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Tuberous sclerosis complex is a type of genetic multisystem disease that causes hamartomas in various organs. Facial angiofibromas commonly occur in 80% of patients and are prominently distributed over the cheek, chin, and nasolabial folds with severe disfigurement and emotional distress. Recently, photoelectric devices have been identified for the treatment of angiofibromas with great efficacy and fewer side effects. We report a case of a 42-year-old man with facial angiofibromas, who was treated with a combination of high-frequency electrocauterization, Ultrapulse CO2 laser, and microneedle fractional radiofrequency with 7 sessions and a 6-month follow-up. The patient showed great improvement in relation to the elevated lesions and nodules. A low recurrence rate was observed. This is the first study to investigate the efficacy of high-frequency electrocauterization and microneedle fractional radiofrequency in angiofibromas. It may provide an optimal approach for clinicians wherein a combined treatment of various lasers and electric devices is effective for complicated, protuberant, and firm angiofibromas of specific patients.

Mechanical allodynia, which develops in patients of diabetes mellitus as a neuropathic manifestation, remains without an effective treatment. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects and potential mechanisms underlying resveratrol (RES) in a rat model of streptozocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mechanical allodynia (DMA). The rat model of DMA was established by the administration of an intraperitoneal injection of STZ. From day 8 post-STZ injection, rats were administered with an intragastric injection of various doses of RES for 14 consecutive days. The von Frey filaments were applied to detect the paw withdrawal threshold and evaluate the analgesic effects of RES. Based on the dose-effect curve, the ED50 of RES was calculated. Immunofluorescence staining and western blotting were performed to detect the expression of purinergic receptor P2X3 (P2X3R) in the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) and spinal dorsal horn (SDH) following RESED50 treatment. The results indicated that RES significantly alleviated mechanical allodynia in DMA model rats in a dose-dependent manner. Compared with the control group, the expression of P2X3R in DRG neurons and SDH terminals was markedly decreased following the administration of RESED50 (P

In professional basketball games, big data has been largely used in analyzing the reasons for winning or losing games and further to design relevant stratagem according to the analytic results to attain victory. Nonetheless, the High School Basketball League (HBL) in Taiwan never used big data or relevant research to analyze game results. The study aims to conduct big data analyses to discuss the key winning factors and trends for HBL. Using Excel and multiple linear regression to understand the importance level and trend of each variable to the winning rate. Additionally, combining with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) prediction to confirm whether the big data analytic result is applicable for implementing in realistic games. After implementing the analysis of multiple linear regression, based on the yearly trends, the significant influence factors are 2P%, 3P%, FTM, TRB, OREB, STL, and TOV. Consequently, the prediction has reached 85% after inputting these data into SVM.

Private set intersection (PSI) is a fundamental cryptographic protocol, which has many important applications, such as personal properties matching, data sharing, or data mining. PSI has been widely studied in the literature, and many PSI protocols have been presented; however, today, many real-world applications do not use a secure PSI protocol, mainly because current PSI protocols have two issues: the insufficient efficiency and not considering the secure storage of users' datasets. Without using the PSI protocols, users of the real-world applications will sacrifice their privacy. In this paper, we propose a new approach for sets representation, which denotes sets by bit vectors and naturally hides the cardinality of a set. The new approach is particularly suitable to cloud computing environments. Then, we present two practical PSI and PSI cardinality protocols based on an additive homomorphic public-key cryptosystem (PKC). The new protocols enjoy two main advantages: 1) they are more efficient than other related protocols, especially when the set size is less than 212 and 2) the approach used in our protocols provides a good solution to securely store users' datasets, and the encrypted datasets could be used as protocols' messages directly without any additional computations. Finally, we implement our PSI and PSI cardinality protocols with Paillier PKC and ElGamal PKC in Java.

Background: Opioid-induced constipation (OIC) is one of the most common complications of analgesic therapy for cancer pain patients who suffer moderate to severe pain. Acupuncture as an effective treatment in constipation has been widely applied. But its efficacy has not been assessed systematically. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a protocol to explore the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for OIC. Methods: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) of acupuncture treatment for OIC in 4 Chinese electronic databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biological and Medical Database, China Scientific Journal Database, Wan-Fang Data) and 3 English electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library) will be searched from their inception to September 31, 2020. RevMan 5.3 software and Stata 14.0 software will be used for meta-analysis, EndNote X9.2 and Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool will be used for literature screening and quality assessment. Results: This study will present an assessment of the efficacy and safety of acupuncture treatment for OIC patients through summarize high-quality clinical evidence. Conclusion: The conclusion of our systematic review and meta-analysis may provide evidence of whether acupuncture treatment is beneficial to patients with OIC. INPLASY registration number: INPLASY2020100026.

