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Ultra-reliable and Low-latency Communication (URLLC) has the potential to support data traffic transmission in factory automation, telesurgery, and automatic driving, where the differential quality of service (QoS) requirements in different types of traffic should be considered. In this letter, a differential QoS oriented URLLC policy is investigated for achieving high energy-efficiency under the given delay tolerance. To characterize the system state, a queueing model under First-In-First-Out (FIFO) service discipline is implemented. Based on this model, a cross-layer approach is developed to analyze the average transmission power and delay by formulating the system state into a Markov chain. For solving the problem more efficiently, the states of similar behavior in the Markov chain are aggregated, based on which the approximate solution can be obtained with low complexity. Numerical results verified the theoretical analysis and good performance of the proposed approach.

Gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) has a lateral device structure with wafer-level packaging, which is advantageous in minimizing parasitic parameters and overall device size. This type of packaging also has better thermal performance than conventional packaging due to low junction-to-bottom thermal resistances. It indicates copper layers in printed circuit boards can effectively serve as heat dissipation channels for the switching devices. When these copper traces and pours in the vicinity of the switching devices are carefully designed and shaped, they can also be utilized as an integrated output filter. In this article, a synchronous buck converter with a single-turn air-core integrated planar inductor is proposed to achieve both zero-voltage switching and high thermal performance of the GaN HEMTs. A new planar inductor design flowchart is introduced, and analytically estimated inductance and resistance are verified with simulation and experiment. Three different inductors are designed and fabricated to prove the improved thermal performance of the proposed converters.

Developing a big data analytics framework for generating a Long-term Gap-free High-resolution Air Pollutants concentration dataset (abbreviated as LGHAP) is of great significance for environmental management and earth system science analysis. By synergistically integrating multimodal aerosol data acquired from diverse sources via a tensor flow based data fusion method, a gap-free aerosol optical depth (AOD) dataset with daily 1-km resolution covering the period of 2000–2020 in China was generated. Specifically, data gaps in daily AOD imageries from MODIS aboard Terra were reconstructed based on a set of AOD data tensors acquired from satellites, numerical analysis, and in situ air quality data via integrative efforts of spatial pattern recognition for high dimensional gridded image analysis and knowledge transfer in statistical data mining. To our knowledge, this is the first long-term gap-free high resolution AOD dataset in China, from which spatially contiguous PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations were estimated using an ensemble learning approach. Ground validation results indicate that the LGHAP AOD data are in a good agreement with in situ AOD observations from AERONET, with R of 0.91 and RMSE equaling to 0.21. Meanwhile, PM2.5 and PM10 estimations also agreed well with ground measurements, with R of 0.95 and 0.94 and RMSE of 12.03 and 19.56 μg m−3, respectively. Overall, the LGHAP provides a suite of long-term gap free gridded maps with high-resolution to better examine aerosol changes in China over the past two decades, from which three distinct variation periods of haze pollution were revealed in China. Additionally, the proportion of population exposed to unhealthy PM2.5 was increased from 50.60 % in 2000 to 63.81 % in 2014 across China, which was then drastically reduced to 34.03 % in 2020. Overall, the generated LGHAP aerosol dataset has a great potential to trigger multidisciplinary applications in earth observations, climate change, public health, ecosystem assessment, and environmental management. The daily resolution AOD, PM2.5, and PM10 datasets can be publicly accessed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5652257 (Bai et al., 2021a), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5652265 (Bai et al., 2021b), and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5652263 (Bai et al., 2021c), respectively. Meanwhile, monthly and annual mean datasets can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5655797 (Bai et al., 2021d) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5655807 (Bai et al., 2021e), respectively. Python, Matlab, R, and IDL codes were also provided to help users read and visualize these data.

Objectives. This study aimed to compare performances of China reference and different national references on high blood pressure (HBP). Methods. A cross-sectional study including 695,302 children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years in Suzhou, China, was conducted to determine the prevalence of HBP based on U.S., international, Europe, and China references in 2016. Results. Different percentiles of height and blood pressure were found among four references. Referring to U.S. reference, the prevalence of HBP was the highest with 26.0%, followed by International reference with 20.0%, Europe reference with 19.5%, and China reference with 19.2%. McNemar tests indicated statistically significant differences between HBP prevalence comparing China reference with the other 3 references ( P < 0.001 ). The area under the curve was 0.947, 0.851, and 0.949 for U.S., international, and Europe reference, respectively. U.S. reference showed the highest sensitivity (98.2%), but the lowest specificity (91.2%), and Europe reference showed the highest kappa value (0.893). Conclusions. The prevalence of HBP varied among these four references, and the appropriate choice of reference would be important to recognize high-risk children and judge the trends of HBP prevalence in the targeted population.

Background To ascertain if concurrent chemotherapy (CCT) benefits people with stage II nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treated with two‐dimensional radiotherapy (2DRT) or intensity‐modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Methods A total of 4157 patients diagnosed with stage II NPC were evaluated. Patients received radiotherapy (RT) with/without CCT. Patients were divided into 2DRT and IMRT subgroups. After propensity score matching, the role of CCT was explored in these two subgroups. Overall survival (OS) was the primary endpoint and progression‐free survival (PFS), locoregional relapse‐free survival (LRFS) and distant metastasis‐free survival (DMFS) were secondary endpoints. Results In the 2DRT subgroup, CCT addition to RT benefited cases with T1N1/T2N1 in OS, PFS and LRFS (P, In this study, we explored if concurrent chemotherapy (CCT) benefits people with stage II nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treated with two‐dimensional radiotherapy (2DRT) or intensity‐modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).

