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This article investigates the voltage monitoring and control feature for smart meters and identifies the impact of this feature on both power distribution and communication systems. Regarding the voltage monitoring, a cosimulation platform is developed using GridLAB-D and ns-3 to analyze the impact of adding voltage measurements to smart meter readings and assess the mitigation strategies for reducing timeout errors and packet drops of smart meter data. Regarding the voltage control, a new voltage stability control scheme is developed, which applies the voltage stability margin as the control objective, instead of the traditional voltage magnitude. The proposed control scheme makes use of existing advanced metering infrastructure and distributed energy resources (DERs), requiring small marginal costs. It is indicated that integrating the voltage monitoring and control feature, smart meters could enable the voltage stability issues being solved at end-user sides, i.e., the “last-mile” segment. It is also implied that the new feature could support the coordination of the local and system-level voltage controls using both customer-owned and utility-scale DERs.

BACKGROUND Since December 2019, there have been many new cases of coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, which has gradually spread throughout the country. AIM To explore our hospital’s innovative management system to ensure the efficient operation of fever clinics during the epidemic, since controlling the spread of disease is an important way to prevent and control the epidemic. METHODS In total, 200 outpatients with fever at our hospital between November 2019 and July 2020 were selected and allocated into two groups. RESULTS The fever clinic in our hospital operated smoothly, and infection with the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has not been reported in our hospital. Additionally, we did not have any cases of missed diagnosis. The awareness regarding COVID-19 infection sources, transmission routes, early symptoms, and preventive measures was significantly higher in our fever clinic than in those of the pre-management group. CONCLUSION "An integrated system, three separate responsibilities" ensured the efficient functioning of our fever outpatient clinic and early screening of COVID-19 cases, which effectively curbed the transmission of COVID-19 and hence prevented COVID-19 pneumonia epidemic in our hospital, ultimately achieving the maximum effect of epidemic prevention and control.

Existing multi-orientation scene text detection methods generally contain two crucial components: regression prediction for text bounding boxes and classification prediction for text/non-text. However, these methods always regard classification prediction and regression prediction as two independent procedures, neglecting fully exploring their mutual relations. Based on this key observation, we propose an innovative Scale-Guided Regression Module (SRM), specially for multi-orientation scene text detection. Equipped with width-guided kernels and height-guided kernels of different sizes, our SRM can generate a series of scale feature maps of candidate texts by capturing their shape information in classification prediction. The scale feature maps are used to predict the width and height of candidate texts, which can serve as guides for regressing bounding boxes. In this way, the procedures of classification and regression can be coherently integrated. In addition, we adopt IoU loss to train our network and then integrate IoU loss and l 1 -smooth loss for fine-tuning. Extensive experiments on publicly available datasets demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of our method. Notably, our method achieves significant improvement of performance on long texts, e.g., on MSRA-TD500, our method outperforms Basemodel with a great margin (4.86 % in terms of Recall).

The risks associated with rare events threatening the security of power system operation are of paramount importance to power system planners and operators. To analyze the risks caused by high-impact, low-frequency rare events, an immensely large number of samples are typically required for the Monte-Carlo (MC) method on the high-fidelity power system model to achieve a sufficient accuracy, thereby rendering this approach computationally prohibitive. To handle this problem efficiently, it is desirable to construct a surrogate model for the power system response. However, the straightforward MC sampling of the low-fidelity surrogate can lead to biased results in the low-probability tail regions that are vital to risk assessment. Moreover, a single surrogate is unable to handle the topology uncertainties caused by random branch outages. To overcome these issues, we propose a hybrid multi-surrogate (HMS) method based on the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) with low-probability tail events reevaluated by the high-fidelity model through a probabilistic analysis. This method improves the computational efficiency of the MC method for rare-event risk assessment by leveraging multi-fidelity models while retaining the desired accuracy. Simulations conducted in three test systems verify the excellent performances of the HMS method.

