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Background: The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) seems to play an important role in behavioral deficits and executive dysfunctions in patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), while its specific and independent contribution requires clarification. Objective: To identify whether ACC abnormalities in gray matter (GM) volume and standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) images are associated with disease severity of bvFTD, by analyzing hybrid T1 and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET). Methods: We enrolled 21 bvFTD patients and 21 healthy controls in the study. Each subject underwent a hybrid PET/MRI study and a standardized neuropsychologic assessment battery. GM volume and SUVR are voxel-wise calculated and compared. Then we estimate the mean value inside ACC for further partial Pearson’s correlation to explore the association between GM volume/SUVR of the ACC and severity of behavioral deficit as well as executive dysfunction. Results: ACC was shown to be involved in both atrophy and hypometabolism patterns. The partial Pearson’s correlation analysis showed that the SUVR of the ACC was strongly correlated with frontal behavior inventory total score (left r = –0.85, right r = –0.85, p

ObjectiveElucidate the core clinical and genetic characteristics and identify the phenotypic variation between different regions and genotypes of fatal familial insomnia (FFI).MethodsA worldwide large sample of FFI patients from our case series and literature review diagnosed by genetic testing were collected. The prevalence of clinical symptoms and genetic profile were obtained, and then the phenotypic comparison between Asians versus non-Asians and 129Met/Met versus 129Met/Val were conducted.ResultsIn total, 131 cases were identified. The age of onset was 47.51±12.53 (range 17–76) years, 106 patients died and disease duration was 13.20±9.04 (range 2–48) months. Insomnia (87.0%) and rapidly progressive dementia (RPD; 83.2%) occurred with the highest frequency. Hypertension (33.6%) was considered to be an objective indicator of autonomic dysfunction. Genotype frequency at codon 129 was Met/Met (84.7%) and Met/Val (15.3%), and allele frequency was Met (92.4%) and Val (7.6%).129 Met was a risk factor (OR: 3.728, 95% CI: 2.194 to 6.333, p=0.000) for FFI in the non-Asian population. Comparison of Asians and non-Asians revealed clinical symptoms and genetic background to show some differences (pConclusionsInsomnia, RPD and hypertension are representative key clinical presentations of FFI. Phenotypic variations in genotypes and geographic regions were documented. Prion protein gene 129 Met was considered to be a risk factor for FFI in the non-Asian population, and 129 polymorphisms could modify survival duration.

There is limited data on serum biomarkers in distinguishing Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MP) from Streptococcus pneumoniae (SP) and viral pneumoniae (VP) etiologies of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP)....

Purpose To compare the efficacy and safety of bipolar and monopolar transurethral resection of bladder tumors (TURBT) in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) treatment. Methods A systematic search of all Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), which compared bipolar TURBT (bTURBT) and monopolar TURBT (mTURBT) in NMIBC treatment, were performed in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Embase up to February 1, 2019. We evaluated their efficacy by operative time, hospitalization time, catheterization time, and recurrence rate. While obturator jerk, bladder perforation, thermal damage, and overall complications were used to evaluate their safety. Results A total of 13 RCTs, involving 2379 patients, were included. There were no statistically significant differences in efficacy between bTURBT and mTURBT in NMIBC treatment, such as operative time (p = 0.12), hospitalization time (p = 0.13), catheterization time (p = 0.50), and recurrence rate (p = 0.88). Compared to the safety in mTURBT in NMIBC treatment, no significant advantages were observed in that in bTURBT as well, such as obturator jerk (p = 0.12), bladder perforation (p = 0.11), thermal damage (p = 0.24), and overall complications (p = 0.65). Conclusions Our analysis demonstrated that bTURBT has no significant advantages in efficacy and safety in NMIBC treatment compared to that in mTURBT. Thus, bTURBT could not completely replace mTURBT as a safer and more effective NMIBC treatment.

Building recommendation systems for enterprise software has many unique challenges that are different from consumer-facing systems. When applied to different organizations, the data used to power those recommendation systems vary substantially in both quality and quantity due to differences in their operational practices, marketing strategies, and targeted audiences. At Salesforce, as a cloud provider of such a system with data across many different organizations, naturally, it makes sense to pool data from different organizations to build a model that combines all values from different brands. However, multiple issues like how do we make sure a model trained with pooled data can still capture customer specific characteristics, how do we design the system to handle those data responsibly and ethically, i.e., respecting contractual agreements with our clients, legal and compliance requirements, and the privacy of all the consumers. In this proposal, We present a framework that not only utilizes enriched user-level data across organizations, but also boosts business-specific characteristics in generating personal recommendations. We will also walk through key privacy considerations when designing such a system.

