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Operating in unlicensed ISM bands, ZigBee devices often yield poor performance due to the interference from ever increasing wireless devices in the 2.4 GHz band. Our empirical results show that, a specific interference is likely to have different influence on different outbound links of a ZigBee sender, which indicates the chance of concurrent transmissions . Based on this insight, we propose Smoggy-Link, a practical protocol to exploit the potential concurrency for adaptive ZigBee transmissions under harsh interference. Smoggy-Link maintains an accurate link model to quantify and trace the relationship between interference and link qualities of the sender’s outbound links. With such a link model, Smoggy-Link can translate low-cost interference information to the fine-grained spatiotemporal link state. The link information is further utilized for adaptive link selection and intelligent transmission schedule. We implement and evaluate a prototype of our approach with TinyOS and TelosB motes. The evaluation results show that Smoggy-Link has consistent improvements in both throughput and packet reception ratio under interference from various interferers.

Polarization variations in optical fibers are complex and would severely affect the performances of polarization-sensitive signal distribution systems. Owing to advances in experimental techniques and theoretical tools, we observe the effect of polarization variations in the optical fibers and we demonstrate that polarization mode dispersion (PMD) dominates the free-running fiber noise. Ultrahigh correlation, over 99%, is found between the phase fluctuation induced by polarization variation and the temperature fluctuation impacted on the optical fibers. By means of a polarization scrambling technique, the polarization variations in the optical fiber are averaged and the phase perturbations are minimized. It provides a promising solution for suppressing the random disturbances of polarization in the fiber-based optical frequency transfer system and quantum key distribution (QKD) system.

Purpose: To investigate the effect of Yiqi Gubiao pill (YGP) on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in rats, and the mechanism of its action.Methods: Six groups of eight-week old male SPF-grade Wistar rats (n = 60) were used (10 rats/group), viz, control, COPD, low-dose YGP, medium-dose YGP, high-dose YGP, and dexamethasone groups. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was induced using a standard method. Graded doses of YGP were prepared by dissolving 100, 200 or 400 pills of Yiqi Gubiao. Lung damage and airway remodeling were determined by histological examination. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to measure levels of klotho in rat serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). The mRNA and protein expressions of klotho in lung tissue were assayed with qRT-PCR) and Western blot assay, respectively.Results: Serum and BALF klotho levels were significantly lower in COPD rats than in control, but the levels were markedly and dose-dependently increased by YGP (p < 0.05). Treatment of COPD rats with YGP led to significant and dose-dependent upregulation of mRNA and protein expressions of klotho (p < 0.05). Moreover, histologic score (index of lung damage) increased in COPD rats, relative to control, but it was dose-dependently decreased by YGP (p < 0.05).Conclusion: These results suggest that YGP alleviates COPD in rats via the upregulation of klotho expression. However, the potential use of YGP for COPD still needs further clinical research. Keywords: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Klotho, Lungs, Protein expression, Yiqi Gubiao pill

Long range (LoRa) is an attractive low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) technology for its features of low power, long range, and support for concurrent transmission. Our study reveals LoRa concurrent transmission suffer from the mismatch between the sender’s reception (RX) and gateway’s transmission (TX) window, which leads to the decline of goodput even the throughput is improved. Our experiment shows that goodput only accounts for two-fifths of the throughput in concurrent transmissions with 48 nodes at a duty cycle of 20%. This article presents a window match scheme named Cantor which improves the goodput of LoRa concurrent transmission by controlling the RX window size. Cantor does not require the frequent exchange of controlling information. Instead, it introduces a novel concurrent transmission model to estimate the downlink packet reception rate (PRR) with different network parameters, and a regression model is used to make the result more realistic. Then, we propose a simple optimization algorithm to select optimal RX window sizes in which nodes are able to receive acknowledgments. We implement and evaluate Cantor with commodity LoRa gateway and nodes, and conduct experiments in different scenarios. The experimental results show that Cantor increases the goodput by 70% and reduces energy consumption by 30% in LoRa concurrent transmissions with 48 nodes operate at a duty cycle of 20%.

