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Due to the growing proportion of uncertain and fluctuating renewable energy sources in the power system, reasonable generation expansion considering the uncertainties is desperately needed. This paper proposes a novel three‐stage wind‐thermal generation expansion planning model based on representative day unit commitment that incorporates the uncertainty of wind power and load and the probabilistic reliability criteria. The probabilistic reliability criteria are considered by simulating random outage events of thermal units using a robust approach. The consequent robust reliability model is reformulated as mixed‐integer linear programming models and integrated into the multi‐stage generation expansion planning model. A decomposed strategy based on the Benders decomposition is adopted to tackle with the large‐scale original model. Case studies are performed on both the revised IEEE 14‐bus and IEEE 118‐bus test systems to validate the effectiveness of proposed model and method. Numerical results show that the proposed generation planning method balances the economy and reliability of the system.

Background A prospective phase II study showed that Endostar combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) can improve overall survival (OS) in patients with inoperable locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study aimed to retrospectively compare the 5-year survival rates of patients with inoperable locally advanced NSCLC who received a combination of Endostar and CCRT to that of patients receiving CCRT. Methods Treatment-naive patients with inoperable locally advanced NSCLC who had long-term follow-up data were included in this study. Patients in CCRT + Endostar group were treated with Endostar plus radical CCRT, and patients in CCRT group received radical CCRT. For patients with a radiation dose ≥60 Gy, Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis, and Cox proportional-hazards regression model was used for univariate analysis. Results A total of 104 participants were included in the CCRT + Endostar group with 89 participants included in the CCRT group. There were 88 (84.6%) and 74 (83.1%) male patients, respectively. The median follow-up times of two groups were 73.6 (95% CI: 65.6 to 81.7 months) and 66.3 months (95% CI: 52.7 to 79.9 months), respectively. The median overall survival (OS) was 29.7 (95% CI: 22.8 to 36.6 months) and 21.3 months (95% CI: 15.9 to 26.7 months), respectively. Conclusions This study showed that the 5-year survival of those patients who received the combination treatment of Endostar and radical CCRT was significantly superior to those who received radical CCRT.

The adverse effects of heavy metals, such as cadmium, zinc, and copper, occur due to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The use of Caenorhabditis elegans for the purposes of conservation and biomonitoring is of great interest. In the present study, ROS, malondialdehyde (MDA), and citric acid levels and superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities in a model organism were tested to study toxicity. C. elegans was exposed to three different concentrations of cadmium (CdCl2, 5, 10, 50 μM), zinc (ZnSO4, 10, 100, 500 μM), and copper (CuSO4, 10, 100, 500 μM) for 3 days. ROS levels increased by 1.3- to 2.1-fold with increasing metal concentrations. The MDA content increased by approximately 7-, 5-, 2-fold after exposure to high concentrations of cadmium, zinc, and copper, respectively. Furthermore, the citric acid content increased by approximately 3-fold in the cadmium (Cd, 5 μM), zinc (Zn, 10 μM), and copper (Cu, 100 μM) treatment groups compared to that in untreated C. elegans. Therefore, citric acid may play an important role in heavy metal detoxification. Excess citric acid also slightly increased the LC50 by 1.3- to 2.0-fold, basic movements by 1.0- to 1.5-fold, decreased the ROS content by 2.4- to 2.1-fold, the MDA content by 4- to 2-fold, the SOD activity by 9- to 3-fold, the GPx activity by 4.0- to 3.0-fold, and the mRNA expression levels of GPxs by 3.2- to 1.8-fold after metals treatment. And it is most significantly in the alleviation of citric acid to cadmium. This study not only provides information to further understand the effects of heavy metal exposure on ROS, MDA, GPx, SOD, and citric acid in worms but also indicates that supplemental citric acid can protect animals from heavy metal stress and has broad application prospects in decreasing oxidative damage caused by heavy metals.

