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Various branch anomalies of the aortic arch have been reported, but cases with separate origins of the internal and external carotid arteries with combined direct aortic arch origin of the left vertebral artery are extremely rare. Herein, we present a rare case of aplasia of the left common carotid artery with separate origins of the ipsilateral internal and external carotid arteries and vertebral artery from the aortic arch in a 10-year-old girl. In addition, we review the embryological development and clinical implications of these anatomical variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related disease is a rare systemic fibroinflammatory condition characterized by elevated serum IgG4 levels and infiltration of IgG4-positive plasma cells in various organs. IgG4-related lung disease shows varied radiologic features on chest CT. Patients usually present with a solid nodule or mass mimicking lung cancer; therefore, distinguishing between IgG4-related disease and other conditions is often challenging. Additionally, co-existing radiologic findings of IgG4- related lung disease may mimic metastasis or lymphangitic carcinomatosis of the lung. We report two cases of histopathologically confirmed IgG4-related lung disease mimicking lung cancer. Chest CT revealed a solid nodule or mass with ancillary radiologic findings, which suggested lung cancer; therefore, IgG4-related lung disease was radiologically indistinguishable from lung cancer in both cases. Measurement of serum IgG4 levels and clinical evaluation to confirm involvement of various organs may be useful to establish the differential diagnosis. However, surgical biopsy evaluation is needed for confirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As bullae contribute to decreased lung function in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, effective decompression of large bullae is important. Bronchoscopic lung volume reduction via endobronchial one-way valves is less invasive and has a lower mortality rate than lung volume reduction surgery. We report the case of a 48-year-old male who presented with giant bullae that were expeditiously resolved with endobronchial valves and percutaneous catheter insertion. Three days later, imaging revealed marked decreases in the extent of bullae and atelectasis of the contralateral lung without any complications, including air leakage or pneumothorax. Combination of endobronchial valves and percutaneous catheter insertion might be helpful to accelerate the release of large bullae and to achieve improved lung function and higher levels of physical activity in patients with COPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of augmented reality (AR) applications and games are in high demand. Currently, the best common platform to implement AR services is on a smartphone, as online games, navigators, personal assistants, travel guides are among the most popular applications of smartphones. However, the power consumption of an AR application is extremely high, and therefore, highly adaptable and dynamic low power control schemes must be used. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) schemes are widely used in smartphones to minimize the energy consumption by controlling the device's operational frequency and voltage. DVFS schemes can sometimes lead to longer response times, which can result in a significant problem for AR applications. In this paper, an AR response time monitor is used to observe the time interval between the AR image input and device's reaction time, in order to enable improved operational frequency and AR application process priority control. Based on the proposed response time monitor and the characteristics of the Linux kernel's completely fair scheduler (CFS) (which is the default scheduler of Android based smartphones), a response time step control (RSC) scheme is proposed which adaptively adjusts the CPU frequency and interactive application's priority. The experimental results show that RSC can reduce the energy consumption up to 10.41% compared to the ondemand governor while reliably satisfying the response time performance limit of interactive applications on a smartphone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Because anthracofibrosis (AF) is associated with tuberculosis (TB), detection of AF is clinically relevant in Korea, a TB endemic region. We thus sought to develop and validate a predictive model for AF using clinical radiographic data. Materials and Methods: Between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2014, 3849 adult patients who underwent bronchoscopies were retrospectively included from an observational registry. We dichotomized patients based on the presence (n=167) or absence (n=242) of AF. After analyzing their clinico-radiographic characteristics, a logistic prediction model was developed. An area under