Background Sarcopenia has been confirmed as a poor prognostic indicator of lung cancer. However, the lack of abdominal computed tomography (CT) hindered the application to assess the status of sarcopenia. The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of chest CT radiomics combined with machine learning classifiers to identify sarcopenia in advanced non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Methods This study retrospectively analyzed CT images of 99 patients with NSCLC. Skeletal muscle radiomics were extracted from a single axial slice of the chest CT scan at the 12th thoracic vertebrae level. In total, 854 radiomic and clinical features were obtained from each patient. Feature selection was conducted with FeatureSelector module, optimal key features were fed into the lightGBM classifier for model construction, and Bayesian optimization was adopted to tune hyperparameters. The model's performance was evaluated by specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision, F1‐score, Matthew's correlation coefficient (MCC), Cohen's kappa coefficient (Kappa), and AUC. Results A total of 40 patients were found to have sarcopenia. Five optimal features were selected. In the base lightGBM model, the specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, precision, F1‐score, AUC, MCC, Kappa of validation set were 0.889, 0.750, 0.833, 0.818, 0.783, 0.819, 0.649, 0.648, respectively. After Bayesian hyperparameter tuning, the optimized lightGBM model achieved better prediction performance, and the corresponding values were 0.944, 0.833, 0.900, 0.909, 0.870, 0.889, 0.791, 0.789, respectively. Conclusions Chest CT‐based radiomics has the potential to identify sarcopenia in NSCLC patients with the lightGBM classifier, and the optimal lightGBM model via Bayesian hyperparameter tuning demonstrated better performance. Key points Significant findings of the study Our study demonstrates that chest CT‐based radiomics combined with lightGBM classifier has the ability to identify sarcopenia in NSCLC patients. What this study adds Skeletal muscle radiomics would be a potential biomarker for sarcopenia identity in NSCLC patients., Our study demonstrates that chest CT‐based radiomics combined with lightGBM classifier has the ability in identifying sarcopenia in NSCLC patients, and skeletal muscle radiomics would be a potential biomarker for sarcopenia identity in NSCLC patients.

Low value solid waste pyrolysis coke was used as a catalyst to catalytically crack gas-phase tar to improve tar yield and gas production. Pyrolysis coke with different pyrolysis final temperature and pyrolysis time were prepared, the effect of tar cracking products was studied, and the optimal pyrolysis coke were screened. The pyrolysis coke catalyst was characterized by BET, FTIR, SEM. The results show that the optimal preparation final temperature of pyrolysis coke is 750 °C, and the optimal preparation pyrolysis time is 2 h. Compared with the pyrolysis of raw coal, the tar cracking rate increased by 9.3%, after added the pyrolysis coke catalyst, the gas increased by 23.2%, and the light component increased to 36.6%. And the OH, C–N and C–O–C functional groups present on coke are the factors that affect the catalytic cracking.

Background: Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome (FLHS) is a chronic hepatic disease which occurs when there is a disorder in lipid metabolism. This disease is often observed in caged laying hens and characterized by a decrease in egg production and dramatic increase of mortality. Salidroside (SDS) is an herbal drug which has shown numerous pharmacological activities, such as protective effects on mitochondrial function, attenuates cell apoptosis and inflammation, and promotes strong antioxidant defense system. We aimed to determine the therapeutic effects of SDS on FLHS in laying hens and investigate the underlying mechanisms through which SDS operates these functions. We constructed oleic acid (OA)-induced fatty liver model in vitro and high-fat diet-induced FLHS of laying hens in vivo.Results: Results indicated that SDS inhibited OA-induced lipid accumulation in chicken primary hepatocytes, increased hepatocyte activity, elevated the mRNA expression of proliferation related genes PCNA, CDK2, and cyclinD1 and increased the protein levels of PCNA and CDK2, as well as decreased the cleavage levels of Caspase-9, Caspase-8, and Caspase-3 and apoptosis in hepatocytes. Moreover, SDS promoted the phosphorylation levels of PDK1, AKT, and Gsk3-β, while inhabited the PI3K inhibitor. Additionally, we found that high-fat diet-induced FLHS of laying hens in vivo resulted in heavier body weight, liver weight, and abdominal fat weight, and severer steatosis in histology, compared with the control group (Con). However, SDS maintained lighter body weight, liver weight, and abdominal fat weight and alleviate hepatic steatosis in Model+SDS group. In addition, high-fat diet-induced FLHS (Model) of laying hens had higher total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), alanine transaminase (ALT), and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels in serum than Con group, while SDS maintained low TC, TG, ALT, and AST levels and high Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in Model+SDS group. Moreover, SDS decreased the mRNA expression abundances of PPARγ, SCD, and FAS in liver, whereas increased those of PPARα and MTTP, and decreased the mRNA expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 in Model+SDS group.Conclusions: Generally, SDS attenuated OA-induced ROS generation, inhibited lipid accumulation and hepatocyte apoptosis, and promoted hepatocyte proliferation by targeting the pathway PI3K/AKT/Gsk3-β in OA-induced fatty liver model in vitro, and alleviated high-fat diet-induced hepatic steatosis, oxidative stress, and inflammatory response in laying hens in vivo.

