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Effective healing of skin wounds is essential for our survival. Although skin has strong regenerative potential, dysfunctional and disfiguring scars can result from aberrant wound repair. Skin scarring involves excessive deposition and misalignment of ECM (extracellular matrix), increased cellularity, and chronic inflammation. Transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signaling exerts pleiotropic effects on wound healing by regulating cell proliferation, migration, ECM production, and the immune response. Although blocking TGFβ signaling can reduce tissue fibrosis and scarring, systemic inhibition of TGFβ can lead to significant side effects and inhibit wound re-epithelization. In this study, we develop a wound dressing material based on an integrated photo-crosslinking strategy and a microcapsule platform with pulsatile release of TGF-β inhibitor to achieve spatiotemporal specificity for skin wounds. The material enhances skin wound closure while effectively suppressing scar formation in murine skin wounds and large animal preclinical models. Our study presents a strategy for scarless wound repair., Dysfunctional and disfiguring scars can result from aberrant wound repair. Here, the authors develop a wound dressing material based on an integrated photo-crosslinking strategy and a microcapsule platform with pulsatile release of TGF-β inhibitor to achieve spatiotemporal specificity for scarless wound repair.

Medical images play a significant role in modern diagnosis but often suffer from non-uniformity and low-luminance, which always affects the results of diagnosis and even leads to misdiagnosis in real applications. To obtain a clear and accurate view of the medical images, a new method based on luminance-level modulation and gradient modulation (LM&GM) is proposed in this paper. LM&GM is a two-stage approach that, first, increases the visual perception using the luminance-level modulation (LM) operation by compressing the range of luminance levels of the input image, and second, uses the gradient modulation (GM) operation to enhance the details of the previous step result. Experimental results on CT images, X-ray images and MRI images from medical image datasets and quantitative analyses by structural similarity index measurement (SSIM), average gradient (AG), relative enhancement in contrast (REC) and information entropy (IE) demonstrate that the results of the proposed method are competitive and overwhelm those of the existing methods.

Detection of epistatic interactions, which are referred to as nonlinear interactive effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), is increasingly being recognized as an important route in capturing the underlying genetic causes of complex diseases. Its methodological and computational challenges have been well understood, and many methods also have been proposed from different perspectives. Among them ant colony optimization (ACO)-based methods are promising due to their controllable time complexities, heuristic positive feedback search, and high detection power. Nevertheless, there is no comprehensive overview of them so far. This paper, therefore, provides a systematic review of 25 ACO-based epistasis detection methods. First, the generic ACO algorithm, as well as how it is applied to detect epistatic interactions, is briefly described. Then, an in-depth review of ACO-based methods for detecting epistatic interactions is discussed from four aspects, including path selection strategies, pheromone updating rules, fitness functions, and two-stage designs. Finally, this paper analyzes the strengths and limitations of involved methods, provides guidelines for applying them, and gives several views on the future directions of epistasis detection methods.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is one of the foremost public health problems. Alcohol is also frequently co-abused with cocaine. There is a huge unmet need for the treatment of AUD and/or cocaine co-abuse. We have developed and used a skin stem cell-based gene delivery platform and found that production of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1) from the grafted genetically modified skin reduced development and reinstatement of alcohol-induced drug-taking and seeking, voluntary oral alcohol consumption and alcohol-induced increase in dopamine (DA) levels in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Moreover, we have developed a novel co-grafting procedure for both modified human butyrylcholinesterase (hBChE)- and GLP1-expressing cells. Skin grafts-derived hBChE and GLP1 reduced acquisition of drug-taking and toxicity induced by concurrent alcohol and cocaine injections. These results imply that gene delivery through skin transplants may add a new option to treat drug abuse and co-abuse.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is one of the foremost public health problems. Alcohol is also frequently co-abused with cocaine. There is a huge unmet need for the treatment of AUD and/or cocaine co-abuse. We recently demonstrated that skin grafts generated from mouse epidermal stem cells that had been engineered by CRISPR-mediated genome editing could be transplanted onto mice as a gene delivery platform. Here, we show that expression of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1) gene delivered by epidermal stem cells attenuated development and reinstatement of alcohol-induced drug-taking and seeking as well as voluntary oral alcohol consumption. GLP1 derived from the skin grafts decreased alcohol-induced increase in dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens. In exploring the potential of this platform in reducing concurrent use of drugs, we developed a novel co-grafting procedure for both modified human butyrylcholinesterase (hBChE)- and GLP1-expressing cells. Epidermal stem cell-derived hBChE and GLP1 reduced acquisition of drug-taking and toxicity induced by alcohol and cocaine co-administration. These results imply that cutaneous gene delivery through skin transplants may add a new option to treat drug abuse and co-abuse.