Background Hemoglobin glycation index (HGI) is considered to be a convenient measurable indicator to assess the inter-individual variation of HbA1c. In the present study, we tested the relationship between HGI and risk of hypertension, and further explored the possible interacting influences of HGI with other such factors on hypertension risk among Chinese individuals. Methods The eligible subjects were chosen from a community-based cross-sectional survey in China. We collected relevant data and clinical indicators for each participant. HGI was calculated as “measured HbA1c-predicted HbA1c” and divided into four categories according to quartile. The following indicators were used to assess interactive effects: (1) relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI); (2) attributable proportion due to interaction (AP); and (3) synergy index (SI). Statistical analysis was performed using R software. Results Specifically, 1777 eligible participants were selected in this cross-sectional survey. There were 433 subjects who were identified to have hypertension (24.4%). A significant increase in the prevalence of hypertension from Q1 to Q4 of HGI was observed (p Conclusion High HGI was independently associated with the risk of hypertension. Moreover, HGI significantly shared interactions with obesity and family history of hypertension that influenced the risk of hypertension.

Background Psoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory skin disease. Keratinocytes hyperproliferation and excessive inflammatory response contribute to psoriasis pathogenesis. The agents able to attenuate keratinocytes hyperproliferation and excessive inflammatory response are considered to be potentially useful for psoriasis treatment. Daphnetin exhibits broad bioactivities including anti-proliferation and anti-inflammatory. This study aims to evaluate the anti-psoriatic potential of daphnetin in vitro and in vivo, and explore underlying mechanisms. Methods HaCaT keratinocytes was stimulated with the mixture of IL-17A, IL-22, oncostatin M, IL-1α, and TNF-α (M5) to establish psoriatic keratinocyte model in vitro. Cell viability was measured using Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8). Quantitative Real-Time PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to measure the mRNA levels of hyperproliferative marker gene keratin 6 (KRT6), differentiation marker gene keratin 1 (KRT1) and inflammatory factors IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, IL-23A and MCP-1. Western blotting was used to detect the protein levels of p65 and p-p65. Indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) was carried out to detect p65 nuclear translocation. Imiquimod (IMQ) was used to construct psoriasis-like mouse model. Psoriasis severity (erythema, scaling) was scored based on Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI). Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was performed to examine histological change in skin lesion. The expression of inflammatory factors including IL-6, TNF-α, IL-23A and IL-17A in skin lesion was measured by qRT-PCR. Results Daphnetin attenuated M5-induced hyperproliferation in HaCaT keratinocytes. M5 stimulation significantly upregulated mRNA levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, IL-23A and MCP-1. However, daphnetin treatment partially attenuated the upregulation of those inflammatory cytokines. Daphnetin was found to be able to inhibit p65 phosphorylation and nuclear translocation in HaCaT keratinocytes. In addition, daphnetin significantly ameliorate the severity of skin lesion (erythema, scaling and epidermal thickness, inflammatory cell infiltration) in IMQ-induced psoriasis-like mouse model. Daphnetin treatment attenuated IMQ-induced upregulation of inflammatory cytokines including IL-6, IL-23A and IL-17A in skin lesion of mice. Conclusions Daphnetin was able to attenuate proliferation and inflammatory response induced by M5 in HaCaT keratinocytes through suppression of NF-κB signaling pathway. Daphnetin could ameliorate the severity of skin lesion and improve inflammation status in IMQ-induced psoriasis-like mouse model. Daphnetin could be an attractive candidate for future development as an anti-psoriatic agent.