A combined steady-state and transient approach is employed to investigate the corrosion behavior of X80 pipeline steel in carbon dioxide-saturated brines. Continuous bubbling of carbon dioxide into a test vessel with 1 liter capacity is performed to simulate the flowing condition. The measurement of time-dependent open-circuit potential, polarization resistance, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is conducted to interpret the evolution of dissolution processes at the corroding interface. Three distinguishing stages are observed at a temperature of 60 °C during a whole exposure of 144 h. Analyses mainly based on the consecutive mechanism show that after the first stage of the active-adsorption state, the anodic reaction is significantly retarded by the accumulation of (FeOH)

With the traditional vertically integrated electric market transforming into a liberalised one, the generation side consisting of various generation companies (GENCOs) is separated from the grid. This transformation gives opportunity for GENCOs to enhance their own profits by expanding business. One example is to establish bilateral contracts directly with the end users. This study considers a thermal-wind GENCO trading with the grid in the pool-based electricity energy market and meanwhile signs bilateral contracts with a battery swapping station (BSS). The operation framework for this GENCO to maximise its profit under uncertain information is proposed. A two-stage stochastic model is adopted to formulate the profit of the GENCO with the uncertain wind power, electricity market price and stochastic BSS electricity demand. The stochastic problem is transformed into deterministic mixed-integer linear programme and solved by CPLEX. The impact of bilateral contract capacity, contract price, degree of uncertainties and the wind power penetration on the final profit is analysed. This work provides a novel operation framework for GENCOs, and provides feasible bidding strategy and scheduling under uncertain conditions, especially for GENCOs owning renewable energy.

// Yujin Xu 1, 2 , Xiao Zheng 1, 2 , Xue Bai 3 , Pu Li 3 , Honglian Ma 1, 2 , Jin Wang 1, 2 , Xiao Hu 1, 2 and Ming Chen 1, 2 1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, Hangzhou, 310022, China 2 Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Radiation Oncology, Hangzhou, 310022, China 3 Department of Radiation Physics, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, Hangzhou, 310022, China Correspondence to: Ming Chen, email: chenming@zjcc.org.cn Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer, integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy, local control, overall survival Received: March 03, 2017 Accepted: March 31, 2017 Published: April 13, 2017 ABSTRACT Objectives: To evaluate the clinical efficacy and toxicity of simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy (SIB-IMRT) for patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results: All patients completed definitive radiotherapy and 74 (85.1%) patients administrated platinum-based chemotherapy. The median radiation dose was 50.4Gy to PTV and 64.4 Gy simultaneously to the PGTV. The overall response rate (ORR) was 57.5% (50/87). The median duration of follow up was 24.6 months. The 1, 2, 3-year local control rate was 79.0%, 66.1%, and 60.5%, respectively. The 1, 2, 3-year overall survival (OS) rate was 89.7%, 56.7%, and 30.6%, respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that the median OS in concurrent chemoradiation (CCRT) was much better than non-CCRT (35.7 vs. 26.4 months) (HR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.32–0.95, P = 0.033). Twenty-two (25.3%) patients experienced acute grade 3 esophagitis and 10 (11.5%) experienced acute grade ≥ 3 radiation pneumonitis. There were 2 (2.6%) late grade 3 pulmonary toxicity and no late grade ≥ 3 esophageal toxicity was observed. Materials and Methods: A total of 87 patients with locally advanced NSCLC who received SIB-IMRT from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2012 in our hospital were retrospectively analyzed. Male accounted for 88.5%, with a median age of 61 years old. The SIB-IMRT plans were designed to deliver 50.4–64.0 Gy in 28–33 fractions (1.8–2.1 Gy/fraction) to PTV while simultaneously delivering 60.0–74.3 Gy in 28–33 fractions (2.0–2.5 Gy/fraction) to PGTV. Conclusions: SIB-IMRT, especially with concurrent chemotherapy, appears to be an effective and safe option to treat patients with locally advanced NSCLC. More prospective clinical studies should be warranted.