The emerging distribution-level phasor measurement unit (D-PMU) is expected to play an important role in enhancing distribution system observability and situational-awareness. It is a demanding yet challenging task to develop advanced D-PMU data management and analytics tools to improve D-PMU data usability and further promote D-PMU projects deployment. This paper focuses on D-PMU data processing and storage. It presents a brief review of existing D-PMU data storage systems and points out their limitations on high-performance, flexibility, and scalability. To overcome the limitations, a unified PMU-data storage system (UPS) is proposed. Specifically, a unified I/O interface between storage servers and computing jobs is developed to effectively reduce the overhead of managing various computing jobs and data analytics over multiple storage infrastructures; and PMUCache with PMUCache partitioning and PMUCache replacement algorithms are designed to support in-situ data processing and shared distributed data storage and further serve the computing jobs/queries with different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Through a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that UPS achieves high performance on fast and big data processing and storage, and efficiently increases the flexibility and scalability of PMU data management systems.

In this study, an ultra-miniaturized low-profile angularly-stable frequency selective surface (FSS) based on 2.5-dimension convoluted interwoven element is designed. The dimension of FSS element is 0.014λ0 × 0.014λ0, where the λ0 represents the free-space wavelength of resonance frequency. The thickness is only 0.0015λ0. When the FSS is illuminated by electromagnetic wave, the frequency selective properties perform stable under different incident angles up to 85° for both TE and TM polarization. For better understanding, the operation mechanism, the design procedure, distribution of surface current, and equivalent circuit are presented. A prototype of proposed FSS is fabricated, the measurement results prove the validity of simulated ones. To further improve the performance, using the same design procedure, the size and thickness of designed FSS have been reduced to 0.0053λ0 × 0.0053λ0 and 0.00061λ0, respectively. Since the resonance frequency of proposed FSS is adjustable at any desired frequency, an ultra-miniaturized low-profile angularly-stable FSS for GSM 900 band has been designed. The designed FSS can be applied in GSM shielding effectively.

With Electric Vehicles (EVs) Rapidly becoming more popular, along with a need for flexible energy storage resources in the electric grid, the development of vehiclegrid integration (VGI) technology has taken on a new urgency. VGI encompasses any technology that helps EVs better integrate with the grid, including management of charging and control of bidirectional charging and discharging. The practice of managing the one-directional flow of power from the grid to vehicles (V1G) is currently being rolled out across California and in many places where EVs have become popular. V1G programs in California include San Diego Gas and Electric's Power Your Drive, EV-specific retail tariffs from Southern California Edison, and the Charge Forward smart charging pilot program from Pacific Gas and Electric in collaboration with automaker BMW.

A triple band-notched ultra-wideband (UWB) monopole antenna etching novel folded resonator on the radiating patch, ground and between the feeding-line, is presented in this paper. The tri-rejection bands are 5.1–6.1 GHz, 7.6–8.8 GHz and 10.1–10.8 GHz which have covered bands of WLAN and ITU 8 GHz. To analyze the principle of proposed antenna, the simulation of parametric study and distribution of surface current are carried out. The size of antenna is 32 mm×19 mm×1 mm. And the test results are in good agreement with the simulation, which indicate that the antenna is promising for UWB system.

Using 2.5-dimension structure, a novel miniaturized dual-band FSS with closely spaced resonances is proposed in the paper. The special design of the geometry contributes to two closely spaced resonances at 1.69 GHz and 2.16 GHz respectively and the frequency ratio of upper to the lower resonant frequency is 1.27. Besides, the two bands can be controlled individually by varying corresponding parameters. The size of the proposed FSS is only 0.057λ0, where the λ0 represents free space wavelength at lower resonant band. Furthermore, the simulation results show the proposed FSS exhibits stable response with different incident angles and polarizations. To understand the design better, the distribution of surface current is analyzed to explain the operating mechanism of the proposed FSS. Finally, the proposed FSS is fabricated and the measurement results are in accordance with the simulation results.

With the development and popularization of big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, the digital and information development of campuses and education has become a common phenomenon. Smart campus is the development of traditional digital campus. At present, many colleges and universities are constructing and exploring smart campus. The lightweight “smart campus” based on LAPP is a unique campus system that combines manpower, equipment, environment, resources, and social factors on the basis of informatization to form a unique campus system. All information resources related to life services are fully integrated, interconnected and integrated, based on in-depth data mining and analysis, to provide comprehensive, effective and intelligent management and service process support for school work. Based on in-depth data mining and analysis, this paper analyzes and studies the lightweight “smart campus” system of LAPP from the perspective of construction and technology.

As a new high-tech product of the 21st century, big data has been widely used in various industries, affecting people’s daily life. Nowadays, big data has officially entered the education industry, changing the original traditional education model, and realizing education informatization. The combination of education and big data technology is conducive to in-depth mining of education data, making it develop in a personalized and modem direction.

