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In this paper, combined with the concept of virtual power plant, the operation mode of regional integrated energy system based on the combination of multiple terminal systems is designed, and the operation model of terminal integrated energy system with the minimum net cost as the objective function is established. On this basis, the transaction mode of regional integrated energy system is designed, which covers the trading structure and settlement scheme. Finally, an example is given to analyze the operation results of the regional integrated energy system on typical summer day. The results validate the rationality and feasibility of the designed operation model and transaction mode.

In the area of distributed energy, the equipment manufacturing technology and operation model have been relatively mature, however, the lack of business model leads to low utilization rate. Therefore, a distributed energy sharing service model was proposed in this study based on the aggregation of idle equipment, which can not only meet the energy demand of users in the demand side, but also increase the utilization rate of distributed energy equipment. The service structure based on multi-agent technology was established first. Then the service process including five service stages was designed to standardize works of each participant. The energy pricing model of service provider and the cost settlement mechanism was investigated and illustrated. A case study was brought at last, verifying the rationality and feasibility of the service model established.

This paper presents an effective identification method of load pattern in the case of high proportion data missing (HPDM). Data preprocessing generally discards quantities of missing data, which leads to the waste of the information. Traditional missing value completion methods such like nearest neighbor interpolation (NNI) and cubic spline interpolation (CSI) are difficult to sufficiently utilize the information redundancy and correlation of load data set, so they cannot cope with the problem of HPDM well. Hence, this paper presents low rank matrix completion (LRMC) method for HPDM, which can make full use of the approximate low rank characteristic of the load data matrix to rebuild the lost data segments. Meanwhile, Bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) neural network which is an excellent feature extraction model for time series data, is used for load pattern classification. At last, the experimental results based on UCI load data set validate the performance of the presented method on HPDM.

Traditional energy supply systems generally focus on energy storage, which ignore the coupling relationship and interaction among natural gas, heat energy and electrical energy. In this paper, an integrated energy system with various energy storage forms is established, in which six kinds of operating modes of energy storage equipment are put forward. Its operation costs of different operating modes are analyzed, which lead to the cost optimal operating scheme.

Bladder cancer is a common and widespread cancer of the human urinary system, and its incidence is increasing. Gene therapy is a promising treatment of bladder cancer. In our study, a recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV9-UPII-TK-EGFP) driven by a UPII promoter was constructed. The efficacy and safety of infection of bladder cells was tested in vivo and in vitro. The ability of rAAV9-UPII-TK-EGFP to penetrate the glycosaminoglycan (GAG) layer on the surface of bladder cells and to transduce the bladder cells in vivo was very high. Additionally, we confirmed that the TK/GCV system has a powerful cytotoxic effect on bladder tumor cells in vitro and in vivo. Thus, our data indicate that rAAV9-UPII-TK-EGFP is a precise gene drug delivery system for the treatment of bladder cancer, and the TK/GCV therapeutic strategy has a powerful antitumor effect. These findings can be widely used in clinical and scientific studies.

Background: While cement distributes sufficiently in the fractured area and relatively symmetrically around the fractured area, three types of cement mass location in the vertebral body are commonly seen when performing bipedicular percutaneous vertebral augmentation (PVA) for osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures (OVCFs), including anterolateral (AL), anteromedial (AM) and posterolateral (PL). However, little is known about differences of biomechanical behaviors among these three types of cement distribution so far. The present study aimed to investigate biomechanical effects of AL, AM and PL in the fractured area on OVCFs.Methods: Three dimentional finite element methods were utilized to construct OVCF model and simulate AL, AM and PL in the fractured area for OVCFs treated with PVA. Distributions and magnitudes of von Mises stress in cortical and cancellous bone and maximum displacement of the four models were compared.Results: Compared with the OVCF model, Distribution of von Mises stress in cortical bone was unchanged while that in cancellous bone was transferred to be concentrated symmetrically at cancellous bone surrounding cement after PVA. Maximum displacement and maximum von Mises stress in cortical bone in AL decreased the most significantly, while AM created the lowest maximum von Mises stress in cancellous bone.Conclusions: Cement distribution between AL and AM may balance stress in cortical and cancellous bone, better restoring vertebral strength, meanwhile, providing sufficient vertebral stability.

Relation extraction of quality reports in industrial manufacturing industries such as automobiles and machinery is of great significance to the research of quality knowledge graph and quality question answering system of the industry. However, there is no available public dataset for relation extraction of quality reports, and there are few pieces of research on relation extraction of Chinese quality reports. For the above problems, this paper constructs a professional dataset for relation extraction and proposes a Chinese-based Piecewise Convolutional Neural Networks (C-PCNN) for the relation extraction of quality reports. To be more specific, this paper first collects quality reports in the field of industrial manufacturing and makes corresponding professional labels to construct a professional dataset. Then this paper learns a developed PCNN model based on Chinese characteristics by this constructed dataset, and finally this paper applies it to relation extraction in Chinese quality reports. Experimental results on the constructed dataset show that the accuracy, recall, and F1 values of the C-PCNN are 0.8234, 0.8076, 0.8154 respectively, better than PCNN and RNN, indicating the feasibility and effectiveness of the method. This research has practical significance for personnel engaged in the manufacturing industry.