BackgroundHemoglobin glycation index (HGI) is considered to be a convenient measurable indicator to assess the inter-individual variation of HbA1c. In the present study, we tested the relationship between HGI and risk of hypertension, and further explored the possible interacting influences of HGI with other such factors on hypertension risk among Chinese individuals.Methods The eligible subjects were chosen from a community-based cross-sectional survey in China. We collected relevant data and clinical indicators for each participant. HGI was calculated as “measured HbA1c-predicted HbA1c” and divided into four categories according to quartile. The following indicators were used to assess interactive effects：(1) relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI); (2) attributable proportion due to interaction (AP); and (3) synergy index (SI). Statistical analysis was performed using R software.ResultsSpecifically, 1777 eligible participants were selected in this cross-sectional survey. There were 433 subjects who were identified to have hypertension (24.4%). A significant increase in the prevalence of hypertension from Q1 to Q4 of HGI was observed (P Moreover, a significant interaction between family history of hypertension and HGI on hypertension risk was detected (RERI:1.36,95%CI:0.11-2.63; AP: 0.43, 95%CI:0.17-0.69; and SI:2.68, 95% CI:1.10-6.48). The interactive effect between HGI and abdominal obesity was also found to be significant, as estimated by the value of RERI (1.04, 95%CI:0.24-1.85), AP (0.33, 95% CI: 0.11-0.56) and SI (1.96, 95%CI:1.01-3.79). However, in the analysis of the interaction between HGI and general obesity, only the AP value (0.28, 95%CI: 0.01-0.54) was observed to be significant.ConclusionHigh HGI was independently associated with the risk of hypertension. Moreover, HGI significantly shared interactions with obesity and family history of hypertension that influenced the risk of hypertension.

The optimization-based alignment (OBA) methods, which are implemented by the optimal attitude estimation using vector observations&mdash, also called double-vectors&mdash, have proven to be effective at solving the in-flight alignment (IFA) problem. However, the traditional OBA methods are not applicable for the low-cost strap-down inertial navigation system (SINS) since the error of double-vectors will be accumulated over time due to the substantial drift of micro-electronic- mechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope. Moreover, the existing optimal estimation method is subject to a large computation burden, which results in a low alignment speed. To address these issues, in this article we propose a new fast IFA method based on modified double-vectors construction and the gradient descent method. To be specific, the modified construction method is implemented by reducing the integration interval and identifying the gyroscope bias during the construction procedure, which improves the accuracy of double-vectors and IFA, the gradient descent scheme is adopted to estimate the optimal attitude of alignment without complex matrix operation, which results in the improvement of alignment speed. The effect of different sizes of mini-batch on the performance of the gradient descent method is also discussed. Extensive simulations and vehicle experiments demonstrate that the proposed method has better accuracy and faster alignment speed than the related traditional methods for the low-cost SINS/global positioning system (GPS) integrated navigation system

The research develops an intelligent aquaculture system to detect the water quality of a culture pond. Additionally, using Fuzzy Logic to evaluate water quality that influences the aquaculture livability. Each species requires a different environment of water quality; therefore, the study utilizes an intelligent aquaculture system to detect the water quality of white shrimp ponds. After using Fuzzy Logic to analyze water quality, the result is delivered as equally divided into five levels of signals sections. The purpose of the research is to understand whether the aquaculture environment is suitable for white shrimps by detecting the water quality; consequently, through studying the livability to understand the importance of water quality. From the experimental results, the water quality of targeted aquaculture ponds are all within the livability range of white shrimp; the result has shown a livability rate of 33%, which is considered high livability in marine white shrimp farming. Hence, it is concluded that water quality has a high correlation with livability. Moreover, the study demonstrates that water monitoring and water quality analysis are beneficial to monitor the aquaculture environment, which can further increase the livability of white shrimp and boost income.

The receiver's emittance and vacuum pressure are the two of great significance issues on the heat-loss which is the main factor reducing the efficiency of the parabolic though systems. In this paper, the thermal steady-state equilibrium method was used to test the receivers’ heat-loss. The receivers with increasing emittance were tested to study the variation of heat-loss. Meanwhile, the variable vacuum pressure in the annulus that affects the efficiency of the system was investigated. The influence of vacuumizing rate and getters on the vacuum pressure and heat-loss were discussed. The result shows that the emittance and vacuum pressure affect the receiver's heat-loss dramatically, and the emittance is the major influence factor on the thermal properties. The receiver with 0.08 emittance and 10 −3 Pa vacuum pressure has a satisfactory heat-loss of 215.6 W/m at 400 °C. The analysis further reveals that the synergistic effect of both emittance and vacuum pressure on the heat-loss can be reflected by the packaging temperature of the glass tube, and a fitting formula has been established to estimate the receivers’ heat-loss according to the packaging temperature of the glass tube.