To deal with the global climate change and serious energy crisis, the renewable energy, especially wind power has been developed rapidly in power system. Since the conventional power dispatch technology cannot effectively respond to the intermittent and volatility of significant wind power penetration, this paper established a multi-time scale coordinated optimal dispatching framework, which divided the dispatch process into 4 stages in time dimension: day-ahead schedule, rolling schedule, coordinated schedule and automatic generation control (AGC) adjustment process. In addition, the hydropower flexibility is suit to cope with the rapid fluctuation of system. Based on the multi-time scale coordinated optimal scheduling mechanism, the example of a composite wind-hydro-thermal power system is simulated, as the illustrated test results, the feasibility of the proposed multi-time scale power dispatch model is verified.

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical efficacy and toxicity of simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy (SIB-IMRT) in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in Chinese population. Patients and Methods: Patients with ESCC, who received SIB-IMRT from September 2011 to January 2013 were retrospectively analyzed. The SIB-IMRT plans were designed to deliver primary gross tumor volume at 60–64.4 Gy in 28–30 fractions, and planning target volume at 50.4–56 Gy in 28–30 fractions. Treatment-related toxicities were estimated based on Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 4.0, and tumor response after the treatment was estimated according to Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.0. Overall survival (OS), locoregional progression-free survival (LPFS), and progression-free survival (PFS) were estimated with Kaplan–Meier. Results: All patients completed definitive radiotherapy, 54 (78.3%) received combined chemotherapy, of which 31 (44.9%) were concurrent chemoradiotherapy and 23 (33.3%) were sequential chemotherapy. The objective response rate is 82.6% (56/69), with complete response 11 (15.9%), partial response 45 (65.2%), stable disease 8 (11.6%), and progressive disease 5 (7.2%). The 1-, 2- and 3-year LPFS was 74.4%, 57.8%, and 55.6%, respectively. The 1-, 2- and 3-year PFS was 62.3%, 41.0%, and 34.2%, respectively, and the 1-, 2-, and 3-year OS was 73.8%, 57.4%, and 41.0%, respectively, with a median OS of 27.1 months (4.5–54.9 m). For those who received concurrent chemotherapy, the 1-, 2-, and 3-year OS was 75.9%, 69.0%, and 55.2%, respectively, better than those who had sequential chemotherapy or radiotherapy alone (χ2 = 3.115, P = 0.078). Radiation esophagitis occurred in 63.8% and 14.5% with Grade 2 and 3, respectively. No patients occurred ≥ Grade 3 radiation pneumonia. Conclusions: It is safe and effective using SIB-IMRT technology to treat patients with ESCC. More prospective clinical studies should be needed.

Erosion caused by solid particles could not be neglected in oil and gas transportation industry, especially in gathering gas pipelines. Particles with small size may also erode the inner wall of pipelines after cumulative impacting and even lead to the leakage. Normally, a lot of solid particles are carried in the gathering gas before filtrating. Additionally, corrosion productions may fall off the wall as the gas flowing. Researches on erosion of pipeline caused by solid particles are important for predicting the remaining wall thickness, which can be a guide for pipeline inspection and safety protection. However, effect of particle flow rates on erosion ratio is normally omitted in studies on erosion ratio calculations. It was observed that particle flow rates have a great influence on the mass loss of specimens in the impingement experiments of this work. According to groups of Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) results obtained under various conditions, the particle velocity decreased when the particle flow rate was larger under the same experimental condition and the mass loss of the specimen became lower. Relations between particle velocity and particle flow rate under different experimental conditions were calculated according to the PTV results. Further, relations between erosion ratio and particle flow rate were purposed in this work. It is better to consider effect of particle flow rate while calculating solid particle erosion of pipelines in industry.

As the penetration of wind power in power system increases, the operation and scheduling of power system face more technical challenges. Traditional deterministic generation dispatch methods cannot ensure system operation security because they don't consider incorporate wind power uncertainties appropriately. Based on the wind power prediction interval, a robust dispatch scheme is introduced for intra-day active power scheduling, in which wind farms are controlled with the maximum-power-point-tracking strategy mostly. This scheme is featured with flexibility and practicality. In combination with this scheme, a robust interval economic scheduling model is formulated and further simplified as a quadratic programming, which takes into account the response of automatic generation control (AGC) generators adjustment. Finally, simulations are conducted on a test 10-units power system in 96- time intervals. The robustness and economy of the robust dispatch scheme is verified.