Purpose We combined conventional clinical and pathological characteristics and pathological architectural grading scores to develop a prognostic model to identify a specific group of patients with stage I lung adenocarcinomas with poor survival following surgery. Methods This retrospective study included 198 patients with stage I lung adenocarcinomas recruited from 2004 to 2013. Multivariate analyses were used to confirm independent risk factors, which were checked for internal validity using the bootstrapping method. The prognostic scores, derived from β-coefficients using the Cox regression model, classified patients into high- and low-risk groups. The predictive performance and discriminative ability of the model were assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), concordance index (C-index) and Kaplan–Meier survival analyses. Results Three risk factors were identified: T2 (rounding of β-coefficients = 81), necrosis (rounding of β-coefficients = 67), and pathological architectural score of 5–6 (rounding of β-coefficients = 58). The final prognostic score was the sum of points. The derived prognostic scores stratified patients into low- (score ≤ 103) and high- (score > 103) risk groups, with significant differences in 5-year overall survival (high vs. low risk: 49.3% vs. 88.0%, respectively; hazard ratio: 4.55; p Conclusion An integrated prognostic model was developed to discriminate resected stage I adenocarcinoma patients into low- and high-risk groups, which will help clinicians select individual treatment strategies.

Mobile cloud computing systems, or simply mobile clouds, have attracted tremendous attention because they allow mobile devices with limited computational resources to offload complex computations. However, due to the channel uncertainty and the complexity of a computation task, mobile computation offloading may suffer from poor outage performance that the offloaded task cannot be completed within the desired delay constraint. Thus, how to efficiently identify and overcome the outage bottleneck , which could be used to optimize resource allocation schemes and improve the system performance effectively is an open problem. In this paper, we shall develop a unified framework that minimizes the overall outage probability in various mobile computation offloading scenarios. More specifically, the outage bottleneck is defined and identified by adopting asymptotic analysis, without any need of the accurate outage probabilities in both transmissions and computations. To overcome the outage bottleneck , resource pairing, matching, and allocation policies are investigated. Both theoretical analysis and numerical results show that the outage bottleneck relies on not only the availability of spectrum and computation resources but also the probability distributions of computation complexities of the computation tasks.

Background. Cinobufacini capsule, an anticancer traditional Chinese patent medicine, has been widely used as adjunctive treatment to platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. Purpose. To evaluate the efficacy and safety of cinobufacini capsule combined with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy for advanced NSCLC. Study Design. A systematic review and meta-analysis of eight outcome measures selected for this study were performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Methods. A comprehensive literature search was conducted in 7 electronic databases to identify all the relevant randomised controlled trials. Cochrane handbook 5.1.0 was applied to evaluate the quality of included trials, and the RevMan 5.3 and Stata 15.1 software were used to combine the trials for data analysis and assess the publication bias. Results. From the 19 studies reviewed, a total of 1,564 patients were included. Compared with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy alone, cinobufacini capsule combined with chemotherapy showed significant effects in improving ORR (RR = 1.49, 95% CI (1.33, 1.66)), 1-year survival rate (RR = 1.44, 95% CI (1.28, 1.63)), and 2-year survival rate (RR = 1.78, 95% CI (1.42, 2.22)), raising the percentages of CD3+ cells (SMD = 1.25, 95% CI (1.05, 1.45)), CD4+ cells (SMD = 1.52, 95% CI (1.33, 1.71)), and ratio of CD4+/CD8+ (SMD = 1.36, 95% CI (1.17, 1.54)), and reducing chemotherapy toxicity including leukopenia (RR = 0.61, 95% CI (0.51, 0.72)), thrombocytopenia (RR = 0.52, 95% CI (0.41, 0.67)), and vomiting (RR = 0.79, 95% CI (0.70, 0.88)). Conclusion. Cinobufacini capsule may increase the therapeutic effectiveness, improve cellular immune function, and reduce the toxicity of first-line platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with NSCLC. These results require confirmation by further rigorously designed randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

Backgroud: Danhong injection has been proven to be reliable and practical in the clinical treatment of Pulmonary Fibrosis (PF), whereas the mechanism of action is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanism of action of Danhong injection in the treatment of PF through network pharmacology and experimental validation. Methods: In this paper, multiple databases were utilized to capture the targets of Danhong injection and PF disease-related targets. The interaction network such as active ingredient-target was constructed and protein interaction analysis was performed via Cytoscape software. Bioprocess and signaling pathway analysis of the targets was carried out through DIVID database. Based on the analytical results, pharmacodynamic validation and mechanistic investigation were conducted in mice. Results: In this study, 111 compounds and common targets for diseases were filtered, with key targets involving MDM2, IL-2, CCL5, AKT1, MMP9, CASP3, MMP2, etc. The KEGG and GO enrichment analysis identified 16 significantly different signaling pathways, encompassing bioprocesses such as cell proliferation, apoptosis, programmed death and immune response. Animal experiments demonstrated that Danhong injection could reduce bleomycin-induced PF in mice, and could decrease the mRNA of AKT1 and the protein expression of p-Pi3k and p-Akt, thereby reducing apoptosis in mouse lung tissues. Conclusions: This study initially revealed that Danhong injection may inhibit apoptosis through the Pi3k/Akt signaling pathway and thus reduce PF in mice.

This study combs through relevant literature, adopts a combination of typical sampling and random sampling, collects three big data technology-driven interactive marketing e-commerce companies in a specific period of Sina Weibo sample data for research, obtains historical information and data, and constructs a model. Through relevant analysis to eliminate invalid variables, we creatively selected three variables of Internet hot words, activities, and microtopics as independent variables and used marketing effects as dependent variables to carry out empirical analysis and study the marketing innovation of three representative companies based on big data technology. We discussed the use of self-media in interactive marketing e-commerce and the situation of marketing innovation based on self-media, focusing on the interactive relationship between marketing innovation and Internet word-of-mouth (brand image). Through research, we have derived the three-force model, which is the biggest result of this research, and provided a reference model for interactive marketing e-commerce companies to carry out follow-up marketing innovation based on the media. Limited to the level of research and ability, there are some deficiencies in the research, such as barrage marketing, big data marketing, and emotional computing, that have not been analyzed in depth. This article fully considers the dependence of small and medium e-commerce companies on e-commerce platforms in the era of big data and conducted detailed market research on their precision marketing strategies in the era of big data. This will be a new field that does not come from media marketing. This article intends to summarize a series of experiences and laws from special to general, from individuality to generality, so as to give full play to the role of personalized marketing in increasing website traffic and order conversion, in order to personalize the use of data by other e-commerce companies with marketing provides some valuable experiences and methods for reference.