As SDN-based networking infrastructure continues to evolve, an increasing number of traditional network functions are deployed over virtualized network. Like traditional networks, traffic monitoring in a Software Defined Network is critical in order to ensure security and performance of the underlying infrastructure. In the context of virtualized networks, deployment of a virtualized TAP service has been reported as an effective VNF that can provide the same monitoring capabilities as a physical TAP. Unfortunately, over a para-virtualization environment, e.g. OVS, where inter-VM communication is expensive it has been observed that virtual TAPs can contribute up to 70% performance degradation. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach that allows network administrators to mirror VIRTIO port traffic to another VF (SR-IOV) via NIC hardware offloading. As a result, the mirrored traffic can be viewed through a monitoring VNF in a separate VM. Through this approach, the throughput overhead can be reduced by as much as 50%.

SuHeXiang (SHX) has been used to treat a wide range of diseases, including those related to the central nervous system. However, the effects of SHX on mood disorders are still elusive. This study aimed to investigate the effects of SHX essential oil on stress-induced depression of mice. In an acute stress-induced depression model, mice inhaled vehicle (1% Tween 80) for 10 min or 10% SHX for 10 or 30 min once daily for 12 continuous days. In the chronic mild stress (CMS)-induced depression model, mice were exposed to a 28-d CMS treatment. Tail suspension test (TST), forced swimming test (FST), sucrose preference test (SPT), open field test (OFT), and novelty suppressed feeding (NSF) test were conducted. In addition, serum levels of angiogenin (ANG), thrombopoietin (TPO), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assays. The results showed that in mice exposed to acute stress, repeated SHX inhalation exerted significant antidepressant and anxiolytic activities, and also reduced the serum levels of ANG, TPO, IL-6, and TNF-α. It also significantly reversed the depressive and anxiety-like behaviors, and reduced the serum levels of ANG and TPO in mice exposed to CMS. This is the first report to show that SHX inhalation could produce significant antidepressant and anxiolytic-like effects. These effects might be mediated by SHX ability to modulate the inflammatory response, and reduce dysfunction of vascular genesis and thrombosis. These results support further exploration for developing SHX inhalation as a novel therapeutic strategy for depression and stress-related disorders.

A design with wideband and circularly polarized radiation antenna from an open-slot antenna has been demonstrated in this paper. The proposed antenna, which consists of an open slot and an inverted-L strip feeding, provides a large bandwidth, which completely cover the Wimax (3.3–3.8 GHz) and WLAN (2.4–2.48 GHz) bands. The open slot is formed by an modified ground plane with a slit cut and monofilar spiral stubs employed, which fed by an asymmetrical inverted-L strip feedline using a via. As demonstrated, the CP operation was significantly improved by loading monofilar spiral stubs connected to the asymmetric feedline by means of a via. A parametric study of the key parameters is made and the mechanism for circular polarization is described. After optimization, the impedance bandwidth is approximately 3.78 GHz (2.12 to 5.9 GHz) and the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is approximately 2.75 GHz (2.2 to 4.95 GHz), which represent fractional bandwidths of approximately 94.3 % and 76.9 %, respectively.

Aims Pharmacological treatment of prehypertension may ameliorate hypertension and improve vascular structure and function. This study investigated 1) whether early treatment with either losartan or amlodipine at the onset of prehypertension can prevent hypertension and 2) whether losartan and amlodipine equally improve vascular remodeling and function in a rat model of hypertension. Materials and methods Stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive (SHRSP) rats were administered losartan, amlodipine or saline for 6 or 16 weeks at the onset of prehypertension. Wistar-Kyoto rats were used as a control. All groups were observed for 40 weeks. Systolic blood pressure was measured using the tail-cuff method. Vascular structure and function were determined by microscopy and vascular ring contractility assays, respectively. Angiotensin II (Ang II) and aldosterone (Aldo) were measured by radioimmunoassays. Angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R) and angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R) expression was measured by western blot. Key findings Losartan effectively reduced progression from prehypertension to hypertension as well as vascular remodeling and improved vascular contractility in SHRSP rats. Long-term losartan (16 weeks) had greater benefits than short-term (6 weeks) treatment. Losartan increased Ang II and decreased Aldo levels in the serum and vessel walls of resistance vessels in a time-dependent manner. Losartan significantly decreased AT1R and increased AT2R vascular expression. Amlodipine had no effect on vascular AT1R and AT2R expression. Significance Losartan administered at the onset of prehypertension is more effective than amlodipine in ameliorating hypertension and improving vascular remodeling and function, which is likely mediated by the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system.