The ductile crack propagation behavior of pressure equipment has always been the focus of structural integrity assessment. It is very important to find an effective three-dimensional (3D) damage model, which overcomes the geometric discontinuity and crack tip singularity caused by cracking. The cohesive force model (CZM), which is combined with the extended finite element method (XFEM), can solve element self-reconfiguration near the crack tip and track the crack direction. Based on the theory of void nucleation, growth and coalescence, the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) damage model is used to study the fracture behavior of metallic materials, and agrees well with the experimental results. Two 3D crack propagation models are used to compare crack propagation behavior of pipe steel from the crack tip shape, fracture critical value of CTOA and CTOD, constraint effect, calculation accuracy, efficiency and mesh dependence etc. The results show that the GTN model has excellent applicability in the analysis of crack tip CTOD/CTOA, constraint effect, tunneling crack and so on, and its accuracy is high. However, the mesh of crack growth region needs to be extremely refined, and the element size is required to be 0.1–0.3mm and the calculation amount is large. The CZM model combined with XFEM has the advantages of high computational efficiency and free crack growth path, and the advantages are obvious in simulating the shear crack, combination crack and fatigue crack propagation. But, the crack tip shape and thickness effect of ductile tearing specimen can not be simulated, and the CTOA value of local crack tip is not accurate.

With the traditional vertically integrated electric market transforming into a liberalized one, the generation side consisting of various generation companies (GENCOs) wm be separated from the grid. This transformation gives opportunity for GENCOs to enhance their own profits by signing bilateral contracts with users directly, especially newly emerged numerous electric vehicle (EV) users, which could also mitigate the uncertainty. This paper considers a thermal-wind GENCO running a battery swapping station (BSS). The GENCO trades with the grid in the pool-based electricity energy market, and meanwhile signs bilateral contracts with EV users. A two-stage stochastic program is adopted to maximize the profit of the GENCO with the volatile and uncertain wind power and unknown electricity price of the energy market. The Sample Average Algorithm (SAA) method is used to transform the stochastic program into deterministic mixed-integer linear program (MILP). This work provides a feasible operation framework for a single GENCO with uncertain renewable energy to enhance its profit in both pool energy market and bilateral market, and provides optimal bidding strategy and scheduling with uncertain information.

The function of postoperative radiotherapy (PORT) in patients with completely resected pathologically N2 (pN2) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains controversial due to a lack of prospective studies. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of PORT in completely resected pN2 NSCLC when using modern radiation techniques, and to determine the associations between clinicopathological factors and PORT and survival rates. Following patient selection, 246 out of 269 consecutive patients with pN2 NSCLC were enrolled in the present study, with 88 patients having received postoperative chemotherapy (POCT) and PORT, 90 having received adjuvant chemotherapy, 1 having received adjuvant radiotherapy and the remaining 67 having received no adjuvant therapy. Overall survival (OS), local recurrence-free survival (LRFS) and disease-free survival (DFS) were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. The median age of the patients was 59 years, overall, 175 (71.1%) of the patients were male and the median radiation dose was 50.4 Gy. The median follow-up duration was 38.3 months. The 1-, 3- and 5-year OS rates were 98.9, 71.3 and 54.9%, and 93.0, 58.4 and 36.7% (P=0.011) in the PORT and non-PORT group, respectively. The 1-, 3- and 5-year LRFS rates were 95.5, 84.6 and 78.0%, and 86.6, 70.6 and 52.8% (P

For a given set of communication links whose senders transmit at a fixed power level, it is a hot problem to select a maximum set of links that can be transmitted simultaneously, which is known to be NP-hard. The existing algorithm only apply to the condition of omnidirectional transmission. This paper addresses the problem in a plane wireless network where the nodes use directional antennas under physical interference model. We develop a directional interference model applicable to such networks, and first propose the approximation algorithm to solve scheduling problem under this model. We proved the correctness of the algorithm by mathematical analysis. We have also proved the great advantages of using directional antenna by extensive simulations.