Cocaine addiction is associated with compulsive drug seeking, and exposure to the drug or to drug-associated cues leads to relapse, even after long periods of abstention. A variety of pharmacological targets and behavioural interventions have been explored to counteract cocaine addiction, but to date no market-approved medications for treating cocaine addiction or relapse exist, and effective interventions for acute emergencies resulting from cocaine overdose are lacking. We recently demonstrated that skin epidermal stem cells can be readily edited using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and then transplanted back into the donor mice. Here, we show that the transplantation, into mice, of skin cells modified to express an enhanced form of butyrylcholinesterase—an enzyme that hydrolyses cocaine—enables the long-term release of the enzyme and efficiently protects the mice from cocaine-seeking behaviour and cocaine overdose. Cutaneous gene therapy through skin transplants that elicit drug elimination may offer a therapeutic option to address drug abuse. The transplantation of skin cells genetically modified to express an enzyme that hydrolyses cocaine into mice leads to long-lasting levels of the enzyme in the circulation and protects the mice from cocaine-seeking behaviour and cocaine overdose.

Purpose: Fabry disease is an X-linked lysosomal storage disorder caused by mutations in the α-galactosidase A gene. Migalastat, a pharmacological chaperone, binds to specific mutant forms of α-galactosidase A to restore lysosomal activity. Methods: A pharmacogenetic assay was used to identify the α-galactosidase A mutant forms amenable to migalastat. Six hundred Fabry disease–causing mutations were expressed in HEK-293 (HEK) cells; increases in α-galactosidase A activity were measured by a good laboratory practice (GLP)-validated assay (GLP HEK/Migalastat Amenability Assay). The predictive value of the assay was assessed based on pharmacodynamic responses to migalastat in phase II and III clinical studies. Results: Comparison of the GLP HEK assay results in in vivo white blood cell α-galactosidase A responses to migalastat in male patients showed high sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values (≥0.875). GLP HEK assay results were also predictive of decreases in kidney globotriaosylceramide in males and plasma globotriaosylsphingosine in males and females. The clinical study subset of amenable mutations (n = 51) was representative of all 268 amenable mutations identified by the GLP HEK assay. Conclusion: The GLP HEK assay is a clinically validated method of identifying male and female Fabry patients for treatment with migalastat. Genet Med 19 4, 430–438.

Deep learning has yielded state-of-the-art performance on text classification tasks. In this paper, a new neural network based on Long-Short-Term-Memory model is applied to classify spam emails. Using deep learning method to classify spam emails requires large amounts of labeled data. To solve this problem, active learning method is used to reduce labeling cost and increase model adaptability. In this paper, it is found that the new model performs better than standard CNNs and RNNs on email classification task, and active learning methods can match state-of-the-art performance with just 10% of the labeled data.