To allusion to the problem that contribution rate evaluation supporting demonstration of a new information system equipment has a wide range of disciplines, many uncertain factors, complex correlation relationship and great difficulty in research, this paper analyzes the concept connotation and evaluation significance of information system contribution rate evaluation, summarizes the commonly used evaluation perspectives of information system equipment system contribution rate, such as system function adaptability, architecture optimization, combat capability improvement, system technology progress, etc., and puts forward the evaluation methods and models of system contribution rate are from three perspectives of architecture, combat capability and operational effectiveness. This paper analyzes and summarizes the common problems existing in the evaluation method of system contribution rate, and clarifies the future research direction of the evaluation method of system contribution rate, which provides reference for the equipment evaluation work.

To design and fabricate 3D-printed rigid constraint guides for the tooth preparation for laminate veneers and to evaluate the accuracy of guide-assisted preparation.Twenty maxillary right central incisor resin artificial teeth were randomly divided into two equal groups and prepared for laminate veneers. Tooth preparations were performed, assisted by guides in the test group and by depth gauge burs in the control group, and both were finished by freehand operation. The typodonts were 3D scanned before preparation, after initial preparation and after final preparation. The tooth preparation depths at each step, including initial preparation depth, final preparation depth and loss of tooth tissue during polishing, were measured by 3D deviation analysis. Statistical analyses were conducted to investigate differences.The initial preparation depth was 0.488 mm (median, quartile 0.013 mm) in the test group and 0.521 mm (median, quartile 0.013 mm) in the control group. A statistically significant difference was found between them (P0.05). The final preparation depth in the test group (0.547 ± 0.029 mm) was significantly less than that in the control group (0.599 ± 0.051 mm) (P0.05), and closer to the predesigned value (0.5 mm). There was no statistically significant difference in the loss of tooth tissue during polishing between the test group (0.072 ± 0.023 mm) and the control group (0.089 ± 0.038 mm) (P0.05).In maxillary central incisors, the tooth preparation for laminate veneers could be conducted using 3D-printed rigid constraint guides, the accuracy of which is better than that of depth gauge burs.

The inherent degradation property of most dental resins in the mouth leads to the long-term release of degradation by-products at the adhesive/tooth interface. The by-products increase the virulence of cariogenic bacteria, provoking a degradative positive-feedback loop that leads to physicochemical and mechanical failure. Photoinduced free-radical polymerization and sol‒gel reactions have been coupled to produce a novel autonomous-strengthening adhesive with enhanced hydrolytic stability. This paper investigates the effect of network structure on time-dependent mechanical properties in adhesives with and without autonomous strengthening. Stress relaxation was conducted under 0.2% strain for 8 h followed by 40 h recovery in water. The stress‒time relationship is analyzed by nonlinear least-squares data-fitting. The fitted Prony series predicts the sample&rsquo, s history under monotonic loading. Results showed that the control failed after the first loading‒unloading‒recovery cycle with permanent deformation. While for the experimental sample, the displacement was almost completely recovered and the Young&rsquo, s modulus increased significantly after the first test cycle. The experimental polymer exhibited higher degree of conversion, lower leachate, and time-dependent stiffening characteristics. The autonomous-strengthening reaction persists in the aqueous environment leading to a network with enhanced resistance to deformation. The results illustrate a rational approach for tuning the viscoelasticity of durable dental adhesives.

This paper designs a novel opportunistic adaptive non-orthogonal multiple access (OA-NOMA) strategy, where a base station (BS) employs NOMA to serve a near user (NU)-far user (FU) pair opportunistically scheduled from $M$ NUs and $K$ FUs. In particular, the NOMA transmission to the scheduled NU-FU pair adaptively operates in one of two modes: Direct NOMA mode , in which the BS directly serves the scheduled NU-FU pair with using NOMA; Cooperative NOMA mode , in which the scheduled NU receives the messages intended by both scheduled users from the BS, and then forwards the message intended by the scheduled FU. For the OA-NOMA strategy, a scheduling candidate acquisition method and a probabilistic user pair scheduling scheme are proposed to guarantee the transmission reliability and improve the scheduling fairness, respectively. To evaluate the scheduling fairness, we develop a max-min fairness criterion and show that the OA-NOMA strategy approximately achieves max-min fairness. The reliability of the OA-NOMA strategy is also evaluated in terms of outage probability and diversity order. For the outage probability, we derive an approximate expression and numerically verify its tightness. For the diversity order, we show that the proposed OA-NOMA strategy achieves a diversity order of $M$ .