Background Laser and other energy devices are emerging, minimally invasive treatments for scars. Among the various techniques, fractional microplasma radiofrequency technology (FMRT) has proven to be an effective treatment option for various types of scars and skin conditions such as rhytids, striae distensae, and hyperpigmentation. Objective This prospective clinical trial was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of FMRT for treating non-hypertrophic post-burn scars in the Asian population. Method All patients underwent three to five treatment sessions at various intervals of 8–16 weeks. The Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scales (POSAS) [20] were used to evaluate changes in burn scars pre-and post-FMRT treatment. Results A total of 95 patients completed the study. The overall response rate was 86.3% (82/95). The total POSAS scores before and after 6 months of treatment were 53.41 ± 6.28 and 46.35 ± 5.30, respectively. There was statistically significant improvement in scar color, thickness, and pliability. There was no improvement in vascularization, pain, or itching. Complications included prolonged post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, acne eruption, herpes simplex eruption, and abnormal hair growth. No severe adverse events, such as acute skin infection, hypertrophic scarring, or depigmentation, were observed. Conclusion FMRT is an efficacious, safe treatment for non-hypertrophic burn scars in the Asian population. Lasers Surg. Med. 49:563–569, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper proposes a novel registration and super-resolution jointed paradigm for medical images under the Internet of thing environment. In the medical image processing, the matching issue is one catches wide attention with the domain of research. Image registration technique can be divided into similarity measure, optimization, geometric transformation, and interpolation, etc. As the first essential clue of our model, we propose the novel registration algorithm based on energy feature extraction. Generally, the matching energy function by the similarity measurement and a penalty constitution is called the external force and endogenic force separately. The matching is an external force and endogenic force mutual competition, eventually achieves the balanced process. Furtherly, we integrate the game analysis and area feature selection to achieve the better image super-resolution mode through the pretreatment of the image to change the initial value, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the performance. Besides the algorithm level innovation, we integrate the GPU and the IOT to construct the hardware based implementation of the proposed medical image processing system. The latency of registers to read and write data across a GPU’s entire storage system is minimal, it is private to each thread, and can only be accessed by its owning thread. For each thread, the local memory is also private and it is often used to deal with the problem of overflow register, reducing the buffer overflow caused by the entire application of a substantial decline in the possibility and shared memory is visible to all threads within the thread block. We then achieve the optimal integration of IOT and GPU. The experimental result proves the robustness of the method.

Aims. Lipid accumulation product (LAP) is put forward as a powerful marker showing the accumulation of visceral fat. The present study is aimed at (i) analyzing the predictive performances of LAP in the identification of impaired fasting glucose (IFG) in Chinese population and (ii) exploring the potentially interactive effect between LAP and other factors on IFG risk. Methods. Analysis was conducted on the data obtained from a community-based cross-sectional survey in Chinese population, and all the participants enrolled were required to complete a face-to-face questionnaire survey and related health checks. Then, for the purpose of comparing predictive values between LAP and conventional obesity indices for IFG, relevant analysis was carried out on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The assessment of interactive effects was conducted by employing the three indicators as follows: (1) RERI (the relative excess risk due to interaction), (2) AP (attributable proportion due to interaction), and (3) SI (synergy index). Results. A total of 1777 participants (748 males and 1029 females) were involved in the final analysis. It was finally obtained that the prevalence rate of IFG was 14.1% in total, 15.5% for males and 13.1% for females, respectively. In logistic regression analysis, individuals with LAP levels in the fourth quartile had a significant higher risk of getting IFG in comparison with that of the lowest quartile (crude OR: 4.58, 95% CI: 3.01-6.98; adjusted OR: 3.81, 95% CI: 2.33-6.23). In addition, it was indicated by the ROC curve analysis that LAP showed a better performance in discriminating IFG risk than BMI in both males (Z=2.20, P=0.028) and females (Z=2.13, P=0.033). However, LAP displayed a higher predictability in comparison with WC only in females (Z=2.07, P=0.038), but not in males (Z=0.18, P=0.860). Furthermore, LAP and family history of diabetes were able to impose significant synergistic interaction on the risk of IFG, which was indicated by all the parameters in females (RERI: 2.52, 95% CI: 0.19-4.84; AP: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.20-0.74; SI: 2.39, 95% CI: 1.17-4.87) and males (RERI: 2.18, 95% CI: 0.08-4.73; AP: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.07-0.79; SI: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.03-5.45). However, none of the indicators showed significant interaction between LAP and smoking on the risk of IFG in females (RERI: 0.92, 95% CI: -2.79-4.63; AP: 0.20, 95% CI: -0.50-0.92; SI: 1.37, 95% CI: 0.42-4.52). Meanwhile, there was also no significant interaction between LAP and smoking on the risk of IFG in males as indicated by the value of SI (2.22, 95% CI: 0.80-6.21). Conclusion. It was concluded that LAP was significantly related to a higher risk of IFG in Chinese population, and its performance was superior to that of conventional obesity indices, especially in females. Apart from that, LAP with family history of diabetes may have an interactive effect that can impose a great influence on the development of IFG.