// Yi Gou 1,* , Yao Zhang 1,* , Jinxu Qi 1 , Shifang Chen 1 , Zuping Zhou 2 , Xiaoyang Wu 3 , Hong Liang 1 , Feng Yang 1, 2 1 State Key Laboratory for The Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Medicinal Resources, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, Guangxi, China 2 Guangxi University Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, Guangxi, China 3 Ben May Department for Cancer Research, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hong Liang, email: 1437311763@qq.com Feng Yang, email: fyang@mailbox.gxnu.edu.cn Keywords: copper pro-drug, human serum albumin, tumor targeting, therapeutic effect Received: April 05, 2016 Accepted: July 27, 2016 Published: August 22, 2016 ABSTRACT Human serum albumin (HSA)-based drug delivery systems are promising for improving delivery efficiency, anticancer activity and selectivity of anticancer agents. To rationally guide to design HSA carrier for anticancer metal agent, we built a breast mouse model on developing anti-cancer copper (Cu) pro-drug based on the nature of IIA subdomain of HSA carrier and cancer cells. Thus, we first synthesized a new Cu(II) compound derived from tridentate ( E )- N' -(5-bromo-2-hydroxybenzylidene)benzohydrazide Schiff base ligand (HL) containing 2 potential leaving groups [indazole (Ind) and NO 3 − ], namely, [Cu(L)(Ind)NO 3 ]. Structural analysis of the HSA complex showed that Cu(L)(Ind)(NO 3 ) could bind to the hydrophobic pocket of the HSA IIA subdomain. Lys199 and His242 coordinate with Cu 2+ by replacing the indazole and NO 3 ligands of [Cu(L)(Ind)NO 3 ]. The release behavior of the Cu compound from the HSA complex is different at different pH levels. [Cu(L)(Ind)NO 3 ] can enhance cytotoxicity by 2 times together with HSA specifically in cancer cells but has no such effect on normal cells in vitro . Importantly, our in vivo results showed that the HSA complex displayed increased selectivity and capacity to inhibit tumor growth and was less toxic than [Cu(L)(Ind)NO 3 ] alone.

When administering several anticancer drugs within a single carrier, it is important to regulate their spatial distribution so as to avoid possible mutual interference and to thus enhance the drugs' selectivity and efficiency. To achieve this, we proposed to develop human serum albumin (HSA)-based multidrug delivery systems for combination anticancer therapy. We used three anticancer agents (an organic drug [5-fluorouracil, or 5FU], a metallic agent [2-benzoylpyridine thiosemicarbazide copper II, or BpT], and a gene agent [AS1411]) to treat liver cancer and confirm our hypothesis. The structure of the HSA-palmitic acid (PA)-5FU-BpT complex revealed that 5FU and BpT, respectively, bind to the IB and IIA subdomains of HSA. Our MALDI-TOF-MS spectral data show that one AS1411 molecule is conjugated to Cys-34 of the HSA-5FU-BpT complex via a linker. Compared with unregulated three-drug combination therapy, the HSA-5FU-BpT-AS1411 complex enhances cytotoxicity in Bel-7402 cells approximately 7-fold in vitro; however, in normal cells it does not raise cytotoxicity levels. Importantly, our in vivo results demonstrate that the HSA-5FU-BpT-AS1411 complex is superior to the unregulated three-drug combination in enhancing targeting ability, inhibiting liver tumor growth, and causing fewer side effects.

Superior mesenteric artery syndrome (SMAS) is an uncommon cause of vomiting and weight loss due to compression of the third part of the duodenum by the superior mesenteric artery. Small bowel adenocarcinoma is an uncommon tumor, which is frequently delayed in diagnosis as its symptoms and signs are non-specific. The present study describes a case of SMAS occurring in a 51-year-old man, caused by intestinal obstruction secondary to a primary adenocarcinoma of the duodenal-jejunal junction. To the best of our knowledge, the present case is the first report of small bowel adenocarcinoma masquerading as SMAS. The present case highlights the importance of considering the possibility of SMAS in patients with upper bowel obstruction caused by intestinal carcinoma.

