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Background and Purpose: Sirt5 (Sirtuin 5) desuccinylates multiple metabolic enzymes and plays an important role in maintaining energy homeostasis. The goal of this study was to determine whether Sirt5-mediated desuccinylation restores the energy metabolism and protects brain against subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Methods: Male C57BL/6 or Sirt5 −/− mice were used. The endovascular perforation SAH model was applied. Protein lysine succinylation in the brain cortex was examined using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis. The brain metabolism was evaluated by measurement of brain pH as well as ATP and reactive oxygen species level. Neuronal cell death and neurobehavioral deficits were assessed 24 hours after SAH. The expression and desuccinylation activity of Sirt5, lysine succinylation of citrate synthase and ATP synthase subunits were investigated by Western blot, immunohistochemistry, and ELISA in SAH mice and patients. Furthermore, the benefits of resveratrol-mediated Sirt5 activation were investigated. Results: A total of 211 lysine succinylation sites were differentially expressed on 170 proteins in mice brain after SAH. Thirty-nine percent of these succinylated proteins were localized in mitochondria and they are related to energy metabolism. SAH caused a decrease of Sirt5 expression and succinylated citrate synthase as well as the subunits of ATP synthase, subsequently lowered brain pH, reduced ATP and increased reactive oxygen species production, leading to neuronal cell death, and neurological deficits. Knockdown of Sirt5 aggravated SAH-induced effects, mentioned above. Administration of resveratrol resulted in activation of Sirt5. The activation was accompanied both with restoration of the mitochondrial metabolism and alleviation of early brain injury as well as with desuccinylating citrate synthase and ATP synthase. Conclusions: Protein lysine succinylation is a biochemical hallmark of metabolic crisis after SAH, and disruption of lysine succinylation through activation of Sirt5 might be a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of SAH.

The authors reported 2 cases with proximal anterior cerebral artery (A1) aneurysms, and one was treated with aneurysm clipping, whereas another was treated with coil embolization. The authors suggest both endovascular surgery and aneurysm clipping are good options for A1 aneurysms.

Recent applications in large-scale wireless mesh networks (WSN), e.g., Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) scenarios, expect to support an extended number of nodes with higher throughput, which cannot be sufficiently supported by the current WSN protocols. Two prior protocols, Wi-SUN Field Area Network (Wi-SUN FAN) and IETF 6TiSCH standards, are popularly used that are respectively based on asynchronous Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) and IEEE 802.15.4 Time Scheduled Channel Hopping (TSCH). However, the former one with CSMA/CA can be prone to the Hidden Node Problem (HNP) that leads to a degradation of reliability, while the latter one with TSCH avoids HNP by using synchronously scheduling but requires massive control signalling that degrades the upper-bound of throughput. Accordingly, this paper tackles the challenge of how to improve the upper-bound of throughput without loss of reliability. To do so, we first present an in-depth evaluation of reliability and throughput between the two existing standards via system-level simulation. We then propose a self-configurable grouping (SCG) method to cluster nodes without using location information of each node. This SCG method eliminates around 99\% HNP in CSMA/CA, thus greatly improves its reliability with maintaining the relatively high upper-bound of throughput. Our results show that the SCG method almost doubles the network throughput compared with both 6TiSCH and Wi-SUN FAN in heavy traffic scenarios, while providing extremely high reliability of more than 99.999\%.

Steerable directional antennas are increasingly utilised to improve the overall performance of the traditional wireless sensor networks. Steerable directional antenna based networking solutions increase the network capacity by providing a longer range of transmission and reduced interference as compared to networking solutions with omni-directional antennas. However, the use of smart antennas requires complex algorithms and such algorithms may not be easily leveraged in low power Internet of Things (IoT) networks. This study presents mechanisms for integrating low complexity smart antenna solutions into IETF 6TiSCH protocol with the aim of creating scalable and reliable industrial IoT networks. The solution defines extensions to MAC layer and scheduling mechanisms of IETF 6TiSCH protocol to enable its seamless integration with low complexity steerable smart antennas. The results of this study show that smart antenna enabled 6TiSCH protocol stack outperforms the legacy 6TiSCH stack in terms of data delivery performance especially in high density scenarios.

This paper provides details of the collaborative robotics testbed platform that has been developed within the UMBRELLA project. The testbed is part of a larger open Industrial IoT testbed which is currently being deployed in the UK. The aim of the testbed is to permit flexible experimentation using different end devices (including smart city sensing and robot nodes) to evaluate algorithms or new practical application scenarios. For the collaborative robotics testbed this relates to warehouse robotics, which can move pallets of different sizes and shapes. The testbed also includes simulator facilities for validation of algorithms prior to deployment on the robot nodes. The nodes support a rich set of sensors, actuators, and wireless communication technologies. The software architecture is based on Docker containers and ROS2 DDS middleware for flexible and extensible evolution to support future sensors or network technologies. This will be provided as an open testbed to support research, experimentation and evaluation of swarm robotics and other Industrial IoT use-cases.

Combining \underline{v}ideo streaming and online \underline{r}etailing (V2R) has been a growing trend recently. In this paper, we provide practitioners and researchers in multimedia with a cloud-based platform named Hysia for easy development and deployment of V2R applications. The system consists of: 1) a back-end infrastructure providing optimized V2R related services including data engine, model repository, model serving and content matching; and 2) an application layer which enables rapid V2R application prototyping. Hysia addresses industry and academic needs in large-scale multimedia by: 1) seamlessly integrating state-of-the-art libraries including NVIDIA video SDK, Facebook faiss, and gRPC; 2) efficiently utilizing GPU computation; and 3) allowing developers to bind new models easily to meet the rapidly changing deep learning (DL) techniques. On top of that, we implement an orchestrator for further optimizing DL model serving performance. Hysia has been released as an open source project on GitHub, and attracted considerable attention. We have published Hysia to DockerHub as an official image for seamless integration and deployment in current cloud environments., 4 pages, 4 figures

RPL, the de-facto standard for low power and lossy networks, forms multi-hop routing structures between network nodes and a single root. It intrinsically minimises the number of hops across the mesh, however this can result in large distances between adjacent forwarding nodes. Consequently, during forwarding operations, the received signal strength can be close to the receiver sensitivity threshold and result in frequent packet losses due to link fluctuations. RECLAIM, our proposed approach, overcomes this challenge by transmitting routebuilding messages at a reduced power level at first while switching back to the normal transmission power level during the actual data communication phase. This results in more reliable links per hop and ensures link budget above the receiver sensitivity threshold. This however creates more hops and a longer routing path in order to reach destination. Hence, RECLAIM further applies efficient and non-conflicting 6TiSCH scheduling method to coordinate those communication events in a non conflicting manner which do not collide or cause interference to each other, resolving the issue that has traditionally prevented this approach. Our detailed simulation shows that RECLAIM drops 60 times less packets than standard RPL, and achieves 99.9999% packet delivery ratio.

