Jinfeng Zhou, Chujie Zheng, Bo Wang, Zheng Zhang, Minlie Huang. Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2023.

The COVID‐19 outbreak has infected over 6 million people across the world. The origin of COVID‐19 coronavirus (CoV) remains unknown, although pangolins have been suggested as potential hosts. We investigated two pangolins seized in Guangdong Province, China. Molecular screening revealed CoV in one pangolin (“Dahu”), while another (“Meidong”) was infected by Ehrlichia ruminantium . Dahu exhibited difficulty breathing, infections of lung, intestines, and nostrils, as revealed by computed tomography imaging and necropsy. Previous phylogenetic analyses showed bat coronavirus RaTG13 is closer to COVID‐19 CoV compared to pangolin coronavirus. Over 20 caregivers have had close physical contact with CoV‐positive Dahu, but none became infected with CoV. Our data suggest that pangolins are unlikely the natural reservoir or secondary hosts of COVID‐19 CoV. Pangolins seems to be victims infected by CoV carried by a not yet unidentified natural reservoir host species, perhaps due to their weakened immune system.

Solar power is one of the least carbon-intensive approaches for electricity generation, and so photovoltaic (PV) systems have great potential as a low-carbon technology during their long lifecycle. Consequently, remaining useful life (RUL) prediction is critical for the prognostics and health management of PV systems, potentially preventing unexpected failure and maintenance due to PV degradation. One of the major root causes of PV degradation is the dynamic environmental conditions associated with PV outdoor operation. However, RUL prediction under such dynamic environmental conditions remains challenging. This article presents a semiparametric prognostic framework for PV systems under dynamic environmental conditions. The quantitative relationship between PV degradation and environmental conditions is established to integrate environmental condition information into RUL prediction, combining the cumulative damage model with multivariate Bernstein bases. The block bootstrap method is used to estimate future environmental conditions as inputs for RUL prediction. The least-squares estimators of the model parameters can be obtained through the block coordinate descent method. Finally, applications to field data of Australian PV systems are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed framework is applicable to most PV technologies.

Background: Sun’s procedure is currently recognized as the standard procedure for acute type A aortic dissection (AAAD). But the operation istoo difficult for beginners. We hope to reduce the difficulty and complications of this operation. Methods: The aortic arch was immediately cross-clamped after the stented graft was inserted into the distal aorta. Thereafter, the lower-body perfusion was restored. Then, anastomosis was performed between the proximal stent graft and the distal 4-branched Dacron graft. The other arteries were anastomosed to the arched branch of the 4-branched graft. Results: The cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) time was (207 ± 52) min, and the aortic cross-clamp time was (114 ± 39) min. The circulatory arrest time was (38 ± 16) sec. One patient (4%) died. The incidence of complications was stroke (4%), renal dysfunction requiring dialysis (4%), prolonged intubation(12%). Conclusions: The time of circulatory arrest in this operation is less than 1 min, which can avoid the complications caused by DHCA and decrease risk of bleeding and complexity by shifting anastomosis more proximally. The effect of our operation is similar to and even better than that of Sun’s procedure. It does not even require relatively advanced skill, much experience and excellent psychological quality, especially suitable for beginners.