Radiative cooling is a passive technology that lowers surface temperatures, which has shown great potential in temperate regions. However, cooling performance characterised by high solar irradiance and humidity under tropical climate still lacks exploration. Herein, we propose a highly reflective polymeric coating with BaSO4 particles dispersed in P(VdF-HFP) matrix for radiative cooling. Through the strong Mie scattering of sunlight and intrinsic bond vibration, the average substrate-independent solar reflectance and infrared emittance within the 8 to 13 μm atmospheric window could reach 97% and 94.2%, respectively. Under direct exposure to the sky, surfaces could maintain close to ambient temperatures even when the solar intensity was as high as 1000 W/m 2 , while separately achieving 5.7 °C below ambient during night-time with an effective cooling power of 54.4 W/m2. With a scalable fabrication-process, our cost-effective single-layer coating can be easily applied to diverse substrates, which is suitable for real-world applications in the tropics.

Objective:Many tissues contained resident mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) that facilitated tissue hemostasis and repair. However, there is no typical marker to identify the resident cardiac MSCs. We aimed to determine if CD51 could be an optimal marker of cardiac MSCs and assess their therapeutic potential for mice with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).Methods:Cardiac-derived CD51+CD31–CD45–Ter119–cells (named CD51+cMSCs) were isolated from C57BL/6 mice(7-day-old) by flow cytometry. The CD51+cMSCs were characterized by proliferation capacity, multi-differentiation potential, and expression of typical MSC-related markers. Adult C57BL/6 mice (12-week-old) were utilized for an AMI model via permanently ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery. The therapeutic efficacy of CD51+cMSCs was estimated by echocardiography and pathological staining. To determine the underlying mechanism, lentiviruses were utilized to knock down gene (stem cell factor [SCF]) expression of CD51+cMSCs.Results:In this study, CD51 was expressed in the entire layers of the cardiac wall in mice, including endocardium, epicardium, and myocardium, and its expression was decreased with age. Importantly, the CD51+cMSCs possessed potent self-renewal potential and multi-lineage differentiation capacityin vitroand also expressed typical MSC-related surface proteins. Furthermore, CD51+cMSC transplantation significantly improved cardiac function and attenuated cardiac fibrosis through pro-angiogenesis activity after myocardial infarction in mice. Moreover, SCF secreted by CD51+cMSCs played an important role in angiogenesis bothin vivoandin vitro.Conclusions:Collectively, CD51 is a novel marker of cardiac resident MSCs, and CD51+cMSC therapy enhances cardiac repair at least partly through SCF-mediated angiogenesis.

The authors show the onset of an asymmetrically coupled cavity-waveguide system to enable pseudospin modulation in graphene through the mechanism of chaos-assisted tunneling.

Background.The efficacy and safety of combined treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) using Shenyi capsules and platinum-based chemotherapy were comprehensively evaluated. Methods. A computer-based search was used to identify reports on clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on this combined treatment for NSCLC from the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), VIP, China Biomedical (CBM), and Wanfang Data electronic databases. The databases were searched from their start to February 2020. The quality of the included studies was evaluated and then crosschecked by two independent evaluators. A meta-analysis was conducted using RevMan5.3. Results. A total of 27 RCTs involving 2,663 patients were included in the meta-analysis, including 1,380 and 1,283 patients in the treatment and control groups, respectively. The results of the meta-analysis showed that, compared to platinum-based chemotherapy alone, the 1-year survival rate (relative risk (RR) = 1.27, 95% confidence interval (CI) [1.10, 1.47], P < 0.01 ), 2-year survival rate (RR = 1.35, 95% CI [1.10, 1.65], P < 0.01 ), objective tumour remission rate (RR = 1.52, 95% CI [1.35, 1.71], P < 0.01 ), and body CD4+/CD8+ ratio (standardized mean difference (SMD) = 0.12, 95% CI [0.07, 0.17], P < 0.01 ) were increased for the combined treatment of NSCLC using Shenyi capsules and platinum-based chemotherapy; moreover, quality of life was also improved (RR = 2.09, 95%CI [1.75, 2.50], P < 0.01 ) and it reduced leukocyte toxicity (RR = 0.49, 95%CI [0.39, 0.63], P < 0.01 ), haemoglobin toxicity (RR = 0.48, 95% CI [0.28, 0.81], P < 0.01 ), platelet toxicity (RR = 0.44, 95% CI [0.28, 0.70], P < 0.01 ), vomiting reaction (RR = 0.60, 95% CI [0.45, 0.78], P < 0.01 ), and serum vascular endothelial growth factor level (SMD = −63.67, 95% CI [−67.59, −59.75], P < 0.01 ). Conclusions. The treatment of NSCLC using Shenyi capsules together with routine platinum-based chemotherapy could enhance short- and long-term efficacy, improve patient quality of life, alleviate toxicity and side-effects of platinum-based chemotherapeutic drugs, boost body immune function, and inhibit tumour neovascularisation. These findings require further validation in large-sample, high-quality RCTs.

In a vehicular network environment, vehicles can download data through opportunistically-encountered Roadside Units (RSUs) with a lower cost, compared to that from Base Stations (BSs). However, the delay experienced by the vehicles might be undesirably prolonged if they only download data through RSUs. In this paper, we aim to minimize the average delay under the constraint of average cost by scheduling the download rates from RSUs and BSs. One challenge lying in the design of the downloading policy is the uncertainty of the download condition, i.e., whether at least an RSU is available or BS only, in the future slots. To overcome this challenge, we notice that vehicles from opposite directions can share their known download conditions to reduce this uncertainty. To make the most of this information, a Markov decision process (MDP) is used to model the system operations, based on which, average delay and cost can be analyzed to formulate the optimization problem. By solving this problem, the delay-minimal downloading policy can be obtained to achieve the optimal delay-cost tradeoff in the considered vehicular network. Finally, performance improvement with the help of information sharing among vehicles is validated by extensive simulations.

