Timolol has been demonstrated to be efficacious in the topical treatment of superficial infantile hemangiomas (IHs). We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the short-term efficacy and safety of timolol in the treatment of superficial IH in Chinese infants. From March to November 2012, 124 patients with superficial IHs were included in the prospective study. The patients were divided into two groups: treatment (101 patients, the timolol drops were administered on the surface of the lesions three times daily, and erythromycin ointment was applied around the lesions) and observation (23 patients, without treatment). The results were categorized into three grades: class 1 (ineffective), class 2 (controlled growth) and class 3 (promoted regression). Within one week of the initiation of timolol treatment, a number of the lesions became softer and lighter in color. Four months following the initiation of timolol treatment, the overall response was class 1 in eight patients (7.9%), class 2 in 36 patients (35.6%) and class 3 in 57 patients (56.4%). Complete tumor regression was observed in 12 patients. No adverse effects were recorded during the treatment period. Among the patients in the observation group, there were 15 class 1 patients (65.2%), seven class 2 patients (30.4%) and only one class 3 patient (4.3%). In conclusion, timolol is an effective and safe treatment for superficial IH. In addition, it may be used in the treatment of proliferative superficial IH, particularly in infants within 6 months of age.

The quantitative evaluations of mineral resources and delineation of promising areas in survey regions for future mining have attracted many researchers’ interest. Cobalt-Rich manganese crusts (Mn-crusts), as one of the three significant strategic submarine mineral resources, lack effective and low-cost detection devices for surveying since the challenging distribution requires a high vertical and horizontal resolution. To solve this problem, we have built an engineering prototype parametric acoustic probe named PPPAAP19. With the echo data acquired by the probe, the interpretation of the accurate thickness information and the seabed classification using the deep learning network-based method are realized. We introduce the acoustic dataset of the minerals collected from two sea trials. Firstly, the preprocessing method and data augment strategy used to form the dataset are described. Afterward, the performances of several baseline approaches are assessed on the dataset, and the experimental results show that they all achieve high accuracy for binary classification. We find that the end-to-end approach for binary classification based on a 1D Convolution Neural Network has a comprehensive advantage. Such a demonstration validates the possibility of binary classification for recognizing the ferromanganese crust only in an acoustic manner, which may significantly contribute to the efficiency of the survey.

Membrane separation is an alternative separation technology to the conventional method of filtration. Hence, it has attracted use in the purification and concentration of Chinese Herbal Medicine Extracts (CHMEs). The purpose of this work was to study the process of microfiltration of Tongbi liquor (TBL), a popular Chinese herbal drink, using ceramic membranes. Zirconium oxide and aluminum oxide membranes with pore mean sizes of 0.2 μm and 0.05 μm, respectively, are used for comparisons in terms of flux, transmittance of the ingredients, physical-chemical parameters, removal of macromolecular materials and fouling resistance. The results show that 0.2 μm zirconium oxide membrane is more suitable. The stable permeate flux reaches 135 L·h−1·m−2, the cumulative transmittance of the indicator is 65.53%. Macromolecular materials, such as starch, protein, tannin, pectin and total solids were largely eliminated in retentate after filtration using 0.2 μm ZrO2 ceramic membrane, resulting in clearer TBL. Moreover, this work also reveals that continuous ultrasound could strengthen membrane process that the permeate flux increases significantly. This work demonstrates that the purification of CHME with ceramic membranes is possible and yielded excellent results.

No abstract