pipeline Steel
No full textIn this study, a novel hybrid heat source model was developed to simulate the welding temperature field in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of X80 pipeline steel. This model replicates welding conditions with high accuracy and allows flexible three-dimensional adjustments to suit various scenarios. Its development involved the innovative integration of microstructural crystallography information with a multi-scale calibration and validation methodology. The methodology focused on three critical aspects: the weld interface morphology, the location of the Ac1 temperature, and the size of prior austenite grains (PAG). The morphology of the weld interface was calibrated to align closely with experimental observations. The model’s prediction of the Ac1 location in actual welded joints exhibited a deviation of less than ±0.3 mm. Furthermore, comparisons of reconstructed PAG sizes between thermal simulation samples and actual HAZ samples revealed minimal discrepancies (5 μm). Validation results confirmed that the calibrated model accurately describes the welding temperature field, with reconstructed PAG size differences between simulation and experimental results being less than 9 μm. These findings validate the accuracy of the calibrated model in predicting welding temperature fields. This research introduces a novel framework for the development of heat source models, offering a robust foundation for improving welding performance and controlling microstructure in different regions during the welding process of high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steel
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