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With growing populations and pressing environmental problems, future economies will be increasingly plant-based. Now is the time to reimagine plant science as a critical component of fundamental science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, energy, technology and healthcare. This effort requires a conceptual and technological framework to identify and map all cell types, and to comprehensively annotate the localization and organization of molecules at cellular and tissue levels. This framework, called the Plant Cell Atlas (PCA), will be critical for understanding and engineering plant development, physiology and environmental responses. A workshop was convened to discuss the purpose and utility of such an initiative, resulting in a roadmap that acknowledges the current knowledge gaps and technical challenges, and underscores how the PCA initiative can help to overcome them., National Science Foundation 1916797 David W Ehrhardt, Kenneth D Birnbaum, Seung Yon Rhee; National Science Foundation 2052590 Seung Yon Rhee

Gallbladder adenomyomatosis (GAM) is an acquired, reactive, tumor-like condition. Malignant transformation is extremely rare, and imaging features during contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) have not been described before. Herein, we describe a 73-year-old Asian man who had been diagnosed with gallbladder carcinoma by conventional ultrasonography (US). Based on additional radiological findings, we believed that it was a localized adenomyomatosis. However, the histopathological diagnosis was adenocarcinoma originate from adenomyomatosis with serosal invasion. We believe this is the first case of adenocarcinoma derived from GAM with characteristics of CEUS findings. This case is presented to indicate a clinical awareness of malignant transformation of GAM and discuss the radiology significance with an emphasis on CEUS.

In response to the failure of safety critical functions that unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) may happen during the flight phases, fault location scheme was proposed based on function hazard analysis results. And methods about automatically generating repairing strategies were put forward according to the pre-configuration items. Firstly, failure knowledge base, which includes the information about function failure, failure effect, and others, was constructed based on the FHA results combing FMEA analyzing results. And then repair strategies for each failure in the knowledge base combing FTA analyzing results was pre-designed. Finally, abductive reasoning method was applied to search for the cause of failure. And repairing strategies were generated accordingly. An assistant tool was developed to simplify the process of building the knowledge base. Interface for the fault locating and repairing strategies generating was also implemented in the tool. An example was proposed to demonstrate the scheme.

For the sake of obtaining the ammunition storage and transportation shelter, that had the characteristic of rational structure, high reliability and convenient take put, it was needed to design internal structure . This paper analysed the placement of pill ,cartridge case and fuze, and designed 6 schemes of internal structure design, which was regarding the ××mm howitzer projectile as the object to study, based on the technology requirement and demand of the ammunition storage and transportation shelter ,and the ammunition characteristic. By comparing and analyzing, the strength of shelter scheme 1,4 was best. The scheme 4 was better than other schemes in reliability of fixed device and convenience of taking and putting ammunition. The scheme 4 had the characteristic of rational structure, high reliability and convenient use for force. The ammunition storage and transportation shelter applied the scheme 4

Flue gas recycling system is an effective way of saving energy and improving efficiency for coal-fired power plant. In this paper, the general low-temperature economizer, heat pipe type low temperature economizer, composite phase change heat recovery system are introduced. Combined with a 600MW unit parameters, the economies of various waste heat recovery system are compared.

The equipment voice de-noising and reconstruction algorithm is presented in this paper based on intelligent robot in transformer situation (transformer and high resistance). The method is an embodiment of information and intelligence which can be applied in voice recognition of inspection robot. Firstly, equipment voice was collected and formed a sample database. Secondly, the voice features were analyzed in sample database, and the power-frequency Fourier spectrum as the voice features was extracted in the frequency domain. Finally, Fourier spectrum of power-frequency multiple was used to construct the voice by taking advantage of the inverse Fourier transform. The experimental results show that the algorithm has stable performance, strong robustness, and can accurately reconstruct the voice, so it is benefit to the follow-up voice recognition.

