Torchs

Serological screening for TORCH(Toxoplasma gondii [TOX], Rubella virus [RV], Cytomegalovirus [CMV], and Herpes simplex virus [HSV]) infections is an effective method for preventing congenital infections caused by TORCH pathogens.In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the characteristics of TORCH infections in 17,807 infertile women of childbearing age in northwest China.We conducted serological detection of TORCH-pathogen-specific IgM and IgG antibodies. The seroprevalence of TORCH infections was statistically analyzed by applying χ2 and Fisher exact-probability tests to evaluate the differences among ages and across quarters of the year...

Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) site poses diagnostic challenges due to its elusive nature. Many cases of CUP manifest as pleural and peritoneal serous effusions. Leveraging cytological images from 57,220 cases at four tertiary hospitals, we developed a deep-learning method for tumor origin differentiation using cytological histology (TORCH) that can identify malignancy and predict tumor origin in both hydrothorax and ascites. We examined its performance on three internal (n = 12,799) and two external (n = 14,538) testing sets...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The aim of this study was to analyze signaling pathways associated with differentially expressed messenger RNAs in people with restless legs syndrome (RLS). Seventeen RLS patients and 18 controls were enrolled. Coding RNA expression profiling of 12,857 gene transcripts by next-generation sequencing was performed. Enrichment analysis by pathfindR tool was carried-out, with p-adjusted ≤0.001 and fold-change ≥2.5. Nine main different network groups were significantly dysregulated in RLS: infections, inflammation, immunology, neurodegeneration, cancer, neurotransmission and biological, blood and metabolic mechanisms...

BACKGROUND: In the end stage of kidney disease, abnormal levels of blood calcium, phosphorus, and parathyroid hormone lead to bone metabolism disorders, manifesting as osteoporosis or fibrocystic osteoarthritis. X-ray, CT, and MR are useful for detecting bone lesions in dialysis patients, but currently, computer vision has not yet been used for this purpose. METHODS: ResNet is a powerful deep CNN model, which has not yet been used to distinguish between the bones of dialysis patients and healthy people...

The main objective of this study was to use flash boiling atomization as a new method to inject suspensions with high solid content into the high-power plasma flow. The water-based suspension was prepared with submicron titanium oxide particles with an average size of 500 nm. The investigated solid concentrations were 20, 40, 55 and 70 wt%. Two plasma torches operated at 33, 70 and 110 kW were used to investigate the effect of increasing power on the deposited microstructure and deposition efficiency. At low torch power, the deposition efficiency decreased with increasing solid concentration, and deposits with a high number of unmelted particles were obtained with 70 wt% suspensions...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In radiotherapy treatment planning, respiration-induced motion introduces uncertainty that, if not appropriately considered, could result in dose delivery problems. 4D cone-beam computed tomography (4D-CBCT) has been developed to provide imaging guidance by reconstructing a pseudo-motion sequence of CBCT volumes through binning projection data into breathing phases. However, it suffers from artefacts and erroneously characterizes the averaged breathing motion...

Endoscopic content area refers to the informative area enclosed by the dark, non-informative, border regions present in most endoscopic footage. The estimation of the content area is a common task in endoscopic image processing and computer vision pipelines. Despite the apparent simplicity of the problem, several factors make reliable real-time estimation surprisingly challenging. The lack of rigorous investigation into the topic combined with the lack of a common benchmark dataset for this task has been a long-lasting issue in the field...

C-H bond ortho-substitution reaction has always been a significant and challenging topic in organic chemistry. We proposed a synthesis method based on microwave plasma torches. High-resolution mass spectrometry was used to monitor rapid reaction products. 2-Alkylbenzimidazole can be formed through the reaction of phenylnitrenium ion and nitriles on a millisecond scale. This reaction can achieve the one-step formation of benzimidazoles from benzene ring single-substituted compounds without the addition of external oxidants or catalysts...

Infections in the first trimester of pregnancy can be teratogenic, but the possibility that Covid-19 could lead to birth defects is unclear. We examined whether SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy or exposure to pandemic conditions were associated with the risk of congenital anomalies. We carried out a retrospective study of 420,222 neonates born in Quebec, Canada in two time periods: prepandemic (January 1, 2017 to March 12, 2020) vs. pandemic (March 13, 2020 to March 31, 2022). We classified pandemic births as early (first trimester completed before the pandemic) or late (first trimester during the pandemic), and identified patients with SARS-CoV-2 infections during pregnancy...