the curve (AUC) was drawn using the weighted score in logistic regression model. To evaluate the degree of overfitting of the predictive model, a 5-fold cross-validation procedure was performed. Results: In multivariate logistic regression, clinical findings such as age >70 years, female gender, active TB, and computed tomography findings including atelectasis, stenosis, bronchial wall thickening, enlarged and calcified lymph nodes were significant diagnostic predictors for AF. The weighed score had an AUC of 0.939 [95% confidence interval (CI)=0.911-0.960], similar to the AUC obtained from internal validation (AUC=0.926, 95% CI=0.896-0.949). Conclusion: The prediction model may be helpful for predicting AF based only on clinical and radiographic findings. However, further external validation is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Progesterone resistance is thought to be a major factor that contributes to progression of endometriosis. However, it is not clear what causes progesterone resistance in endometriosis. This study aimed to assess whether cytokines or peritoneal fluid can affect progesterone receptor (PR) expression in endometrial cells and to verify whether PR expression is reduced in endometriosis. Materials and Methods: The PR-B/A ratio was measured via real-time polymerase chain reaction after in vitro culture, in which endometrial cells were treated with either tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1 beta, or peritoneal fluid obtained from women with advanced-stage endometriosis. Immunohistochemistry was performed to compare PR-B expression between eutopic and ectopic endometrial tissues from women with and without advanced-stage endometriosis. Results: The PR-B/A ratio was significantly decreased by treatment with either TNF-α (p=0.011) or peritoneal fluid from women with advanced-stage endometriosis (p=0.027). Immunoreactivity of PR-B expression was significantly lower during the secretory phase than during the proliferative phase in endometrial tissues from control subjects (p<0.001). PR-B expression was significantly reduced in the eutopic endometrium (p=0.031) and ovarian endometrioma (p=0.036) from women with advanced-stage endometriosis compared with eutopic endometrium tissues from control subjects. Conclusion: Progesterone resistance in endometriosis may be caused by proinflammatory conditions in the pelvic peritoneal microenvironment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, numerous and various Internet-capable devices are connected in end user networks, such as a home network. Most devices use the combination of TCP and 802.11 DCF as a system platform, but whereas some devices such as a streaming video persistently generate traffic, others such as a motion sensor do so only intermittently with lots of pauses. This study addresses the issue of performance in this heterogeneous traffic wireless LAN environment from the perspective of fairness. First, instantaneous fairness is introduced as a notion to indicate how immediately and how closely a user obtains its fair share, and a new time-based metric is defined as an index. Second, extensive simulation experiments have been made with TCP Reno, Vegas, and Westwood to determine how each TCP congestion control corresponds to the instantaneous fairness. Overall, TCP Vegas yields the best instantaneous fairness because it keeps the queue length shorter than the other TCPs. In the simulations, about 60% of a fair share of the effective user bandwidth is immediately usable in any circumstance. Finally, we introduce two simple strategies for adjusting TCP congestion controls to enhance instantaneous fairness and validate them through simulation experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Total lung capacity (TLC), forced expiratory flow between 25 and 75% (FEF25-75%), peak expiratory flow (PEF), or post-bronchodilator volume response is recommended to detect obstructive abnormalities in the lung. The present study was performed to evaluate the usefulness of these pulmonary function test (PFT) parameters to diagnose obstructive lung disease in subjects with a restrictive pattern of spirometry. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted in 64 subjects with a restrictive pattern of spirometry (normal FEV,/FVC and low FVC) out of 3,030 patients who underwent all pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry and lung volume measurement between April 2008 and December 2010. After subjects were clinically classified into those with obstructive lung disease, restrictive lung disease, and mixed lung disease, the agreements between the clinical diagnosis and PFT classification according to TLC, FEF25-75%, PEF, and post-bronchodilator response criteria were compared. RESULTS: Of 64 subjects, 18 (28.1%) were classified with obstructive lung disease, 39 (60.9%) had restrictive lung disease, 1 (1.6%) had mixed lung