Low temperature economizer is an efficient way to recover the flue gas waste and to improve the efficiency of the boiler. Several basic layout of low temperature economizer are introduced in this paper. Layout is divided into flue gas side arrangement and water side arrangement. In this paper, combined with the parameters of a 600 mw, the economy of the different configuration is calculated and compared.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based methods are revolutionizing biology. Their prevalence requires biologists to be increasingly knowledgeable about computational methods to manage the enormous scale of data. As such, early introduction to NGS analysis and conceptual connection to wet-lab experiments is crucial for training young scientists. However, significant challenges impede the introduction of these methods into the undergraduate classroom, including the need for specialized computer programs and knowledge of computer coding. Here, we describe a semester-long, course-based undergraduate research experience at a liberal arts college combining RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis with student-driven, wet-lab experiments to investigate plant responses to light. Students derived hypotheses based on analysis of RNA-seq data and designed follow-up studies of gene expression and plant growth. Our assessments indicate that students acquired knowledge of big data analysis and computer coding; however, earlier exposure to computational methods may be beneficial. Our course requires minimal prior knowledge of plant biology, is easy to replicate, and can be modified to a shorter, directed-inquiry module. This framework promotes exploration of the links between gene expression and phenotype using examples that are clear and tractable and improves computational skills and bioinformatics self-efficacy to prepare students for the “big data” era of modern biology.

As the indoor environment is complex,the attenuation model is imprecise.and the wireless location system is inaccurate.It is a effective method calculating attenuation factor with different distance RSSI data and selecting proper reference distance for solving single reference distance defect. The experiment verified that it can modify distance measurement mode and improve the accuracy and reliability of indoor distance measurement based on RFID.

Thermistor has a large temperature range, good stability and resistance to oxidation, which occupies an important position in the low-temperature measurement. This article describes new two-wire thermistor temperature measurement device using the Freescale MC9S12XS128 MCU with sampling capacitance. The device is composed of the MCU with its own A/D, MC9S12XS128 MCU, sampling capacitance, amplifier, boosted circuit, data acquisition and processing system, constant current source, etc. Using constant current source and 16-bit A/D converter designs the temperature measurement circuit, it can eliminate the effect from the conductor resistances in the traditional two-wire resistance temperature measurement system and reduce the measurement error which conductor resistances bring. The method is simple, practical, with high accuracy, strong anti-interference ability and other characteristics.

For decreasing the error of wind speed prediction in wind farm, improvements from the aspects of arithmetic, space and time has been proposed based on the soft sensor. Support Vector Machine as the basic prediction method is used to analyze. MRA-SVM testify the improvement of algorithm can increase the performance targets.The modified model about meteorological information achieves the space continuity and the cascading of turbines profits the time continuity. Based the actual measured data, the calculated result shows that it is feasible to improve the wind speed prediction from the aspects of algorithm, space and time.

Approximately 34–86% of neoplasms of the salivary glands are located in the parotid gland and parotidectomy is the first-line treatment for parotid gland tumors. Frey syndrome and cosmetic deformity are common complications experienced by patients following parotidectomy and the sternocleidomastoid muscle flap (SCMF) is used to prevent them. Numerous studies have been performed to examine the effectiveness of the SCMF for the prevention of cosmetic deformity and Frey syndrome, however, they provide contradictory results and possess small sample sizes with consequently low statistical power. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the SCMF for the prevention of Frey syndrome and cosmetic deformity following parotidectomy, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis based on published randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which were identified using PubMed and CNKI databases, and references of studies up to August 2012 were included. Using these criteria, we yielded 11 RCTs. Following an independent assessment of the methodological quality of these studies and the extraction of data, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted. The results of the meta-analysis demonstrated that there was a significant trend towards a lower risk of objective incidence [67%; risk ratio (RR), 0.33; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.16–0.67; P

OBJECTIVES The aims of this study were to determine the features of solid pseudopapillary tumors of the pancreas on contrast-enhanced sonography and correlate them with pathologic findings. METHODS Five patients with solid pseudopapillary tumors of the pancreas underwent conventional sonographic, color Doppler flow imaging, and contrast-enhanced sonographic examinations. Time-intensity curves were used to calculate the contrast enhancement times, wash-out times, and enhancement patterns of the lesions. Three of the 5 patients also underwent contrast-enhanced computed tomography. All cases were confirmed by surgery and pathologic examination. RESULTS The study included 3 women and 2 men. Tumor diameters ranged from 4.4 to 13.0 cm. Sonography revealed round well-defined encapsulated tumors. Two appeared as mixed cystic-solid and 3 as solid masses on conventional sonography. One mass had a macrocalcification. Some areas of blood flow were seen in 3 of the masses on color Doppler flow imaging. On contrast-enhanced sonography, the peripheral rims of the tumors showed isoenhancement during the early arterial phase, and the interiors of the masses showed heterogeneous enhancement consisting of regions of isoenhancement, hypoenhancement, and nonenhancement. Progressive wash-out of the contrast agent during venous phases revealed hypoenhancement compared with normal adjacent pancreatic parenchyma. Pathologic findings showed that each tumor was completely encapsulated and had varying degrees of internal hemorrhage and necrosis. CONCLUSIONS Solid pseudopapillary tumors of the pancreas have characteristic findings on contrast-enhanced sonography, including peripheral rim isoenhancement and internal heterogeneous enhancement with nonenhanced portions; these features may help differentiate solid pseudopapillary tumors from other pancreatic neoplasms.

Malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH) of the sigmoid colon is extremely rare and imaging characteristics of MFH during contrast-enhanced sonography have not been described yet. Here we report the case of a 55-year-old man suffering from MFH in the sigmoid colon, with an emphasis on contrast-enhanced sonography findings. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Ultrasound 40:439–442, 2012

A hybrid GrayART network consisting of an unsupervised clustering stage and a supervised adjusting stage is proposed in this paper. In this hybrid learning scheme, the unsupervised clustering stage estimates cluster centers of a given dataset, and the supervised adjusting stage follows to tune the cluster centers for improving the training result. With a proper vigilance threshold value, the overall learning process needs only two epochs, one for each stage. The hybrid network is applied to solve the Iris dataset for illustration. Simulation results demonstrate the classification ability and effectiveness of the proposed network.

It is important to ensure the data security of biosignals transmitted by a wireless network. This paper proposes a mobile-care device using Tame Transformation Signatures (TTS), which is a digital signature scheme from the family of asymmetric public key systems to encrypt the electrocardiogram (ECG) data. TTS has the advantages of high security, fast key generation, complex algorithm, less calculations and low signature delay. The proposed system consists of a mobile-care device to measure ECG signal, a key center to generate key pair, and a monitor center. The proposed ECG mobile-care device adopts the TI MSP430F449 microprocessor as the kernel and generates 8-byte hash codes and 10-byte signatures to sign the data. And the mobile-care device transmits the signed data through a wireless network to the server to decrypt. This paper describes the design and implementation of the proposed system in detail and also completely verifies the validity of the proposed system.

A wireless sensor network is a data communication system that consists of from several to thousands of tiny wireless sensor nodes. These battery-powered sensor nodes cooperate with each other to accomplish data transmission. A variety of wireless sensor networks have been developed for different applications in the recent years. In this paper, a data routing protocol, which is designed for a wireless home security network, is proposed. Due to the lifetime of such a network depends entirely on the lifetime of the battery power, the proposed routing protocol chooses hop counts and battery power levels as metrics, in order to conserve as much energy as possible in both computations and data communications. In addition, when some of the nodes fail or run out of battery, the routing protocol could effectively adapt the change and find an alternative path. The robustness and the energy efficiency of the proposed routing protocol were tested, and the results turned out to be successful.

In response to the home healthcare requirement of chronic patients, this paper proposes a mobile-care system integrated with a variety of vital-sign monitorings, where all the front-end vital-sign measuring devices are portable and have the ability of short-range wireless communication. In order to make the system suitable for home applications, wireless sensor network is introduced to transmit the captured vital signs to the residential gateway by means of multi-hop relay. Then the residential gateway uploads data to the care server via internet to carry out patient's condition monitoring and the management of pathological data. Furthermore, the system is equipped with the alarm mechanism, where the portable care device is able to immediately perceive the critical condition of the patient and send a warning message to medical and nursing personnels to achieve the goal of prompt rescue.

This paper is mainly to implement an active RFID system for 2-dimensional positioning service for home healthcare applications. It elaborates on the research processes including designing, planning and building of the system. The proposed system uses four active tags for the reference addresses and an object equipped with an active tag. It transmits the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and the unique electronic product code (EPC) back to the tag reader through wireless transmission. Then the system employs the information, which is received from the tag reader via the monitor center, to compute the geometric relation between the reference tags and the object to determine the location of the object by the positioning algorithm. Because the radio signal is vulnerable to the interferences from the terrain and obstacles while propagating, the tag reader is likely to receive signals with bad quality thats result in errors. Therefore, this paper studies and sorts out several issues that could affect the positioning accuracy, and probes into the influence degree of distance errors by experiment. The experiment results show that the confidence rate of the distance error within 2.5 meters is as high as 95% of a 5 m × 5 m region where four coordinates references are arranged.