Information-centric networking (ICN) has been touted as a revolutionary solution for the future of the Internet, which will be dominated by video traffic. This work investigates the challenge of distributing video content of adaptive bitrate (ABR) over ICN. In particular, we use the in-network caching capability of ICN routers to serve users; in addition, with the help of named function, we enable ICN routers to transcode videos to lower-bitrate versions to improve the cache hit ratio. Mathematically, we formulate this design challenge into a constrained optimization problem, which aims to maximize the cache hit ratio for service providers and minimize the service delay for endusers. We design a two-step iterative algorithm to find the optimum. First, given a content management scheme, we minimize the service delay via optimally configuring the routing scheme. Second, we maximize the cache hits for a given routing policy. Finally, we rigorously prove its convergence. Through extensive simulations, we verify the convergence and the performance gains over other algorithms. We also find that more resources should be allocated to ICN routers with a heavier request rate, and the routing scheme favors the shortest path to schedule more traffic.

Objective A ketogenic diet (KD) improves cellular metabolism and functional recovery after moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury. Here, we evaluated the changes of neurochemical metabolites after KD therapy for repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (rmTBI) and its possible role in neurodegeneration. Methods Postnatal day 35 rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: sham, control, and KD groups. Rats in control and KD groups were given 3 rmTBI by a fluid percussion traumatic brain injury device 24 hours apart. All rats were killed at 7 days after the last injury. The ipsilateral cortex were analyzed with hematoxylin and eosin staining; beta-hydroxybutyrate was measured; conventional magnetic resonance imaging and the dry–wet weight method were used to assess the brain edema; changes of neurochemical metabolites were assessed using the ratio of N-acetylaspartate (NAA)/creatine (Cr), choline compound (Cho)/Cr, and NAA/Cho with magnetic resonance spectroscopy; the effect of KD therapy on neurodegeneration was evaluated with double immunofluorescence staining of Iba-1/beclin-1; behavioral outcome was assessed with beam walk/beam balance tests. Results KD significantly elevated beta-hydroxybutyrate levels, and there was no brain edema associated with rmTBI and KD therapy; behavioral assessment showed KD therapy significantly improved motor performance; magnetic resonance spectroscopy showed that rmTBI reduced the ratio of NAA/Cr and had no effect on the ratios of Cho/Cr and NAA/Cho whereas KD increased the ratio of NAA/Cr; double immunofluorescence staining showed KD therapy could significantly decrease microglial beclin-1 expression in the ipsilateral cortex. Conclusions These results suggest the effect of KD on metabolic status and its possible role in preventing neurodegeneration in adolescent rats after rmTBI.

The latest 6TiSCH standard enables highly reliable industrial monitoring and control applications through deterministic wireless communications and efficient allocation of radio resources among wireless nodes. However, much of these benefits are tied to the ability of the scheduler in orchestrating communication over individual links in an efficient and a non-conflicting manner. The state-of-the-art 6TiSCH scheduling algorithms only tackle the scheduling problem at the MAC layer with an assumption of having an optimal routing layer. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, no solution so far has taken content-specific scheduling into account. This paper proposes CONCISE, which is a content-centric cross-layer scheduling solution. CONCISE creates content-independent routing topologies and schedulers, resulting in an overlaid routing structure and multiple content-based schedules. Further, CONCISE addresses in-network processing and data aggregation with the objective of reducing network traffic. Performance evaluation demonstrates that CONCISE can effectively reduce inner layer network traffic by up to 65%. As a result, it can provide up to 50% delay reduction and achieve significantly higher packet delivery ratio, compared with existing scheduling solutions. Initial proof of concept is implemented and evaluated in Contiki OS.

Baicalin, a flavonoid compound from the root of the herb Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, has been widely used to treat patients with inflammatory disease. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of baicalin in a rat model of focal cerebral ischemia. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rat models of cerebral artery occlusion were established and then randomly and equally divided into three groups: ischemia (cerebral ischemia and reperfusion), valproic acid (cerebral ischemia and reperfusion + three intraperitoneal injections of valproic acid; positive control), and baicalin (cerebral ischemia and reperfusion + intraperitoneal injection of baicalin for 21 days). Neurological deficits were assessed using the postural reflex test and forelimb placing test at 3, 7, 14, and 21 days after ischemia. Rat cerebral infarct volume was measured using 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining method. Pathological change of ischemic brain tissue was assessed using hematoxylin-eosin staining. In the baicalin group, rat neurological function was obviously improved, cerebral infarct volume was obviously reduced, and the pathological impairment of ischemic brain tissue was obviously alleviated compared to the ischemia group. Cerebral infarct volume was similar in the valproic acid and baicalin groups. These findings suggest that baicalin has a neuroprotective effect on cerebral ischemia.