A node can provide a file to other nodes after downloading the file or data from the Internet. When more than one node have obtained the same file, this is considered a multisource transmission, in which all these nodes can act as candidate providers (sources) and transmit the file to a new request node (destination) together. In cases where there is negligible or no interference, multisource transmission can improve the download throughput because of parallel transmissions through multiple paths. However, this improvement is not guaranteed due to wireless interference among different paths. Wireless interference can be alleviated by the multiradio and multichannel technique. Because the source and multipath routing selections interact with channel assignment, the multisource transmission problem with multiradio and multichannel presents a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a distributed joint source, routing, and channel selection scheme. The source selection issue can be concurrently solved via multipath finding. There are three sub-algorithms in our scheme, namely, interference-aware routing algorithm, channel assignment algorithm, and local routing adjustment algorithm. The interference-aware routing algorithm is used to find paths sequentially and is jointly executed with the channel assignment algorithm. After finding a new path, the local routing adjustment algorithm may be executed to locally adjust the selected paths so as to further reduce wireless interference. Extensive simulations have been conducted to demonstrate that our algorithms can effectively improve the network aggregate throughput, as well as reduce delay and packet loss probability.

BackgroundBehavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a clinically heterogeneous syndrome with high heredity. However, the frequencies of mutations associated with bvFTD have yet to be determined. The aim of the current study was to investigate the frequency of Chinese Han patients harboring genetic bvFTD variants.MethodsA total of 49 bvFTD patients selected from our frontotemporal lobar degeneration database, including 14 familial cases belonging to eight families and 35 sporadic cases were consecutively recruited from July 2014 to December 2019 at Xuanwu Hospital (Beijing, China). Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed and repeat-primed PCR was used to test samples for the C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion mutation. The frequency of genetic variants and the pathogenicity of the novel variants were analyzed.ResultsTen pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants were identified in 17 bvFTD patients, including C9orf72 repeat expansions, six previously reported mutations and three novel mutations (MAPT p. R5C, p. D54N, GRN p. P451L). Genetic mutations accounted for 27.9% (12/43) of total cases, 87.5% (7/8) of patients with familial bvFTD, and 14.3% (5/35) with sporadic bvFTD. Pathogenic variants mostly occurred in MAPT gene (20.9%, 9/43), followed by C9orf72 repeat expansions (2.3%, 1/43), GRN gene (2.3%, 1/43) and FUS gene (2.3%, 1/43).ConclusionThere was a high prevalence of genetic variants in Chinese bvFTD patients, highlighting the necessity of genetic testing for bvFTD.

ObjectiveThe objective of the study was to explore patterns of white matter (WM) alteration in preclinical stage familial Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (fCJD) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).MethodsSeven asymptomatic carriers of the PRNP G114V mutation and six non-carriers were recruited from the same fCJD kindred and follow-up obtained from all asymptomatic carriers and two non-carriers 2 years later. Overlapping WM patterns were also explored in asymptomatic carriers and symptomatic CJD patients. All participants underwent clinical and neuropsychological assessments and DTI at baseline and follow-up. DTI data were subjected to whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in WM using tract-based spatial statistics. Three comparisons were conducted: baseline carriers against non-carriers (baseline analysis), changes after 2 years in carriers (follow-up analysis), and differences between patients with symptomatic CJD and healthy controls (CJD patient analysis).ResultsNeither carriers nor non-carriers developed any neurological symptoms during 2 years of follow-up. Baseline analysis showed no differences between the carrier and non-carrier groups in MD and FA. Follow-up analysis showed significantly increased MD in multiple WM tracts, among which increased MD in the bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, bilateral anterior thalamic radiation, bilateral cingulate gyrus, and left uncinate fasciculus overlapped the patterns observed in patients with symptomatic CJD.ConclusionChanges in integrity within multiple WM tracts can be detected during the preclinical stage of fCJD.

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is widely considered as an atypical variant of Alzheimer disease and is characterized by a progressive decline in visual function. PCA has been investigated from the standpoints of brain structure and metabolism, but tau deposition and its relationship to disease severity still remain unclear. Here, we used a novel tau ligand, [18F]PI2620, to visualize tau deposition in a PCA patient. The results showed that high [18F]PI2620 uptake in posterior cortical regions was associated with clinical manifestations, morphologic changes in the brain observed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and hypometabolism detected by [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET). This is the first report demonstrating a clinical anatomical correspondence between [18F]PI2620 PET results, clinical manifestations, MRI, and [18F]FDG PET findings in a Chinese patient with PCA. The results also support the utility of [18F]PI2620 for visualizing tau aggregation in PCA.

