Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the imbalance of erythropoiesis and iron metabolism in patients with thalassemia.Methods: 192 patients with non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia (NTDT), 94 patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia (TDT) and 101 healthy controls were recruited between June 2013 and December 2016 in the Hematology Department, the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University. The groups were compared in terms of levels of erythropoiesis biomarkers [growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), erythropoietin (EPO) and soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR)] and of iron overload biomarkers [serum ferritin (SF), liver iron concentration (LIC) and cardiac T2*] and hepcidin.Results: The levels of GDF15, EPO, sTfR, LIC and SF were significantly higher in patients with thalassemia. The levels of GDF15 and EPO were significantly higher in patients with TDT compared to NTDT. Those with iron overload had higher EPO, GDF15, SF and sTfR levels compared with non-iron overload patients. Hepcidin levels and ratios of hepcidin to erythropoietic activity and to iron biomarker levels were lower in patients with β-thalassemia intermedia or hemoglobin (Hb) E/β-thalassemia than in patients with HbH disease. The hepcidin levels were correlated negatively with the levels of EPO, GDF15 and sTfR in patients with NTDT and TDT, but correlated positively with SF and Hb levels only in patients with TDT.Conclusions: Patients with thalassemia showed iron overload, reduced hepcidin levels, and a greater extent of ineffective erythropoiesis. The hepcidin levels were more strongly related to ineffective erythropoiesis compared with iron overload. The imbalance between erythropoiesis and iron metabolism differed across different thalassemia types.

Abstract：To solve these problems of larger diameter, upright position, and film damage, a mechanism with planetary five-bar is proposed based on the theory of zero-speed transplanting. According to the movement characteristics of zero-speed transplanting, the mechanism movement trajectory is analyzed and presented kinematics model. A computer-aided analysis program based on Visual Basic 6.0 is developed for optimizing the structural parameters as well as optimized to satisfy the motion trajectory conditions by human-computer interaction analysis method. The image shows that the static trajectory tallies with its computer simulation. During the field test with the forward speed of 0.5m/s and transplanting frequency of 50 seedlings per minute, note that the advantages of the seedling transplanting mechanism are that the diameter of the planting cave is less than 70 millimeter, 96.7% of the seedling perpendicularity qualification rate can be reached, the film injury rate is only 3.2%, the missing rate of seedling transplanting is merely 3%, and the hanging membrane phenomenon is avoided. The mechanism achieves requirement for a mulch-film transplanting machine. Key words：seedling transplanting on mulch-film；effective zero-speed transplanting；cylindrical cam；kinematic；parameter optimization；experimental validation 0 前言 *

Background. Extramedullary hematopoiesis (EMH) is common in non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia (NTDT) patients. Clinical presentations of EMH vary as MRI screening is not feasible. Hence, serum biomarkers are used to predict the risk of EMH. Materials and Methods. 52 NTDT patients, including 26 EMH (+) and 26 EMH (-), together with 26 healthy controls, were enrolled in this case-control study from 2013 to 2016. EMH was confirmed by computed tomography or MRI. Demographic, transfusion, genetic, laboratory, and liver iron concentration (LIC) data, as well as clinical complications, were analyzed. Results. EMH (+) patients had significantly higher serum ferritin (SF), growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), and erythropoietin (EPO) levels compared with EMH (-) patients and controls. The levels of erythroferrone (ERFE), hepcidin, and sTfR did not differ significantly between EMH (+) and EMH (-) patients (p>0.05). In NTDT patients, serum ERFE was not related to SF, LIC, hepcidin, sTfR, EPO, GDF15, and Hb levels. GDF15, EPO concentrations, and GDF15 to sTfR and GDF15 to EPO ratios are able to determine the presence of EMH with considerable sensitivity and specificity. Conclusions. GDF15, EPO, and GDF15 to EPO and GDF15 to sTfR ratios are potential biomarkers for the early prediction of NTDT in patients who are at risk for EMH.