Drug addiction is a brain disease characterized by compulsive drug-seeking and taking and a high likelihood of relapse when exposed to drugs or drugassociated cues, even long after abstention [1]. Relapse is the major challenge for the treatment of drug addiction in humans. Cocaine is a widely abused drug that causes significant morbidity and mortality. There are currently no FDA-approved medications for reducing cocaine use or treating relapse in cocaine addicts. Moreover, there are no interventions for the acute emergencies that result from cocaine overdose. A novel skin stem cell-based gene therapy has recently been described to be effective in reducing core features of cocaine abuse in laboratory mice [2], offering hope of producing the first medication for treating cocaine abuse, and adding a new tool for treating drug abuse and co-abuse.

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are mesenchymal neoplasms that arise in the gastrointestinal tract, accounting for ~1% of gastric malignancies. The present study reports the case of a GIST of the stomach in a 75-year-old man who presented with abdominal distension and anorexia for 1 month. Gastroscopy was unremarkable. Ultrasound and computed tomography (CT) scans showed a giant intraabdominal cystic lesion of unknown origin. The lesion was initially believed to be a duplication cyst, a pancreatic pseudocyst or a liver cyst in the pre-operative diagnosis. Exploratory laparotomy revealed a cystic lesion of the lesser sac originating from the lesser curvature of the stomach. A distal gastrectomy with en bloc resection of the lesion was performed. The intraoperative frozen section showed a spindle-cell GIST and microscopically negative margins. The patient was treated with imatinib for 1 year. The latest CT scan at 14 months post-surgery did not show any recurrence. Although GISTs presenting as predominantly cystic lesions are very rare, they should be considered in the differential diagnosis of cystic lesions of the upper abdomen.

To test the hypothesis that undiagnosed patients with Fabry disease exist among patients affected by common heart disease. Globotriaosylceramide in random whole urine using tandem mass spectroscopy, α-galactosidase A activity in dried blood spots, and next-generation sequencing of pooled or individual genomic DNA samples supplemented by Sanger sequencing. We tested 2,256 consecutive patients: 852 women (median age 65 years (19–95)) and 1,404 men (median age 65 years (21–92)). The primary diagnoses were coronary artery disease (n = 994), arrhythmia (n = 607), cardiomyopathy (n = 138), and valvular disease (n = 568). Urinary globotriaosylceramide was elevated in 15% of patients and 15 males had low α-galactosidase A activity. GLA variants found included R118C (n = 2), D83N, and D313Y (n = 7); IVS6-22 C>T, IVS4-16 A>G, IVS2+990C>A, 5′UTR-10 C>T (n = 4), IVS1-581 C>T, IVS1-1238 G>A, 5′UTR-30 G>A, IVS2+590C>T, IVS0-12 G>A, IVS4+68A>G, IVS0-10 C>T, IVS2-81–77delCAGCC, IVS2-77delC. Although the pathogenicity of several of these missense mutations and complex intronic haplotypes has been controversial, none of the patients screened in this study were diagnosed definitively with Fabry disease. This population of patients with common heart disease did not contain a substantial number of patients with undiagnosed Fabry disease. GLA gene sequencing is superior to urinary globotriaosylceramide or α-galactosidase A activity in the screening for Fabry disease.

With the rapid development of the Internet, massive Internet text data has brought new opportunities and challenges to the research of entity relation extraction. Open entity relation extraction overcomes the shortage of traditional methods, that relation types need to be predefined and plenty of training data need to be labeled in advance. A lot of work have been done for English Open ERE, and now the Chinese Open ERE is attracting more and more researchers and scholars. This paper presents a novel CRFs-Based Semi-Supervised Chinese Open Entity Relation Extraction method-C-COERE. C-COERE combines the CRFs and the syntax parse tree to extract the entity relation tuples. Then it improves the accuracy of the extracted results through a post-processing filter module. Meanwhile, it enhances the recall of the extracted results by exploiting the duality of patterns and tuples. Experiments on real dataset show that the C-COERE method has achieved good effect.