The P4 language was originally proposed as a means of providing programmable network data plane functions with the potential to implement, understand, and interpret custom protocols. However, the recompilation process and the re-instantiation of network functions on a target device introduces measurable downtime for network services. In this work, we present Ripple, an efficient, runtime reconfigurable P4 engine on multicore systems to eliminate the recompilation process. The Ripple framework adopts the "generic and static" philosophy, and uses a highly optimized universal binary executable to avoid the lengthy recompilation and reconfiguration process, while supporting packet processing at line rates. We leverage advanced I/O and vectorization techniques to take advantage of packet level parallelism and processor architectural features, thus significantly improve the performance of P4 data plane at runtime. Our in-depth evaluation on multicore architecture shows that Ripple reaches comparable throughput with one of the state-of-art frameworks that requires recompilation and reconfiguration.

With increasing penetration of intermittent generation in power systems, it becomes essential to develop an integrated component-oriented modeling, simulation, and optimization tool for renewable energy resources to accurately capture the dynamics of large-scale power systems. Being an open, straightforward specification of differential-algebraic equations and discrete variables for component-oriented modeling and simulation of complex system, Modelica has been successfully used in robotics, automotive, aircraft, and communication systems, and is now being considered for use in electric power systems. In this paper, we show the initial efforts in the creation of OpenRES—an open-source JModelica.org library for renewable energy resources with their control blocks, and demonstrate the use of wind-farm frequency and voltage control functions in power grid dynamic simulation that is performed on the New England IEEE 39-bus test system.

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the additional effects of acupuncture treatment on motor function in patients with subacute hemorrhagic stroke. Design One hundred and thirty-four patients with subacute hemorrhagic stroke were randomized to receive acupuncture treatment plus conventional treatment (treatment group) or conventional treatment only (control group). Acupuncture treatments were given in 24 sessions over 4 weeks, with 3-month follow-up period. Blinded evaluation was based on Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Barthel Index with an intention-to-treat analysis. For those patients who were able to walk, a three-dimensional gait analysis system was employed to objectively record spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters. Results Compared with control group, the treatment group showed a significantly greater over-time improvement in total Fugl-Meyer, lower-limb Fugl-Meyer, but not in upper-limb Fugl-Meyer and Barthel Index. The spatiotemporal parameters of velocity, step length, cadence, step width all showed significant difference between the 2 groups. The velocity in treatment group decreased unexpectedly at day 14, then increased sharply and overcame control group at day 28. The treatment group also showed a significantly greater increase in peak circumduction, peak hip hiking, hip range of motion, knee range of motion and a tendency for the ankle range of motion. Conclusions Acupuncture may promote the motor function recovery of hemorrhagic stroke patients in subacute phase mainly by enhancing the lower limb ability. It probably diminishes the compensation strategies earlier to correct the abnormal gait pattern. Although this adjustment may result in a compromise in the improvement of gait velocity temporarily, patients would benefit from it in a long run.

Background and Purpose: Lower limb spasticity is often a significant problem in stoke rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of acupuncture treatment on lower limb spasticity in patients following hemorrhagic stroke. Methods: Fifty-nine patients following hemorrhagic stroke were randomized to receive acupuncture treatment combined with conventional treatment (treatment group [TG]) or conventional treatment only (control group [CG]). Acupuncture treatments were given in 24 sessions over 4 weeks. Blinded evaluation was based on Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), short intracortical inhibition (SICI), and Hmax/Mmax ratio as the primary outcomes. In addition, Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), Barthel Index (BI), motor evoked potential (MEP) and surface integrated electromyogram (IEMG) were employed as the secondary outcomes. All the evaluations were performed at 14 and 28 days after the start of the treatment. Results: Compared with the CG, the TG showed a significantly greater over-time decrease in MAS for knee (p = 0.022) and ankle (p = 0.017), SICI (p = 0.000) and Hmax/Mmax ratio (p = 0.000). In all patients of TG, we found a greater improvement in lower-limb FMA and MEP but not in BI. IEMG show that TG obtained a greater reduction in spastic agonist muscles and a greater enhancement in spastic antagonist muscles. A significant correlation between a greater decrease in ankle MAS and a greater increase in SICI for spastic muscles was found (r = 0.390, p = 0.002). Conclusions: Acupuncture could improve the lower limb spasticity and motor function, thus providing a safe and economical approach for treating stroke patients. The potential mechanism underpinning the greater improvement may be attributed to a reshape of corticospinal plasticity induced by acupuncture.