To explore the clinicopathological characteristics and outcomes of light chain deposition disease (LCDD) in a Chinese population, we retrospectively studied the clinicopathological data, treatment, and outcomes of 48 patients with biopsy-proven LCDD from a single center. Among the patients, there were 29 males and 19 females, with an average age of 51 years. The patients presented with hypertension (79.2 %), edema (60.4 %), renal insufficiency (95.8 %), anemia (93.8 %), nephrotic proteinuria (≥3.0 g/24 h) (44.4 %), and hematuria (75.0 %). Moreover, 33.3 % had hypocomplementemia of C3, and 25 % were diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Serum immunofixation electrophoresis and a serum free light chain assay showed that 26.7 and 85.4 % of patients presented with monoclonal immunoglobulin, respectively. Nodular mesangial sclerosis was identified in 83.3 % of our cases and vascular involvement was observed in 77.1 % by light microscopy. Over an average of 22 months of follow-up, the mean renal survival was 32.5 months. Of the patients, 34.1 % had stable or improved renal dysfunction, 2.3 % had worsening renal function, and 63.6 % progressed to end-stage renal disease. Of the 33 patients receiving chemotherapy, 15 patients had stable or improved renal function and the renal survival was higher in patients with hematological and renal responses than in those without. The independent predictors of ESRD by multivariate analysis were serum creatinine (p = 0.008) and urinary retinol binding protein (RBP) (p = 0.045). In conclusion, LCDD was characterized in Chinese patients by renal dysfunction, hypertension, anemia, proteinuria, abnormal free light chain ratios, and less overt hematologic malignancies. Serum creatinine and RBP were independent prognostic factors of LCDD. As better hematologic and renal responses to chemotherapy were associated with improved renal survival, there is an urgent need for multicenter and prospective studies to establish the standardized therapy for LCDD.

Background Adenomyomatosis of gallbladder is an acquired hyperplastic lesion, characterized by focal or diffuse thickening of the gallbladder with intramural cysts or echogenic areas with comet tail on ultrasonography. But in some cases, especially in the localized fundal type of adenomyomatosis, the intramural anechoic cystic spaces are uncertainty which causes difficult to differential adenomyomatosis from GB cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of real-time contrast-enhanced ultrasonography(CEUS) in the diagnosis of the fundal localized type of gallbladder adenomyomatosis. Methods We performed a retrospective study of 21 patients with pathologically proven fundal localized type of gallbladder (GB) adenomyomatosis. All patients underwent preoperative grayscale ultrasound (US) and real-time CEUS examination. The study’s reviewers made the diagnosis of adenomyomatosis according to the presence of the focal thickening of the fundal gallbladder wall with intramural cyst or intramural echogenic foci on grayscale US or CEUS. The diagnostic accuracy of US and CEUS was compared. The enhanced pattern and degree of intactness of the GB wall were also recorded. Results The fundal portion of the GB wall showed localized thickness in all 21 patients. Small anechoic spaces or intramural echogenic foci were detected in 14 (66.7 %) and 21 (100 %) of cases respectively, and the intactness of the GB wall’s outer hyper-echoic layer was demonstrated in 17 (81 %) and 20 (95 %) on grayscale US and CEUS, respectively. The accuracy rate of the above two examination modalities was significantly different (p

Background Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) has been found in tumor neovasculature endothelial cells (NECs) of non-prostate cancers and may become the most promising target for anti-tumor therapy. To study the value of PSMA as a potential new target for lung cancer treatment, PSMA expression in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) tissues and its relationship with clinicopathology were investigated in the current study. Methods Immunohistochemistry was used to detect PSMA expression in a total of 150 lung specimens of patients with lung cancer. The data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate statistical analyses. Results The percentages of NSCLC patients who had PSMA (+) tumor cells and PSMA (+) NECs were 54.02% and 85.06%, respectively. The percentage of patients younger than 60 years old who had PSMA (+) tumor cells was 69.05%, which was significantly greater than the percentage of patients aged 60 years or older (40.00%, p

This paper attempts to incorporate grey relational analysis into the ART 2 (adaptive resonant theory) network to construct a GreyART network. GreyART networks not only possess the structure and learning ability of an ART-based network, but also use grey relational analysis to process the grey information among the data for clustering. The problems of determining the optimal number of clusters and the optimal locations of cluster centres are also considered. Additionally, the network is used to solve two data clustering problems for illustration. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the GreyART network in solving the data clustering problems.