The internet of things comes into our daily life. It connected lots of resource-constrained devices, denoted as smart device, in an Internet-like structure. Considering the computing burden, the CoAP protocol is developed for serving the resource-constrained device and maps to HTTP for integration with existing web. In this paper, an access-control protocol will be introduced. The protocol is designed for IoT(Internet of Things) home scenario. Like the most IoT we can see, the IoT home scenario contains lots smart devices which collect some private information from us. To protect those data, an access-control protocol is needed. The protocol is deployed into Contiki OS and evaluated using the powertrace and some other tools. The results shows the protocol we designed takes a little more memory usage than an OAuth based authorisation protocol but smaller power consumption and more suitable for small scale IoT environment.

Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is a neuroprotective hormone and a decrease in levels of circulating IGF-1 contributes toward cognitive decline. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of sevoflurane on the level of circulating IGF-1 and cognitive function in aged mice and the role of circulating IGF-1 in the cognitive dysfunction induced by sevoflurane. Aged mice were exposed to 1 or 2 minimal alveolar concentrations of sevoflurane for 4 or 8 h. Before and after the exposure, blood was collected from the tail vein and serum IGF-1 was measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. After exposure, spatial learning and memory were tested in the Morris water maze. An intraperitoneal injection of IGF-1 was used to study the role of IGF-1 in the cognitive impairment induced by sevoflurane. Sevoflurane dose dependently decreased the serum IGF-1 concentration, and resulted in aged mice taking significantly longer and traveling significantly further to find the platform. Sevoflurane significantly decreased the times crossing the platform and %time spent in target quadrant relative to the control group. IGF-1 attenuated this effect, but could not completely reverse it. We conclude that downregulation of circulating IGF-1 contributes toward the cognitive impairment induced by sevoflurane.

Pancreatic cysts are a group of lesions with heterogeneous malignant potential. Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers to aid in cyst diagnosis and classification. The objective of this study was to identify potential microRNA (miR) biomarkers in endoscopically acquired pancreatic cyst fluid that could be used to distinguish between benign, premalignant, and malignant cysts.A list of candidate miRs was developed using a whole-genome expression array analysis of pancreatic cancer (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma) and nonmalignant samples overlapped with existing literature and predicted gene targets. Endoscopically acquired pancreatic cyst fluid samples were obtained from a group of 38 patients who underwent cyst fluid aspiration and surgical resection. Selected miR expression levels in cyst fluid samples were assessed by quantitative real-time-PCR. Additionally, in situ hybridization (ISH) on corresponding cyst tissue samples was performed to identify the source and validate the expression level of fluid miRs.Of the six miRs that were profiled in the study, two showed differential expression in malignant cysts. miR-221 was expressed at significantly higher levels in malignant cysts compared with benign or premalignant cysts (P=0.05). miR-21 was also expressed at significantly higher levels in malignant cysts (P0.01). Additionally, the expression of miR-21 was significantly higher in premalignant cysts than benign cysts (P=0.03). The differential expression of miR-21 among cyst categories was confirmed by ISH.In this small single-center study, miRs are potential pancreatic cyst fluid diagnostic biomarkers. In particular, miR-21 is identified as a candidate biomarker to distinguish between benign, premalignant, and malignant cysts. Additionally miR-221 may be of use in the identification of more advanced malignant disease.

Small bowel adenocarcinoma is part of the tumor spectrum of Lynch syndrome, which is caused by germline mutations in the mismatch repair genes. The present study describes the case of a 51-year-old man fulfilling the Amsterdam II criteria for Lynch syndrome, who had a 15-mm early-stage colorectal cancer resected endoscopically from the ascending colon. Due to upper abdominal discomfort after eating and consequent anorexia, a computed tomography scan performed 1 month later showed a tumoral mass of the upper jejunum with local lymphadenopathy. The laparotomy revealed a completely obstructing mass. Intraoperative frozen section showed a small bowel adenocarcinoma. Subsequent genetic testing confirmed the germline mutation of mutL homolog 1. The patient received 6 cycles of an adjuvant folinic acid, fluorouracil and ocaliplatin chemotherapy regimen. The latest CT scan, 16 months after the chemotherapy, did not show any recurrence. This case highlights the importance of considering the possibility of small bowel adenocarcinoma in patients with upper bowel obstruction, particularly for patients with Lynch syndrome.

