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The accurate prediction of protein-ligand binding is of great importance for rational drug design. We present herein a novel docking algorithm called as FIPSDock, which implements a variant of the Fully Informed Particle Swarm (FIPS) optimization method and adopts the newly developed energy function of AutoDock 4.20 suite for solving flexible protein-ligand docking problems. The search ability and docking accuracy of FIPSDock were first evaluated by multiple cognate docking experiments. In a benchmarking test for 77 protein/ligand complex structures derived from GOLD benchmark set, FIPSDock has obtained a successful predicting rate of 93.5% and outperformed a few docking programs including particle swarm optimization (PSO)@AutoDock, SODOCK, AutoDock, DOCK, Glide, GOLD, FlexX, Surflex, and MolDock. More importantly, FIPSDock was evaluated against PSO@AutoDock, SODOCK, and AutoDock 4.20 suite by cross-docking experiments of 74 protein-ligand complexes among eight protein targets (CDK2, ESR1, F2, MAPK14, MMP8, MMP13, PDE4B, and PDE5A) derived from Sutherland-crossdock-set. Remarkably, FIPSDock is superior to PSO@AutoDock, SODOCK, and AutoDock in seven out of eight cross-docking experiments. The results reveal that FIPS algorithm might be more suitable than the conventional genetic algorithm-based algorithms in dealing with highly flexible docking problems.

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This study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a modified single-armed suture technique for microsurgical vasoepididymostomy (VE) in patients with epididymal obstructive azoospermia. From September 2011 to December 2011, microsurgical two-suture longitudinal intussusception VEs were performed using our modified single-armed suture technique in 17 men with epididymal obstructive azoospermia at our hospital. Two of these patients underwent repeated VEs after previous failed VEs, and one patient underwent unilateral VE because of an occlusion of the left abdominal vas deferens. The presence of sperm in the semen sample at 3 months postoperation was used as the preliminary endpoint of this study. Each patient provided at least one semen sample at the 3-month time point, and the patency was assessed by the reappearance of sperm (>10(4) ml(-1)) in the semen. The mean operative time for the modified technique was 219 min. Patency was noted in 10 men (58.8%), including one patient who underwent repeated VE. The patient who underwent unilateral anastomosis manifested no sperm postoperatively in his semen. Sperm granulomas were not detected in this cohort. The results of this study demonstrate that our modified technique for microsurgical longitudinal intussusception VE is effective. We believe that it is a practical alternative that may reduce operation time and obviate the suture crossing.

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Phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (Φ-OTDR) based distributed optical fiber sensing system has been widely used in many fields such as long range pipeline pre-warning, perimeter security and structure health monitoring. However, the lack of event recognition ability is always being the bottleneck of Φ-OTDR in field application. An event recognition method based on deep learning is proposed in this paper. This method directly uses the temporal-spatial data matrix from Φ-OTDR as the input of a convolutional neural network (CNN). Only a simple bandpass filtering and a gray scale transformation are needed as the pre-processing, which achieves real-time. Besides, an optimized network structure with small size, high training speed and high classification accuracy is built. Experiment results based on 5644 events samples show that this network can achieve 96.67% classification accuracy in recognition of 5 kinds of events and the retraining time is only 7 min for a new sensing setup.

When the region of interest (ROI) is smaller than the object, one can increase MRI speed by reducing the imaging field of view (FOV). However, when such an approach is used, features outside the reduced FOV will alias into the reduced-FOV image along the phase-encoding direction. Reduced-FOV methods are designed to correct this aliasing problem. In the present study, we propose a combination of two different approaches to reduce the acquired FOV: 1) two-dimensional (2D) spatially-selective RF excitation, and 2) the unaliasing by Fourier-encoding the overlaps using the temporal dimension (UNFOLD) technique. While 2D spatially-selective RF excitation can restrict the spins excited within a reduced FOV, the UNFOLD technique can help to eliminate any residual aliased signals and thus relaxes the requirement for a long RF excitation pulse. This hybrid method was implemented for MR-based temperature mapping, and resulted in artifact-free images with a fourfold improvement in temporal resolution. Magn Reson Med 53: 1118 -1125, 2005.

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