disease, and 6 (9.4%) had no clinical lung disease. Among the 58 subjects with clinical lung disease, 22 (37.9%), 37 (63.8%), 33 (56.9%), and 3 (5.2%) were classified as having obstructive pattern based on TLC, FEF25-75%, PEF, and post-bronchodilator response criteria, respectively. The kappa coefficients for the agreement between the clinical classification and PFT classification using TLC, FEF25-75%, PEF, and post-bronchodilator response criteria in 58 subjects were 0.59, 0.18, 0.17, and < 0.01, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The additional measurement of TLC is more useful than FEF25-75%, PEF, and post-bronchodilator response for diagnosis of obstructive lung disease in subjects with a restrictive pattern of spirometry, when obstructive lung disease is clinically suspected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To evaluate lipid profiles and liver enzymes as surrogate markers used for recognizing insulin resistance in Korean women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Materials and Methods: 458 women with PCOS were divided into two groups: non-obese with a body mass index (BMI)<25.0 kg/m2 and obese with a BMI≥25.0 kg/m². Anthropometric measures and blood sampling for hormone assay, liver enzymes, lipid profiles and 75 g oral glucose tolerance test were performed. Insulin resistance was defined as homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR)≥2.5. Areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to compare the power of serum markers. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the contribution of each confounding factor for HOMA-IR. Results: In non-obese and obese groups, the ROC curve analyses demonstrated that the best marker for insulin resistance was triglyceride (TG), with the areas under the ROC curve of 0.617 and 0.837, respectively. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) was the significant marker for insulin resistance with areas under the ROC curve of 0.698 in obese group, but not significant in non-obese group. TG and LDL-C were significantly associated with HOMA-IR in both non-obese and obese PCOS women by multiple linear regression analysis. The optimal cut-off points of TG≥68.5 was a marker for predicting insulin resistance in non-obese PCOS patients and TG≥100.5 in obese group. Conclusion: TG can be used as a useful marker for insulin resistance in Korean women with PCOS, especially for obese patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 802.11 wireless LANs are so widely used, it has become common for numerous access points (APs) to overlap in a region, where most of those APs are managed individually without any coordinated control. This pattern of wireless LAN usage is called the private OBSS (Overlapping Basic Service Set) environment in this paper. Due to frame collisions across BSSs, each BSS in the private OBSS environment suffers severe performance degradation. This study approaches the problem from the perspective of congestion control rather than noise or collision resolution. The retry limit, one of the 802.11 attributes, could be used for traffic control in conjunction with TCP. Reducing the retry limit causes early discard of a frame, and it has a similar effect of random early drops at a router, well known in the research area of congestion control. It makes the shared link less crowded with frames, and then the benefit of fewer collisions surpasses the penalty of less strict error recovery. As a result, the network-wide performance improves and so does the performance of each BSS eventually. Reducing the retry limit also has positive effects of merging TCP ACKs and reducing HOL-like blocking time at the AP. Extensive experiments have validated the idea that in the OBSS environment, reducing the retry limit provides better performance, which is contrary to the common wisdom. Since our strategy is basically to sacrifice error recovery for congestion control, it could yield side-effects in an environment where the cost of error recovery is high. Therefore, to be useful in general network and traffic environments, adaptability is required. To prove the feasibility of the adaptive scheme, a simple method to dynamically adjust the value of the retry limit has been proposed. Experiments have shown that this approach could provide comparable performance in unfriendly environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) assay is employed as a complementary diagnostic test for bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in many countries. To simplify this assay, we established a 96-well plate format using the ESAT-6 and CFP-10 antigens and then employed it to determine the extent of Mycobacterium (M.) bovis infection in dairy herds with a history of BTB outbreaks in a country where only selective culling is practiced. The sensitivity and specificity of this IFN-γ assay were 85.9% and 100%, respectively, based on