Quinacrine (QC), an antimalarial drug, has been shown to possess anticancer effect both in vitro (cancer cell lines) and in vivo (mouse models). In the cancer cells, QC can simultaneously suppress nuclear factor-κB and activate p53 signaling, which results in the induction of the apoptosis in these cells. However, the experimental results come from a few limited cancer cell lines, and the detailed mechanisms remain unknown.This study investigated the tumor-killing effects of QC on gastric cancer cells as well as underlying molecular pathways.SGC-7901 cells were treated with or without QC at different concentrations for 24 hours. The effect of QC on the inhibition of SGC-7901 cell proliferation was assessed by Cell Counting Kit-8 assay. Apoptosis was detected by examining nuclear morphology and quantifying phosphatidylserine externalization. Alterations in cellular morphology were analyzed by laser scanning confocal microscopy for fluorescent analysis. Cell cycle analysis was performed by propidium iodide (PI) staining and flow cytometry. The enzyme activity changes of caspase-3 were detected by colorimetry expression method. Western blot analysis was used to detect the changes in the protein level of Bax, Bc1-2, p53, and cytochrome c in cytosol of SGC-7901 cells.Our results showed that QC could significantly inhibit the growth of SGC-7901 cells in a dose-dependent manner, with the IC50 mean (SD) value of 16.18 (0.64) μM, compared with nontreated controls. QC treatment (15 μM) could also induce apoptosis in SGC-7901 cells (26.30% [5.31%], compared with control group of 3.37% [0.81%]; P0.01), and the increasing phosphatidylserine level and the accumulation of chromatin nucleation in QC-treated cells provided further evidence. In addition, cell cycle analysis with PI staining showed that a significant S enriches, increasing from 12.00% (1.24%) (control) to 20.94% (2.40%) (QC treatment) (P0.01). Furthermore, increased activities of caspase-3 (increasing from 0.108 [0.019] to 0.628 [0.068]; P0.01) were observed in SGC-7901 cells treated with 15 μM QC. Western blot analysis showed that QC treatment significantly increased the levels of proapoptotic proteins, including cytochrome c, Bax, and p53, and decreased the levels of antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2, thus shifting the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 in favor of apoptosis.Our findings suggest that QC can significantly inhibit cell growth and induce apoptosis in SGC-7901 cells, which involves p53 upregulation and caspase-3 activation pathway.

Dental caries (tooth decay) is caused by a specific group of cariogenic bacteria, like Streptococcus mutans, which convert dietary sugars into acids that dissolve the mineral in tooth structure. Killing cariogenic bacteria is an effective way to control or prevent tooth decay. In a previous study, we discovered a novel compound (Glycyrrhizol A), from the extraction of licorice roots, with strong antimicrobial activity against cariogenic bacteria. In the current study, we developed a method to produce these specific herbal extracts in large quantities, and then used these extracts to develop a sugar-free lollipop that effectively kills cariogenic bacteria like Streptococcus mutans. Further studies showed that these sugar-free lollipops are safe and their antimicrobial activity is stable. Two pilot human studies indicate that a brief application of these lollipops (twice a day for ten days) led to a marked reduction of cariogenic bacteria in oral cavity among most human subjects tested. This herbal lollipop could be a novel tool to promote oral health through functional foods.