A pyriform sinus fistula is a rare congenital abnormality of the third or fourth branchial pouch that usually affects children. We report one case of the condition; ultrasound (US) imaged a heterogeneous mass with a hypoechoic area and air bubbles representing an abscess. Although these manifestations are rare, prominent and characteristic findings on US may facilitate the diagnosis of pyriform sinus fistula.

High-throughput technologies including transcriptional profiling, proteomics and reverse genetics screens provide detailed molecular descriptions of cellular responses to perturbations. However, it is difficult to integrate these diverse data to reconstruct biologically meaningful signaling networks. Previously, we have established a framework for integrating transcriptional, proteomic and interactome data by searching for the solution to the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem. Here, we present a web server, SteinerNet, to make this method available in a user-friendly format for a broad range of users with data from any species. At a minimum, a user only needs to provide a set of experimentally detected proteins and/or genes and the server will search for connections among these data from the provided interactomes for yeast, human, mouse, Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. More advanced users can upload their own interactome data as well. The server provides interactive visualization of the resulting optimal network and downloadable files detailing the analysis and results. We believe that SteinerNet will be useful for researchers who would like to integrate their high-throughput data for a specific condition or cellular response and to find biologically meaningful pathways. SteinerNet is accessible at http://fraenkel.mit.edu/steinernet., National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (U54-CA112967), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01-GM089903), National Science Foundation (Award Number DB1-0821391)

Anomaly detection becomes increasingly important in hyperspectral image analysis, since hyperspectral imagers can now uncover many material substances which were previously unresolved by multispectral sensors. Two types of anomaly detection are of interest and considered in this paper. One was previously developed by Reed and Yu to detect targets whose signatures are distinct from their surroundings. Another was designed to detect targets with low probabilities in an unknown image scene. Interestingly, they both operate the same form as does a matched filter. Moreover, they can be implemented in real-time processing, provided that the sample covariance matrix is replaced by the sample correlation matrix. One disadvantage of an anomaly detector is the lack of ability to discriminate the detected targets from another. In order to resolve this problem, the concept of target discrimination measures is introduced to cluster different types of anomalies into separate target classes. By using these class means as target information, the detected anomalies can be further classified. With inclusion of target discrimination in anomaly detection, anomaly classification can be implemented in a three-stage process, first by anomaly detection to find potential targets, followed by target discrimination to cluster the detected anomalies into separate target classes, and concluded by a classifier to achieve target classification. Experiments show that anomaly classification performs very differently from anomaly detection.

Independent component analysis (ICA) has shown success in blind source separation and channel equalization. Its applications to remotely sensed images have been investigated in recent years. Linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA) has been widely used for subpixel detection and mixed pixel classification. It models an image pixel as a linear mixture of materials present in an image where the material abundance fractions are assumed to be unknown and nonrandom parameters. This paper considers an application of ICA to the LSMA, referred to as ICA-based linear spectral random mixture analysis (LSRMA), which describes an image pixel as a random source resulting from a random composition of multiple spectral signatures of distinct materials in the image. It differs from the LSMA in that the abundance fractions of the material spectral signatures in the LSRMA are now considered to be unknown but random independent signal sources. Two major advantages result from the LSRMA. First, it does not require prior knowledge of the materials to be used in the linear mixture model, as required for the LSMA. Second, and most importantly, the LSRMA models the abundance fraction of each material spectral signature as an independent random signal source so that the spectral variability of materials can be described by their corresponding abundance fractions and captured more effectively in a stochastic manner.