Purpose Accurate staging of mediastinal lymph nodes metastases is critical for determining the application of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this multicenter study the accuracy of 18 F-FDG PET/CT to detect lymph node metastases was evaluated for early stage NSCLC. Materials and methods The data from the patients with stage1 NSCLC who received preoperative 18 F-FDG PET/CT staging and radical surgery was retrospectively reviewed of five centers from February 2004 to August 2010. The lymph node metastases were confirmed histopathologically after radical surgery. And the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated for PET/CT staging. Results Two hundred patients were enrolled. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, PPV and NPV for lymph node metastases on PET/CT were 44%, 83%, 78%, 29% and 91%, respectively. There were eight and 19 cases positive for lymph node metastases with central ( n =62) and peripheral ( n =138) NSCLC ( P> 0.05), respectively. Conclusion 18 F-FDG PET/CT was specific in N 0 staging for T 1–2 NSCLC. The NPV was about 91% in clinical N 0 patients, suggested that 18 F-FDG PET/CT may help to accurately stage N 0 patients and thus identify patients for SBRT.

To cope with increasingly serious global energy crisis and environmental problem, renewable energy, like hydropower and wind power, develops rapidly in power system. This paper mainly focuses on improving the traditional generation dispatch methods which lack effective response to the intermittency and uncertainty of large scale wind power integration. Based on the principle of flexible hydropower preferentially complementing stochastic wind power, the original wind-hydro-thermal hybrid system is decomposed into wind-hydro subsystem and thermal subsystem. A rolling generation dispatch model based on rolling updated wind power is proposed, which rolling corrects units output in power schedule process. By introducing the concept of expected breed rate and elitist preservation strategy, the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm combined with the exterior penalty function is used to solve the proposed model. At last, some test results are illustrated to verify the validity of the proposed rolling generation dispatch model.

A proportion of patients with locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may benefit from anti-angiogenic therapy combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy; however, effective prognostic biomarkers are required for prognosis. In this study, we aimed to establish whether inflammation-based factors offer a prognostic benefit in terms of response rate (RR) and overall survival (OS) in stage III NSCLC patients treated by endostar with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). We retrospectively investigated an unselected cohort of stage III NSCLC patients, who were treated by combined endostar and CCRT. The log-rank test was used to analyze the association between each clinical variable and OS. Cox regression models were fitted to identify risk factors associated with OS. A total of 82 patients with stage III NSCLC were treated with a combination of endostar and CCRT and 78 patients were included in the data analysis. A total of 13 patients achieved a complete response, 49 achieved a partial response, 6 had stable disease, 8 had progressive disease and 2 patients could not be evaluated. The median progression-free survival of the entire group was 10.50 months (95% CI: 6.298-14.702), while the median OS was 22.83 months (95% CI: 19.156-26.504). On χ2test analysis, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) exerted a significant effect on RR (P=0.048). The univariate analysis identified the factors associated with OS, including NLR (P=0.004) and monocyte count (P=0.001), whereas the multivariate analysis confirmed NLR [P=0.043, hazard ratio (HR)=0.502] and monocyte count (P=0.011, HR=0.387) as independent prognostic factors for OS. Our results indicated that, in patients with stage III NSCLC treated by a combination of endostar and CCRT, pre-treatment elevated NLR and monocyte number are negatively associated with OS.