Scott connection transformer can be used as traction transformer, which is an important part of electrified railway traction power supply system. The application of Scott connection transformer can solve current unbalance problem of three phase power source and realize bilateral power supply of the contact network. Scott transformer and back-to-back converter can be joined together to form the railway co-phase power supply system, which will not only provide the traction load with all needed active power, but also compensate negative sequence components, harmonics and reactive power. This provides a new idea for the development of traction power supply. A simulation with Matlab/Simulink is performed to validate the feasibility of this proposed control strategy.

Aspect sentiment analysis of online course reviews is of great significance in helping users choose courses and improve course quality. Review target extraction is particularly important as the basis of aspect sentiment analysis. Because the current models mostly rely on a large amount of annotation data, there is fewer relevant research on the extraction of online course review targets with higher annotation costs. This paper proposes an ALBERT-IDCNN-CRF review target extraction model for a small amount of labeled data. First, using ALBERT pre-trained sentences obtained dynamic model Chinese word vector coding; Simultaneously, using ALBERT pre-trained model of Transformer obtain sentence abstract features. Then, abstract features are input into the dilated convolutional neural network (IDCNN) to reduce the number of neuron layers and parameters. Finally, conditional random field (CRF) is used to decode and annotate the review sentences to extract the appropriate review objectives. The experimental results on the school online real Chinese online course review data set show that our model has achieved better results than existing models.

A novel single-layer dual-band miniaturized frequency selective surface (FSS) based on fractal structures is proposed and analyzed in this paper. A prototype with enough dimensions is fabricated and measured in anechoic chamber, and the measured results provide good agreement with the simulated. The simulations and measurements indicate that the dual-band FSS with bandstop selectivity center at 3.95 GHz and 7.10 GHz, and the whole dimension of the proposed FSS cell is only 7×7 mm2, amount to 0.092λ0×0.092λ0, that λ0 is free space wavelength at first resonant frequency. In addition, the center frequencies have scarcely any changes for different polarizations and incidences. What’s more, dual-band mechanism is analyzed clearly and it provides a new way to design novel miniaturized FSS structures.

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of Buyang Huanwu decoction (BYHWD) on tumor growth, metastasis and angiogenesis in nude mice bearing human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) HCCLM3 xenografts. A total of 96 nude mice bearing HCCLM3 xenografts were randomly divided into four groups: BYHWD group (LB), Yi‑qi decoction group (LY), Huo‑xue decoction group (LH) and model group (LM). Each of these groups was divided into three subgroups (n=8), which were observed on days 21, 25, 38 following treatment, respectively. The tumor weights, volumes and pulmonary metastases were recorded. The expression of CD105 and the microvessel density (MVD) were assessed, and the expression levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), hypoxia‑inducible factor 1α (HIF‑1α), and regulator of G protein signaling 5 (RGS‑5) were analyzed using immunohistochemical staining. Compared with the LM group, no significant decrease in tumor weight or volume were observed in the herbal medicine treatment groups, the number of the metastases in the lungs decreased, whereas the expression levels of RGS‑5 and HIF‑1α decreased in the LB group on day 35. However, the expression levels of VEGF increased in the LB group on days 28 and 35 post‑treatment. The results of the present study suggested that BYHWD may inhibit angiogenesis and metastasis by affecting the expression levels of VEGF, RGS‑5 and HIF‑1α, and suggested that BYHWD may contribute to the tumor microenvironment and vasculature normalization in HCC.

A frequency selective surface (FSS) with polarization rotation which provides a quasi- elliptic bandpass response is presented in this paper. Based on substrate integrated waveguide cavity (SIWC), 90 degrees polarization rotation is obtained when electromagnetic wave passes through the frequency selective surface at specially appointed polarization in a range of 16.28-16.70 GHz. Moreover, TM120/TM210 dual-mode configuration appears in the cavity within the passband. The design has been proved with high stability to electromagnetic wave of different incident angles. And the measured results in anechoic chamber provide good agreement with those from commercial software simulations.