comparison with the conventional single intradermal tuberculin test (SIDT). The IFN-γ assay was also positive in 30.4% and 36.8% of SIDT-negative animals from herds with recent and remote BTB outbreaks, respectively. Of 14 SIDT-negative, IFN-γ positive cattle, five (35.7%) were culture positive and an additional six were positive based on a polymerase chain reaction-based test for M. bovis. Therefore, the IFN-γ assay has the potential to serve as a specific and sensitive test for M. bovis infection in dairy cattle. Further, the results indicated that a substantial portion of SIDT-negative animals in herds with previous BTB outbreaks were actually infected with M. bovis. Accordingly, the present selective-culling strategy may require modifications to include this more sensitive assay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Triclosan (TCS, 2,4,4′-trichloro-2′-hydroxydiphenyl ether), a broad-spectrum antibacterial agent, is commonly found in the aquatic environment. In this study, we investigated TCS toxicity with pertaining to gamete viability, fertilization, and embryogenesis up to pluteus stage of the sea urchin, (Strongylocentrotus nudus). When the sperm and eggs were exposed to TCS (0–3.0μM), the viability of sperm was significantly decreased at molarities higher than 1μM of TCS. In addition, for exposure of 2.0μM TCS the viability of eggs was not influenced and none of the sperm was viable. Fertilization rate was significantly decreased when sperm were exposed to 0.5 and 1μM of TCS (p<0.001) and no fertilization was observed for the exposure of 1.5μM of TCS. In embryonic development, embryos are treated with higher than 1.0μM levels of TCS displayed arrested development. For TCS, the EC50 and LOECs values were 1.8, 1.49 and 0.99μM and 0.53, 0.62 and 0.39μM for sperm viability, fertilization rate, and larval development to pluteus, respectively. In the recovery test regarding normal development of arrested embryos based upon TCS exposure time, it was observed that embryos exposed to 1μM TCS for 15h were normally recovered for normal development, while embryos with more than 30h exposure were not recovered to normal larvae. Overall, the results of this study strongly suggest that the gametes and embryos of S. nudus can provide the basis for an effective bioassay, with a fast and sensitive means of evaluating TCS contamination in the marine ecosystem. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article details a study of the effects of low-intensity treadmill exercise and bright light on neurogenesis in the hippocampus of adult Sprague-Dawley rats. The researchers assigned nine rats to each of the control, exercise, light and exercise plus light (EPL) groups. They found that the neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus of rats in the exercise, light and EPL groups have increased. They concluded that moderate exercise or exposure to sunlight can stimulate neural development.

Recent advances in cognitive radio technology have drawn immense attention to higher layer protocols above medium access control, such as transmission control protocol (TCP). Most proposals to improve the TCP performance in cognitive radio (CR) networks have assumed that either all nodes are in CR networks or the TCP sender side is in CR links. In those proposals, lower layer information such as the CR link status could be easily exploited to adjust the congestion window and improve throughput. In this paper, we consider a TCP network in which the TCP sender is located remotely over the Internet while the TCP receiver is connected by a CR link. This topology is more realistic than the earlier proposals, but the lower layer information cannot be exploited. Under this assumption, we propose an enhanced TCP protocol for CR networks called TCP for cognitive radio (TCP-CR) to improve the existing TCP by (1) detection of primary user (PU) interference by a remote sender without support from lower layers, (2) delayed congestion control (DCC) based on PU detection when the retransmission timeout (RTO) expires, and (3) exploitation of two separate scales of the congestion window adapted for PU activity. Performance evaluation demonstrated that the proposed TCP-CR achieves up to 255% improvement of the end-to-end throughput. Furthermore, we verified that the proposed TCP does not deteriorate the fairness of existing TCP flows and does not cause congestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the estimation of the total content and composition of the Policosanols (PCs), a group of long chain alcohols that have many beneficial physiological activities in 15 rice cultivars from Korea. The methods used were gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The result provides preliminary information on the health-promoting phytochemicals in PCs, the composition of PCs in 15 rice cultivars from Korea, and the correlations among their contents.