Many existed physical layer based schemes have been proposed to enhance the traditional authentication in wireless networks. However earlier schemes did not discuss directional antenna issue, and lacked of real measurement based evaluation. In this paper, we take an insight into the threat of directional antenna on physical layer authentication by real measurement observation. We give a brief overview of the mainstream physical layer authentication schemes, and build a real-time experimental platform to collect the channel state information, and evaluate the performance of some mainstream schemes by collecting real data in different typical environments, especially in the situation when the attacker uses directional antenna. We show the physical layer authentication schemes are effective in most cases, but may fail to detect the third party attacker equipped with directional antenna. Based on our discovery, we suggest that directional antenna impact should be seriously considered in physical layer based applications, especially in security domain.

Regulator of G protein signaling 5 (RGS5) belongs to the R4 subfamily of RGS proteins, a family of GTPase activating proteins, which is dynamically regulated in various biological processes including blood pressure regulation, smooth muscle cell pathology, fat metabolism and tumor angiogenesis. Low-expression of RGS5 was reported to be associated with tumor progression in lung cancer. In the present study, we examined the potential roles of RGS5 in human lung cancer cells by overexpressing RGS5 in the cancer cells and further explored the underlying molecular mechanisms. The RGS5 gene was cloned and transfected into the human lung cancer cell lines A549 and Calu-3. The cells were tested for apoptosis with flow cytometry, for viability with MTT, for mobility and adhesion capacity. The radiosensitization effect of RGS5 was measured by a colony formation assay. The mechanisms of RGS5 functioning was also investigated by detection of protein expression with western blot analysis, including PARP, caspase 3 and 9, bax, bcl2, Rock1, Rock2, CDC42, phospho-p53 (Serine 15) and p53. The present study demonstrated that RGS5 overexpression remarkably induced apoptosis in human lung cancer cells, which was suggested to be through mitochondrial mechanisms. Overexpression of RGS5 resulted in significantly lower adhesion and migration abilities of the lung cancer cells (P

Large-scale spectral clustering in high-dimensional space is among the most popular unsupervised problems. Existed sampling schemes have different limitations on high-dimensional data. This paper proposes an improved Nystrom extension based spectral clustering algorithm with a designed sampling scheme for high-dimensional data. We first take insight into some existed sampling schemes. We illustrate their defects especially in high dimension scene. Furthermore we provide theoretical analysis on how the similarity between the sample set and non-sampling set influences the approximation error, and propose an improved sampling scheme, the minimum similarity sampling MSS for high-dimensional space clustering. Experiments on both synthetic and real datasets show that the proposed sampling scheme outperforms other algorithms when applied in Nystrom based spectral clustering with higher accuracy, and lowers the time consumption for sampling.

This paper deals with the query problem in the Internet of Things (IoT). Flooding is an important query strategy. However, original flooding is prone to cause heavy network loads. To address this problem, we propose a variant of flooding, called Level-Based Flooding (LBF). With LBF, the whole network is divided into several levels according to the distances (i.e., hops) between the sensor nodes and the sink node. The sink node knows the level information of each node. Query packets are broadcast in the network according to the levels of nodes. Upon receiving a query packet, sensor nodes decide how to process it according to the percentage of neighbors that have processed it. When the target node receives the query packet, it sends its data back to the sink node via random walk. We show by extensive simulations that the performance of LBF in terms of cost and latency is much better than that of original flooding, and LBF can be used in IoT of different scales.

Purpose To determine whether the standard uptake value (SUV) of the primary lesion can predict mediastinal lymph node metastasis in clinical stage IA non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and Methods At 5 centers, patients with clinical stage IA NSCLC from February 2004 to August 2010 were analyzed retrospectively. Data from Shandong Cancer Hospital and from the Cancer Hospital Affiliated to Harbin Medical University were used as a testing set, and data from the other 3 institutions were used as the validation set. Final diagnosis was established based on the histopathologic examination. Results Data from 144 patients were collected for the study. The primary results in our study showed that maximal SUV (SUVmax) of primary tumor might be a predictor of lymph node metastasis (χ 2 = 10.424; P = .001) and the best cutoff value was 7.25 ( P = .029). For the testing set, lymph node metastasis rates in low-grade group (SUVmax 7.25) were 5% (2/43) and 36% (9/25) ( P = .001) For the total data set, lymph node metastasis rate was 7% (6/93) in low-grade group (SUVmax 7.25) (χ 2 = 10.424; P = .001). A multivariate analysis revealed that no factors were applied to predict the probability of metastasis. But the analysis showed a weak correlation between SUVmax and nodal status ( r = 0.21; P = .011) with bivariate correlation. Conclusion Analysis of our data suggested that fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose SUVmax of the primary tumor might be a predictor of lymph node involvement in stage IA NSCLC. The rate of mediastinal lymph node metastasis of patients with a lower fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography–computed tomography SUVmax might be relatively low, which provides more evidence for clinical procedures of clinical stage IA NSCLC.