Wireless power transfer (WPT) is an effective approach to enhance sustainability of mobile devices. In this context, we consider a system composed of a hybrid access point (HAP) that powers a wireless device (WD), provisioned with a finite energy storage and data butter. The WD uses the harvested energy to perform data transmission. We assume that both HAP and WD can perform power adaptation to save energy. Unlike most existing works, we focus on delay minimization in transmitting an arbitrary data arrival packets over wireless fading channels, which is extremely important for time-sensitive applications. Previous works mainly focused on slot-oriented optimization, where the harvested energy is consumed in the same slot, without considering the possibility of storing energy for future use. In contrast, we consider a long-term average delay minimization under average power consumption constraint at the HAP. This requires to consider the data arrival process, data and energy queue evolution, and the channel state statistics, thus, greatly increasing the optimization complexity. Our goal is to determine the optimal delay-power tradeoff and its corresponding scheduling strategy to decide the operations, e.g., data transmission by the WD and power transfer by the HAP, for arbitrary i.i.d arrival process and adaptive transmissions. Through two-dimensional Markov chain modeling and linear programming, we provide the optimal scheduling strategy. We corroborate the theoretical analysis by simulation results.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a particular app on a smartphone due to the increasing number of apps installed. Consequently, it is important to be able to quickly and accurately predict the next app to be used. Two problems arise in predicting next-app usage from the app usage history. One is that some algorithms do not consider the increasing amount of training data available over time, which causes the prediction accuracy to decrease over time. The other is that although some algorithms do consider the aggregation of training data over time, they rebuild their models using all historical data once the amount of new data has reached a certain limit, thus greatly increasing the remodeling time. To reduce the remodeling time, we utilize an modified incremental k-nearest neighbours (IkNN) algorithm to implement a recommender system called Predictor. When the IkNN is used for predicting next-app usage, a new problem is found. When modeling the training data, the classification accuracy decreases as the number of app features increases. After studying the relationships among the contextual features of apps, we design a cluster effective value (CEV), which can compensate for the error induced by multidimensional features, to improve the classification accuracy. It is shown that the IkNN algorithm with the CEV achieves a higher and more stable prediction accuracy compared with that of the algorithm without the CEV. Furthermore, we proposed a the Cold Start strategy: an efficient dynamic collaborative filtering fusion algorithm that provides app Cold Start prediction. Large-scale experiments show that Predictor offers a reduced remodeling time and an improved prediction accuracy.

Cough variant asthma (CVA) is a unique type of asthma characterized by cough as the only or primary clinical presentation. Inhaled glucocorticoid is the main treatment in clinical practice currently, but its efficacy remains relatively unsatisfactory. Traditional Chinese medicine has certain advantages in the treatment of CVA, and at present, the most commonly used traditional Chinese medicine is Suhuang Zhike Capsule (SZC). The aim of this study was to systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of SZC in the treatment of CVA using a meta-analysis. A comprehensive search of papers published in the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature database (CBM), Wanfang Database, and VIP Information (VIP) from January 2018 to June 2019 was conducted. Review Manager 5.3 was used to carry out a meta-analysis of 10 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In a total of 10 randomized controlled trials, 896 CVA patients were included. The results showed the following: (1) compared with conventional Western medicine, SZC can effectively increase the efficacy rate of CVA (RR 1.25, 95% CI, 1.16–1.35, P < 0.00001 ) and (2) compared with other traditional Chinese medicines, SZC can effectively increase the efficacy rate of CVA (RR 1.44, 95% CI, 1.01–2.05, P = 0.05 ), In conclusion, our study builds on existing clinical evidence showing that SZC is safe and effective in treating CVA. However, larger randomized controlled trials are required for further validation.

To observe the effect of acupuncture on blood oxygen concentration in the brain of rats with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), thus to reveal the mechanisms of acupuncture in intervening the brain function of PTSD rats. Sixty Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into a blank group, a model group, a grasping group, a paroxetine group and an acupuncture group, with 12 rats in each group. Except the blank group, rats in the other groups all received incarceration plus electric shock for 7 d to prepare the PTSD animal model. One hour before the stress model was established, rats in each group received the designated intervention: rats in the blank group and the model group did not receive any intervention; rats in the grasping group received grasping and fixation; rats in the paroxetine group received paroxetine hydrochloride solution by intragastric administration; and rats in the acupuncture group received acupuncture. Six-day treatment was a course, with 2 courses of treatment conducted for a total of 12 d. After the modeling, rats in each treatment group received intervention for 5 d, and the fNIRS system was used to collect and record the changes in the concentrations of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2), deoxygenated hemoglobin (d-Hb) and total hemoglobin (t-Hb) of the involved rat’s brain regions, and also to assess the brain function. Compared with the blank group, the concentration of HbO2 was significantly increased, the concentration of d-Hb was significantly decreased, and the concentration of t-Hb was significantly increased in the model group and the grasping group after the intervention, and the differences were statistically significant (all P 0.05). Compared with the grasping group, the concentration of HbO2 was significantly decreased, the concentration of d-Hb was significantly increased, and the concentration of t-Hb was significantly decreased in the paroxetine group and the acupuncture group, and the differences were statistically significant (all P 0.05). Acupuncture can regulate the blood oxygen concentration in the brain of PTSD model rats, which may be an important mechanism of acupuncture in intervening the brain function in PTSD rats.

To observe the effect of liver-soothing and mind-regulating acupuncture method on the resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) in rats with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and to provide evidence for the effect mechanism study and clinical application of acupuncture intervention for PTSD. Sixty Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into a blank control group, a model group, a grasping group, a paroxetine group and an acupuncture group, with 12 rats in each group. Except for rats in the blank control group, rats in the other groups were subjected to preparing the PTSD models using ‘incarceration plus electric shock’ method. After interventions, changes in rat behavior of each group were observed; changes in resting-state EEG were collected and analyzed with multichannel EEG acquisition and analysis system, and image analysis and statistical processing were performed. Compared with the blank control group, the average escape latency in the model group was significantly longer (P 0.05). Compared with the blank control group, the α-wave power spectrum value in the model group was significantly decreased, and the power spectrum values of β-wave, δ-wave and э-wave were significantly increased (all P 0.05). Liver-soothing and mind-regulating acupuncture method can significantly improve the abnormal EEG activity in PTSD rats, which may be one mechanism of liver-soothing and mind-regulating acupuncture method in effectively affecting the brain function in PTSD rats.