Background Microfibril-associated protein 2 (MFAP2) is a protein coding gene that exerts important phenotypic effects on cell motility, and increasing research has indicated that MFAP2 was correlated with many cancers. However, the functional and potential clinical role of MFAP2 in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) has not yet been verified. Materials and Methods We performed whole transcriptome sequencing on 78 paired PTC tissues and corresponding adjacent normal tissues and found that MFAP2 was highly expressed in PTC tissues. Then, we analyzed the expression of MFAP2 and its relation with the clinicopathological features of PTC in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) PTC genomic dataset. We detected MFAP2 expression in 40 paired PTC tissues and corresponding adjacent normal tissues through RT-qPCR (real time-quantitative polymerase chain reaction) to validate the sequencing data and TCGA cohort. Cell functional assays were performed to elucidate the function of MFAP2 in PTC cells, Western blot assay was performed to explore the correlation between MFAP2 and EMT (epithelial-mesenchymal transition)-related proteins. Results Statistical analysis showed that MFAP2 was obviously upregulated in PTC tissues compared to matched normal tissues, and the expression levels of MFAP2 in PTC tissues were strongly related with lymph node metastasis (p=0.016). The results of RT-qPCR of our own tissue specimens showed the same conclusions as that in TCGA dataset. The results of functional assays in PTC cell lines showed that MFAP2 could promote proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion abilities and decrease the apoptotic rate in PTC cells. Western Blot assay showed that MFAP2 could regulate the expression of EMT-related proteins. Conclusion MFAP2 increases the proliferation, motility and decreases the apoptosis of PTC cells, and might be a potential therapeutic target for papillary thyroid cancer.

T cell receptor (TCR)-mediated immune functions are closely related to autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). However, technical challenges used to limit the accurate profiling of TCR diversity in SLE and the characteristics of SLE patients remain largely unknown. In this study, we collected peripheral blood samples from 10 SLE patients with lupus nephritis (LN) who were confirmed by renal biopsy, as well as 10 healthy controls. The TCR repertoire of each sample was assessed by high-throughput sequencing to examine the distinction between SLE subjects and healthy controls. Our results showed statistically significant differences in TCR diversity and usage of TRBV/TRBJ genes between the two groups. A set of signature V-J combinations enabled efficient identification of SLE cases, yielding an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.74-1.00). Taken together, our results revealed the potential correlation between the TCR repertoire and SLE status, which may facilitate the development of novel immune biomarkers.

BACKGROUND The oncogenic roles of lncRNA THOR have been revealed in several tumors, however, its functions in breast cancer are still unclear. MATERIAL AND METHODS Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to detect THOR expression in clinical samples and the expression of stemness regulatory factors. ALDH1 assay and sphere-formation analysis were constructed to examine the stemness of cells. Cell viability assay was constructed to determine the cell proliferation capacity. In vitro RNA-RNA interaction and messenger RNA (mRNA) stability assays were performed to explore the mechanisms. RESULTS THOR was overexpressed in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) compared to that in luminal A- and B-type breast cancer. THOR silencing reduced TNBC cell stemness, which was evident by the decreased sphere-formation ability, stemness marker expression and ALDH1 activity. Mechanistically, THOR directly bound to s-catenin mRNA, enhanced s-catenin mRNA stability and thus increased its expression. Furthermore, overexpression of s-catenin partially diminished THOR silencing-mediated inhibition on TNBC cell stemness. CONCLUSIONS This work proposes that THOR facilitates TNBC cell stemness through activating s-catenin signaling.

Wearable body area networks (BANs) have been widely used in activity measurements for kinematic information collection. This paper presents the design and implementation of a wearable device used as a training tool in freestyle swimming. The device supplies a close-loop control mechanism via a fuzzy logic controller. Swimming posture data is collected quantitatively and audibly fed back to swimmers in real time through bone conductors. Two recreational swimmers were invited to participate in a series of experiments including 7 days of baseline capability test (no feedback), 7 days of feedback training, and 2 days of retention test. It was found that both swimmers could well adapt to the feedback instructions. A maximum of 7.62% of lap time improvement and 29.64% of trunk roll improvement were observed in FB training, and such pattern was maintained after feedback was removed. We conclude that real-time fuzzy logic feedback can be used to improve recreational swimmers performance.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). Several factors, including neuroinflammation, neuronal excitotoxicity, genetic mutations and incorrect protein folding are involved in PD pathophysiology. However, the precise mechanism that contributes to the decreased number of dopaminergic neurons is unknown. A growing body of research suggests that oxidative stress is a major factor in PD. Therefore, antioxidant therapy is an important approach for treating PD. The thioredoxin system is an important antioxidant system, and thioredoxin reductase 1 (TR1) is a major member of the thioredoxin system. The present study demonstrates that oxidative stress is increased and that the expression of TR1 is decreased in the SNc of A53T mice; TR1 has emerged as an important antioxidant agent in dopaminergic neurons. Therefore, we over-expressed TR1 in the MPP+-induced cellular model and in the A53T transgenic mouse model of PD. We confirmed that the overexpression of TR1 in neuronal cells decreased DNA damage and malondialdehyde (MDA) and ROS generation, increased T-SOD and GSH production, and decreased the ER stress, and autophagy in the PD model. In summary, our findings demonstrate that the overexpression of TR1 could be effective as a novel neuroprotective strategy for PD. This research suggests a novel direction in the treatment of PD.

