Sun Yat-sen University

About: Sun Yat-sen University is a education organization based out in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cancer. The organization has 115149 authors who have published 113763 publications receiving 2286465 citations. The organization is also known as: Zhongshan University & SYSU.

Metabolism of dietary soy isoflavones to equol by human intestinal microflora--implications for health.

Abstract: Soy isoflavones have received considerable attention. Individuals with isoflavones-rich diets have significantly lower occurrences of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and some cancers. The clinical effectiveness of soy isoflavones may be a function of the ability to biotransform soy isoflavones to the more potent estrogenic metabolite, equol, which may enhance the actions of soy isoflavones, owing to its greater affinity for estrogen receptors, unique antiandrogenic properties, and superior antioxidant activity. However, not all individuals consuming daidzein produce equol. Only approximately one-third to one-half of the population is able to metabolize daidzein to equol. This high variability in equol production is presumably attributable to interindividual differences in the composition of the intestinal microflora, which may play an important role in the mechanisms of action of isoflavones. But, the specific bacterial species in the colon involved in the production of equol are yet to be discovered. Therefore, future researches are aimed at identifying the specific bacterial species and strains that are capable of converting daidzein to equol or increasing equol production.

Orthogonal learning particle swarm optimization

Abstract: This paper proposes an orthogonal learning particle swarm optimization (OLPSO) by designing an orthogonal learning (OL) strategy through the orthogonal experimental design (OED) method. The OL strategy takes the dimensions of the problem as the orthogonal experimental factors. The levels of each dimension (factor) are the two choices of the personal best position and the neighborhood's best position. By orthogonally combining the two learning exemplars, the useful information can be discovered, preserved and utilized to construct an efficient exemplar to guide the particle to fly in a more promising direction towards the global optimum. The effectiveness and efficiency of the OL strategy is demonstrated on a set of benchmark functions by comparing the PSOs with and without OL strategy. The OL strategy improves the PSO algorithm in terms of higher quality solution and faster convergence speed.

The Impact of Memorable Tourism Experiences on Loyalty Behaviors: The Mediating Effects of Destination Image and Satisfaction

Abstract: The current study develops a theoretical model of the effect of memorable tourism experiences (MTEs) on behavioral intentions by examining the structural relationships between destination image (DI...

Instance-Level Human Parsing via Part Grouping Network.

Abstract: Instance-level human parsing towards real-world human analysis scenarios is still under-explored due to the absence of sufficient data resources and technical difficulty in parsing multiple instances in a single pass. Several related works all follow the “parsing-by-detection” pipeline that heavily relies on separately trained detection models to localize instances and then performs human parsing for each instance sequentially. Nonetheless, two discrepant optimization targets of detection and parsing lead to suboptimal representation learning and error accumulation for final results. In this work, we make the first attempt to explore a detection-free Part Grouping Network (PGN) for efficiently parsing multiple people in an image in a single pass. Our PGN reformulates instance-level human parsing as two twinned sub-tasks that can be jointly learned and mutually refined via a unified network: (1) semantic part segmentation for assigning each pixel as a human part (e.g., face, arms); (2) instance-aware edge detection to group semantic parts into distinct person instances. Thus the shared intermediate representation would be endowed with capabilities in both characterizing fine-grained parts and inferring instance belongings of each part. Finally, a simple instance partition process is employed to get final results during inference. We conducted experiments on PASCAL-Person-Part dataset and our PGN outperforms all state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, we show its superiority on a newly collected multi-person parsing dataset (CIHP) including 38,280 diverse images, which is the largest dataset so far and can facilitate more advanced human analysis. The CIHP benchmark and our source code are available at http://sysu-hcp.net/lip/.

Induction of long-term glycemic control in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic patients is associated with improvement of beta-cell function.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE —To investigate whether long-term optimal glycemic control can be achieved without medication by transient continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) and the possible mechanisms responsible for this remission. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS —Newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic patients ( n = 138, fasting glucose >11.1mmol/l) were hospitalized and treated with CSII for 2 weeks. Intravenous glucose tolerance tests (IVGTTs) were performed, and blood glucose, HbA 1c , lipid profiles, proinsulin, insulin, and C-peptide were measured before and after CSII. Patients were followed longitudinally on diet alone after withdrawal of insulin. RESULTS —Optimal glycemic control was achieved within 6.3 ± 3.9 days by CSII in 126 patients. The remission rates (percentages maintaining near euglycemia) at the third, sixth, twelfth, and twenty-fourth month were 72.6, 67.0, 47.1, and 42.3%, respectively. Patients who maintained glycemic control >12 months (remission group) had greater recovery of β-cell function than those who did not (nonremission group) when assessed immediately after CSII. Homeostasis model assessment of β-cell function (HOMA-B) and the area under the curve (AUC) of insulin during IVGTT were higher in the remission group (145.4 ± 89.6 vs. 78.5 ± 68.5, P = 0.002, and 1,423.4 ± 523.2 vs. 1,159.5 ± 476.8 pmol · l −1 · min −1 , P = 0.044). Change in acute insulin response was also greater in the remission group than that in the nonremission group (621.8 ± 430.4 vs. 387.3 ± 428.8 pmol · l −1 · min −1 , P = 0.033). CONCLUSIONS —Short-term intensive insulin therapy can induce long-term glycemic control in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic patients with severe hyperglycemia. The improvement of β-cell function, especially the restoration of first-phase insulin secretion, could be responsible for the remission.