Objectives Lipid accumulation product (LAP) is a simple and effective indicator that reflects visceral obesity. This study aimed to compare the significance of LAP in predicting hypertension risk with other obesity indices, and to evaluate the interactive effects of LAP and smoking, family history of hypertension on hypertension risk in Chinese Han adults. Methods A community based cross-sectional study was performed in Bengbu, China. Participants received face-to-face questionnaire survey, anthropometric tests and laboratory examinations. Relevant indicators that reflect obesity including BMI (body mass index), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and LAP were calculated. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was applied to explore the association between LAP and hypertension risk. The area under the receiver-operating characteristics curves (AUC) of LAP, BMI, and WHtR were calculated and then compared. Interactive effect was evaluated by relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI), attributable proportion due to interaction (AP) and synergy index (SI). Results A total of 1777 participants were enrolled, and the prevalence of hypertension was 24.4% (n = 433). There was a significant increase in hypertension risk with LAP levels in the fourth quartile as compared with the bottom quartile (OR: 3.31, 95%CI: 1.76–6.25). The AUC of LAP was significantly different than that of BMI in males (Z = 2.158, p = 0.0309) and females (Z = 3.570, p = 0.0004), while only performed better in females as compared with that of WHtR (Z = 2.166, p = 0.0303). LAP was significantly interacted with family history of hypertension on hypertension risk both in males (RERI: 1.07, 95%CI: 0.09–2.05; AP: 0.33, 95%CI: 0.23–0.44; SI: 1.92, 95%CI: 1.53–2.41) and females (RERI: 0.80, 95%CI: 0.07–1.53; AP: 0.25, 95%CI: 0.11–0.39; SI: 1.59, 95%CI: 1.16–2.19). However, a significant interaction between LAP and smoking was only observed in males (RERI: 1.32, 95%CI: 0.15–2.75; AP: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.14–0.73). Conclusion Increased LAP was significantly associated with a higher risk of hypertension in Chinese Han adults. Moreover, the effect of LAP on predicting hypertension risk was better than that of other obesity indices. Our results also demonstrated interactive effects of LAP with smoking, family history of hypertension on hypertension risk.

Objectives/Hypothesis Occupational exposure to asbestos occurs in many workplaces and is well known to cause asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. However, the link between asbestos exposure and other malignancies was not confirmed. The aim of the current meta-analysis was to provide a summary measure of risk for laryngeal cancer associated with occupational asbestos exposure. Study Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods Electronic databases were searched for studies characterizing the association between asbestos and laryngeal cancer. Standardized mortality rate (SMR) with its 95% confidence interval (CI) of each study was combined using a fixed or random effect model. Results Significantly increased SMR for laryngeal cancer was observed when subjects were exposed to asbestos (SMR = 1.69, 95% CI = 1.45-1.97, P 25 years), and SMR for lung cancer > 2.0. Publication bias was not detect by Begg test (P = .910) and Egger test (P = .340). Conclusions Our study supports the association of exposure to asbestos with an increased risk of laryngeal cancer mortality among male workers. Level of Evidence NA Laryngoscope, 126:1169–1174, 2016

Solar selective coatings draw much attention due to its critical role in solar receiver employed in solar heat power generation. Al/Ti0.5Al0.5N/Ti0.25Al0.75N/AlN solar selective coating exhibits a high absorptance of 0.926–0.945 in solar spectrum range and low emittance of 0.04–0.06 (82 °C) in infrared spectrum range. The microstructure of the solar selective coatings by using Al as metal reflector layer had been analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), auger electron spectroscopy (AES), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). After long time annealed in air, the coating is observed to lost effectiveness in solar spectrum adsorption. More Ti–N bonds rather than Ti–N–O bonds are observed in Ti0.5Al0.5N layer. The experimental results also indicate that the crystallization of the adsorption layers is not complete. It is believed that oxygen diffused into the Ti–Al–N layer to form Ti–Al–O–N structure, and the destruction of the four-layer structure, lead to the degradation of the coatings after long time (>192 h) annealed in air at high temperature (500 °C). Compared with the thermal stability in air, the coatings are much more stable in vacuum under high temperature, which makes it is more appropriate to be used in vacuum.