With the growing concerns about energy saving and security problems in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), we investigated a joint energy saving scheduling and secure routing algorithm for critical event reporting in WSN. When a critical event has been detected, the notification must be safely sent to the sink node through the uplink transmission, and the sink node needs to broadcast the alarm messages to the whole network through the downlink transmission. In the uplink, a joint power allocation and secure routing strategy (JPASR) has been proposed to maximize the routing secure connection probability (RSCP) under the constraint of power. Meanwhile, combined with the level-by-level sleeping scheduling method, the energy-saving and secure uplink transmission can be guaranteed. In the downlink, an energy-first multi-point relays set selection mechanism (EFMSS) is designed to choose the backbone nodes to broadcast messages, and the backbone nodes are waken up by the same level-by-level sleeping scheduling method as the uplink transmission. With the two-step procedure, the critical events are appropriately dealt with and the responses are broadcast to the whole network. Extensive simulations results demonstrate that the energy saving and security performances of the proposed method are superior to the existing ones.

Fundamental limits of fiber link are set by non-reciprocal effects that violate the hypothesis of equality between forward and backward path. Non-reciprocal noise arises technically from the set-up asymmetry, and fundamentally by the Sagnac effect when the fiber link encloses a non-zero area. As a pre-requisite for observation of Sagnac effect in fiber links, we present a study on phase noise and frequency stability contributions affecting coherent optical frequency transfer in bi-directional fiber links. Both technical and fundamental limitations of Two-Way optical frequency transfer are discussed. Our model predicts and our experiments substantially verify that the dominant noise mechanism at low Fourier frequencies is the polarization asymmetry induced by the temperature and relative humidity variations impacted on fiber links. The flicker noise floor due to the non-reciprocal noise arising from polarization mode dispersion is evidenced for the first time. We perform a post-processing approach which enables us to remove this polarization noise, improve the long-term stability and remove a frequency bias. We evaluate the uncertainty contributions of all the effects discussed for our 50 km spooled fiber link, dominated by its non-reciprocal noise induced by polarization mode dispersion with uncertainty of 1.9( ± 0.8)( ± 1.2) × 10−20. After correction, the linear drift of the residual phase is as low as 27 yoctosecond/s, leading to an uncertainty of the frequency transfer of 2.6 ( ± 39) × 10−22, confirming its potential for searching for more fundamental effects such as Sagnac effect or transient frequency variation due to dark matter.

Facial makeup transfer is a hot research field in computer vision, aiming to transfer the reference face's makeup style to the non-makeup face. In the existing research, we can use to combat the loss to keep the identity information of the face consistent before and after the makeup transfer, but because the input face sometimes has a massive deflection and expression action, which seriously affects the effect of makeup transfer. This paper proposed a face makeup transfer framework based on multi-scale feature loss. Our model is composed of a generator, discriminator, and multi-scale discriminator. The reference makeup and the non-makeup face are input into the generator at the same time. The generator will output the non-makeup face after makeup, which contains the input non-makeup face's identity information and the reference makeup style. To enhance the robustness of the makeup result on the network and improve the effect of makeup on the network, the output makeup face and the input non-makeup face are input into the multiscale discriminator to calculate the feature loss. The multi-scale discriminator takes the pixel multiplication of the semantic segmentation image of the makeup face and the non-makeup face as the input 1 of the multi-scale discriminator, and the pixel multiplication of the non-makeup face and its semantic segmentation as the input 2 of the multi-scale discriminator, and then calculates the feature loss of the two inputs after passing through the multi-scale discriminator. In the calculation process, the feature loss can constrain the pixel differences of different semantic segmentation, which can restrain the shadow and makeup overflow caused by angle deflection and facial expression in makeup transfer. The experimental results show that this paper's experimental method achieves a better effect of makeup transfer than the existing experimental methods.