Seismic signals are nonstationary mainly due to absorption and attenuation of seismic energy in strata. Referring to spectral decomposition of seismic data, the conventional method using short-time Fourier transform (STFT) limits temporal and spectral resolution by a predefined window length. Continuous-wavelet transform (CWT) uses dilation and translation of a wavelet to produce a time-scale map. However, the wavelets utilized should be orthogonal in order to obtain a satisfactory resolution. The less applied, Wigner–Ville distribution (WVD) being superior in energy distribution concentration, is confronted with cross-terms interference (CTI) when signals are multi-component. In order to reduce the impact of CTI, Cohen class uses kernel function as low-pass filter. Nevertheless it also weakens energy concentration of auto-terms. In this paper, we employ smoothed pseudo Wigner–Ville distribution (SPWVD) with Gauss kernel function to reduce CTI in time and frequency domain, then reassign values of SPWVD (called reassigned SPWVD) according to the center of gravity of the considering energy region so that distribution concentration is maintained simultaneously. We conduct the method above on a multi-component synthetic seismic record and compare with STFT and CWT spectra. Two field examples reveal that RSPWVD potentially can be applied to detect low-frequency shadows caused by hydrocarbons and to delineate the space distribution of abnormal geological body more precisely.

To accurately measure crack lengths, we developed a real-time surface imaging method (SAW PA) combining an ultrasonic phased array (PA) with a surface acoustic wave (SAW). SAW PA using a Rayleigh wave with a high sensitivity to surface defects was implemented for contact testing using a wedge with the third critical angle that allows the Rayleigh wave to be generated. Here, to realize high sensitivity imaging, SAW PA was optimized in terms of the wedge and the imaging area. The improved SAW PA was experimentally demonstrated using a fatigue crack specimen made of an aluminum alloy. For further verification in more realistic specimens, SAW PA was applied to stainless-steel specimens with a fatigue crack and stress corrosion cracks (SCCs). The fatigue crack was visualized with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and its length was measured with a high accuracy of better than 1 mm. The SCCs generated in the heat-affected zones (HAZs) of a weld were successfully visualized with a satisfactory SNR, although responses at coarse grains appeared throughout the imaging area. The SCC lengths were accurately measured. The imaging results also precisely showed complicated distributions of SCCs, which were in excellent agreement with the optically observed distributions.

Background Elevated urinary globotriaosylceramide (Gb 3 ) has been considered a hallmark of F abry disease, an X‐linked lysosomal disorder that is a risk factor for most types of heart disease. Methods and Results We screened 1421 consecutive patients with common forms of heart disease for F abry disease by measuring urinary Gb 3 in whole urine using tandem mass spectrometry, α‐galactosidase A activity in dried blood spots, and we looked for GLA mutations by parallel sequencing of the whole gene (exons and introns) in pooled genomic DNA samples followed by Sanger sequencing verification. GLA variants were found in 13 patients. In the 1408 patients without GLA mutations, urinary Gb 3 levels were significantly higher in heart disease patients compared to 116 apparently healthy controls (median difference=10.0 ng/mL and P F abry disease (n=7) and heart disease patients with elevated urinary Gb 3 (n=6). Sphingomyelin and Gb 3 levels were abnormal in the left ventricular wall of patients with ischemic heart failure. Elevated levels of urinary Gb 3 were independently associated with increased risk of death in the average follow‐up of 17 months (hazard ratio=1.59 for increase in Gb 3 of 200, 95% CI =1.36 and 1.87, and P Conclusions In heart disease patients who do not have F abry disease or GLA gene mutations, a higher level of urinary Gb 3 is positively associated with near‐term mortality. The elevation of urinary Gb 3 and that of other lipids suggests that heart disease is associated with multiorgan lipid abnormalities. Clinical Trial Registration URL: clinicaltrials.gov. Unique Identifier: NCT 01019629.

