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The prevalence rate of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasing worldwide, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a main cause of death in patients with CKD. The high incidence of CVD in CKD patients is related to chronic inflammation, dyslipidemia, malnutrition, atherosclerosis, and vascular calcification. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (ω-3 PUFAs) have been shown to reduce the risk of CVD. In this paper, we review the beneficial effects of ω-3 PUFAs on CVD and the possible cardioprotective mechanisms of ω-3 PUFAs in CKD patients by determining the effect of ω-3 PUFAs in the general population. ω-3 PUFAs have several cardioprotective benefits, such as reducing inflammation, decreasing oxidative stress, inhibiting platelet activity, exerting antiarrhythmic effects, and improving triglyceride levels, in the general population and patients with CKD. Modifications of erythrocyte membrane fatty acid content, including an increased ω-3 index and decreased oleic acid, after ω-3 PUFAs supplementation are important changes related to CVD risk reduction in the general population and patients with CKD. Further basic and clinical studies are essential to confirm the effects of ω-3 PUFAs on vitamin D activation, vascular calcification prevention, cardiovascular events, and mortality in CKD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Warm-needle acupuncture (WA) and fire-needle acupuncture are treatment techniques that use the combination of acupuncture and thermal stimulation. In clinical practice, a new method of fire-needle acupuncture called "heated-needle acupuncture (HA)" has been proposed, wherein the needle is directly heated after insertion. WA and HA share similarities in their methods, and no previous study has sought to assess whether their thermal outcomes are also similar. Methods. We controlled environmental variables and measured the maximum temperatures and temperature changes of a silicon phantom in which K-type thermocouples were embedded at depths of 0, 2, 5, 7, and 10 mm. WA and HA were also performed with acupuncture needles of various thicknesses (0.30 × 40 mm, 0.40 × 40 mm, and 0.50 × 40 mm). Results. Different time-dependent temperature distributions were observed between the two acupuncture methods: HA yielded a higher maximum temperature and temperature change on the surface, whereas WA yielded higher temperatures at the other tested depths. The thermal patterns were similar among the needles of different thicknesses for each method, with the following exception: while the temperature change and maximum temperature did not differ significantly by needle thickness for WA, these parameters increased significantly with needle thickness for HA. Conclusion. The two acupuncture procedures yielded different thermal patterns in a controlled environment. Further studies are necessary to reflect the effect of external environment variables occurring in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence rate of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasing worldwide, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a main cause of death in patients with CKD. The high incidence of CVD in CKD patients is related to chronic inflammation, dyslipidemia, malnutrition, atherosclerosis, and vascular calcification. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids ( ¿ -3 PUFAs) have been shown to reduce the risk of CVD. In this paper, we review the beneficial effects of ¿ -3 PUFAs on CVD and the possible cardioprotective mechanisms of ¿ -3 PUFAs in CKD patients by determining the effect of ¿ -3 PUFAs in the general population. ¿ -3 PUFAs have several cardioprotective benefits, such as reducing inflammation, decreasing oxidative stress, inhibiting platelet activity, exerting antiarrhythmic effects, and improving triglyceride levels, in the general population and patients with CKD. Modifications of erythrocyte membrane fatty acid content, including an increased ¿ -3 index and decreased oleic acid, after ¿ -3 PUFAs supplementation are important changes related to CVD risk reduction in the general population and patients with CKD. Further basic and clinical studies are essential to confirm the effects of ¿ -3 PUFAs on vitamin D activation, vascular calcification prevention, cardiovascular events, and mortality in CKD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing is a type of Internet-based computing that allows users to access computing resources that are connected to the Internet anytime and anywhere. Recently, as the Internet-of-Things market using the cloud has grown, a tremendous amount of data has been generated, and services requiring low latency are increasing. To solve these problems, a new architecture called fog computing has been proposed. Fog computing can process data on a network device close to the user, drastically reducing the bandwidth required from the network and providing near real-time response. However, not much research has been done on which network devices should be used to deploy the fog server. In this article, we propose a fog server deployment technique to minimize the data movement path in a fog computing environment and a technique to make full use of the computing resources of a fog device through a vector bin packing algorithm in a situation where many services are concentrated on one network device. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce the data movement distance and maximize the utilization of the computing resources of the fog device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. Radiation-induced lung fibrosis (RILF) is a serious late complication of radiotherapy. In vitro studies have demonstrated that pentoxifylline (PTX) has suppressing effects in extracellular matrix production in fibroblasts, while the antifibrotic action of PTX alone using clinical dose is yet unexplored. Materials and Methods. We used micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and histopathological analysis to evaluate the antifibrotic effects of PTX in a rat model of RILF. Results. Micro-CT findings showed that lung density, volume loss, and mediastinal shift are significantly increased at 16 weeks after irradiation. Simultaneously, histological analysis demonstrated thickening of alveolar walls, destruction of alveolar structures, and excessive collagen deposition in the irradiated lung. PTX treatment effectively attenuated the fibrotic changes based on both micro-CT and histopathological analyses. Western analysis also revealed increased levels of plasminogen activator inhibitor- (PAI-) 1 and fibronectin (FN) and PTX treatment reduced expression of PAI-1 and FN by restoring protein kinase A (PKA) phosphorylation but not TGF-β/Smad in both irradiated lung tissues and epithelial cells. Conclusions. Our results demonstrate the antifibrotic effect of PTX on radiation-induced lung fibrosis and its effect on modulation of PKA and PAI-1 expression as possible antifibrotic mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease and is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. Dietary omega-3 fatty acid (FA) has cardioprotective effect and is associated with a slower deterioration of albumin excretion in patients with diabetic nephropathy. In this study, we evaluated the effect of omega-3 FA on proteinuria in diabetic nephropathy patients who are controlling blood pressure (BP) with angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi) or angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB). In addition, we identified changes in erythrocyte membrane FA contents. A total of 19 patients who were treated with ACEi or ARB for at least 6 months were treated for 12 weeks with omega-3 FA (Omacor, 3 g/day) or a control treatment (olive oil, 3 g/day). Proteinuria levels were unchanged after 12 weeks compared with baseline values in both groups. The erythrocyte membrane contents of omega-3 FA and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were significantly increased, and oleic acid, arachidonic acid : EPA ratio, and omega-6 : omega-3 FA ratio were significantly decreased after 12 weeks compared with the baseline values in the omega-3 FA group. Although omega-3 FA did not appear to alter proteinuria, erythrocyte membrane FA contents, including oleic acid, were altered by omega-3 FA supplementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the end-to-end performance of TCP over wireless networks has been an active research area. When TCP operates in wireless networks, the performance of TCP degrades significantly. It is well known that frequent retransmission timeouts are the leading source of TCP performance degradation over wireless networks. Retransmission timeouts are unavoidable, when the fast retransmission of a lost packet fails to reach the destination. There have been many schemes developed for reducing the retransmission timeouts of TCP. However, these schemes have no mechanism to detect the loss of fast retransmitted packets over wireless networks. In this paper, we introduce an efficient TCP mechanism, called T-DLRP, which is able to detect the loss of fast retransmitted packets and react accordingly. To justify our contributions, we compared T-DLRP against TCP New Reno, Vegas, New Jersey, Veno, Cerl, and DAC via extensive simulations using Qualnet 4.5 simulator. The results demonstrate that our mechanism achieves significant improvement over existing TCP variants especially in a coexisted network with packet loss and fast retransmission losses. Compared to DAC, T-DLRP gains more than 70% improvement in terms of accuracy over wireless networks. Also, our experiments of multiple connections of the same TCP flows reveal that T-DLRP has better fairness compared to TCP NewReno. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyethylene Glycol- (PEG-) coated gold nanoparticles (PEG-AuNPs) are synthesized by a one-step route with rapid microwave heating. Homogeneous nucleation of the primary gold particles is enhanced by increasing the applied microwave power during the initial stage of the synthesis, increasing the temperature ramping rate (Rr) and resulting in decreased size and improved uniformity of the synthesized PEG-AuNPs. Using rapid microwave heating, we successfully produce uniform colloidal PEG-AuNPs with an average diameter of 14.3 ± 2.5nm within a few minutes. By appropriate tuning of the growth parameters, microwave synthesis can produce largely colloidal PEG-AuNPs with high uniformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]