A new solar selective coating was designed in our paper. Ti0.5Al0.5N and Ti0.25Al0.75N coatings were chosen as absorber layers, and AlN coating was chosen as anti-reflection layer. The optical constants of these coatings were studied by spectroscopic ellipsometric. The Ti0.5Al0.5N coating exhibits metallic character. But, the Ti0.25Al0.75N coating exhibits semiconducting property. The AlN coating is expected as a dielectric layer. The solar selective coating was optimized by using a computer program named TFCalc and verified by experimental results. The absorptance and emittance of the optimized solar selective coating were 0.945 and 0.04 (82 °C), respectively.

This paper reports a new efficient solar selective surface in high temperature application. The influence of the monolayer’s microstructure and deposition rate was firstly discussed. Then the nitride nano-multilayer on the polished stainless steel (herein after referred as “SS”) substrate was prepared with Ti and Al metal targets by DC. and R.F. magnetron co-sputtering. The samples were annealed in air at different temperatures ranging from 350 to 800°C for 2 h to evaluate their thermal stability. The samples’ surface and cross-section morphology, crystal structure, phase composition, optical properties were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer and infrared emissivity tester. The results show that the coatings exhibit high solar selectivity (α/ɛ) of 0.943/0.08 even after heat-treatment up to 400°C for 2 h in air. After heat-treatment at 600°C in air, the solar selectivity decreases to 0.92/0.16.

Background The impact of partial hepatectomy on intra-hepatic and distant tumor growth is a matter of controversy. Utilizing a highly sensitive tumor imaging strategy, we sought to demonstrate whether this growth-acceleration occurs, and to develop an animal model with which to investigate potential therapeutic strategies. Methods Mice bearing constitutively-active luciferase-expressing tumor cells were subjected to either 70% partial hepatectomy (PH; n = 10) or a sham operation (n = 11). Mice were sacrificed 14 days later and remnant livers (or anatomic equivalents in the control group) and lungs harvested for bioluminescence detection. Results Remnant liver weights were significantly increased in PH compared to equivalent lobes in sham-operated animals (t-test; p = 0.005). Tumor burden as measured by bioluminescence was significantly higher in both liver and lung specimens in the PH group (Wilcoxon's Rank Sum test; p = 0.01 and 0.004, respectively). Conclusions Following PH, enhanced metastatic growth was depicted regionally and systemically with bioluminescence imaging providing an objective measure of tumor burden. This preclinical model can help to identify adjuvant therapies that can influence both tumor growth and liver regeneration.

Angiogenesis is essential for solid tumor growth. Although successful antiangiogenic therapies have been demonstrated in animal models, a systematic comparison of the efficacy of different antiangiogenic factors has not been described in the hepatic environment. To address this issue, CT26 murine colon carcinoma cells were transfected with retroviral vectors encoding murine endostatin (mEndostatin), human angiostatin (hAngiostatin), murine-soluble vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2, (msFlk-1), or murine-soluble Tie2 (msTie2). The transfected cells were then subjected to another round of transfection with a luciferase cDNA-encoding retroviral vector. Expression of these putative antiangiogenic proteins inhibited the proliferation of human umbilical vein endothelial cells in vitro but not tumor cells. To examine effects on tumor growth in vivo, modified cells were delivered via intrasplenic injection into BALB/c mice to induce liver metastases. Tumor burden was measured weekly by bioluminescence. Growth of hepatic metastases in vivo was significantly reduced in mice that were administered cells expressing msTie2 (76% reduction compared with control cells 21 days after intrasplenic inoculation; P < 0.05). Similar results were observed with cells that expressed msFlk-1 and hAngiostatin. However, expression of mEndostatin had no significant effect on the growth of liver metastases compared with control animals. These findings indicate that multiple antiangiogenic pathways are necessary for the growth of hepatic metastases, and each of these pathways is a potential clinically relevant antiangiogenic target for the treatment of this disease.

