Crowd monitoring for sports games is important to improve public safety, game experience, and venue management. Recent crowd-crushing incidents (e.g., the Kanjuruhan Stadium disaster) have caused 100+ deaths, calling for advancements in crowd-monitoring methods. Existing monitoring approaches include manual observation, wearables, video-, audio-, and WiFi-based sensing. However, few meet the practical needs due to their limitations in cost, privacy protection, and accuracy.

In this paper, we introduce a novel crowd monitoring method that leverages floor vibrations to infer crowd reactions (e.g., clapping) and traffic (i.e., the number of people entering) in sports stadiums. Our method allows continuous crowd monitoring in a privacy-friendly and cost-effective way. Unlike monitoring one person, crowd monitoring involves a large population, leading to high uncertainty in the vibration data. To overcome the challenge, we bring in the context of crowd behaviors, including (1) temporal context to inform crowd reactions to the highlights of the game and (2) spatial context to inform crowd traffic in relation to the facility layouts. We deployed our system at Stanford Maples Pavilion and Michigan Stadium for real-world evaluation, which shows a 14.7% and 12.5% error reduction compared to the baseline methods without the context information.

Seed germination is a pivotal period of plant growth and development. This process can be divided into four major stages, swelling absorption, seed coat dehiscence, radicle emergence and radicle elongation. Cupressus gigantea, a tree native to Tibet, China, is characterized by its resistance to stresses such as cold, and drought, and has a high economic and ecological value. Nevertheless, given its unique geographic location, its seeds are difficult to germinate. Therefore, it is crucial to explore the mechanisms involved in seed germination in this species to improve the germination efficiency of its seeds, thereby protecting this high-quality resource. Here, our findings indicate that seed germination was enhanced when exposed to a 6-h/8-h light/dark photoperiod, coupled with a temperature of 20°C. Furthermore, the application of exogenous GA3 (1 mg/ml, about 2.9 mM) stimulated the germination of C. gigantea seeds. Subsequently, proteomics was used to detect changes in protein expression during the four stages of seed germination. We identified 34 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs), including 13 at the radicle pre-emergence stage, and 17 at the radicle elongation stage. These DEPs were classified into eight functional groups, cytoskeletal proteins, energy metabolism, membrane transport, stress response, molecular chaperones, amino acid metabolism, antioxidant system and ABA signalling pathway. Most of them were found to be closely associated with amino acid metabolism. Combined, these findings indicate that, along with temperature and light, exogenous GA3 can increase the germination efficiency of C. gigantea seeds. Our study also offers insights into the changes in protein expression patterns in C. gigantea seeds during germination.

Chronic inflammation exerts pleiotropic effects in the aetiology and progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Glucosamine is widely used in many countries and may have anti-inflammatory properties. We aimed to prospectively evaluate the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD risk and explore whether such association could be modified by smoking in the UK Biobank cohort, which recruited more than half a million participants aged 40–69 years from across the UK between 2006 and 2010. Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for potential confounding factors were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) as well as 95 % CI for the risk of incident COPD. During a median follow-up of 8·96 years (interquartile range 8·29–9·53 years), 9016 new-onset events of COPD were documented. We found that the regular use of glucosamine was associated with a significantly lower risk of incident COPD with multivariable adjusted HR of 0·80 (95 % CI, 0·75, 0·85; P < 0·001). When subgroup analyses were performed by smoking status, the adjusted HR for the association of regular glucosamine use with incident COPD were 0·84 (0·73, 0·96), 0·84 (0·77, 0·92) and 0·71 (0·62, 0·80) among never smokers, former smokers and current smokers, respectively. No significant interaction was observed between glucosamine use and smoking status (P for interaction = 0·078). Incident COPD could be reduced by 14 % to 84 % through a combination of regular glucosamine use and smoking cessation.

Although the streaked optical pyrometer (SOP) system has been widely adopted in shock temperature measurements, its reliability has always been of concern. Here, two calibrated Planckian radiators with different color temperatures were used to calibrate and verify the SOP system by comparing the two calibration standards using both multi-channel and single-channel methods. A high-color-temperature standard lamp and a multi-channel filter were specifically designed for the measurement system. To verify the reliability of the SOP system, the relative deviation between the measured data and the standard value of less than 5% was calibrated out, which demonstrates the reliability of the SOP system. Furthermore, a method to analyze the uncertainty and sensitivity of the SOP system is proposed. A series of laser-induced shock experiments were conducted at the ‘Shenguang-II’ laser facility to verify the reliability of the SOP system for temperature measurements at tens of thousands of kelvin. The measured temperature of the quartz in our experiments agreed fairly well with previous works, which serves as evidence for the reliability of the SOP system.

