In this paper, the digital image correlation was innovatively applied to study the deformation and damage process of raw coal and briquette under a complex stress environment. The results show that under symmetrical loading, briquette coal shows tensile failure and that the strain field goes through three stages. The raw coal shows shear failure; the stage characteristic of the strain field is not obvious. Under asymmetric loading, the strain field evolution of raw coal and briquette shows three characteristic stages, but the briquette is more likely to form a localization phenomenon. The displacement value of the crack in the shear direction is greater than that in the tension direction, so the raw coal and briquette mainly undergo shear failure. The localized starting stress is determined by the defined statistical index function, and the localized starting stress of the raw coal and the briquette coal has a quadratic function relationship with the asymmetric coefficient.

Background Macular edema (ME) is a major complication of retinal disease with multiple mechanisms involved in its development. This study aimed to investigate the metabolite profile of aqueous humor (AH) in patients with ME of different etiologies and identify potential metabolite biomarkers for early diagnosis of ME. Methods Samples of AH were collected from 60 patients with ME and 20 age- and sex-matched controls and analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS)-based metabolomics. A series of univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed to identify differential metabolites and enriched metabolite pathways. Results The metabolic profile of AH differed significantly between ME patients and healthy controls, and differentially expressed metabolites were identified. Pathway analysis revealed that these differentially expressed metabolites are mainly involved in lipid metabolism and amino acid metabolism. Moreover, significant differences were identified in the metabolic composition of AH from patients with ME due to different retinal diseases including age-related macular degeneration (AMD-ME), diabetic retinopathy (DME) and branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO-ME). In total, 39 and 79 etiology-specific altered metabolites were identified for AMD-ME and DME, respectively. Finally, an AH-derived machine learning-based diagnostic model was developed and successfully validated in the test cohort with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.79 for AMD-ME, 0.94 for DME and 0.77 for BRVO-ME. Conclusions Our study illustrates the potential underlying metabolic basis of AH of different etiologies across ME populations. We also identify AH-derived metabolite biomarkers that may improve the differential diagnosis and treatment stratification of ME patients with different etiologies.

In order to study the bedding effect of coal and rock deformation, the surface deformation fields of coal and rock at different bedding angles were obtained by means of digital image correlation (DIC). By optimizing the statistical index describing the nonuniformity of strain field, the initiation and evolution characteristics of deformation localization were analyzed quantitatively. The concepts of equivalent cohesive force and equivalent tensile strength were put forward, and a transverse isotropic constitutive model of coal and rock was established. The results show that the maximum shear deformation field of uniaxial compressed coal and rock in parallel bedding is more likely to show the three-stage characteristics of uniform stage, localization stage, and failure stage. In the vertical and parallel bedding directions, the modified statistical index curve of coal and rock in the process of uniaxial compression shows typical two-stage characteristics. When loading perpendicular to bedding, the starting stress of deformation localization of coal and rock is closer to the peak strength, and when loading parallel to bedding, coal and rock are easier to show localization characteristics.