Background Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is the change in cerebral blood flow in response to a vaso-active stimulus, and may assist the treatment strategy of ischemic stroke. However, previous studies reported that a therapeutic strategy for stroke mainly depends on the degree of vascular stenosis with steady-state vascular parameters (e.g., cerebral blood flow and CVR). Hence, measurement of CVR by multimodal imaging techniques may improve the treatment of ischemic stroke. Methods/design This is a prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial that aimed to examine the capability of multimodal imaging techniques for the evaluation of CVR to improve treatment of patients with ischemic stroke. A total of 66 eligible patients will be recruited from Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine. The patients will be categorized based on CVR into two subgroups as follows: CVR > 10% group and CVR Discussion Measurement of cerebrovascular reserve by multimodal image is recommended by most recent studies to guide the treatment of ischemic stroke, and thus its efficacy and evaluation accuracy need to be established in randomized controlled settings. This prospective, parallel, randomized, controlled registry study, together with other ongoing studies, should present more evidence for optimal individualized accurate treatment of ischemic stroke. Trial registration Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ID: ChiCTR-IOR-16009635; Registered on 16 October 2016. All items are from the World Health Organization Trial Registration Data Set and registration in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: ChiCTR-IOR-16009635.

When a person is performing daily activities (e.g. walking) in the context of a WBAN application, the channel quality between the worn sensor devices and the hub can vary due to the switching of Line-Of-Sight (LOS) and None-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) statuses among the sender and the receiver. Therefore, motion aware wireless MAC protocols are designed in order to enhance communication reliability and to avoid wasting energy on unnecessary wireless re-transmissions during most of the NLOS communications. Despite its importance, the prerequisite step of accurate and energy efficient motion detection remains as an assumption in most of the existing motion aware WBAN protocols. Hence in this paper, we propose an optimized real-time gesture detection method and implement it in a motion aware WBAN communication protocol. Wireless communications only take place when the channel condition is good, while data is buffered otherwise. It is lightweight and tailored to perform fast with accurate detection that suits embedded devices with limited memory size and relatively low MCU processing speeds. Experiments are conducted using both simulation and real-life hardware devices with 6 volunteers. The proposed motion detection method showed 99.28% off-line accuracy and 92.5% online accuracy, respectively. Thanks to which, the communication results yielded a promising 82% improvement in packet drop reduction and 32.8% improvement in energy efficiency compared to conventional methods.

Recently, network operators around the world have encountered a paradox. On the one hand, they have made enormous investments to handle the tremendous growth of Internet media services triggered by the ubiquitous penetration of high-speed wireless networks and the increasing popularity of mobile devices. On the other hand, these investments have not delivered the expected revenue, leading to declining profitability. In response to this paradox, network function virtualization (NFV) has been proposed as a revolutionary technology to transform network architecture and operations. This emerging technology opens up significant opportunities to reduce the cost of operating media services. In this article, the authors present a survey on this emerging topic. Specifically, they analyze the forces driving the evolution of the network architecture, then describe a novel NFV-enabled media cloud system from two alternative perspectives: an end-to-end view and a layered view. They then illustrate the architectural changes' technical challenges, which range from optimal resource provision and request routing to automated optimization. Finally, they substantiate the NFV-enabled media cloud platform with proof-of-concept case studies. By demonstrating NFV's flexibility and effectiveness, they show that the cost of providing Internet media services by NFV-enabled systems could be substantially reduced in practice.

Cloud-centric media network (CCMN) was previously proposed to provide cost-effective content distribution services for user-generated contents (UGCs) based on media cloud. CCMN service providers orchestrate cloud resources to deliver UGCs in a pay-per-use style, with an objective to minimize the operational monetary cost. The monetary cost depends on the actual usage of cloud resources (e.g., computing, storage, and bandwidth), which in turn, is affected by the content placement strategy. In this paper, we investigate this cost-optimal content placement problem. Specifically, it is formulated into a constrained optimization problem, in which the objective is to minimize the total monetary cost, with respect to the resource capacity. We tackle this problem via a two-step strategy. The first step focuses on the placement for a single content, which is mapped into a $k$ -center problem. Using a graph-theoretic approach, we derive and verify a logarithmic model between the optimal mean hop distance from viewers to contents, and the optimal number of content replicas. The second step leverages this analytical result to solve the cost optimization problem, via a feasible direction method. The analysis is substantiated via numerical simulations, using a set of data traces from a top content website. This investigation suggests that the optimal number of content replica for each title follows a power-law distribution in respect to its popularity rank. Moreover, it reveals a fundamental tradeoff between the storage and bandwidth cost. Finally, compared to existing heuristics, our proposed algorithm is able to obtain the optimal placement strategy, with lower computational complexity.

The Time Synchronised Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC, adopted in popular WirelessHART, ISA100.11a and IEEE802.15.4e, is emerging as the de-facto technique for critical wireless industrial monitoring and control applications. However, much of its benefits are tied to the ability of the protocols and the scheduling techniques to optimally route traffic and orchestrate communication over individual links in a non- conflicting manner. Existing routing and scheduling approaches employ complex algorithms requiring excessive signalling overhead. While some of them can build optimal solutions under static conditions, they lack the agility to adapt to changes in network topology, traffic, and link qualities. To overcome these limitations, we propose BOOST, a protocol that blends TSCH with opportunistic routing and an effortless scheduling technique. BOOST complements the native support of spatial and channel diversity of the former with receiver diversity of the latter, pushing the envelope of network reliability to over 99.99\%. Its ultra-lightweight autonomous scheduling mechanism adapts the communication schedule to network changes instantly with almost zero signalling overhead when other solutions struggle with tens of seconds or even minutes of delay with low reliability during this period.

Background Complex mechanisms participate in microglial activation after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI can induce autophagy and apoptosis in neurons and glial cells, and moderate hypothermia plays a protective role in the acute phase of TBI. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of TBI and moderate hypothermia on microglial activation and investigated the possible roles of autophagy/apoptosis and toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4). Methods The TBI model was induced with a fluid percussion TBI device. Moderate hypothermia was achieved under general anesthesia by partial immersion in a water bath for 4 h. All rats were killed 24 h after the TBI. Results Our results showed downregulation of the microglial activation and autophagy, but upregulation of microglial apoptosis, upon post-TBI hypothermia treatment. The expression of TLR4 and downstream myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88) was attenuated. Moderate hypothermia reduced neural cell death post-TBI. Conclusions Moderate hypothermia can reduce the number of activated microglia by inhibiting autophagy and promoting apoptosis, probably through a negative modulation between autophagy and apoptosis. Moderate hypothermia may attenuate the pro-inflammatory function of microglia by inhibiting the MyD88-dependent TLR4 signaling pathway.