Energy consumption is one of the most important issues for mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops. For mobile devices that execute multiple computation-intensive or delay-sensitive applications simultaneously, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) based offloading provides a promising solution to the energy problem. However, blindly offloading all tasks to MEC servers is not the best choice because transferring a simple task to a MEC server via wireless networks might consume more energy than processing the task locally. In addition, Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) could be utilized to reduce the energy consumption associated with locally processed tasks by appropriately lowering CPU frequency. In this paper, we propose a realtime reinforcement learning based offloading scheme, RRLO, which is based on both MEC-based offloading and DVFS-based energy consumption reduction. Technically, RRLO jointly learns the optimal offloading policy and DVFS-based scheduling method. Depending on the workload and network condition, RRLO not only determines whether a task should be offloaded to a MEC server, but also selects the best DVFS method used to schedule local tasks. Our simulation results indicate that RRLO outperforms the existing MEC-based offloading schemes.

Objective To investigate the application of mind mapping-based health education in extended care for children with caries. Methods This was a prospective study of 159 eligible children with caries. Participants were randomly assigned to an observation group and a control group, and received extended health education and guidance. Patients in the observation group received health education with mind mapping. In the third month after the first visit, a questionnaire survey was conducted to assess knowledge of extended caries diagnosis and treatment in children and their parents. Children also underwent a bacterial plaque test. Results Caries knowledge was significantly greater in the observation group than in the control group. There was no significant between-group difference in debris index on the bacterial plaque test. The observation group had a significantly greater number of follow-up visits in 12 months than the control group. Conclusions Mind mapping was effective in the implementation of extended care. Mind mapping information was more accessible to children and their parents, increasing their compliance with health education. Thus, mind mapping is an appropriate health education tool for use in extended care for children with caries.

Senescence is activated in response to gemcitabine to prevent the propagation of cancer cells. However, there is little evidence on whether senescence is involved in gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that microRNAs (miRs) are potential regulators of cellular senescence. The present study aimed to investigate whether aberrant miR-7 expression modulated senescence to influence pancreatic cancer resistance to chemotherapy. In the present study, cell senescence assay, ALDEFLUOR™ assay, luciferase reporter assay, flow cytometry, quantitative PCR, immunohistochemistry and western blot analysis were performed to explore the association between senescence and gemcitabine therapy response, and to clarify the underlying mechanisms. The present study revealed that gemcitabine-induced chronically existing senescent pancreatic cells possessed stemness markers. Therapy-induced senescence led to gemcitabine resistance. Additionally, it was found that miR-7 expression was decreased in gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer cells, and that miR-7 acted as an important regulator of cellular senescence by targeting poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1)/NF-κB signaling. When miR-7 expression was restored, it was able to sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that miR-7 regulated cellular senescence and relieved gemcitabine resistance by targeting the PARP1/NF-κB axis in pancreatic cancer cells.

Bacterial adhesion and growth at the composite/adhesive/tooth interface remain the primary cause of dental composite restoration failure. Early colonizers, including Streptococcus mutans, play a critical role in the formation of dental caries by creating an environment that reduces the adhesive's integrity. Subsequently, other bacterial species, biofilm formation, and lactic acid from S. mutans demineralize the adjoining tooth. Because of their broad spectrum of antibacterial activity and low risk for antibiotic resistance, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have received significant attention to prevent bacterial biofilms. Harnessing the potential of AMPs is still very limited in dentistry-a few studies have explored peptide-enabled antimicrobial adhesive copolymer systems using mainly nonspecific adsorption. In the current investigation, to avoid limitations from nonspecific adsorption and to prevent potential peptide leakage out of the resin, we conjugated an AMP with a commonly used monomer for dental adhesive formulation. To tailor the flexibility between the peptide and the resin material, we designed two different spacer domains. The spacer-integrated antimicrobial peptides were conjugated to methacrylate (MA), and the resulting MA-AMP monomers were next copolymerized into dental adhesives as AMP-polymer conjugates. The resulting bioactivity of the polymethacrylate-based AMP conjugated matrix activity was investigated. The antimicrobial peptide conjugated to the resin matrix demonstrated significant antimicrobial activity against S. mutans. Secondary structure analyses of conjugated peptides were applied to understand the activity differential. When mechanical properties of the adhesive system were investigated with respect to AMP and cross-linking concentration, resulting AMP-polymer conjugates maintained higher compressive moduli compared to hydrogel analogues including polyHEMA. Overall, our result provides a robust approach to develop a fine-tuned bioenabled peptide adhesive system with improved mechanical properties and antimicrobial activity. The results of this study represent a critical step toward the development of peptide-conjugated dentin adhesives for treatment of secondary caries and the enhanced durability of dental composite restorations.