Background CSF1R-related encephalopathy refers to adult-onset leukodystrophy with neuroaxonal spheroids and pigmented glia (ALSP) due to CSF1R mutations, which is a rare autosomal dominant white matter disease including two pathological entities, hereditary diffuse leukoencephalopathy with spheroids (HDLS) and pigmentary orthochromatic leukodystrophy (POLD). The aim of this study was to identify additional causative mutations in the CSF1R gene and clarify their pathogenic effects. Methods Whole-exome sequencing was conducted for nine Chinese patients diagnosed with possible ALSP based on clinical and neuroimaging findings from March 2014 to June 2020 at Xuanwu Hospital (Beijing, China). Variant pathogenicity was assessed according to the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG/AMP) Standards and Guidelines. Results Mean ± standard deviation (range) age of disease onset in the nine patients was 39.22±9.63 [25-54] years. Four of the nine patients were male, and four out of nine had a remarkable family history. Seven CSF1R mutations were identified in the nine patients; four (p.G17C, p.R579Q, p.I794T and c.2909_2910insATCA) have been previously reported, while three (p.V613L, p.W821R and c.2442+2_2442+3dupT) were novel. Of the latter, two (p.V613L and p.W821R) were likely pathogenic and 1 (c.2442+2_2442+3dupT) was of uncertain significance according to ACMG/AMP criteria. Conclusions These findings expand the mutational spectrum of ALSP and provide a basis for future investigations on etiologic factors and potential management strategies for this disease.

Cooperative communication has attracted many research interests in recent years because it can take advantage of the broadcast nature of wireless communications and spatial diversity to improve the network performance. Although relay nodes in cooperative communications can help improve the performance, relay nodes may cause the serious competition on wireless channel accessing, which makes the channel access problem in cooperative communications challenging. To solve this problem, based on cooperative triple busy tone multiple access, this paper proposes a media access control scheme that concurrently combines the request to send/clear to send and busy tone with a proper tone duration timer. In the scheme, three busy tones are proposed to coordinate the nodes in the network to transmit packets, which is further utilised to solve the hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems in cooperative communications. Among the three busy tones, the cooperative busy tone is set according to the relay's signal-to-noise ratio. Based on the busy tone, this paper also proposes a bandwidth efficient relay selection algorithm, in which the source node can select the best relay in a distributed way by monitoring the busy tone. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can largely reduce the blocking time and improve the channel utilisation in wireless cooperative networks. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In a multi-hop wireless network, a node can act as a candidate file provider to other nodes, if it has downloaded the file from the Internet. When another node requires the same file, all nodes which have already obtained the file can act as candidate file providers (sources) and transmit file together to the request node (destination). We form this as the multi-source transmission. As the multi-source transmissions can exploit multiple paths to transmit data, it is an efficient way to largely increase the download throughput. Although it is promising, suffering from wireless interference, all candidate file providers transmitting together in a multi-source transmission may not provide better performance or even worse performance than only a subset of candidate file providers involved. Moreover, to maximize the performance gain, multi-radio and multichannel technique is exploited to alleviate interference, where the source, multi-path routing, and channel are closely related and should be joint solved. The multi-source transmission problem becomes very challenging. This paper is the first study to investigate the multi-source transmission problem in multi-hop wireless network and proposes an interference-aware joint source, routing, and channel selection scheme to solve the problem. Firstly, we propose a novel interference-aware metric (Metric of Path Capacity, MIPC) to capture interference. Based on the metric, we propose three sub-algorithms: interferenceaware routing algorithm, channel selection algorithm, and local routing adjustment algorithm to solve the multi-source transmissions problem. We have done extensive simulations. The simulation results make clear that the proposed scheme can effectively maximize the network throughput.

People's activity sequences such as eat at a restaurant after 2 hours of shopping, contains rich semantic information. This information can be explored for a broad range of applications and services. However, it is impractical to ask a large number of people to record their daily activities. As the increasing popularity of GPS-enabled mobile devices, a huge amount of trajectories which show people's movement behaviors have been acquiring. The natural link between activities and traveling motivates us to investigate a novel approach to automatically extract sequences of activities from large set of trajectory data. Intuitively, activities can only happen when trajectory is geographically near for a proper period of time for these activities, such as 30 minutes for dining in a restaurant. In this work, the concepts influence and influence duration are proposed to capture the intuition. We also propose two algorithms to join large set of trajectories with activities with duplication reuse techniques. We conduct comprehensive empirical studies to evaluate the two algorithms with synthetic data set generated from real world POIs and road networks.

Partitioning a P2P network into distinct semantic clusters can efficiently increase the efficiency of searching and enhance scalability of the network. In this paper, two semantic-based self-organized algorithms aimed at taxonomy hierarchy semantic space are proposed, which can dynamically partition the network into distinct semantic clusters according to network load, with semantic relationship among data within a cluster and load balance among clusters all well maintained. The experiment indicates good performance and scalability of these two clustering algorithms.