A wideband frequency selective surface (FSS) with a sharp band edge is proposed. The periodic cell includes a mushroom-like cavity and four L-type slots etched on the top and bottom conductor claddings of the cavity. The measured results show that the proposed FSS operates at X band with a 12.5% bandwidth (7.85-8.90 GHz), in which the insertion loss is less than 3 dB. Comparing with the FSSs based on substrate integrated waveguide cavity, the proposed FSS not only realizes high selectivity, but also realizes a 55.8% reduction in cell size.

Introduction The effects of edaravone against pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)‐induced epilepsy in male albino rats were investigated. Edaravone is a well‐known commercial drug used in the treatment of strokes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities of edaravone have been reported in patients with ALS. Methods In this study, the experimental groups were as follows: sham, control, 5 mg/kg edaravone, and 10 mg/kg edaravone. Behavioral assessment, determination of biochemical markers, apoptosis, nitric oxide (NO), and mRNA and protein expression of cyclooxygenase‐II (COX‐II) were carried out. Seizure incidence, including generalized tonic–clonic seizure (GTCS) and minimal clonic seizure (MCS), was directly associated with PTZ administration in rats. Results Edaravone supplementation substantially increased MCS and GTCS latency in rats, and biochemical markers were significantly altered in the brain tissue of PTZ‐treated rats. Edaravone treatment normalized altered biochemical markers compared with the untreated control. Apoptosis and NO levels were significantly reduced by more than 50% compared to their respective controls. COX‐II mRNA was increased by 130% in PTZ‐treated rats, while edaravone supplementation reduced mRNA and protein expression of COX‐II by more than 20% and 40%, respectively. Immunohistochemistry indicated that COX‐II protein expression was reduced by 13.2% and 33.7% following supplementation with 5 and 10 mg/kg edaravone, respectively. Conclusion Taken together, our results suggest that edaravone functions by downregulating the levels of COX‐II and NO and is a potential candidate for the treatment of PTZ‐induced epilepsy.

Network measurement is critical in network management such as performance monitoring, diagnosis, and traffic engineering. However, conventional network measurement solutions are limited by simple and fixed functionalities as well as coarse-grained statistics which often fail to precisely illustrate network conditions. In this paper, we propose an event-driven declarative query language, EQuery, for programmable network management in order to design sophisticated measurement tasks and enable event mechanism to avoid human intervene. Furthermore, we design a compiler to support the query language on the EQuery Controller, which drives the chaining query workflow with nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), and translates measurement jobs into low-level rules/states on the physical devices. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of our EQuery framework on a nation-wide operational network with real-time network statistics.

Brain oxidative stress due to chronic cerebral hypoperfusion was considered to be the major risk factor in the pathogenesis of vascular dementia. In this study, we investigated the protective efficacy of alpha-lipoic acid, an antioxidant, against vascular dementia in rats, as well as the potential mechanism. Bilateral common carotid arteries occlusion (BCCAO) induced severe cognitive deficits tested by Morris water maze (MWM), along with oxidative stress and disturbance of central cholinergic system. However, administration of alpha-lipoic acid (50mg/kg, i.p.) for 28 days significantly restored cognitive deficits induced by BCCAO. Biochemical determination revealed that alpha-lipoic acid markedly decreased the production of malondialdehyde (MDA) and the generation of reactive oxidative species (ROS), and increased the level of reduced glutathione (GSH) in the hippocampal tissue. Additionally, alpha-lipoic acid raised the level of acetylcholine (ACh) and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and decreased the activity of acetycholinesterase (AChE) in the hippocampus. These results indicated that treatment with alpha-lipoic acid significantly improved behavioral alterations, protected against oxidative stress, and restored central cholinergic system in the rat model of vascular dementia induced by BCCAO.

In a public cloud, a data owner outsources encrypted data in order to protect its privacy. However, when sharing data with particular users, it is neither willing to share the decryption key nor reluctant to download and decrypt data. The former may reveal its identity and the latter can cause high computing and communication cost. In this paper, we proposed a half-decryption scheme (SDS2) for crowd owners to share privacy data with authorized users securely in a public cloud. Our scheme allows the owner to upload confidential data to a cloud, and deliver two half-decryption keys to a trusted authority and a user respectively according to our protocol. The trusted authority transfers the half-decryption key to the cloud after receiving a data sharing request. Then the user gets half-decrypted data from the cloud for further decryption. Experimental results show that computing and communication cost of our scheme is lower than other schemes with the increasing data and sharing requests.