Two-stage ensemble-based forecasting methods have been studied extensively in the wind power forecasting field. However, deep learning-based wind power forecasting studies have not investigated two aspects. In the first stage, different learning structures considering multiple inputs and multiple outputs have not been discussed. In the second stage, the model extrapolation issue has not been investigated. Therefore, we develop four deep neural networks for the first stage to learn data features considering the input-and-output structure. We then explore the model extrapolation issue in the second stage using different modeling methods. Considering the overfitting issue, we propose a new moving window-based algorithm using a validation set in the first stage to update the training data in both stages with two different moving window processes.Experiments were conducted at three wind farms, and the results demonstrate that the model with single input multiple output structure obtains better forecasting accuracy compared to existing models. In addition, the ridge regression method results in a better ensemble model that can further improve forecasting accuracy compared to existing machine learning methods. Finally, the proposed two-stage forecasting algorithm can generate more accurate and stable results than existing algorithms.

Background: To identify neoplastic and reactive neoformation bone by quantitative CT radiomics analysis, and to further validate the performance of the model by the diagnosis of osteosarcoma (OS) and chondrosarcoma (CS). Methods: A total of 478 bone tumor patients were retrospectively enrolled from 5 hospitals. Crucial radiomics features were selected and employed to construct radiomics signature by Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. Then radiomics signature and clinical characteristics were combined to construct the model identifying neoplastic and reactive neoformation bone (ModelRN) in the training set (n = 300), and then validated in the validation set (n = 178). Furthermore, a new model (ModelOC) incorporating the clinical characteristics and the comprehensive scores produced by ModelRN was constructed to differentiate OS and CS (training set: n = 103; validation set: n = 41). The performance of the model was evaluated with respect to discrimination, calibration, and clinical usefulness. Findings: ModelRN incorporating radiomics signature, tumor position and course of disease achieved promising results with high identification accuracy (AUC: 0.9319 in the training set and 0.9350 in the validation set). ModelOC was built incorporating alkaline phosphatase with the comprehensive score produced by ModelRN. ModelOC also showed satisfying performance in the training (AUC: 0.8752) and validation (AUC: 0.9032) sets. Decision curve analysis showed the clinical usefulness of the model. Interpretation: This study suggested that CT-based radiomics can help radiologists to identify neoplastic and reactive neoformation bone, thereby more effectively distinguishing osteosarcoma from chondrosarcoma than current clinical images diagnosis. Funding Statement: This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81871510, 81871511), Ministry of Science and Technology of China under Grant (No.2017YFA0205200, 2017YFA0700401, 2016YFA0100902, 2016YFC0103803, 2016YFA0201401, 2016YFC0103702). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical approval was obtained from the institutional review board (IRB) of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, and the need for informed consent from the patients was waived.

Virtual reality, an immersing and interactive information communication technology, is changing the fundamental of medical education by creating more astonishing vivid realistic clinical environment and cases. Here, we proposed a virtual reality medical education platform with intelligent real-time emotion evaluation and help system, named Hypocrates+. By this platform, medical students can gain their medical knowledge and experience through well designed virtual clinical cases and environments with less frustration. Experiments shows that the overall mean frustration before getting the help was 0.53 and the mean frustration after was 0.50; better performance is related to lower frustration. We concluded that Hypocrates+ is a good start for developing a popular virtual medical education platform.

In this correspondence paper, we investigate the problem of user scheduling in a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system consisting of a base station, a weak user, and $K$ intermediate users. During each transmission, an intermediate user is scheduled to receive its own message and forward the message destined for the weak user. For this type of cooperative NOMA system, a novel scheduling scheme is proposed to achieve full diversity and scheduling fairness simultaneously. With the consideration that all channels experience independent but non-identically distributed Rayleigh fading, outage probabilities of the weak user and the scheduled intermediate user are derived in closed-form expressions. It is theoretically shown that the proposed scheme provides full diversity for both the weak user and the scheduled intermediate user. Furthermore, theoretical results also demonstrate that the proposed scheme schedules each intermediate user with the same probability 1/ $K$ , demonstrating that scheduling fairness is also guaranteed.

In this paper, a dynamic radio resource slicing framework is presented for a two-tier heterogeneous wireless network. Through software-defined networking-enabled wireless network function virtualization, radio spectrum resources of heterogeneous wireless networks are partitioned into different bandwidth slices for different base stations (BSs). This framework facilitates spectrum sharing among heterogeneous BSs and achieves differentiated quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for data service and machine-to-machine service in the presence of network load dynamics. To determine the set of optimal bandwidth slicing ratios and optimal BS-device association patterns, a network utility maximization problem is formulated with the consideration of different traffic statistics and QoS requirements, location distribution for end devices, varying device locations, load conditions in each cell, and intercell interference. For tractability, the optimization problem is transformed to a biconcave maximization problem. An alternative concave search (ACS) algorithm is then designed to solve for a set of partial optimal solutions. Simulation results verify the convergence property and display low complexity of the ACS algorithm. It is demonstrated that the proposed radio resource slicing framework outperforms the two other resource slicing schemes in terms of low communication overhead, high spectrum utilization, and high aggregate network utility.