In this paper, we pay attention to the problem of node search in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The main problem of basic flooding is that the cost is too high. In order to solve above problem, we propose a variant of Flooding called Level Based Flooding (LBF). In LBF, the whole network is divided into several layers according to the distance (hops) between the nodes and the sink node. The sink node knows the level information of each node. The search packet is broadcast in the network according to levels of nodes and its TTL is set to the level of the target node. When the target node receives the packet, it sends its data back to the sink node in random walk within level hops.We show by extensive simulations that the energy consumption of LBF is much better than that of basic flooding.

Background Hypoxic tumor cells can reduce the efficacy of radiation. Antiangiogenic therapy may transiently "normalize" the tumor vasculature to make it more efficient for oxygen delivery. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the recombinant human endostatin (endostar) can create a "vascular normalization window" to alleviate hypoxia and enhance the inhibitory effects of radiation therapy in human nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in mice. Methodology/principal findings Transient changes in morphology of tumor vasculature and hypoxic tumor cell fraction in response to endostar were detected in mice bearing CNE-2 and 5-8F human NPC xenografts. Various treatment schedules were tested to assess the influence of endostar on the effect of radiation therapy. Several important factors relevant to the angiogenesis were identified through immunohistochemical staining. During endostar treatment, tumor vascularity decreased, while the basement membrane and pericyte coverage associated with endothelial cells increased, which supported the idea of vessel normalization. Hypoxic tumor cell fraction also decreased after the treatment. The transient modulation of tumor physiology caused by endostar improved the effect of radiation treatment compared with other treatment schedules. The expressions of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, and MMP-14 decreased, while the level of pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) increased. Conclusions Endostar normalized tumor vasculature, which alleviated hypoxia and significantly sensitized the function of radiation in anti-tumor in human NPC. The results provide an important experimental basis for combining endostar with radiation therapy in human NPC.

To investigate the genotoxicity of acrylamide and to determine its genotoxic target organs.DNA damage was detected by using comet assay. Lung, liver, spleen, kidney, testicle, bone marrow and peripheral lymphocytes of mice were isolated at 0, 3, 6, 12 and 24h after 50 mg/kg acrylamide intraperitoneal injection.Significant increase in comet tail length, tail DNA% and tail moment in the cells of liver, spleen, testicle, bone marrow and peripheral lymphocytes were induced at different sampling time after treatment of acrylamide. The indexes decreased more or less as time extended. No obvious increase in DNA damages was observed in the lung and kidney with the same treatment.Acrylamide could cause DNA damage to multiple organs of mice. The DNA damage caused by acrylamide could be repaired to a certain degree.

A method of determining 3D position based on vanishing-point theorem in perspective picture was developed and tested. Proposed an iterative method that using fastest descent arithmetic to calculate the non-linear parameter and implemented the non-linear calibration to system. In order to get the accurate position of vanishing-point, a sub-pixel self-adapting recursion arithmetic was presented, that makes the originality numeric image defined in integral pixel position obtain continuous mapping in rational number field. A experiment of determination 3D position with a cub showed, the position precision can effectively improved by using the sub-pixel self-adapt recursion arithmetic in the non-linear calibration method based on vanishing-point, and part of a plaster module of a person's head also been measured with this method and the vivid result of reconstruction shows the measurement can be used in free curved surface.