Objective To explore the brain function mechanism of "liver-soothing and mind-regulating" acupuncture manipulation in intervening post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Methods According to random number table method, 60 SD rats were randomly divided into blank group, model group, grabbing group, paroxetine group and acupuncture group. Except for the blank group, all the rats were established into PTSD models through electric shock and incarceration, with model replication for 7 days in total. The rats were given gavage, acupuncture intervention and grabbing fixation 1 h before modeling, with 6 days as 1 course of treatment. Grabbing treatment was performed for 2 courses, with 12 days in total. After modeling, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system was adopted to collect and record the changes of concentration of Oxy-Hb, Deoxy-Hb and Total-Hb during 3 min in related brain regions of rats in each group after treatment for 5 consecutive days, and the brain function was evaluated. Results According to the comparison of the time series of blood-oxygen concentration, there were significant differences between model group and blank group as well as grabbing group and blank group (P 0.05); there were significant differences between paroxetine group and grabbing group as well as acupuncture group and grabbing group (P 0.05). Conclusion "Liver-soothing and mind-regulating" acupuncture manipulation has a benign regulatory effect on the blood-oxygen concentration in cerebral cortex of PTSD rats, which may be the important brain function mechanism of "liver-soothing and mind-regulating" acupuncture manipulation in intervening PTSD.

An integration of an electric motor and a drive with wide-bandgap (WBG) devices possesses numerous attractive features for electrified and decentralized actuation systems. The WBG devices can operate at a high-junction temperature (>170 °C) with improved efficiency due to fast switching speed and low on-state resistance. It also leads to better performance and higher power density electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHAs) than the traditional solutions, which are being widely adopted in industrial applications such as aerospace, robotics, automobiles, manufacturing, wind turbine, and off-road vehicles. This paper introduces and investigates the benefits of the integrated motor drive with the WBG-based power electronics for the EHA systems.

The Cold Start Recommender System (RS) for App usage prediction on mobile phones is important for improving new user experience on mobile operating systems. At present, the existing Cold Start RS computes the probability of App launching mainly by mining the potential information of new users and similar users (i.e., collaborative filtering algorithm CF). But for newly installed Apps, the default CF does not have any useful information for App Cold Start recommendation, resulting in the data sparseness. To tackle the problems, we think that App usage periodicity installed by the new user is regularly followed under different conditions. It not only compensates for the data sparseness of similar users but also increases the predictive flexibility when the user’s environment changes. Therefore, we designed Predictor, an efficient dynamic CF fusion algorithm that provides App Cold Start prediction for new users on mobile devices. It dynamically combines both App preferences of similar users (user-based CF) and App usage periodicity (item-based CF) through the conditional combination. Compared to other traditional methods, Predictor proposes more appropriate App launching recommendation and matches the launching expectations of most users.

Objective: Worldwide, community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common infection that occurs in older adults, who may have pulmonary comorbidities, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although there have been clinical studies on the coexistence of CAP with COPD, there remain some controversial findings. This review presents the current status of COPD in CAP patients, including the disease burden, clinical characteristics, risk factors, microbial etiology, and antibiotic treatment. Data Sources: A literature review included full peer-reviewed publications up to January 2018 derived from the PubMed database, using the keywords “community-acquired pneumonia” and “chronic obstructive pulmonary disease”. Study Selection: Papers in English were reviewed, with no restriction on study design. Results: COPD patients who are treated with inhaled corticosteroids are at an increased risk of CAP and have a worse prognosis, but data regarding the increased mortality remains unclear. Although Streptococcus pneumoniae is still regarded as the most common bacteria isolated from patients with CAP and COPD, Pseudomonas aeruginosa is also important, and physicians should pay close attention to the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance, particularly in these two organisms. Conclusions: COPD is a common and important predisposing comorbidity in patients who develop CAP. COPD often aggravates the clinical symptoms of patients with CAP, complicating treatment, but generally does not appear to affect prognosis.

The recent advancements in power switching device material and manufacturing technology have enabled the design of highly efficient and compact high-speed motor direct drives. The use of high-switching frequency pulse width modulation in these drives provides speed and torque control capabilities and it can also serve as an effective phase current shaping method for torque ripple minimization. This paper builds upon the previous paper introducing a torque ripple minimization technique for gallium nitride high-electron mobility transistor-based high-speed single-phase brushless dc motor drive. It presents an in-depth performance analysis in comparison with the conventional high-speed control techniques. Four different high-speed control techniques are implemented and tested to quantify the maximum speed, efficiency, torque ripple, and vibration. The vibration of the motor drive is measured using a microelectromechanical systems accelerometer with a ferroelectric random access memory for high-speed data acquisition with the maximum bandwidth of 1 kHz.

This paper introduces a new concept of common mode voltage cancellation for pulse width modulated motor drives, aiming at solving issues such as ground leakage current, common mode electromagnetic interference, and bearing current. The balanced inverter topology and dual-winding stator configuration are proposed as a practical realization. Implementation considerations on the influence of circuit asymmetry are also investigated. Finally, a gallium nitride HEMT based induction motor drive prototype is built and tested to evaluate the performance of the cancellation concept in a practical situation.

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) on symptoms of depression and anxiety complicated by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods Literature from 8 electronic medical databases were searched for meta-analysis using RevMan (version 5.3) and Stata (version 12.0) software. The GRADE Pro Guideline Development Tool and TSA Viewer (version.0.9.5.10 beta) were adopted to evaluate the certainty and conclusiveness of the evidence. Results 26 studies involving 2529 participants were identified. CHM demonstrated significant lower scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Self-Rating Depression Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale compared to the control group without CHM. Moreover, CHM showed favorable safety. Conclusions The evidence verified the efficacy and safety of CHM on relieving depression and anxiety in COPD. However, further large-scale and rigorously designed studies are urgently warranted to strengthen the evidence.

Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs and gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistors are perceived as future replacements for Si IGBTs and MOSFETs in medium- and low-voltage drives due to their low conduction and switching losses. However, it is widely believed that the already significant conducted common-mode (CM) electromagnetic interference (EMI) emission of motor drives will be further exacerbated by the high-speed switching operation of these new devices. Hence, this paper investigates and quantifies the increase in the conducted CM EMI emission of a pulse width modulation inverter-based motor drive when SiC and GaN devices are adopted. Through an analytical approach, the results reveal that the influence of dv/dt on the conducted CM emission is generally limited. On the other hand, the influence of switching frequency is more significant. Lab tests are also conducted to verify the analysis.