Italian ryegrass has invaded wheat fields in China and is becoming a predominant, troublesome weed. Fenoxaprop-P-ethyl has been widely used for weed control on Chinese farms since the 1990s. However, overuse has led to fenoxaprop-P-ethyl resistance in Italian ryegrass in Chinese wheat fields. In this study, we identified a putative fenoxaprop-P-ethyl–resistant population of Italian ryegrass, HZYC-6, from Henan province, China. Mutations involving Asp-2078-Gly and Ile-1781-Leu substitutions were identified in the carboxyl-transferase domain of acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase in this population, and these mutations are the likely cause of the target site–based resistance to fenoxaprop-P-ethyl. In addition, we identified cytochrome P450–mediated metabolism of herbicides (non–target site based resistance) in the HZYC-6 population, indicating that multiple mechanisms of resistance may be segregating in this population. Furthermore, HZYC-6 was also highly resistant to haloxyfop-R-methyl and quizalofop-P-ethyl, moderately resistant to clodinafop-propargyl and sethoxydim, and had low resistance to clethodim and pinoxaden.

This study aimed to investigate the impacts of dietary threonine on intestinal immunity and inflammation in juvenile grass carp. Six iso-nitrogenous semi-purified diets containing graded levels of threonine (3·99–21·66 g threonine/kg) were formulated and fed to fishes for 8 weeks, and then challenged with Aeromonas hydrophila for 14 d. Results showed that, compared with optimum threonine supplementation, threonine deficiency (1) decreased the ability of fish against enteritis, intestinal lysozyme activities (except in the distal intestine), acid phosphatase activities, complement 3 (C3) and C4 contents and IgM contents (except in the proximal intestine (PI)), and it down-regulated the transcript abundances of liver-expressed antimicrobial peptide (LEAP)-2A, LEAP-2B, hepcidin, IgZ, IgM and β-defensin1 (except in the PI) (P<0·05); (2) could up-regulate intestinal pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8 and IL-17D mRNA levels partly related to NF-κB signalling; (3) could down-regulate intestinal anti-inflammatory cytokine transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, TGF-β2, IL-4/13A (not IL-4/13B) and IL-10 mRNA levels partly by target of rapamycin signalling. Finally, on the basis of the specific growth rate, against the enteritis morbidity and IgM contents, the optimum threonine requirements were estimated to be 14·53 g threonine/kg diet (4·48 g threonine/100 g protein), 15.05 g threonine/kg diet (4·64 g threonine/100 g protein) and 15·17 g threonine/kg diet (4·68 g threonine/100 g protein), respectively.

High-protein diets are popular for weight management, but the health effects of such diets in diabetic persons are inconclusive. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to examine the effects of high-protein diets on body weight and metabolic risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes. We searched the PubMed and Cochrane Library databases for relevant randomised trials up to August 2012. Either a fixed- or a random-effects model was used to combine the net changes in each outcome from baseline to the end of the intervention. Overall, nine trials including a total of 418 diabetic patients met our inclusion criteria. The study duration ranged from 4 to 24 weeks. The actual intake of dietary protein ranged from 25 to 32 % of total energy in the intervention groups and from 15 to 20 % in the control groups. Compared with the control diets, high-protein diets resulted in more weight loss (pooled mean difference: − 2·08, 95 % CI − 3·25, − 0·90 kg). High-protein diets significantly decreased glycated Hb A1C (HbA1C) levels by 0·52 (95 % CI − 0·90, − 0·14) %, but did not affect the fasting blood glucose levels. There were no differences in lipid profiles. The pooled net changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure were − 3·13 (95 % CI − 6·58, 0·32) mmHg and − 1·86 (95 % CI − 4·26, 0·56) mmHg, respectively. However, two studies reported a large influence on weight loss and HbA1C levels, respectively. In summary, high-protein diets (within 6 months) may have some beneficial effects on weight loss, HbA1C levels and blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes. However, further investigations are still required to draw a conclusion.

To identify the disease-causing gene for a large multi-generational Chinese family affected by familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHCM), genome-wide screening was carried out in a Chinese family with FHCM using micro-satellite markers, and linkage analysis was performed using the MLINK program. The disease locus was mapped to 1q32 in this family. Screening for a mutation in the cardiac troponin T (cTnT) gene was performed by a PCR and sequencing was done with an ABI Prism 3700 sequencer. A novel C→G transition located in the ninth exon of the cTnT gene, leading to a predicted amino acid residue change from Ile to Met at codon 90, was identified in all individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). The results presented here strongly suggest that Ile90Met, a novel mutation in the cTnT gene, is causative agent of HCM in this family.

In this paper, we consider random dynamical systems (abbreviated as RDSs) generated by compositions of one-sided stationary random endomorphisms of class C^2 of a compact manifold. We will first introduce the notions of entropy and Lyapunov exponents for such RDSs, and then prove that the entropy formula of Pesin type holds if the sample measures of an invariant measure are absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure on the manifold. Our result covers those obtained by Ledrappier and Young [11], and Liu [12] for i.i.d. random diffeomorphisms or (non-invertible) endomorphisms, and that obtained by [12] for two-sided stationary random endomorphisms. If the phase spaces are compact and finite-dimensional manifolds without boundary, this result may be considered as the almost-final form of Pesin entropy formula for RDSs with absolutely continuous invariant or sample measures.