Fruit morphology is an important trait closely related to fruit quality and quality parameters evaluated for new cultivar breeding. FASCIATED (FAS), SUN and OVATE are characterized as key genes that regulate fruit morphology in tomato and other fruits, however, its underlying mechanism driving variation in blueberry is not known. In this study, FAS, SUN and OVATE genes were isolated from southern highbush blueberry ‘O’Neal’ (10–14 locules) and ‘Bluerain’ (10 locules). VcFAS and VcSUN gDNAs contained 5 introns and 4 exons, whereas no intron was detected in the VcOVATE gDNAs. Additionally, between two cultivars, long-fragment insertions/deletions (in/dels) were found in the 1st, 2nd and 5th introns of VcFAS and in the 2nd introns of VcSUN gDNAs. The expression levels of VcFAS, VcSUN and VcOVATE were significantly higher in the expanded leaves and lower in the rootlets than those in the stems. VcFAS and VcSUN mRNAs in the ‘Bluerain’ flower buds were dramatically higher than in those of ‘O’Neal’, and partially lower in the ‘Bluerain’ fruits than in those of ‘O’Neal’. Compared with VcFAS and VcSUN, VcOVATE transcripts were relatively low throughout the flower bud and fruit development, although the VcOVATE transcripts were somewhat higher in the early flower bud and fruit stages of ‘Bluerain’ than in those of ‘O’Neal’. The results indicated that VcFAS, VcSUN and VcOVATE might influence blueberry fruit morphology at pre-anthesis and post-pollination stages, but particularly at the pre-anthesis stages, and the in/dels of VcFAS and VcSUN introns might affect fruit shape and size through regulating the locule number during flower bud enlargement.

Modern society relies heavily on complex infrastructures, such as power systems and communication systems, which makes it vulnerable to intentional attacks or unpredictable failures. Being able to locate critical components in such systems allows us to protect it from attacks or failures with minimal effort. From a network science perspective, two fundamental types of components in a system are its constituent nodes and edges. The importance of nodes recently attracts a lot of interests. However, edges are paid less attention to, although in the case of protection, edge targeted methods are less invasive and more flexible. In this brief, we address the issue of quantifying importance of edges. The importance of edges is defined as how their removal affects the connectivity of the network, since connectivity is the most important property that ensures the network’s function. The proposed importance measure, nearest-neighbor connectivity-based edge importance, can be used to quantify the importance of a single edge or a set of edges. The result on real-world network data shows that the proposed measure is more efficient than the most widely used measures. As another result, we show that the importance of a single edge is not necessarily positive correlated with the importance of incident nodes, which is widely assumed in literatures.

Background and objective Freezing of gait (FOG) is a symptom that manifests as an episodic inability to move. It happens typically in patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease (PD), and it is a common cause of falls in PD patients. The management of FOG is extremely difficult due to its sudden and transient property. Methods In this study, we implemented a novel FOG detection system that was based on deep convolutional neural network (CNN). By taking data segments from 1-dimensional (1D) acceleration signals as its inputs, the proposed CNN-based approach can realize automatic feature learning and discrimination of FOG events from normal walking in a streamline manner. By this way, it can remove the need for extracting hand-crafted features and the time-consuming feature selection. The proposed method was tested on a dataset comprised of more than eight hours of recorded lab data from 10 PD patients that experience FOG in their daily life. Results The final system achieved more than 99% classification accuracy in a patient-dependent setting, and an average of 80.70% accuracy in the patient -independent setting. The time for classification of a 4 s data segment is only 3.6 ms without the acceleration of graphics processing unit (GPU). Conclusions These results indicate that the proposed CNN-based system can provide satisfactory effectivity and efficiency in detecting FOG gaits if used suitably and can be beneficial to realize an accurate monitoring and gait assistance during daily living and rehabilitation therapy.

Pleurotus tuoliensis is a popular edible and medical mushroom, but it is highly perishable during postharvest storage. The quality parameters, chemical composition, malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration, and activity of metabolic enzymes were studied during 12 days of storage at 4 °C and 6 days of storage at 25 °C. Degradation was well described by changes in quality parameters, losses in nutritional value, increased metabolic enzyme activity, the accumulation of MDA concentrations, and the increase of total phenolic (TP) content. The phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) significantly positively correlated with TP, which suggested an underlying mechanism of browning that the increased PAL activity stimulates the biosynthesis of phenols through the phenylalanine pathway. These results suggest that increased activity of laccase, lipoxygenase, PAL, TP and MDA accumulation, together with polysaccharide degradation, are the main factors involved in the deterioration of P. tuoliensis during storage.