BACKGROUND: The core of postnatal care is that midwives recognise the needs of women and new-born babies and provide the highest possible quality of care and medical safety to optimise the health and well-being of new families. The study aimed to describe midwives' experiences in providing postnatal care for families during the first week after the birth of their baby. METHODS: An interview study included 18 midwives who interchangeably worked within the models of traditional hospital care, hotel-based care, home-based care, hospital-based check-ups, and specialist care at a breastfeeding clinic at one university hospital in Sweden...

BACKGROUND: Chlorine concentrations above 1 mg kg-1 in lipid feedstocks for biofuel production can generate corrosion issues in the different refining units as well as catalyst deactivation by clogging or fouling. To reach accurate analyses by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) techniques at low concentration levels, dilution in organic solvents rises as a simpler and more straightforward sample preparation methodology than conventional sample decomposition procedures (e.g., microwave-assisted acid digestion)...

The Keyhole Plasma Arc Welding (KPAW) process utilizes arc plasma highly constricted by a water-cooled cupper nozzle to produce great arc pressure for opening a keyhole in the weld pool, achieving full penetration to the thick plate. However, advanced control of welding is known to still be difficult due to the complexity of the process mechanism, in which thermal and dynamic interactions among the arc, keyhole, and weld pool are critically important. In KPAW, two large eddies are generally formed in the weld pool behind the keyhole by plasma shear force as the dominant driving force...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have caused widespread environmental concern in recent years. Among them, the levels of perfluoroalkane sulfonyl fluorides (PFASFs) in the environment have rarely been reported due to the lack of sensitive analytical methods. Herein, a novel liquid chromatography-microwave plasma torch ionization-mass spectrometry (LC-MPTI-MS) technique was designed for the direct analysis of PFASFs in the environment. The collaborative action of reactive oxygen species (such as hydroxyl radicals) and the elevated temperature within the ambient MPTI environment results in the replacement of the fluorine atom in sulfonyl fluoride by oxygen, leading to the detection of perfluoroalkanesulfonic acid (PFSA) ions by MS...

The utilization of adhesive compounds in bonding lightweight and high-performance composite structures, including carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites, has garnered significant attention from researchers. This study presents the novel application of Al2 O3 coated with TiO2 as a thermal protective layer for CFRP substrate. Initially, the CFRP substrate underwent a protective treatment involving the application of Al2 O3 as a middle coat, followed by a further protective layer consisting of TiO2 as a top coat...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

We synthesized uranium oxide nanoparticles using a plasma flow reactor (PFR) and studied the effects of three different experimental parameters on the resulting morphologies and speciation of the particles: (1) collection duration, (2) collection substrate temperature, and (3) radial collection position due to radial temperature gradients in the PFR. We also induced three distinct temperature histories along the axis of the plasma flow reactor by varying the gas flow rates downstream of the plasma torch. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses of collected particles showed two phases of uranium oxides (fcc-UO2 and α-UO3 )...

Carbon/Phenolic Composites (CPCs) are essential to manufacture many portions of the nozzle assembly of Solid Rocket Motors (SRMs) which are essential both to preserve the independent access to space as well as for the homeland security. In our research, a feasible approach aimed at preliminary retrieving the in-plane and out-plane thermal diffusivity of CPCs through the Oxy-Acetylene Torch (OAT) tests was validated. The proposed approach showed to be effective and able to bypass some limitations of common protocols, especially in terms of capability to determine the thermal diffusivity of CPCs at high heating rates...

In this study, the GMAW welding torch was controlled by a stepping motor to achieve a periodic swing. By controlling the swing speed, a micro-variable deposition path was obtained, which was called the micro-control deposition trajectory. The influence of the micro-control deposition trajectory on the arc characteristics, microstructure, and mechanical properties of 304 steel wire arc additive manufacturing was studied. The results showed that the micro-control deposition process was affected by the swing arc and the deposition trajectory and that the arc force was dispersed over the whole deposition layer, which effectively reduced the welding heat input...

PURPOSE: To introduce a tool (TensorFit) for ultrafast and robust metabolite fitting of MRSI data based on Torch's auto-differentiation and optimization framework. METHODS: TensorFit was implemented in Python based on Torch's auto-differentiation to fit individual metabolites in MRS spectra. The underlying time domain and/or frequency domain fitting model is based on a linear combination of metabolite spectroscopic response. The computational time efficiency and accuracy of TensorFit were tested on simulated and in vivo MRS data and compared against TDFDFit and QUEST...