Interior permanent magnet (IPM) machine is one of the most widely used machine topologies in electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles nowadays. The idealized IPM machine model is commonly used in the analysis and simulation of IPM machine’s control and drive system. However, nonlinearity and temperature effects will greatly influence the performance and characteristics of IPM machine. Without a precise IPM machine model, high-performance IPM machine control algorithm cannot be accurately evaluated in the simulation. This paper derived the IPM machine’s voltage equations and torque equation considering saturation, cross coupling, spatial harmonics, and temperature effects. The derived IPM machine equations can use as high-fidelity IPM machine model with the assistance of lookup tables in the machine drive system simulation. The results in this paper facilitate the design of high-performance IPM machine controller, which is robust to temperature variation.

In this letter, we will investigate the joint relay selection and subcarrier allocation problem for decode-and-forward relay assisted secure vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, where the eavesdroppers could be any illegal receivers or non-intending information destinations. The joint relay selection and subcarrier allocation scheme will be proposed to minimize the secure outage probability of each ${V_{\text {Tx}}}$ - ${V_{\text {Rx}}}$ pair while guaranteeing fairness. Specifically, the joint relay selection and subcarrier allocation problem in secure V2V communications is formulated into a random bipartite graph (RBG) model. The considered problem is then equivalent to generate the maximum matching on every sample of the RBG, thus it can be solved by R2HK algorithm with low complexity. By analyzing the properties of the RBG model-based maximum matching, the closed-form approximation formula of the secure outage probability is then obtained. Simulation results will not only verify the accuracy of theoretical derivations, but also show the performance improvement of the proposed approach.

// Xue-Di Han 1, * , Chen Liu 1, * , Fei Liu 1 , Qing-Hua Xie 1, 2 , Te-Li Liu 1 , Xiao-Yi Guo 1 , Xiao-Xia Xu 1 , Xing Yang 3 , Hua Zhu 1 and Zhi Yang 1 1 Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Translational Research (Ministry of Education), Department of Nuclear Medicine, Peking University Cancer Hospital and Institute, Beijing 100142, China 2 College of Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China 3 Russell H. Morgan, Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland 21287, United States * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hua Zhu, email: zhuhuananjing@163.com Zhi Yang, email: pekyz@163.com Keywords: prostate specific membrane antigen, neo-vasculature, gastric cancer, PET, 64Cu Received: April 14, 2017 Accepted: May 14, 2017 Published: May 26, 2017 ABSTRACT Here, we report that it’s feasible for imaging gastric adenocarcinoma mice model with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) targeting imaging agents, which could potentially provide an alternate and readily translational tool for managing gastric adenocarcinoma. DKFZ-PSMA-617, a PSMA targeting ligand reported recently, was chosen to be radio-labeled with nuclide 64 Cu. 64 Cu-PSMA-617 was radio-synthesized in high radio-chemical yield and specific activity up to 19.3 GBq/μmol. It showed good stability in vitro . The specificity of 64 Cu-PSMA-617 was confirmed by cell uptake experiments in PSMA (+) LNCaP cell and PSMA (-) PC-3 and gastric adenocarcinoma BGC-823 cells. Micro-PET imaging in BGC-823 and PC-3 xenografts nude mice was evaluated ( n = 4). And the tumors were visualized and better tumor-to-background achieved till 24 h. Co-administration of N- [[[(1S)-1-Carboxy-3-methylbutyl]amino]-carbonyl]-L-glutamic acid (ZJ-43) can substantially block the uptake in those tumors. Dissected tumor tissues were analyzed by auto-radiography and immunohistochemistry, and these results confirmed the PSMA expression in neo-vasculature which explained the target molecular imaging of 64 Cu-PSMA-617. All those results suggested 64 Cu-PSMA-617 may serve as a novel radio-tracer for tumor imaging more than prostate cancer.

The adoption of silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs in variable speed drives (VSDs) makes it possible to increase the inverter switching frequency up to several hundred kilohertz without incurring excessive inverter loss. As a result, the harmonic currents and related losses in the machine can be significantly reduced, and the dynamic performance of motor will also be improved. However, the high switching frequency will increase the common mode (CM) electromagnetic interference (EMI) emission of the drive system presenting new challenges on CM choke design. In the literature, chokes designed for VSDs operating above 100 kHz are rarely found. Hence, this paper presents a case study on the output CM chokes for a SiC-based VSD switching at 20 and 200 kHz. A comprehensive comparison is made between the chokes for two switching frequencies regarding design, sizing, and performance, through both calculation and experiments. The results show that the CM choke designed for 200 kHz switching frequency is significantly larger and heavier than the 20 kHz choke, due to the higher inductance value required to meet the EMI limit and the lower permeability of the core material. Meanwhile, the 200 kHz choke is also less effective in noise attenuation as a result of the larger winding capacitance compared with the 20 kHz choke.

Objective To observe the effect of needling Hegu (LI 4) on functions of the prefrontal cortex using the functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

This paper proposes a balanced inverter topology for canceling the common-mode (CM) voltage of motor drives, and thus reducing or eliminating the ground leakage current, bearing current, and CM electromagnetic interference. The proposed topology splits one of the switches on each phase-leg of a conventional inverter into two half-voltage rated switches, and creates two complementary sets of balanced three phase output voltages, whose CM voltages cancel each other in the driven motor. The balanced inverter topology does not involve filter components, modification of the modulation strategy, or increase of the total device rating. Theoretical analysis and testing results are presented to verify this concept.

Wide bandgap semiconductors, such as gallium nitride (GaN)-based power devices have become increasingly popular in the automotive industry due to their low on-state resistance and fast switching capabilities. These devices are sought to replace silicon (Si) devices in power electronics converters for vehicular applications. GaN devices dissipate less energy during each switching event, thus, GaN converter designers can significantly increase the switching frequency without increasing switching losses, relative to Si converters. However, one item of concern is that the high $dv/dt$ of GaN devices, due to the increased switching speed, has the potential to deteriorate the electromagnetic interference (EMI) emission of power converters, and thus may fail the corresponding regulations for vehicles. To understand these effects, this paper presents an experimental case study on the switching characteristics and common mode (CM) noise generation of a GaN-based half-bridge configuration operating in the synchronous boost mode. A comprehensive comparison has been made between the chosen GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) and Si MOSFET in terms of switching voltage waveforms, ground leakage currents, and CM noise spectrum. By parametrically increasing the gate resistance of GaN HEMT and Si MOSFET, the tradeoff between converter efficiency and CM noise generation is also quantified.