An airdrop model with aerial carrier is carried out to simulate an airdrop test. A coupled CFD/6 DOF is designed to compute the orientation and trajectory of the airdrop model. The results show that the CFD/6 DOF coupled method is appropriate to simulate this problem with a sufficient precision. The airdrop’s motion is strongly coupled with the aerodynamic force after leaving the sliding rail and the trajectory of its CG is mainly in the symmetry of the aerial carrier. The variation of its orientation mainly rolls in X axis direction and it swings as an approximate periodic oscillation which amplitude decreases over time. The maximum angle of orientation in X axis direction is-116°in 5 seconds. The similar variation of the airdrop motion is present in different angle of attack and sideslip of the aerial carrier.

Cognitive impairment, the most common and severe comorbidity of epilepsy, greatly diminishes the quality of life. However, current therapeutic interventions for epilepsy can also cause untoward cognitive effects. Thus, there is an urgent need for new kinds of agents targeting both seizures and cognition deficits. Oxidative stress is considered to play an important role in epileptogenesis and cognitive deficits, and antioxidants have a putative antiepileptic potential. Metformin, the most commonly prescribed antidiabetic oral drug, has antioxidant properties. This study was designed to evaluate the ameliorative effects of metformin on seizures, cognitive impairment and brain oxidative stress markers observed in pentylenetetrazole-induced kindling animals. Male C57BL/6 mice were administered with subconvulsive dose of pentylenetetrazole (37 mg/kg, i.p.) every other day for 14 injections. Metformin was injected intraperitoneally in dose of 200mg/kg along with alternate-day PTZ. We found that metformin suppressed the progression of kindling, ameliorated the cognitive impairment and decreased brain oxidative stress. Thus the present study concluded that metformin may be a potential agent for the treatment of epilepsy as well as a protective medicine against cognitive impairment induced by seizures.

Prehypertension has been associated with adverse cerebrovascular events and brain damage. The aims of this study were to investigate i) whether short- and long-term treatments with losartan or amlodipine for prehypertension were able to prevent blood pressure (BP)-linked brain damage, and ii) whether there is a difference in the effectiveness of treatment with losartan and amlodipine in protecting BP-linked brain damage. In the present study, prehypertensive treatment with losartan and amlodipine (6 and 16 weeks treatment with each drug) was performed on 4-week-old stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSP). The results showed that long-term (16 weeks) treatment with losartan is the most effective in lowering systolic blood pressure in the long term (up to 40 weeks follow-up). Additionally, compared with the amlodipine treatment groups, the short- and long-term losartan treatments protected SHRSP from stroke and improved their brains structurally and functionally more effectively, with the long-term treatment having more benefits. Mechanistically, the short- and long-term treatments with losartan reduced the activity of the local renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) in a time-dependent manner and more effectively than their respective counterpart amlodipine treatment group mainly by decreasing AT1R levels and increasing AT2R levels in the cerebral cortex. By contrast, the amlodipine treatment groups inhibited brain cell apoptosis more effectively as compared with the losartan treatment groups mainly through the suppression of local oxidative stress. Taken together, the results suggest that long-term losartan treatment for prehypertension effectively protects SHRSP from stroke-induced brain damage, and this protection is associated with reduced local RAAS activity than with brain cell apoptosis. Thus, the AT1R receptor blocker losartan is a good candidate drug that may be used in the clinic for long-term treatment on prehypertensive populations in order to prevent BP-linked brain damage.

To investigate the effects of losartan and amlodipine on cell apoptosis in the cerebral cortex of stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSP) from the onset of prehypertension or hypertension. SHRSP were randomly divided into five experimental groups that were administered losartan, amlodipine (n=8 in each group; 4 weeks old or 10 weeks old), or vehicle, respectively. Wistar-Kyoto rats were used as control animals. Systolic blood pressure was measured using the tail-cuff method every 2 weeks. At 20 weeks of age, apoptosis was analyzed by TdT-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling, and the level of angiotensin II was measured by radioimmunoassay. Protein expressions of gp91(phox), superoxide dismutase, and angiotensin II type 1 (AT1R) and type 2 (AT2R) receptors in the cerebral cortex were detected by western blot. Losartan and amlodipine effectively delayed the progression of systolic blood pressure elevation, especially from the onset of prehypertension, and they had no obvious effects on the level of angiotensin II. In addition, treatment with losartan or amlodipine significantly decreased cell apoptosis, downregulated the protein expression of gp91(phox), and upregulated the protein expression of superoxide dismutase. The protein expressions of AT1R and AT2R were decreased by the administration of both drugs. No difference was found in the expression of AT1R among the drug treatment groups, whereas the expression of AT2R was increased in rats with increased blood pressure. Amlodipine, especially from the onset of prehypertension, was more effective than losartan in reducing apoptosis in the cerebral cortex in SHRSP. This may be related to the antioxidative stress properties of amlodipine.