In order to tackle the spectrum scarcity problem and enhance the spectrum efficiency, deploying LTE in unlicensed band (LTE-U) is an emerging technology for supporting massive connections in future networks. By taking into account of the coexistence between the LTE-U cellular user equipments (CUEs) and the legacy Wi-Fi stations (STAs) in the unlicensed band, a partial non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based scheme is proposed in this paper. By dividing all UEs into two groups and making the Wi-Fi STA as the UE with the weakest channel gain in its group, we can exploit the multiplexing gain of NOMA by introducing no extra modification to Wi-Fi STAs. Accordingly, a fairness-oriented resource allocation framework is formulated as a max-min problem to jointly optimize the inter-group time occupancy ratio and the intra-group power allocation when the guaranteed bit rate (GBR) requirements for each UE are considered. A modified two-dimensional bisection algorithm is proposed to search the optimal time occupancy ratio and the max-min rate in this coexisting network. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the partial NOMA scheme and outperform the traditional orthogonal multiple access method, in terms of both efficiency and robustness.

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have been developed rapidly with the increasing popularity of wireless network and wearable technologies. The inherent characteristics of convenience and efficiency for health monitoring facilitate the depth and width of WBAN applications. However, the inter-WBAN interference problem affects the network performance in intensive WBAN scenarios, degrading reliability and increasing latency of health data. In this paper, we propose a Two-Tier Multi-channel Medium Access Control (2TM-MAC) protocol with interference mitigation for reliable health monitoring. Specially, the 2TM-MAC establishes an inter-WBAN interference matrix for every WBAN to show the mutual interference among coexisting WBANs. We design a multi-channel selection algorithm at the first tier to select different numbers of channels for each WBAN to avoid inter-WBAN interference and collisions. At the second tier, the hub of each WBAN schedules the available channels assigned from the first tier to sensor nodes according to their traffic requirements, mitigating the intra-WBAN interference as well. 2TM-MAC protocol enhances the reliability of emergency data and service experience in healthcare applications. Simulation results show the 2TM-MAC protocol significantly improves the network throughput and decreases the average packet delay compared with IEEE 802.15.6 for densely deployed coexisting WBANs scenarios.

Intelligent wireless body area networks (WBANs) have entered into an incredible explosive popularization stage. WBAN technologies facilitate real-time and reliable health monitoring in e-healthcare and creative applications in other fields. However, due to the limited space and medical resources, deeply deployed WBANs are suffering severe interference problems. The interference affects the reliability and timeliness of data transmissions, and the impacts of interference become more serious in mobile WBANs because of the uncertainty of human movement. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic interference taking human mobility into consideration. The dynamic interference is investigated in different situations for WBANs coexistence. To guarantee the performance of different traffic types, a health critical index is proposed to ensure the transmission privilege of emergency data for intra- and inter-WBANs. Furthermore, the performance of the target WBAN, i.e., normalized throughput and average access delay, under different interference intensity are evaluated using a developed three-dimensional Markov chain model. Extensive numerical results show that the interference generated by mobile neighbor WBANs results in 70% throughput decrease for general medical data and doubles the packet delay experienced by the target WBAN for emergency data compared with single WBAN. The evaluation results greatly benefit the network design and management as well as the interference mitigation protocols design.

Micellization mechanism of biosurfactant/synthetic surfactant systems is essential in predicting their industrial applications. Biosurfactant, [Glu1,Asp5]-C15 surfactin, mixing with three isomers of sodium cetyl benzenesulfonate (SCBS) with benzenesulfonate attached at the 2nd, 5th, 8th carbon on the alkyl chain (abbreviated as 2-SCBS, 5-SCBS, and 8-SCBS), constituted the binary biosurfactant/synthetic surfactant systems in this work. Effects of mixing ratios, temperature, and hydrophobic structures of SCBS on micellization process were investigated by surface tensiometry, steady state fluorescence measurements, dynamic light scattering, and small angle neutron scattering. The results showed that at 60 ℃ synergism in micellization occurred in surfactin/2-SCBS and surfactin/5-SCBS binary systems, while antagonism appeared in surfactin/8-SCBS binary systems. Molecular interaction in mixed micelle at 60 ℃ turned from strong attractive to strong repulsive with the benzenesulfonate moving from the end to the middle of the alkyl chain. Surfactin exhibited weak interaction with both 5-SCBS and 8-SCBS at 25 ℃. Mixed surfactin/2-SCBS micelles were formed in spherical cylinders with more hydrophobic core and within 66 A. Mixed surfactin/5-SCBS micelles and mixed surfactin/8-SCBS micelles showed similar morphology evolutions at 25 ℃, long elliptical cylinders transformed into small spherical cylinder by reducing both length and radius ratio of cross section with increasing surfactin mole fraction.