Image matting plays an important role in image editing and computer vision. Alpha matting is to solve the problem of softly extracting the foreground object from an image. The problem is inherently ill-posed. Existing matting approaches usually use a given trimap to estimate the alpha value for each unknown pixel. So the results rely on not only the different algorithms, but also the given trimap. In this paper, we present an easy interactive matting method based on the sample search matting. Users only require drawing some strokes or points on the foreground and background to extract the foreground object. This method can easily collect the samples available to compute the alpha value for the whole image pixels.

Image inpainting refers to the process of reconstructing the damaged image or removal of unwanted objects in the image. We need to take the most appropriate way of inpainting the image to its original state, while ensuring that the result achieves the best artistic effect. There are some methods commonly used, such as method based on PDE or based on texture synthesis. But in cases that the damaged region is too large or a semantic fragment is completely missed, those old methods cannot do a good job. Rather than inpainting within the original image data, a way of inpainting using image content from other pictures will do help. As long as the improvement of research in image retrieval, we hope to take advantage of the good results by image retrieval with particular criteria. With the image patches from the image retrieval results, we can do a better inpainting and achieve the result more in line with the visual effects. This paper shows the algorithm and experiment results show the high efficiency and quality of the algorithm. And the unexpected result due to the random computation shows its creative accomplishment.

Pathologic angiogenesis induced by a tumor is essential for its survival. The promise of tumor inhibition by targeting angiogenesis over the past several years has translated into numerous ongoing clinical trials. Recently, in a phase III trial involving patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, Bevacizumab (Genentech, Inc, San Francisco, CA), a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody against vascular endothelial growth factor used in conjunction with standard chemotherapy was shown to increase survival, progression-free survival, response rate, and duration of response compared to chemotherapy alone. Thus far, duration of the increased response remains less than 6 months. The majority of deaths in patients with colorectal cancer are related to hepatic metastases. It is hoped that novel approaches directed at the complex interactions between tumor and microenvironment in the angiogenic process will strengthen the therapeutic armamentarium against hepatic malignancies.

Delivering high-definition (HD) videos to a large number of Internet users is a challenging research problem due to its heavy bandwidth consumption and inelastic quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. Different from the traditional content delivery networks and overlay peer-to-peer networks, crowdsourcing-based platforms, e.g., Thunder Crystal, deliver HD videos by renting agents' bandwidth and storage resources. Cash will be rewarded to agents based on agents' upload traffic. Online video providers, i.e., Tencent Video and YouKu, pay Thunder Crystal for its video distribution service. Therefore, a critical problem for Thunder Crystal is to evaluate the performance it can achieve, which determines Thunder Crystal's competitiveness and its bargaining power with online video providers. Although previously studied proportional video replication and random request scheduling strategy are implemented by Thunder Crystal, the system performance cannot be evaluated by simply using existing models, because of its novel business model. To address this problem, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that can analyze the performance for synchronized streaming, video-on-demand (VoD) streaming, and video downloading, which are all supported by Thunder Crystal. A differentiated bandwidth allocation is designed to boost Thunder Crystal's streaming performance by assigning downloading users more fluctuating bandwidth, which only slightly degrades downloading performance. Finally, simulation is conducted to validate the accuracy of our theoretical results. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Copyright 2015 ACM.Content distribution, especially the distribution of video content, unavoidably consumes bandwidth resource heavily. Internet content providers (ICP) spend lots of money to buy content distribution network (CDN) service. By deploying thousands of edge servers close to end users, CDN companies are able to distribute content efficiently. In lieu of traditional CDN systems, we implement a crowdsourcing-based content distribution system, Thunder Crystal, which utilizes agents' upload bandwidth to amplify the content distribution capacity. Agents are well motivated to contribute storage and upload bandwidth to the system by rebated cash. As far as we know, this is a novel system that has not been studied before. In this work, we will present its design principles first. Then, we study agent behavior and methods to evaluate system efficiency and user efficiency. We evaluate the system by simulations, and observe that agents are well motivated to keep online most of the time and amplify the content distribution capacity by 10∼20 times. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Crowdsourcing-based video service systems, e.g., Thunder Crystal, are novel content distribution platforms composed by a large number of agent devices, acting like miniservers. Most agents are normal Internet users who would like to earn rewarded cash by uploading content through their devices. Compared with CDN, the bandwidth cost is much cheaper; while compared with Peer-To-Peer(P2P), the bandwidth supply is more stable. In this work, we create a stochastic model to analyze the live and VoD streaming performance in such crowdsourcingbased video service systems. Simulation is conducted to validate the accuracy of our analytical results. Refereed/Peer-reviewed