SiC semiconductor devices allow for an increased switching speed in motor drive applications and offer large volume and weight savings for inverter design. Due to the low switching losses, the switching frequency can be extended to more than 100 kHz which allows the use of motor filters with small component size. Nevertheless, the increasing switching speed and frequency also raise concerns regarding the conducted EMI emmissions. First, this paper presents the passive component sizing for a sine-wave filter for a 10 kW SiC inverter. Afterwards, the components are characterized and modelled in detail to predict the filter attenuation up to several MHz. Finally, first practical tests carried out at full output current and reduced DC-link voltage with a passive load and then a motor and drive integrated together verify the system performance.

Background Xiao-ai-ping injection (XAPI), as patented Chinese medicine, has shown promising outcomes in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. This meta-analysis investigated the efficacy and safety of XAPI in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy. Methods A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify relevant studies in Pubmed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wangfang Database, VIP Database, and Chinese Biology Medical Database from the date of their inception to September 2018. The RevMan 5.3 software was applied to calculate the risk ratio (RR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results We included and analyzed 24 randomized controlled trials. The meta-analysis showed that XAPI adjunctive to platinum-based chemotherapy had better outcomes in objective tumor response rate (ORR) (RR: 1.27, 95% CI, 1.14–1.40); improved Karnofsky performance scores (KPS) (RR: 1.70, 95% CI, 1.48–1.95); reduction in occurrence of grade 3/4 leukopenia (RR: 0.49, 95% CI, 0.38–0.64), anemia (RR: 0.63, 95% CI, 0.46–0.87) and thrombocytopenia (RR: 0.53, 95% CI, 0.38–0.73), nausea and vomiting (RR: 0.57, 95% CI, 0.36–0.90); and enhanced immune function (CD8+ [MD: 4.96, 95% CI, 1.16–8.76] and CD4+/CD8+ [MD: 2.58, 95% CI, 1.69–3.47]). However, it did not increase dysregulated liver and kidney function, diarrhea, constipation, and fatigue. Subgroup analysis of ORR and KPS revealed that dosage, treatment duration, and methodological quality did not affect the outcome significantly. Conclusions Our meta-analyses demonstrated that XAPI in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy had a better tumor response, improved the quality of life, attenuated adverse side effects, and enhanced immune function, which suggests that it might be used for advanced NSCLC. Moreover, low dosage (

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive and ultimately fatal lung disease with a poor prognosis and limited treatment options. The incidence of IPF increases with age, and the mechanisms related to aging such as cellular senescence have been strongly implicated in disease pathology. Therefore, a better understanding of fibroblasts senescence might provide a new therapeutic strategy to prevent and treat pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we aimed to explore the effects of citrus alkaline extracts (CAE) on the fibroblasts senescence, and elucidate the underlying mechanism to ameliorate pulmonary fibrosis. We demonstrated that CAE mitigated the collagen deposition by the initial early treatment, suggesting a potential preventive effect of CAE on pulmonary fibrosis. The expression of senescence biomarkers P16INK4a and P21, concomitant with down-regulation of the myofibroblasts marker α-SMA, and the number of senescence-associated β-galactosidase (SA-β-Gal) positive cells were decreased by CAE treatment, indicating a significant inhibitory effect of CAE on fibroblast senescence. Additionally, CAE down-regulated the expression of the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) in etoposide-induced senescent fibroblasts. Further studies indicated that COX-2 activation was required for CAE to inhibit the lung fibroblast senescence through a P53-dependent pathway. Results showed that the anti-senescence effect of CAE was abrogated when COX-2 was knocked down or inhibited by COX-2 inhibitor NS-398 or indomethacin in lung fibroblasts. Meanwhile, the anti-fibrotic and anti-senescence effect of CAE were abolished due to disruption of COX-2 in vivo. Collectively, our results provided a novel insight into the potential mechanism of CAE to inhibit the fibroblasts activation through preventing cellular senescence.

Gastric cancer (GC) development and progression is significantly associated with tumour immune escape. T cell immunoreceptor with Ig and ITIM domains (TIGIT) inhibits T-cell responses and is associated with human cancers and T cell exhaustion phenotypes, but its role in cancers remains unclear. TIGIT and programmed cell death protein (PD)-1 levels were detected in 441 human GC specimens using histochemistry. We used flow cytometry to evaluate percentage of TIGIT+ constituting CD8+ T cells of 23 patients with GC who underwent D2 gastrectomy and the S-1 plus oxaliplatin (SOX) regimen. We investigated the influence of SOX regimen and TIGIT functional antibody on CD8 tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). Results showed that PD-1 and TIGIT were significantly over expressed in GC and predicted poorer outcome, agreeing with bioinformatics analysis. Significantly reduced percentages of CD8+ TIGIT+ cells were observed in patients after D2 gastrectomy (pre- vs post-surgery, 38 ± 8.7% vs. 26.7% ± 5.2%, p

Gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) has a lateral device structure with a wafer-level packaging, which is advantageous in minimizing parasitic parameters and the overall device size. The wafer-level packaging also provides better thermal performance than the conventional packaging due to low junction-to-case and junction-to-bottom thermal resistances. When a printed circuit board layout is optimally designed, copper traces and pours in the vicinity of the switching devices can serve as effective heat dissipation channels. In this paper, a synchronous buck converter with a single-turn air-core integrated planar inductor is proposed to achieve both quasisquare wave zero-voltage switching (QSW ZVS) and high thermal performance of the GaN HEMTs in high-frequency operation. The integrated planar inductor which is directly connected to the GaN HEMTs serves as a heat dissipation channel to maintain the device temperature low enough without any additional heat sink. Three different inductor designs with two different copper thicknesses have been investigated and compared to verify the effective thermal performance of the proposed converters.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode-division multiplexing (MDM) has recently been under intense investigations as a new way to increase the capacity of fiber communication. In this paper, a two-layer Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) for an OAM multiplexing system is proposed. The amplifier is based on the circular photonic crystal fiber (C-PCF), which can maintain a stable transmission for 14 OAM modes by a large index difference between the fiber core and the cladding. Further, the two-layer doped region can balance the amplification performance of different modes. The relationship between the performance and the parameters of the amplifier is analyzed numerically to optimize the amplifier design. The optimized amplifier can amplify 18 modes (14 OAM modes) simultaneously over the C-band with a differential mode gain (DMG) lower than 0.1 dB while keeping the modal gain over 23 dB and noise figure below 4 dB. Finally, the fabrication tolerance and feasibility are discussed. The result shows a relatively large fabrication tolerance in the OAM EDFA parameters.

