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High leakage power consumption has become a serious problem in modern IC designs. By isolating a circuit block that is not in use from the power supply, power gating has become one of the most effective ways to reduce leakage power. During the circuit wake-up process, turning on sleep transistors simultaneously may induce an excessive surge current, which will threaten signal integrity. To avoid significant surge currents, sleep transistor wake-up sequences should be carefully designed. On the other hand, PMOS sleep transistors may suffer from the Negative-Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) effect, where the wake-up time is increased after circuit aging. Conventional fixed wake-up sequence-based methods do not consider the NBTI effect, which may result in a longer or an unacceptable wake-up time after circuit aging. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel reconfigurable circuit structure that can reconfigure the wake-up sequence and a novel NBTI-aware wake-up strategy to reduce the wake-up time. Our strategy first finds a set of proper wake-up sequences under different aging circumstances and then dynamically reconfigures wake-up sequences at runtime based on an actual aging scenario (i.e. different months or years of aging). The experimental results show that compared with a traditional fixed wake-up sequence approach, our strategy can reduce up to 49.78% of the average wake-up time latency. In the meantime, according to our estimation, to implement the reconfigurable wake-up sequence structure, the parasitic area overhead is only about 0.27% with a larger benchmark.

BACKGROUND: Since COVID-19 outbreak, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been tested for effective therapies and the relevant researches have shown controversial results. METHODS: Systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted after a thorough search of relevant studies from databases. Trials that have evaluated HCQ for COVID-19 treatment were recruited for statistical analysis with fixed- and random-effect models. RESULTS: Nine trials involving 4,112 patients were included in present meta-analysis. It was seen that hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin (HCQ-AZI) combination regimen increased the mortality rate in COVID-19 (OR 2.34, 95% CI 1.63-3.36) patients, however, it also showed benefits associated with the viral clearance in patients (OR 27.18, 95% CI 1.29-574.32). HCQ-alone when used as a therapy in COVID-19 did not reveal significant changes in mortality rate, clinical progression, viral clearance and cardiac QT prolongation. Subsequent subgroup analysis showed that HCQ treatment could decrease mortality rate and progression to severe illness in severely-infected COVID-19 patients (OR 0.27, 95% CI 0.13-0.58). A lower risk of mortality rate was also noted in the stratified group of >14 days follow-up period (OR 0.27, 95% CI 0.13-0.58) compared to ≦14 days follow-up period group that conversely showed an increased mortality rate (OR 2.09, 95% CI 1.41-3.10). CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that HCQ-AZI combination treatment increased mortality rate in COVID-19, but it also showed benefits associated with viral clearance in patients. HCQ-alone used for treatment has revealed benefits in decreasing the mortality rate among severely-infected COVID-19 group and showed potential to be used for COVID-19 treatment in long-term follow-up period group. Accordingly, more rigorous, large-scale and long follow-up period studies in patients with COVID-19 are needed.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is mainly an infectious disease of the respiratory system transmitted through air droplets, and pulmonary symptoms constitute main presentations of this disease. However, COVID-19 demonstrates a clinically diverse manifestation ranging from asymptomatic presentation to critically illness with severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory failure, or multiple organ failure. Accumulating evidences demonstrated that COVID-19 has extrapulmonary involvement, including neurological, smelling sensation, cardiovascular, digestive, hepatobiliary, renal, endocrinologic, dermatologic system, and others. Over a third of COVID-19 patients manifest a wide range of neurological symptoms involving the central/peripheral nervous system. Underlying cardiovascular comorbidities were associated with detrimental outcomes, meanwhile the occurrence of cardiovascular complications correlate to poor survival. Gastrointestinal symptoms frequently occur and have been associated with a longer period of illness. Impaired hepatic functions were associated with the severity of the disease. Higher rate of acute kidney injury was reported in critically ill patients with COVID-19. Endocrinologic presentations of COVID-19 include exacerbating hyperglycemia, euglycemic ketosis, and diabetic ketoacidosis. The most common cutaneous manifestation was acro-cutaneous (pernio or chilblain-like) lesions, and other skin lesions consist of maculopapular rash, vesicular lesions, livedoid/necrotic lesions, exanthematous rashes, and petechiae. This review article summarized the general clinical signs and symptoms, radiologic features, and disease manifestation with progression in patients with COVID-19.