Internet of Things (IoT) has become a hot research topic recently. IoT networks are expected to integrate billions of small devices to the Internet enabling countless applications ranging from automation of cities to home based healthcare solutions for elderly and vulnerable population. Such wide range of application pose unique challenges such as the need for high reliability, ultra low power and low delay communications. In addition to these challenges, such Internet enabled small devices will have to be equipped with the necessary security suits to cope with security challenges posed by the Internet. Furthermore, these solutions have to address such unique challenges via a micro controller generally with a limited processing power and memory consuming as little energy as possible. This paper presents an extension to the secure bootstrapping mechanism of the newly introduced IETF 6TiSCH protocol where the authentication keys are distributed within the trusted nodes of the IoT network to enable an efficient authentication and bootstrapping process. Using a distributed approach, we aim to reduce the communication overhead of the standard IETF 6TiSCH authentication mechanism and improve energy efficiency of the network by keeping authentication tokens at the edge of the IoT network.

Cranioplasty (CP) with titanium mesh after standard trauma craniectomy (STC) has been proven to be a favorable technology. According to reflection of temporalis muscle or not, the CP was divided into 2 operation ways. Effect of reflection of temporalis muscle has not been systematically researched. Thirty-nine patients were enrolled to assess the effect of reflection of temporalis muscle during CP after STC. Cranial index of symmetry was adopted to evaluate the aesthetic results, transcranial Doppler was used to assess change of cerebral blood flow (CBF), functional independence measurements were performed to monitor the improvement of neuronal function, and complications associated with CP were also recorded. The results displayed that reflection of temporalis muscle or not had no effect on the anesthetic results. Both operation ways could improve CBF and neuronal function. Cranioplasty with reflection of temporalis muscle could improve CBF and neuronal function more significantly. Furthermore, reflection of temporalis muscle would not increase complications associated with CP. Reflection of temporalis muscle during CP with titanium mesh after STC proves to be an effective and safe operation way.

Nowadays, large-scale video distribution feeds a significant fraction of the global Internet traffic. However, existing content delivery networks may not be cost efficient enough to distribute adaptive video streaming, mainly due to the lack of orchestration on storage, computing, and bandwidth resources. In this paper, we leverage Media Cloud to deliver on-demand adaptive video streaming services, where those resources can be dynamically scheduled in an on-demand fashion. Our objective is to minimize the total operational cost by optimally orchestrating multiple resources. Specifically, we formulate an optimization problem, by examining a three-way tradeoff between the caching, transcoding, and bandwidth costs, at each edge server. Then, we adopt a two-step approach to analytically derive the closed-form solution of the optimal transcoding configuration and caching space allocation, respectively, for every edge server. Finally, we verify our solution throughout extensive simulations. The results indicate that our approach achieves significant cost savings compared with the existing methods used in content delivery networks. In addition, we also find the optimal strategy and its benefits can be affected by a list of system parameters, including the unit cost of different resources, the hop distance to the origin server, the Zipf parameter of users’ request patterns, and the settings of different bitrate versions for one segment.

Objective Multiple mechanisms participated in the cell death after fluid percussion traumatic brain injury (TBI). In the present study, we evaluated the effect on cell death in the injured cortex after fluid percussion TBI and investigated a possible role of autophagy. Methods TBI model was induced by a fluid percussion TBI device. Moderate hypothermia (32°C) was achieved by partial immersion in a water bath (0°C) under general anesthesia for 4 hours. All rats were killed at 6 or 24 hours after TBI. Results Cleaved caspase 3 evaluated with Western blotting and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated 2′-deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate-biotin nick end labeling-positive cells in injured cortex were significantly increased 6 hours after fluid percussion TBI and were further up-regulated 24 hours after TBI, dramatic up-regulation of Beclin-1 and protein light chain-3 expression levels was also observed. Further up-regulation of biomarkers of autophagy, attenuation of caspase 3 up-regulation and reduction of cell death was observed after 4 hours of hypothermia. Immunofluorescence analysis for cell localization demonstrated that protein light chain-3- and Beclin-1-positive cells included neurons and glial cells in the injured cortex after TBI and hypothermic treatment. By ultrastructural observation, autolysosomes in injured cortex were significantly increased at 6 and 24 hours after TBI and were further up-regulated after TBI hypothermic treatment. Conclusions These data suggest that hypothermic treatment could attenuate TBI-induced cell death in this fluid percussion TBI model, possibly through activation of autophagy pathway.

Mobile media applications are on the rise due to the explosive popularity of mobile devices. Advances in mobile media cloud (MMC) make it a promising solution to serve those huge multimedia applications. In MMC, virtualization is adopted to allocate resources elastically from a shared resource pool. Therefore, effective virtual machine (VM) consolidation is of paramount importance to maximize energy efficiency. In this paper, we consider a scenario that mobile media cloud performs video streaming and transcoding for viewers with different mobile devices. We formulate the VM consolidation problem as a mixed integer linear programming. Under this framework, the minimum energy consumption and the number of physical machines (PMs) in operation are derived. Based on these analytical results, for homogeneous media cloud, we develop an approximation algorithm for VM consolidation and placement which jointly considers CPU and bandwidth constraints. For heterogeneous media cloud, we derive an upper and a lower bound of the number of PMs and their energy consumption. Trace-driven simulations demonstrate that our proposed algorithm significantly reduces energy consumption and the number of PMs used.

The pathophysiology of delayed cerebral vasospasm (CVS) after subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is multifaceted and involves endothelial apoptosis and inflammation. Ethyl pyruvate (EP) could attenuate early brain injury following SAH via anti-inflammation and inhibition of the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signalling pathway. However, the role of EP in the delayed CVS has yet to be determined. In this study, we examined the effect of EP on endothelial apoptosis and inflammation and explore possible signalling pathways. We found that EP could significantly attenuate the delayed CVS. Possible mechanisms include a decrease in the endothelial cell apoptosis of the basilar artery and alleviation of endothelial inflammation. The JNK signalling pathway may play an important role in the neuroprotective effects of EP on delayed CVS. The results suggest that EP may be a possible therapy for delayed CVS, and the JNK signalling pathway should be targeted for therapeutic purposes in the future.