Partitioning network, especially some DTN, can use Message Ferry(MF) scheme to restore network connection. Message TTL describes the maximum delay tolerance of transmission and messages with out-of-date TTL should be dropped. In this paper, we will study the problem of how to design the ferry's moving route dynamically to get high message delivery ratio under the constraint of message TTL, which we call it TAFR problem as well as algorithms. We compare TAFRA to existing SIRA and Random Way point algorithm with different message TTLs and ferry number in two scenarios. The simulation shows that TAFRA can get nearly twice the delivery ratio than SIRA in low message TTL conditions, and 50% more delivery ratio with increasing ferry number. Furthermore, the simulation shows that TAFRA provides on-demand characteristics which are more suitable in some non-uniformly distribute message condition.

for HSCT evaluation. It was determined that there might also be a maternal family history of Fragile X syndrome. EB, and his mother, were tested and the mother was found to be a carrier of a premutation allele (82 repeats) and EB was found to be mosaic for a premutation allele and a full mutation (107 and >200 repeats). Since Fragile X syndrome, even in a mosaic state, is expected to cause cognitive disability in males, it was determined that even if HSCT was performed, this child may see only minimal neurological benefit due to the underlying Fragile X syndrome. This abstract will discuss the ethical dilemmas presented by these results and how the dilemma was eventually resolved with emphasis on ethical principles.

A new calculation method of the relations between Lattice constant and transmission wavelength in three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals is presented. It provides theoretical basis for the preparation of 3D photonic crystals. Based on the plane wave expansion method, this paper analyze the relationship with the width of photonic band gaps, refractive index difference, lattice constant, transmission wavelength of 3D photonic crystals with typical lattice structures including fcc, diamond and woodpile. The structure of 3D photonic band gap (PBG) is simulated using band-solve software. In 3D photonic crystals, with the change of refractive index difference, lattice constant and wavelength of photonic band is linear relationship. To realize, on the visible range of 3D photonic crystals, the fcc structure is easier to implement. But woodpile structure is more difficult to implement. Compared with high refractive index materials, 3D photonic crystals with low refractive index are easier to work on visible range.

An elliptical symmetric model in spatial domain of natural image is proposed in this paper. Based on the model, the statistical properties of intra prediction error are studied. Furthermore, using the linear characteristic of discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the proposed model, we offer a mathematical analysis of the properties of DCT coefficient for intra prediction error. The horizontal intra prediction mode is selected as the example. DCT coefficient properties of the rest prediction modes can be derived by the same method.

Context-based adaptive 2D-VLC (CA-2D-VLC) is adopted by AVS. In this paper, we present an area-efficient VLSI implementation of CA-2D-VLC decoder. Data compression storage (DCS) method is proposed in memory optimization for VLC tables and a reduction of 30% in on-chip memory cost is achieved. Furthermore, an Exp-Golomb decoder is developed with codeword segmentation decoding (CSD) method, which saves 70% hardware cost compared with the prior work. Synthesized with 0.18 mum CMOS standard-cell library, the overall hardware cost of the proposed CA-2D-VLC decoder is 1540 gates at the clock frequency constraint of 180MHz. With an average throughput of one symbol per cycle, the proposed design is suitable for cost-aware and high-resolution AVS video decoding applications. Though designed for AVS originally, the proposed architecture can be adapted to other coding standards easily.

The H.264/AVC video coding standard adopts various advanced coding techniques such as variable block sizes and multiple reference frames motion compensation (MRF-MC). The computational burden of motion estimation increases as the number of reference frames searched. In this paper, we present a content-adaptive fast motion estimation algorithm. This algorithm fully uses the temporal and spatial content information at frame, MB and block levels to speed up the search process for multiple reference frames. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can be 3.6 times faster than the multiple reference frames UMHexagonS scheme, with negligible degradation of video quality.

increase the Kc. In this paper, we suggest Kr should be increased. There are many possibilities to be done with thereflector. This is based on the fact that reflector is independent. This new idea can also break through the restrictionto the objective resolution, and make the sensitivity greatly increased.The reflector, shown in Fig.3, consists of two plane mirrors Ri and R2. The Ri, fixed within the reflector, gives