In recent years, many large-scale plantings have become refined small-scale or home plantings. The rapid progress of agriculture technologies and information techniques enables people to control the growth of agricultural products well. Hence, this study proposes an Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) based Plant Pot Design for planting edible mint in an office setting, which is called APPD. APPD is composed of intelligent gardens and a cloud-based service platform. An intelligent garden is deployed an Arduino with multiple sensors to monitor and control plant pots of the edible mint, Mentha spicata. The cloud-based service platform provides a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) inference engine with a database for adjustment influence factors. This study discusses eight growing statuses of Mentha spicata with different illumination, photometric exposure, and moisture content, designed for an office environment. Evaluation results indicate that Mentha spicata with 16 h red–blue lighting and 50% moisture content makes a maximum 5% mint extract of the total weight of the mint leaves. Finally, APPD can be a reference model for researchers and engineers.

The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has brought an unprecedented impact upon the global economy and public health. Although the SARS-CoV-2 virology has been gradually investigated, measures to combat this new threat in public health are still absent. To date, no certificated drug or vaccine has been developed for the treatment or prevention of coronavirus disease Extensive researches and international coordination has been conducted to rapidly develop novel vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Several major breakthroughs have been made through the identification of the genetic sequence and structural/non-structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2, which enabled the development of RNA-, DNA-based vaccines, subunit vaccines, and attenuated viral vaccines. In this review article, we present an overview of the recent advances of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and the challenges that may be encountered in the development process, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches that may help in effectively countering COVID-19.

The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has brought an unprecedented impact upon the global economy and public health. Although the SARS-CoV-2 virology has been gradually investigated, measures to combat this new threat in public health are still absent. To date, no certificated drug or vaccine has been developed for the treatment or prevention of coronavirus disease Extensive researches and international coordination has been conducted to rapidly develop novel vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Several major breakthroughs have been made through the identification of the genetic sequence and structural/non-structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2, which enabled the development of RNA-, DNA-based vaccines, subunit vaccines, and attenuated viral vaccines. In this review article, we present an overview of the recent advances of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and the challenges that may be encountered in the development process, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches that may help in effectively countering COVID-19.

Since COVID-19 outbreak, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been tested for effective therapies, and the relevant researches have shown controversial results.Systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted after a thorough search of relevant studies from databases. Trials that have evaluated HCQ for COVID-19 treatment were recruited for statistical analysis with fixed- and random-effect models.Nine trials involving 4112 patients were included in present meta-analysis. It was seen that HCQ-azithromycin (HCQ-AZI) combination regimen increased the mortality rate in COVID-19 (odds ratio [OR], 2.34; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.63-3.36) patients; however, it also showed benefits associated with the viral clearance in patients (OR, 27.18; 95% CI, 1.29-574.32). HCQ-alone when used as a therapy in COVID-19 did not reveal significant changes in mortality rate, clinical progression, viral clearance, and cardiac QT prolongation. Subsequent subgroup analysis showed that HCQ treatment could decrease mortality rate and progression to severe illness in severely infected COVID-19 patients (OR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.13-0.58). A lower risk of mortality rate was also noted in the stratified group of14 days follow-up period (OR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.13-0.58) compared to ≤14 days follow-up period group that conversely showed an increased mortality rate (OR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.41-3.10).Our results indicated that HCQ-AZI combination treatment increased mortality rate in patients with COVID-19, but it also showed benefits associated with viral clearance in patients. HCQ-alone used for treatment has revealed benefits in decreasing the mortality rate among severely infected COVID-19 group and showed potential to be used for COVID-19 treatment in long-term follow-up period group. Accordingly, more rigorous, large-scale, and long follow-up period studies in patients with COVID-19 are needed.