The emergence of social TV has transformed TV experiences, providing a unified media experience across different devices. In response to this trend, we have implemented a multi-screen social TV system, offering video teleportation as an attractive feature. The enabling technology is instantiating a cloud clone to support all media outlets of each user. As the user shifts his attention from one device to the other, the cloud clone might migrate to a better location to reduce its operational cost. This paper investigates this cloud clone migration problem, aiming to minimize the monetary cost on operating video teleportation. Specifically, we formulate it into a Markov Decision Problem, to balance the trade-off between the migration cost and the content transmission cost. Under this framework, four algorithms are proposed to solve this optimization problem. We first characterize an upper and a lower bound for the optimal cost, by considering a random fixed placement and an offline algorithm. We then present a semi-online and a more practical Q-learning approach to make online decisions. Their performances are evaluated based on both simulated and real user traces. The results show that the Q-learning method achieves up to 25% cost compared to random fixed placement in typical scenarios. The savings are affected by the delivery path length, the migration size, and the user behavior pattern. Moreover, our investigations reveal the optimal cloud clone location is either at the nearest or the furthest node to the user along the content delivery path for a single user scenario.

Objective The objective of this study was to retrospectively review the postoperative seizure outcome in patients with short duration of epilepsy associated with cavernous malformations and analyze the effect of surgical methods on seizure outcome in such population. Methods 36 patients with short duration of epilepsy (shorter than 12 months) associated with cavernous malformations in temporal or frontal lobe underwent microsurgical resection. The patients were retrospectively divided into two groups: Group A (21 patients) with complete removal of hemosiderin rim and Group B (15 patients) with partial removal of hemosiderin rim. Clinical follow-up was achieved with telephone correspondence or outpatient assessment. The seizure outcome was based on Engel’s classification. Results After a mean follow-up period of 18 months, 77.8% of the patients (28/36) were classified into Engel class I, including 19 patients (90.5%) in the complete removal of hemosiderin rim group (Group A) and 9 patients (60%) in the partial removal of hemosiderin rim group (Group B). Seizure outcome was significantly better in Group A. There was no mortality and all the postoperative neurological deficits were recovered at the time of follow-up. Conclusion The analysis of the seizure outcome demonstrate patients with short duration of epilepsy associated with cavernous malformations could benefit greatly from complete resection of hemosiderin rim and cavernous malformations.

The dramatic growth of user-generated contents (UGCs) transforms the digital media value chain, and stresses current content distribution network (CDN). In order to deliver UGCs in an efficient and economical fashion, we have proposed content-delivery-as-a-service (CoDaaS) by leveraging cloud computing technology. However, due to the exponential increase of Internet traffic (especially the UGCs), traditional hashing-based content routing and lookup scheme in CDNs suffers from high delay and consequent inefficient delivery. This paper introduces a global compressed counting BF (CCBF) into CoDaaS to address this issue. By equipping it with the global CCBF, our system is able to check early on for the existence of any specific content among all the peering surrogates, before any local checking on each cache node. Based on this global CCBF, we propose two content routing and lookup mechanisms (i.e., parallel and cut-through schemes) to reduce the delay for better user experience. The comparative performance of those approaches is verified via both mathematical modeling and experimental simulation. The results show that for light traffic load, the average response time can be saved by up to 65.2% compared with traditional methods. In addition, the impacts and overheads of different synchronization schemes are also quantified to provide valuable insight for further optimizations.

Objective We evaluated the role of microglia autophagy in microglia activation after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in rats. Methods TBI was induced by a fluid percussion TBI device. All rats were killed 24 hours after TBI. The ipsilateral hippocampus in all rats was analyzed with hematoxylin-eosin staining. Immunohistochemistry and Western blotting of ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule 1 was used to determine changes in microglia activation. Double staining of microtubule-associated protein light chain 3, Beclin-1, and ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule 1 was used to assess changes of microglia autophagy. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay of tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β was used to evaluate changes in inflammatory responses. Terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase–mediated deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate nick-end labeling staining was used to determine cell death in the ipsilateral hippocampus. Results At 24 hours after TBI, microglial cells became activated, and the autophagy inhibitor 3-methyladenine (3-MA) further promoted microglia activation. Protein light chain 3– and Beclin-1–positive microglial cells were increased after TBI, whereas 3-MA decreased the number of positive microglial cells, increasing the expression of tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β; terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase–mediated deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate nick-end labeling staining demonstrated that 3-MA could increase the number of terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase–mediated deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate nick-end labeling–positive cells (16.83 ± 0.83 vs. 11 ± 0.82, P Conclusions Our data demonstrated that TBI induced microglia activation and microglia autophagy. Inhibition of microglia autophagy with 3-MA increased microglia activation and neural apoptosis. These findings indicate that targeting microglia autophagy may be a therapeutic strategy for TBI.

When a person is performing repetitive daily activities (e.g. walking, cycling etc.) with equipped motion sensor such as accelerometer, its measured motion signals can go up or down and fluctuates in a periodical manner. In addition, recent researches indicate that the Received Signal Strength (RSS) through wireless channels between on-body sensors and the hub in a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) also shares a similar periodical pattern regards to the same body movement. Finding the connections of the two, can enable low-power tracking of body movement and infer corresponding channel changes to provide optimized MAC communications between sensor nodes and the hub. However, since nodes can be placed at different parts of the body experiencing different motion intensities and velocities, it is not straightforward to directly map the motion sensor measurements to the Channel RSS. In this paper, we proposed the notion of motion index which is an effective mechanism to achieve synchronization between the channel periodicity and the corresponding body motion. The proposed M-MAC protocol then reacts to such WBAN channel periodicity and gives high medium access priority to sensors with good channel condition hence increases communication reliability, while buffering data otherwise. We conducted experiments based on real-life on-body channel measurements, and our initial results yield promising results with 10% - 20% PDR increase and 3 dB transmitting power reduction compared to the conventional methods.

Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a part of an emerging IEEE 802.15.4e standard to enable deterministic low-power mesh networking. It promises to pave the way to the future Internet of (Important) things by offering high reliability and low latency for wireless industrial applications. Nonetheless, the standard only provides a framework but it does not mandate a specific scheduling mechanism. In this paper, we propose a centralized Adaptive MUlti-hop Scheduling method (AMUS) based on the latest TSCH MAC. AMUS first enables sequential multi-hop scheduling to provide low latency guarantee for time-critical applications. Secondly, the novel tentative cell allocation method allocates additional resources to vulnerable links such that possible MAC retransmissions can be accommodated within the same slotframe, hence significantly reducing the delay caused by interference or collisions. Last but not least, the battery power of the node can be further conserved by adopting the proposed End-of-Q notification mechanism. Preliminary simulation results have confirmed that AMUS outperforms other popular scheduling algorithms in the literature.

Smoke inhalation injury is the leading cause of acute respiratory failure in critical burn victims. Advances in the treatment of smoke inhalation injury have been limited in the past years. To further explore the pathogenesis, stable and practical animal models are necessary.To develop a rat model of smoke inhalation injury.The smoke composition including the particulate matters, irritant gases, chemical carcinogens was measured. The blood gas values, pro-inflammatory and protein concentration in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and lung wet to dry weight ratio were assayed. Pathological evaluations of pulmonary were performed at 24 h, 96 h, 7 days and 28 days post-injury. Masson-Goldner trichrome staining was performed on day 7 and 28 post-injury, along with the measurement of hydroxyproline and collagen I and III.In our present animal model, smoke inhalation caused a significant hypoxemia and CO poisoning. A surge of pro-inflammatory response and microvascular hyperpermeability with neutrophils accumulations were also found in our animal model. At 24 h post-smoke inhalation, the hematoxylin and eosin results exhibited that there were inflammatory exudates and diffuse hemorrhage in the lung tissue with significant edema. With the time going, the lung injuries appeared at alveolar collapse and alveolar septum thickening, which indicated that smoke inhalation further induced damage to lung parenchyma. Specially, the markedly collagen deposition appeared at 28 days post-injury indicated that pulmonary fibrosis happened.In conclusion, this rat smoke inhalation injury model induced by our novel self-made smoke generator could be used for acute and chronic lung injury experiments.

Emerging applications in Multihop Wireless Networks (MHWNs) require considerable processing power which often may be beyond the capability of individual nodes. Parallel processing provides a promising solution, which partitions a program into multiple small tasks and executes each task concurrently on independent nodes. However, multihop wireless communication is inevitable in such networks and it could have an adverse effect on distributed processing. In this paper, an adaptive intelligent task mapping together with a scheduling scheme based on a genetic algorithm is proposed to provide real-time guarantees. This solution enables efficient parallel processing in a way that only possible node collaborations with cost-effective communications are considered. Furthermore, in order to alleviate the power scarcity of MHWN, a hybrid fitness function is derived and embedded in the algorithm to extend the overall network lifetime via workload balancing among the collaborative nodes, while still ensuring the arbitrary application deadlines. Simulation results show significant performance improvement in various testing environments over existing mechanisms.

OBJECTIVE To explore the correlation between p73 G4C14-to-A4T14 polymorphism and lung cancer risk. METHODS The meta analysis was conducted from October 2017 to March 2018, and comprised studies published till March 27, 2018, that addressed the relationship between the p73 G4C14-to-A4T14 polymorphism and risk of lung cancer, and were available on databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. Pooled odds ratio with corresponding 95% confidence interval and subgroup analysis between ethnicities were carried out to assess the association between the two parameters using four different models. Stata 12 was used for data analysis. RESULTS For overall population, there was no significant risk of lung cancer for the polymorphism under allele and dominant genetic models. However, reduced risks were found under homozygous (AT/AT vs GC/GC; p=0.02) and recessive (AT/AT vs GC/AT + GC/GC; p=0.02) comparison models. Subgroup analysis between ethnicities demonstrated reduced risk of lung cancer for the polymorphism under the four genetic comparison models for Asian population, but increased risk for the Caucasian group. CONCLUSIONS AT/AT variant carriers possessed reduced susceptibility of lung cancer in the general population. Ethnic differences for the p73 gene polymorphism played an important role in lung cancer susceptibility.

Spontaneous resolution of chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) is rare, especially for the nontraumatic cases. Here, we present 1 case of a 70-year-old female patient with spontaneous resolution of CSDH. She was chronically anticoagulated after percutaneous coronary intervention. Moreover, she denied previous mild head trauma and bleeding episodes. For personal reasons, she declined surgery. Treatment just included mannitol, which was used to alleviate the symptoms. Intermittent computed tomography showed gradually resolution of CSDH. Spontaneous resolution of nontraumatic CSDH is rare, with different mechanisms and computed tomography characteristics compared with that of traumatic CSDH. Dimerized plasmin fragment D in venous blood may be more sensitive in the judgment of types of CSDH.

Intracranial arachnoid cysts are rare cystic-appearing intracranial masses. In rarer cases, the arachnoid cysts originate from brain parenchyma, which is defined as intracerebral arachnoid cyst. Here, we present a patient younger than 2 years with massive intracranial arachnoid cysts (one of which was intracerebral arachnoid cyst), whose clinical symptoms included megacephaly and limb weakness. Ommaya reservoir implantation and repeated aspiration of the intracerebral cyst fluid were performed. The symptoms gradually improved, and the intracerebral arachnoid cyst gradually disappeared during 13 months of follow-up. The case highlights the potential of Ommaya reservoir implantation in the treatment of intracerebral arachnoid cyst, especially for young patients. We also reviewed the published literatures concerning the rare condition, including the mechanisms for its pathogenesis and enlargement.