In recent years, human action recognition in videos has become an active research topic, being applied in surveillance, security, somatic games, interactive operations, etc. Since most human action recognition systems are designed for PCs, their performance is poor when transplanted to mobile devices. In this paper, we develop a human action recognition system called “RegFrame,” which can rapidly and accurately recognize simple human actions, including 3D actions, on a stand-alone mobile device. The system divides an action recognition process into two steps: object recognition and movement detection. The movement detection is implemented by a novel Nine-Square algorithm that nearly avoids floating point computing, which improves the recognition time. The experimental results show that the proposed “RegFrame” works reliably in different testing scenarios, and it outperforms the action recognition method of the SAMSUNG Galaxy V (S5) by up to 20% in terms of action recognition time. In addition, the proposed system can be flexibly integrated with a variety of applications.

Electric and hybrid vehicles continue to demand a considerable share of the automotive market. This movement has been enabled by the recent technological improvements in the areas of electric motors, power electronics, and energy storage. While many electric vehicles (EVs) are on the market, they are not as cost competitive as conventional vehicles, and affordable cost is necessary for large-scale market penetration. For this to become a reality, continued research is needed to develop new cost-efficient technologies. This article presents the metrics and benchmarks used to gauge the performance of various electric drivetrains. In addition, current state-of-the-art technologies are presented in terms of these metrics as well as the future goals and trends in the industry. With ongoing development, the market for electric and hybrid vehicles will continue to increase.

With low loss, fast switching speed, and high-temperature capabilities, silicon carbide (SiC)-based devices are beneficial to automotive power converters in terms of efficiency increase and size reduction. Nevertheless, as a result of fast switching transitions and low on-state resistance of SiC devices, SiC-based converters are prone to overshoots and oscillations on switching waveforms, with the presence of parasitic inductances in the circuit. The overshoots and oscillations further contribute to increased converter loss and EMI emissions. This paper aims to study the influence of parasitic inductances on the performance of SiC MOSFETs for automotive dc–dc converters from the loss and electromagnetic interference perspective.

// Ya-di Han 1,* , Xue-bin Wang 1* , Ning-hua Cui 2 , Shuai Zhang 1 , Chen Wang 1 and Fang Zheng 1 1 Center for Gene Diagnosis, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China 2 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Children’s Hospital of Zhengzhou, Zhengzhou, Henan, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Fang Zheng, email: // Keywords : cervical cancer, squamous intra-epithelial lesion, P16 INK4a promoter hypermethylation, smoking habit, meta-analysis Received : June 04, 2016 Accepted : September 16, 2016 Published : September 22, 2016 Abstract To assess the associations of P16 INK4a methylation status with low-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesion (LSIL), high-grade squamous intra-epithelial lesion (HSIL), cervical cancer (CC) and their clinicopathological features, a meta-analysis with 29 eligible studies was conducted. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) with their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated to assess the strength of the associations. Heterogeneity, sensitivity of pooled results and publication bias were also evaluated. Overall, there was an increasing trend of P16 INK4a hypermethylation rates among LSIL (21.4%), HSIL (30.9%) and CC (35.0%) specimens. P16 INK4a hypermethylation was significantly associated with the increased risk of LSIL, HSIL and CC, with the pooled ORs of 3.26 (95% CI: 1.86-5.71), 5.80 (95% CI: 3.80-8.84) and 12.17 (95% CI: 5.86-25.27), respectively. A significant association was also found between P16 INK4a hypermethylation and smoking habit (OR = 3.88, 95% CI: 2.13-7.08). Taken together, meta-analysis results support P16 INK4a hypermethylation as an epigenetic marker for the progression of cervical carcinogenesis.

As mobile computing increasingly interacts with the cloud, a number of approaches, e.g., MAUI and CloneCloud, have been proposed, aiming to offload parts of the mobile application execution to the cloud. To achieve a good performance by using these approaches, they particularly focus on the application partitioning problem , i.e., to decide which parts of an application should be offloaded to the cloud and which parts should be executed on mobile devices such that the execution cost is minimized. Most works on this problem assume that the offloading cost of each part of the application remains the same as the application is running. Unfortunately, this assumption does not hold in dynamic mobile cloud environments, where the device and network connection status may fluctuate, and thus affects the offloading cost. With the varying offloading cost, the one time partitioning of the application may yield significant performance degradations. In this paper, we study application repartitioning problem which considers updating the partition periodically during the course of application execution. We first propose a framework for run time application repartitioning in dynamic mobile cloud environments. Based on this framework, we take the dynamic network connection to clouds as a case study, and design an online solution, Foreseer, to solve the mobile cloud application repartitioning problem. We evaluate our solution based on real world data traces that are collected in a campus WiFi hotspot testbed. The result shows that our method can achieve significantly shorter completion time over previous approaches.

‘Warming-dredging needling technique’ is one of the specific needling techniques created by Prof. Zheng Kui-shan for treating intractable and difficult diseases. Developed from ‘Shao Shan Huo (Mountain-burning Fire)’ and ‘warmingreinforcing method’, this method displays the effects of ‘warming’, ‘dredging’ and ‘reinforcing’. The ‘scapula-penetrating heat’ and ‘eye-transmitting heat’ belong to the representative needling techniques of ‘warming-dredging needling technique’. In order to promote the clinical application of ‘warming-dredging needling technique’, its theoretical foundation and clinical experience are summarized.