Background: Sarcopenic obesity, a loss of muscle and a concomitant increase in ectopic fat, is reported to increase in life-style related diseases. Especially the prevalence of sarcopenia is greater in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) than in non-diabetic subjects. Increase in fat filtration enhances insulin resistance and is associated with metabolic risk factors. However, the detailed mechanism of such ectopic fat filtration in muscle of T2DM patients has not been well investigated. Here, we assessed muscle regeneration using muscle-injured models in obese diabetic mice. Methods: Male eight-week-old wild-type mice (C57BL6) and T2DM mice (KKAy) were undergone intramuscular injection of cardiotoxin (Ctx) (100uL/10uM) into tibia. After two weeks, muscle were removed and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. KKAy replaced by bone marrow prepared from GFP-transgenic mice were generated by 8 Gy whole body X-ray irradiation. Cell-differentiation was evaluated by immunofluorescent analysis. Some mice were treated with all trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) and PPAR-gamma antagonist, GW9662. Results: In 26 week-old KKAy, magnetic resonance imaging analysis showed that intramuscular fat deposition was estimated as higher intensity compared with C57BL6 mice. Treatment with Ctx showed a significant increase in honey comb structure which was perilipin positive. KKAy mice exhibited impaired muscle regeneration. Tibial muscle weight was approximately a half in Ctx-injured KKAy. Such change was also observed in another diabetic mouse model, db/db, but not in streptozocin-induced diabetic mice. Fat formation was remarkably increased in aged KKAy compared with younger mice. Several fat formation was GFP-positive in GFP-chimeric mice indicating that fat tissue was partially generated from marrow cells. Fat formation was desmin-negative and vimentin-positive indicating that these are mesenchymal origin. Treatment with ATRA reduced fat filtration. On the other hand, treatment with GW9662 enhanced fat filtration. Conclusion: Obese diabetic mice showed significantly impaired muscle regeneration with replacement of fat deposition, suggesting that diabetes enhanced sarcopenic obesity possibly due to inhibitory effect of cell differentiation.

We evaluate the portal venous waveform (PVW) with pulsed Doppler ultrasound (US) after living-related liver transplantation (LRLT) and correlate it with subsequent abnormalities. In the first 2 wk after LRLT, pulsed Doppler US demonstrated three types of PV waveform (PVW) in 33 recipients: non-phasic PVW in 19 patients, pulsatile in 10, and turbulent in 4. In the pulsatile PVW group, arterio-portal (A-P) shunt was confirmed in three grafts by either arteriograhy or computed tomography during hepatic arteriography. A severe stenosis in the grafted vein was confirmed in one case by both US and venography. The pulsatile PVW in the remaining six cases spontaneously disappeared and turned to the non-phasic PVW without treatment. The graft volume/liver standard volume (GV/SV) ratio was significantly smaller in the pulsatile PV waveform group than in the non-phasic PVW group (p

The authors present a projection pursuit (PP) approach to target detection. Unlike most of developed target detection algorithms that require statistical models such as linear mixture, the proposed PP is to project a high dimensional data set into a low dimensional data space while retaining desired information of interest. It utilizes a projection index to explore projections of interestingness. For target detection applications in hyperspectral imagery, an interesting structure of an image scene is the one caused by man-made targets in a large unknown background. Such targets can be viewed as anomalies in an image scene due to the fact that their size is relatively small compared to their background surroundings. As a result, detecting small targets in an unknown image scene is reduced to finding the outliers of background distributions. It is known that "skewness," is defined by normalized third moment of the sample distribution, measures the asymmetry of the distribution and "kurtosis" is defined by normalized fourth moment of the sample distribution measures the flatness of the distribution. They both are susceptible to outliers. So, using skewness and kurtosis as a base to design a projection index may be effective for target detection. In order to find an optimal projection index, an evolutionary algorithm is also developed to avoid trapping local optima. The hyperspectral image experiments show that the proposed PP method provides an effective means for target detection.

Efficacies of the charging strategy and electrified pattern dominate the functionality and lifespan of Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries intensely. In order to maximize the available performance of the Li-ion batteries, in this paper, a searching strategy based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) conducted with a fuzzy-deduced fitness evaluator (FDFE) is proposed to find the best multistage charging current pattern. The objective function is to maximize the cost benefit of the applied prospective charging pattern based on the nonlinear weightings' allocation of the charge time (CT) and normalized discharge capacity (NDC) in the objective function. Rules of the weighting allocation are derived from the fuzzy logic inference. The fitness value of each candidate particle (charging pattern) is figured out by the FDFE to guide the searching path of the PSO algorithm for finding the optimal solution out. Experimental findings show that the resulted pattern is capable of charging the batteries to over 90% available capacity within 50 minutes. Comparing with the conventional constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) method, the devised scheme has the performance enhancements of more than 80% charging time reduction, 21% more life cycles, and over 0.4% charging efficiency increase.