Rupture of traumatic pseudoaneurysms of the middle meningeal artery (MMA) usually causes extradural hematoma. In rare cases, it may be a possible cause of intraparenchymal hematoma. We present 2 cases of intraparenchymal hematoma caused by rupture of traumatic pseudoaneurysms of MMA. Both patients had definite medical history of head trauma. Imaging examinations indicated temporal hematoma or frontal hematoma caused by rupture of pseudoaneurysm of MMA. After surgical management, both the patients had a favorable prognosis. The formation of the traumatic pseudoaneurysms, imaging findings, and the management were discussed, and we conclude that in the management of traumatic intraparenchymal hematoma, possibility of traumatic pseudoaneurysms must be considered. Surgery may be the prior choice for the treatment of traumatic pseudoaneurysms.

Objective The role of autophagy in moderate hypothermia in posttraumatic brain injury (post-TBI) remains elusive. In this study, we evaluated the protective role of autophagy in post-TBI moderate hypothermia. Methods Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 3 groups ( n = 36/group): TBI with hypothermia group (sham), TBI with hypothermia and a single intracerebroventricular injection of saline (saline, 5 μL), and TBI with hypothermia and a single intracerebroventricular injection of 3-methyladenine (600 nmol, diluted in 0.9% saline to a final volume of 5 μL). All rats, except those in the behavioral tests, were killed at 24 hours after fluid percussion TBI. Immunohistochemistry staining, western blot, and transmission electron microscopy were performed to assess changes in apoptosis and autophagy after injection of 3-methyladenine. Motor function (beam-walk test) and spatial learning/memory (Morris water maze) were assessed on postoperative days 1–5 and 11–15, respectively. Results Our results showed downregulation of the expression level of microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 and Beclin-1, aggravation of behavioral outcome, and increase of apoptosis. Conclusion Our results suggest that the autophagy pathway is involved in the neuroprotective effect of post-TBI hypothermia and negative modulation of apoptosis may be 1 possible mechanism.

Given the exploding growth of video traffic, efficient video distribution is essential to the future Internet. Therefore, how to optimize its networking cost is a critical research problem. In this paper, we introduce Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in conjunction with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to minimize the cost via joint orchestration of caching, transcoding and routing functions. Specifically, we propose a two-step iterative approach. First, in NFV-based resource allocation phase, we maximize total cache hits by optimally allocating storage and computing resources for a giving routing policy. Second, in SDN-based routing phase, we minimize the networking cost by optimally configuring the routing matrix for a given resource placement. Finally, we analytically prove their iterative repeat converges to the joint optimum. Through extensive simulations, we verify its convergence, and performance gains compared with the optimal solution of either phase alone. By examining numerical results, we obtain some operational guidelines. From the resource allocation aspect, we should allocate more resources to the node with heavier request rate. From the routing aspect, for each node-server pair, the node should split the traffic across multiple paths with identical shortest hops if there are many, or use the shortest path alone if there is only one.

With the advent of Machine to Machine (M2M) communication, we are witnessing an increased interest towards technologies that will enable efficient and reliable operation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Such networks are expected to include a large number of sensor devices which will generate large body of M2M traffic. To reduce the impact of this M2M traffic, efficient storage and retrieval methods should be employed in a distributed manner for the successful deployment of this technology. In this paper, a distributed storage solution is presented with the aim of reducing the impact of M2M traffic on data centres and the network backbone. The reliable and efficient storage of the sensor data is established by taking advantage of codes with Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) properties. The solution is implanted in Contiki OS using RPL protocol \cite{draft-ietf-rpl} and its performance is evaluated through simulations. Furthermore, to realise such a system, a centralised clique finding algorithm is demonstrated and benchmarked against a solution that uses a brute force approach.

Intracranial chondromas are rare benign tumors, which usually originate from skull base synchondrosis. In rarer cases, intracranial chondromas originate from the cerebral parenchyma without meningeal attachment, which is defined as intracerebral chondroma. In this paper, an 18-year-old male patient with intracerebral chondroma is presented. There are only 5 cases of intracerebral chondromas without meningeal attachment published in the literature. According to the clinical data, the intracerebral chondromas are hard hyaline cartilage, irregular lobulated grayish-white mass macroscopically and consist of mature hyaline chondrocyte microscopically. Total removal is the best treatment method for intracerebral chondroma.

Malignant transformation of an epidermoid cyst is rare. The current report presents a case of a 55-year-old female patient with squamous cell carcinoma arising from a benign epidermoid cyst in the left temporal region and prepontine area. She had undergone subtotal resection of an epidermoid cyst 7 months previously. Preoperative imaging findings included a focal enhancing area adjacent to the lesion. Postoperative computed tomography demonstrated an increase in the size of the enhancing area. The patient underwent removal of the lesion and postoperative histological examination revealed a squamous cell carcinoma possibly arising from the epidermoid cyst. Accurate diagnosis of malignant transformation prior to operation is difficult; however, the possibility of an intracranial epidermoid cyst must be considered if a focally enhancing area is visible. Postoperative histological examinations may be used to determine a definite diagnosis, and accurate diagnosis is important for planning a rational therapeutic strategy.

Selfishness and altruism are two distinctive node behaviors in wireless networks. Users of network nodes, e.g. mobile phones, would like their individual devices to be operational for as long as possible. On the other hand, users and operators of wireless networks may wish for an overall long network lifetime via collaborative node operations. In contrast to the most of the work done till now, in this paper, we consider a node-centric scenario, where a node can balance its energy consumption according to its needs to prolong the node lifetime. More specifically, the energy balancing problem is defined as an inventory control problem, where the node may choose to be selfish or unselfish with various degrees having in mind a range of parameters, such as its battery state and the existence and rate of energy harvesting. Each node can use the proposed solution to allocate the available energy between internal (node itself) and external (collaborative) tasks subject to dependencies among application and communication layers and the node operating system. We also discuss a number of other possible extensions of the method to include interactions among different nodes in the network. To illustrate one such an extension, a case study with a large number of nodes among two separate but co-located wireless mesh networks is presented. By applying the inventory balancing algorithm, considerable increase in the network lifetime is shown for both networks.