The Second Meeting of the National Control Laboratories for Vaccines and Biologicals in the Western Pacific, was jointly organized by the National Institute of Food and Drug Safety Evaluation of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in the Republic of Korea, and by the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific. In the National Lot Release Systems session countries including Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Republic of Korea, all shared information on their current Lot Release Systems, including current practices and developments in risk-based official lot release of vaccines. In the session on Quality Control of Blood Products, experts from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control shared quality control and research results for; blood coagulation factor VIII products, and the measurement of procoagulant activity in immunoglobulin products. Representatives from Japan proposed a regional collaborative study to test aggregated immunoglobulin free from complement activity. A cell-based Japanese encephalitis vaccine potency assay was proposed by representatives from Korea and they also called for voluntary participation of other National Control Laboratories in a collaborative study, on the first Korean Gloydius anti-venom standard. Participants agreed in general to continue communicating, and coordinate presentation of the study results.

With software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies, network slicing is a promising solution for resource orchestration to achieve quality-of-service (QoS) isolation in customized services in fifth-generation (5G) networks. In this article, we propose a comprehensive network slicing framework for end-to-end (E2E) QoS provisioning, with differentiated resource types in both wireless and wired network domains considered.

China has recently seen surging retail investor participation in commodity futures markets and rapid adoption of mobile Internet interface. We study two questions with these developments using search frequency from Baidu, the leading Chinese Internet search engine, as a measure of retail investor attention. First we examine whether the relation between retail investor attention and stock returns exists for futures markets where short-selling constraint faced by retail investors is relaxed. Second, we investigate whether mobile Internet searches serve as an effective attention measure as traditional PC-based Internet searches. We find that higher attention predicts larger positive and negative returns in the futures markets, consistent with the argument of short-selling constraint in stock market. We also find that the predictive power of search frequency is mainly from PC-based searches and not from mobile searches.

The tremendous proliferation of smart phones and other smart devices has spurred the explosive growth of delay-sensitive high-rate multimedia services, which significantly increases energy consumption in wireless cellular networks. Therefore, it is an important yet challenging issue to carry out resource allocation for cellular networks to meet the quality of service requirement in terms of high data rate and, at the same time, achieve high energy efficiency. In this paper, two resource allocation approaches are proposed, where user selection and power allocation are jointly considered, to maximize effective capacity (EC) and effective energy efficiency (EEE), respectively, for a relay-assisted downlink of cellular networks. Channel estimation errors are taken into account to make the proposed approaches more practical. Moreover, to solve the EC maximization problem efficiently, we develop an optimal algorithm based on Lagrange method and Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, and derive closed-form optimal solutions for user selection and power allocation at both the base station and relays. For the EEE maximization problem, an iterative algorithm based on the Dinkelbach method is developed to find the optimal solutions. Theoretical analysis and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approaches in terms of EC, EEE, and delay bound violation probability.

Fluorescent derivatization of the carboxyls in surfactin peptide rings is an effective way to improve the sensitivity of trace detection of surfactin, but very little is known about the reaction selectivity of surfactin containing multiple carboxyls in derivatization. In this paper, the reaction selectivity in fluorescent derivatization of a surfactin containing two carboxyls in its peptide ring with 1-bromoacetylpyrene and the catalysis role in the reactions were investigated using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry. It showed that only one carboxyl was labeled with 1-bromoacetylpyrene in derivatization reactions, and the connection of the Asp residue with 1-bromoacetylpyrene was confirmed. It also showed that triethylamine as a catalyst was connected with surfactin to liberate more nucleophilic groups beneficial to promote the derivatization rate. This would contribute to better understanding the mechanism of derivatization of surfactin and its analogues with 1-bromoacetylpyrene, and with other fluorescent labeling reagents.

This study investigates the effect of China's new accounting standards (which converged with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2007) on a new market‐based attribute of earnings quality – earnings transparency (defined as the explanatory power of the returns–earnings relation at firm level) – and their association with audit pricing. Using China's listed companies from 2001 to 2012 as a sample, we find that the adoption of China's new accounting standards, specifically the introduction of fair value measurement and the change in the accounting treatment of minority interest income, increases earnings transparency. We also find that earnings transparency negatively impacts audit fees, and the adoption of new accounting standards attenuates the negative association between earnings transparency and audit fees. This study has implications for standard setters, auditors and managers regarding the change in the information environment of investors resulting from IFRS convergence in China from a new perspective.

Recently, significant attention has been paid to the controllability problem of networked systems. In many real-world multi-agent systems, agents are spatially located in arbitrary positions and can only communicate with nearby agents. A natural problem of designing such a system is how to determine the necessary communication radius that ensures a certain degree of controllability. Taking advantage of the recent findings on network controllability, we obtain theoretical results that aid in choosing such a radius. We find that the critical communication radius, with which one can use only a negligible number of driver nodes to control the whole system, is proportional to the inverse of the square root of node density. Finally, we present how our conclusions apply to systems of different scales, ranging from very-large scale systems that have nearly infinite nodes to ones with only a limited number of nodes. The probability for the calculated critical communication radius to have a certain error is shown to be bounded.