Background: Iron overload is one of the main factors that increase morbidity and mortality in patients with non-transfusion dependent thalassemia (NTDT). Aim: This study aimed at investigating the prevalence and severity of iron overload in Chinese NTDT patients. Methods: we analyzed serum ferritin (SF), liver iron concentration (LIC) and cardiac T2* in 178 Chinese NTDT in this cross-sectional study. Results: The median SF level was 996.00(27.15–19704.00) ng/ml and the median LIC value was 8.90(0.60–43.00) mg Fe/g dry weight (dw). The youngest patient with liver iron overload was 5 years old with 5.6 mg Fe/g dw in LIC. The median cardiac T2* was 33.06(7.46–75.08) ms. 6 patients had cardiac T2*⩽20ms. The patients with β thalassemia intermedia and HbE/β thalassemia showed a statistically significant lower Hb and higher values of SF and LIC than those of hemoglobin H disease patients. On multivariate logistic regression analysis, patients in ⩾ age 30-year old had a significant higher risk for iron overload (OR: 77.75, 95% CI: 8.76–690.49) in the age group. The detailed analysis of proportions of different LIC indicate in  > 30-year old group, 76.8% patients suffered from moderate and severe LIC. Conclusion: Our study provides a strong support for the novel findings that Chinese NTDT patients have a high prevalence of iron overload. The first assessment of MRI LIC should be performed as early as 5 years old. Then, NTDT patients  > 30 years old may suffer with a high burden of iron overload.

Hb Southampton [β106(G8)Leu→Pro; HBB: c.320T>C] is a rare, unstable hemoglobin (Hb), variant. The main clinical presentation of this variant is hemolytic anemia. We detected this mutation in a 2-year-old Chinese girl with a history of regular transfusions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that this variant has been found in the Asian population.

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Up-film pot seedling transplanter is not stable in soil output, causing exposed and fallen seedlings, insufficient up-film daylighting and other problems. Based on the research on soil-covering process and principle of soil-covering device of transplanter, a theoretical model of the soil taking volume was established, the soil output principle of soil-covering drum was analyzed, the theoretical soil output volume was calculated, and the influences of structural parameters on soil output were studied. The field tests based on the influences of structural parameters on soil output was conducted using Box-Behnken experiment design, and a mathematical model between soil output and declination, vertical center distance (i.e. the depth in soil of soil-covering disc), and height of screw blades of soil-covering disc was established. Optimized analysis on the response surface was conducted based on parameter range and target soil output range. Results show that the soil output increases when the declination of the soil-covering disc increases from 20° to 40°, or the vertical center distance increases from 4-6 cm; the change of screw blade height has small impact on the soil output; The optimal structural parameters combination for the soil-covering device was obtained with the included angle of soil-covering disc of 37°, vertical center distance of 5.5 cm, and height of screw blades of 5 cm. With this optimal parameters combination, the soil output of 1 m soil-cover belt is 4.84 kg, which is basically the same with the actual volume of 4.53 kg and can ensure the stability of the soil output and provide reference for the optimization design of soil-covering device.

It is specified in agronomic requirements of sugarcane sowing that sugarcane buds should be placed toward the walls on bothsides of the sowing ditch, while the traditional detection model of small sugarcane bud targets cannot meet the requirementsof intelligent directional seeding machine for sugarcane bud identification due to such shortcomings as low accuracy, lowrecognition speed, and low training speed. To this end, a network model targeting sugarcane buds, called YOLOv3-CSE wasproposed in this paper. On the basis of analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the YOLOv3 network, the originalYOLOv3 network was improved to achieve accurate and rapid identification of small and medium-sized targets in sugarcanebuds. Besides, to further enhance the detection ability of the model for small object regions such as sugarcane buds, the originalDarkNet-53 network structure and the complete intersection over union (CIoU) bounding box regression loss function wereimproved to make the real box regression more stable, thus avoiding IoU divergence in the training process and ameliorating theregression effect on sugarcane bud identification. Mosaic data augmentation method was applied to enrich the data diversity,so as to solve the inadequate generalization ability during small dataset training. Finally, SE-ResNet module was embedded toincrease the ability of network model to identify sugarcane bud features. The test results of the YOLOv3-CSE network andthe original YOLOv3 network indicated that the precision and mean average precision (mAP) of the YOLOv3-CSE networkwere 96.93% and 95.87%, which were 5.66% and 4.95%, respectively, higher than those of the original YOLOv3 network.Compared with other object detection models with the same dataset, the YOLO v3-CSE network proposed in this paper boastsstronger robustness, better instantaneity, higher precision and higher detection velocity in identifying small objects of sugarcanebuds. In addition, it can rapidly identify the sugarcane buds, providing a technical guarantee for the application of the intelligentdirectional seeding machine for sugarcane seeds.