Wireless mesh networks are widely considered for interconnecting large number of smart metering devices in a locality. For efficient link scheduling, Spatial Time Division Multiple Access (STDMA) is considered over the conservative CSMA/CA scheme where the spectral efficiency improvement primarily comes from spatial reuse and concurrent transmissions. The link scheduling algorithm finely balances the spatial reuse and interference among concurrent transmissions. Nevertheless, the link quality may still get affected due to various sources of noises and changes in the interference environment. As a result, link breakage events are very likely to happen when the SINR level is below the communication threshold. This paper presents an adaptive rescheduling algorithm that reschedules some of the concurrent transmissions in order to reduce the aggregate interference in the precinct of the affected link and thereby improving the chances of link revival. The proposed STDMA link rescheduling algorithm is neck-node centric that is aiming to exploit sector localisation of a large mesh network. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated in terms of schedule length and link revival success rate. The performance results illustrate that with minimal tradeoff in schedule length, a higher success rate of link revival can be achieved. It also shows that the algorithm is potentially scalable for larger number of nodes in the network.

The emergence of portable devices and online social networks (OSNs) has changed the traditional video consumption paradigm by simultaneously providing multi-screen video watching, social networking engagement, etc. One challenge is to design a unified solution to support ever-growing features while guarantee system performance. In this demo, we design and implement a multi-screen technology to provide multi-screen interactions over wide area network (WAN). Furthermore, we incorporate face-detection technology into our system to identify users' bio-features and employ a machine learning based traffic scheduling mechanism to improve the system performance.

Moyamoya disease patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage and cerebral infarction are rare, especially when the subarachnoid hemorrhage is nonaneurysmal. Here, we present one 48-year-old male patient with moyamoya disease identified with digital subtraction angiography. His initial symptoms are associated with increased intracranial pressure. Subsequent computed tomography demonstrated subarachnoid hemorrhage and cerebral infarction. Digital subtraction angiography showed no obvious aneurysms. We assume that subarachnoid hemorrhage is associated with the rupture of the moyamoya vessels and transdural anastomotic vessels. The cerebral infarction can be also explained by hemodynamic mechanisms. We should pay more attention to the recurrent hemorrhagic stroke.

Information centric network (ICN) has emerged as a promising architecture to efficiently distribute content over the future Internet. However, ICN proposals may still not be cost efficient enough for adaptive video streaming. The problem is, each ICN node caches duplicated copies of the same content for each bitrate version in its limited storage space. Thus the cache hit ratio drops, and the bandwidth cost of serving the cache missed requests increases. This paper proposes PAINT (Partial In-Network Transcoding) scheme to reduce the operational cost of delivering adaptive video streaming over ICN. Specifically, we consider both the in-network caching and transcoding services at each ICN node, where the storage and transcoding resources can be dynamically scheduled. Then we formulate an optimization problem to balance the trade-off between the transcoding and bandwidth costs. Next we analytically derive the optimal strategy, and quantify cost savings compared with existing schemes. Finally, we verify our solution by intensive numerical evaluations. The results indicate PAINT can achieve significant cost savings (e.g., up to 50% in typical scenarios). Besides, we find the optimal strategy and the cost savings can be affected by the cache capacity, the unit price ratio, the hop distance to origin server, and the Zipf parameter of users' request patterns.

Recently, multi-screen cloud social TV is invented to transform TV into social experience. People watching the same content on social TV may come from different locations, while freely interact with each other through text, image, audio and video. This crucial virtual living-room experience adds social aspects into existing performance metrics. In this paper, we parse social TV user experience into three elements (i.e., inter-user delay, video quality of experience (QoE), and resource efficiency), and provide a joint analytical framework to enhance user experience. Specifically, we propose a cloud-based optimal playback rate allocation scheme to maximize the overall QoE while upper bounding inter-user delay. Experiment results show that our algorithm achieves near-optimal tradeoff between inter-user delay and video quality, and demonstrates resilient performance even under very fast wireless channel fading., submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 2014

In low-power and lossy wireless networks, message delivery could be jeopardized by factors such as channel conditions, noise, interference etc. This can lead to communication retransmissions, resulting in significant energy depletion and consequently consumes limited on-node energy resources. This paper elaborates on a two-pronged approach to improve energy efficiency and reliability of communications: a) the application of content-centric data aggregation (pre-processing of correlated information) at each node to reduce traffic volume, and b) the use of link quality information to estimate local network lifetime while routing traffic. A novel objective function is proposed which ties the two together and findings from a performance evaluation are presented. It is shown that the proposed mechanism is able to achieve significant energy savings and prolongs the network lifetime in energy constrained multi-hop networks with lossy wireless links.

Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) is a challenging problem for the next generation wireless systems which limits the system performance, especially for users located at the edge of a cell. In this paper, in order to achieve good user fairness, each user is given a guaranteed minimum number of resource blocks while the cell edge users were given a higher allocation priority. The resource allocation is coordinated in a way that the ICI is controlled within its acceptance limit. In addition, an adaptive power control scheme is utilized to further adjust the transmission power levels of the cell centre users. Finally, in order to achieve a balanced solution considering both user fairness and total cell throughput, a suitable power level is selected by running a hybrid objective function. Simulations show that the proposed RRM method combined with the adaptive power allocation scheme can provide considerable performance improvement compared with the existing methods.

Residual hemifacial spasm (HFS) after microvascular decompression (MVD) is common, and the factors associated with residual HFS are still controversial. In the present study, we analyzed the outcome of 212 patients with hemifacial spasm after a single microvascular decompression and evaluated the prognostic factors involved in residual hemifacial spasm. Based on our study, possible prognostic factors included indentation of the root exit zone (REZ), preoperative illness duration, and preoperative psychological state. We suggest that MVD should be performed as early as possible for it may decrease the rate of residual HFS. Preoperative assessment of psychological state in HFS patients is a timely intervention that should be implemented to minimize the residual HFS.