Purpose: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) are major mediators of angiogenesis and are induced by tissue inflammation and hypoxia. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether serum VEGF and Ang-2 are associated with the presence of hemoptysis and the extent of systemic inflammation in patients with inflammatory lung diseases. Materials and Methods: We prospectively enrolled 52 patients with inflammatory lung disease between June 2008 and October 2009. Results: The median values of VEGF and Ang-2 were 436 pg/mL and 2383 pg/mL, respectively. There was a significant positive correlation between serum Ang-2 and VEGF levels. VEGF levels were not significantly different according to the presence of hemoptysis. C-reactive protein (CRP) and Ang-2 level were significantly higher in patients without hemoptysis (n=26) than in those with hemoptysis (n=26; p<0.001 and p<0.001, respectively). CRP and arterial oxygen tension (PaO2) were significantly correlated with both serum VEGF (p=0.032 and p=0.016, respectively) and Ang-2 levels (p<0.001 and p=0.041, respectively), after adjusting for other factors. Age and the absence of hemoptysis were factors correlated with serum Ang-2 levels. Conclusion: Our study suggests that serum VEGF and Ang-2 levels are associated with PaO2 and the severity of inflammation rather than the presence of hemoptysis in patients with inflammatory lung diseases. Thus, hemoptysis may not be mediated by increased serum levels of VEGF and Ang-2 in patients with inflammatory lung diseases, and further studies are required to determine the mechanisms of hemoptysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication technology of future networks is predicted to provide a large variety of services including WiFi service in vehicular network. In this paper, we assume that vehicles are embedded with WiMAX antenna and in-vehicle terminals receive WiMAX traffic through WiFi interface. This assumption will impose severe performance degradation due to interference among mobile BSSs when WiFi access points (APs) are densely located. Existing interference avoidance techniques cannot properly resolve the above problems and do not cope with dynamically moving vehicular scenario since they focus only on the fixed network topology. In this paper, we propose a mobility-aware interference avoidance scheme for WiFi services. The proposed scheme computes the interference duration by exploiting mobility vector and location information of neighboring APs. If the interference duration is not negligible, our scheme searches for another channel in order to avoid interference. However, if the interference duration is negligible, our scheme continues to use the channel to reduce switching overhead. To measure the effectiveness of the proposed scheme against other existing techniques, we evaluated performance by using OPNET simulator. Through the simulation, we obtained about 60% reduction in the maximum interference frequency and about 67% improvement in throughput. Furthermore, our scheme provides fair channel usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN, every unicast transmission requires an ACK from the receiver for reliability, though it consumes energy and bandwidth. There have been studies to remove or reduce ACK overhead, especially for energy efficiency. However none of them are practically used now. This paper introduces a noble method of selective unacknowledged transmission, where skipping an ACK is dynamically decided frame by frame. Utilizing the fact that a multicast frame is transmitted without accompanying an ACK in 802.11, the basic unacknowledged transmission is achieved simply by transforming the destination address of a frame to a multicast address. Since removing ACK is inherently more efficient but less strict, its practical profit is dependent on traffic characteristics of a frame as well as network error conditions. To figure out the selective conditions, energy and performance implications of unacknowledged transmission have been explored. Extensive experiments show that energy consumption is almost always reduced, but performance may be dropped especially when TCP exchanges long data with a long distance node through a poor wireless link. An experiment with a well-known traffic model shows that selective unacknowledged transmission gives energy saving with comparable performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The optimal treatment regimen for Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) lung disease has not yet been fully established. We evaluated the efficacy of standardized combination antibiotic therapy and the factors that might affect unfavorable microbiologic responses in patients with MAC pulmonary disease. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study reviewed data from 96 patients (56 females; median age 59 years) treated with newly diagnosed MAC lung disease between January 2003 and December 2006. Results: All patients received standardized combination antibiotic therapy, consisting of clarithromycin, rifampicin, and ethambutol. Streptomycin was additionally given in 72 patients (75%) for a median duration of 4.5 months. The overall favorable microbiologic response rate was 79% (76/96); 20 patients (21%) had unfavorable microbiologic responses, including failure to sputum conversion (n = 13), relapse (n = 3), and MACrelated death (n = 4). A positive sputum acid-fast bacillus smear at the start of treatment was an independent predictor of an unfavorable microbiologic response. Conclusion: Standardized combination antibiotic therapy consisting of clarithromycin, rifampicin, and ethambutol with or without initial use of streptomycin is effective in treating patients with newly diagnosed MAC lung disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the application of stable isotope dilution gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOFMS) procedure to determine niacin in rice. It mentions the significance of determining niacin in biological samples to evaluate their nutritional conditions. It describes the said analytical method to quantify niacin with the use of D4-nicotinic acid as an internal standard (IS).