Aim The purpose of this study was to evaluate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) as a modality for diagnosing perforation of the gallbladder (GB) and pericholecystic hepatic abscess. Methods This retrospective study comprised 6 patients with acute cholecystitis and GB perforation plus pericholecystic hepatic abscess who underwent conventional US and CEUS imaging. The following sonographic features were examined: GB contour, defect in the GB wall, and pericholecystic hepatic mass. The findings of conventional US and CEUS were compared. Results Conventional US revealed a defect in the GB wall in 2 patients and partially obscured GB wall in 4 patients. Pericholecystic masses were visualized as isohypoechoic masses in 3 and mixed cystic-solid masses in 3 patients. Contrast-enhanced US revealed hyperenhancement of the GB wall during the early arterial phase, and a defect was seen in every patient. The pericholecystic masses showed heterogeneous enhancement with a honeycomb-like appearance during the arterial phase–interpreted abscesses. Conclusion Contrast-enhanced US clearly visualized defects in the GB wall and pericholecystic abscesses in patients with GB perforation. The results indicate that CEUS is a useful modality for the diagnosis of GB perforation.

Owing to the perception of high-efficiency and comfortable lighting systems possess better energy-saving effect as well as the positive impact on the health and performance of people, the demand of dimmable electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps is increasing rapidly. A high-power-factor electronic ballast with varied dimming interfaces for T5 fluorescent lamps is devised in this paper. With functionality of wide dimmable range, the proposed ballast provides flexible and friendly dimming mechanism for application in modern lighting system. The developed ballast consists of an EMI filter, an active power factor correction (PFC), an inverter power stage with a resonant tank, and a fully isolated dimmer with different control interfaces. By means of wired or wireless transmission protocol, the industrially standard 0 to 10 V dc control signals are generated to tune the lamp luminance. Performance and effectiveness of the proposed dimmable ballast on T5 28W lamps are demonstrated via a prototype experimental setup.

Cystic lymphangioma of the pancreas is an extremely rare benign tumor of lymphatic origin. We report on a 68-year-old woman who had experienced epigastric abdominal distension and nausea for over 1 year. Sonography revealed a cystic-solid mixed mass in the head of pancreas, with intrahepatic and extrahepatic duct dilatation. A diagnosis of cystic lymphangioma with congenital intrahepatic duct dilatation and choledochal cyst was made after excision and pathologic examination. Preoperative diagnosis of cystic lymphangioma of the pancreas is difficult, and carefulsonographic evaluation is required. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Ultrasound, 2010; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/jcu.20763

Signet-ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) of ampulla of Vater is extremely uncommon, and less than 15 cases have been reported so far in literature. It mainly occurs in elderly people (median age 57 years). We report a rare case of SRCC of the ampulla of Vater in a 38-year-old woman who presented with a small tumor at the Vater, discovered by the contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS). Histopathological examination showed prominent signet-ring features. We also describe the imaging features of SRCC of ampulla of Vater in CEUS.

In this paper, the deployment analysis considering the latency in data forwarding stage for an in-home healthcare network with wireless multi-hop relaying for long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring is presented and performed. By means of multi-hop transmission, the ECG data of elders or chronic patients with heart diseases can be automatically acquired by the mobile-care device and wirelessly relayed to the residential gateway via the proposed network at any time or any place at home. Then the residential gateway uploads data to the back-end care server through Internet to carry out the patient's health condition monitoring and the management of pathological data. In order to effectively and timely forward the ECG data to the residential gateway in the house, the aim of this paper is to estimate and determine the maximum hop count of relay nodes needed to be deployed to achieve the ECG data relaying in time and the optimal communication coverage in the house. Finally, the simulation and performance evaluation results are given to verify the analysis.

The DHT-based Chord protocol for P2P networks is one of the research hotspots recently. Considering the low efficiency problem on the resource lookup, we have developed a more efficient double-ring Chord protocol for P2P networks. We analyze theoretically the expectation of hops and present the simulation results.

This paper presents a heath-care home gateway (HCHG), with the abilities of wireless transmission by using a ZigBee module and multimedia home platform (MHP), over digital cable television (CATV) network. By means of HCHG, it is mainly to transmit the vital signs of the CATV subscribers via digital CATV network to the medical/health-care center, and could further to consult their health condition with the professional medical and nursing personnel timely.

The high precision two-photon excitation measurements for 5S1/2 (Fg = 2) to 5D5/2 (Fe = 4 to 1) of 87Rb are performed by using an optical frequency comb. The two counter-propagating femtosecond pulses (5S1/2 → 5P3/2 at 780 nm, and 5P3/2 → 5D5/2 at 776 nm) act on 87Rb vapor, and the Doppler broadened background signal is effectively eliminated. The temperature and power dependences of the two-photon spectrum are studied in this paper.