Many crucial functions in life, such as heartbeat, sensory transduction and central nervous system response, are controlled by cell signalings via various ion channels. Therefore, ion channels have become an excellent drug target, and study of ion channel-drug interaction networks is an important topic for drug development. However, it is both time-consuming and costly to determine whether a drug and a protein ion channel are interacting with each other in a cellular network by means of experimental techniques. Although some computational methods were developed in this regard based on the knowledge of the 3D (three-dimensional) structure of protein, unfortunately their usage is quite limited because the 3D structures for most protein ion channels are still unknown. With the avalanche of protein sequences generated in the post-genomic age, it is highly desirable to develop the sequence-based computational method to address this problem. To take up the challenge, we developed a new predictor called iCDI-PseFpt, in which the protein ion-channel sample is formulated by the PseAAC (pseudo amino acid composition) generated with the gray model theory, the drug compound by the 2D molecular fingerprint, and the operation engine is the fuzzy K-nearest neighbor algorithm. The overall success rate achieved by iCDI-PseFpt via the jackknife cross-validation was 87.27%, which is remarkably higher than that by any of the existing predictors in this area. As a user-friendly web-server, iCDI-PseFpt is freely accessible to the public at the website http://www.jci-bioinfo.cn/iCDI-PseFpt/. Furthermore, for the convenience of most experimental scientists, a step-by-step guide is provided on how to use the web-server to get the desired results without the need to follow the complicated math equations presented in the paper just for its integrity. It has not escaped our notice that the current approach can also be used to study other drug-target interaction networks.

Background/Purpose Effective stone disintegration by extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) may depend on patient- and stone-related factors. We investigated predictors of disintegration failure in ESWL for a solitary ureteral calculus. Methods From July 2008 to May 2010, 203 patients who underwent ESWL for a solitary ureteral calculus were enrolled. Clinical and radiologic data were collected, and factors related to ESWL failure were analyzed. Results Fifty-two patients (25.6%) showed ESWL failure, with a mean follow-up of 41 days. Forty patients (19.7%) required retreatment, including 12 who underwent repeat ESWL and 28 who underwent curative ureteroscopy. Patients with ESWL failure had significantly higher body weight, body mass index (BMI), and buttock circumference (BC) than patients for whom ESWL was successful. Univariate analysis showed that stone burden (odds ratio [OR], 1.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03–1.06) and BC (OR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.01–1.11) were predictors of ESWL failure, while BMI was a potential predictor with borderline significance (OR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.99–1.20). Multivariate analysis showed that stone burden (OR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03–1.06) was a significant predictor for all patients. On stratifying patients according to the level of ureteral calculi, BC was found to be an independent predictor (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.02–1.80) for ESWL failure for middle/lower ureteral calculi and BMI (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.13–1.91) for upper ureteral calculi. Conclusion Stone burden is the main predictor of ESWL failure for all patients with ureteral calculi. BC and BMI are independent predictors for ESWL failure for middle/lower and upper ureteral calculi, respectively.

Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) are often required to have special characteristics in concrete applications. Related and Urgent message should be sent First (RUF) is a typical scenario in many applications of WSN. In this paper, we focus on presenting a MAC protocol for RUF applications in WSN. First of all, through analysis, some concrete cases of RUF scenario are listed, from which 4 common requirements of MAC protocols are summed up. Then a novel RUF-MAC is devised to meet these requirements. By modifying the frame structure of IEEE 802.15.4 standards, new algorithms are presented for the assignment and adjustment of time slots, of which some measures are introduced into RUF-MAC, such as sub-frames competition, priority assignment and adaptive period adjustment. The simulation results of data from RUF scenario show that the performance of RUF-MAC is better than that of other MAC protocols for WSN in RUF scenario.