Search

Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV) BamHI A rightward transcripts (BART) encoded microRNAs (EBV‐miR‐BARTs) are abnormally highly expressed in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). This study aims to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic performance of miR‐BART7‐3p and miR‐BART13‐3p. Plasma levels of EBV DNA, miR‐BART7‐3p, and miR‐BART13‐3p were examined by quantitative PCR in 483 treatment‐naïve NPC patients and 243 controls without NPC. The prognostic performance was examined by comparing plasma levels with rates of distant metastasis during follow‐up. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for diagnosing NPC was 0.926 for EBV DNA, 0.964 for plasma miR‐BART7‐3p, 0.973 for miR‐BART13‐3p, and 0.997 for all three indices. Among 465 NPC patients without distant metastasis, the above‐median miR‐BART7‐3p and EBV DNA were independent risk for shorter distant metastasis‐free survival (DMFS) (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.94, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.44‐5.97, P = .003; HR = 2.27, 95% CI, 1.26‐4.10, P = .006) in multivariate Cox regression. Epstein‐Barr virus DNA, miR‐BART7‐3p, and miR‐BART13‐3p after radiotherapy were detectable in 28.6%, 17.6%, and 54.7% of patients, respectively. In multivariate Cox regression, detectable miR‐BART7‐3p and EBV DNA were independent risks for shorter DMFS (HR = 4.13, 95% CI, 1.89‐9.01, P, This is so far the most extensive retrospective study to report the diagnostic and prognostic value of circulating levels of the Epstein‐Barr virus BamHI A rightward transcripts encoded microRNAs (EBV miR‐BARTs) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Compared with circulating EBV DNA, this study found that circulating EBV miR‐BARTs is not inferior to EBV DNA in diagnosis and prognosis. Furthermore, the combination of circulating levels of EBV DNA and miR‐BARTs at diagnosis can improve the potential for diagnostic and prognostic evaluation.

Aiming at electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring systems for wearable and implantable health-care applications, an ultralow-power and low-cost wavelet-based ECG processor is presented in this brief. This processor can work at subthreshold voltage and further save energy by using voltage overscaling (VOS) and algorithmic noise tolerance (ANT). As to the ANT mechanism, we propose a weighted-average-bilateral-estimation predictor and a two-stage architecture with heterogeneous error detection schemes, which enhance the error resiliency of the ECG processor under VOS and improve its robustness against voltage variations within the subthreshold region. Moreover, we intend to meet the strict area constraint of wearable devices, minimizing the hardware cost of the ECG processor and ANT module by using several area-reduction techniques. A test chip of the proposed processor is fabricated under Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) 65-nm low power (LP) CMOS technology. Measurement results show that this subthreshold processor consumes 2.28 pJ/cycle at (410 mV, 49.8 kHz), and the proposed ANT scheme can result in only 5% area overhead while leading to 7% power saving by tolerating 17% error rate.

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is regarded as a very promising technique for fast or online coal analysis. However, the analytical performance is greatly influenced by its moisture content. In the present work, the effects of moisture content variations on the properties of the laser-induced plasma and its spectral signals were investigated using the same coal samples mixed with different moisture contents. Plasma morphology and spatially resolved spectra were also obtained to further investigate the effects, and the mechanism of the effects was also discussed. Results showed that most of the spectral line intensities decreased as the moisture content increased, even including those of H and O. Seen from the spatially resolved spectra, the profile of H intensity over the height of plasma showed a higher peak position with increasing moisture content, and the height of the peak of the H intensity profile was slightly higher than those of other elements such as C and Al. The laser ablation process and mechanism underlying the effects of moisture content were proposed as following: part of the moisture was evaporated first under laser radiation and ablated earlier than those of other coal materials. Consequently, the outside layer of the laser-induced plasma was mostly from the dissociation of moisture. Given the earlier evaporation of moisture, part of the energy was used to dissociate and ionize the surrounding water vapor or even reflected by the splashed particle caused by fast expanding moisture, thereby shielding the further absorption of laser energy to the solid coal material. This phenomenon resulted in less coal mass being actually ablated into the plasma with increasing moisture content, hence emitting smaller line intensities. On the other hand, the decrease in H line intensity may be caused by the fact that these elements were pushed to the outside cooler layer.

The IEEE 802.15.6-2012 standard optimized for short-range/low power purpose for WBAN applications has been approved recently. Based on the standard, this paper proposes the hardware implementation of the baseband transmitter for the first time. In our design, the physical layer (PHY) employs narrowband(NB) PHY in the standard and DPSK Modulator is optimized by employing CSD-coded (canonical signed digit) filters for low power and area-efficiency consideration. Clock gating is also implemented to cut the dynamic power in the idle state. Implemented in 130nm CMOS technology, the least total power dissipation of the transmitter is only 69.5uW at 151.8kbps and 1.0V supply in the Medical Implant Communication Service (MICS) band. In addition, The power consumption of the PHY module under different frequency bands and different data rates is investigated. The minimum energy-per-bit is only 10.1pJ/bit at 971.4kbps indicating that our PHY module is more energy-efficient than previous works.

The second pulse signal the Beidou time receiver output is of great random error, but there is no cumulative error; the high-precision crystal oscillator’s clock signal doesn’t generate random error while the accumulated error is relatively small in a short period of time. Based on the characteristics of the two errors, the error mathematical model is established, through seeking the round part of the dynamic average of the counts generated by two adjacent Beidou second pulses within a period of time, the method of generating accurate clock signal by using the high-precision crystal oscillator to modify the Beidou second pulse’s random error online after the elimination of the Beidou pseudo-second signals is put forward. The high-precision clock signal output device is developed according to this method and the device is applied to the synchronization field of radio and television broadcast industry successfully.