Background The interplay between COVID‐19 pandemic and asthma in children is still unclear. We evaluated the impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on childhood asthma outcomes. Methods The PeARL multinational cohort included 1,054 children with asthma and 505 non‐asthmatic children aged between 4 and 18 years from 25 pediatric departments, from 15 countries globally. We compared the frequency of acute respiratory and febrile presentations during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic between groups and with data available from the previous year. In children with asthma, we also compared current and historical disease control. Results During the pandemic, children with asthma experienced fewer upper respiratory tract infections, episodes of pyrexia, emergency visits, hospital admissions, asthma attacks, and hospitalizations due to asthma, in comparison with the preceding year. Sixty‐six percent of asthmatic children had improved asthma control while in 33% the improvement exceeded the minimal clinically important difference. Pre‐bronchodilatation FEV1 and peak expiratory flow rate were improved during the pandemic. When compared to non‐asthmatic controls, children with asthma were not at increased risk of LRTIs, episodes of pyrexia, emergency visits, or hospitalizations during the pandemic. However, an increased risk of URTIs emerged. Conclusion Childhood asthma outcomes, including control, were improved during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, probably because of reduced exposure to asthma triggers and increased treatment adherence. The decreased frequency of acute episodes does not support the notion that childhood asthma may be a risk factor for COVID‐19. Furthermore, the potential for improving childhood asthma outcomes through environmental control becomes apparent., This study evaluates the frequency of acute respiratory and febrile presentations furing the first wave of COVID‐19 pandemic in childhood asthma. Data from the multinational PeARL cohort reveal improved health and asthma activity during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, probably attributed to decreased exposure to asthma triggers and increased treatment adherence. During that period, children with asthma experienced fewer URTIs, episodes of pyrexia, emergency visits, hospital admissions, asthma attacks and hospitalizations due to asthma, in comparison to the preceding year.

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common progressive respiratory condition. Chills in the back region with excessive sweating are common symptoms in COPD patients. The aim of our study was to identify factors associated with increased rates of perspiration in COPD patients.Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study over the course of one year by recruiting 120 COPD patients and 32 healthy controls. All patients underwent pulmonary function testing (PFT) and cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). The rate of perspiration was determined during CPET through sweat collection. The relationship between perspiration rate and multiple clinical and physiologic variables was explored through correlative analyses. Logistic regression analysis was used to reveal the multifactorial influence on the risk of acute COPD exacerbations.Results: Results showed that COPD patients were found to have a higher rate of perspiration during CPET than healthy individuals. We observed a direct relationship between perspiration rate and clinical measures of disease severity such as air flow limitations and the number of acute COPD exacerbations. The rate of perspiration was also found to be correlated with several clinical (i.e. number of hospitalizations) as well as physiologic variables (i.e. PFT and CPET parameters). Lastly, we generated a logistic regression model which predicted the likelihood of acute COPD exacerbations with an accuracy of 87.4%. Thus, elevated perspiration rates during exercise are observed in COPD patients, which is also directly correlated with the degree of dyspnea and disease progression.Conclusions: perspiration may be used as a biomarker for disease state with prognostic value.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the result of interaction between genetic and environmental factors. In this study, we aimed to explore whether MIR2113 and MIR129-LEP polymorphisms confer susceptibility to COPD.We selected five polymorphisms of two genes (MIR2113: rs2505059 and rs9320913; MIR129-LEP: rs7778167, rs791595 and rs4731420) based on previous studies and genotyped 629 samples, which included 315 COPD patients and 314 controls with Agena MassARRAY platform. The association of MIR2113 and MIR129-LEP polymorphisms with COPD risk was conducted with logistic regression by calculating odd ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).MIR2113 rs2505059 was remarkably linked with a decreased susceptibility of COPD in five genetic models, whereas MIR2113 rs9320913, MIR129-LEP rs791595 and MIR129-LEP rs4731420 could enhance the susceptibility of COPD in the Chinese Han population (P 0.05). Stratified analysis revealed that the influences of genetic variants on COPD risk were dependent on age, sex, Body mass index or smoking status (P 0.05). Haplotype analysis showed that AIt suggested that polymorphisms of MIR2113 and MIR129-LEP might be linked with the susceptibility of COPD among the Chinese Han population.

High power wavelength-stabilized 976nm diode lasers attract more attention recently with the development of higher power, higher efficiency and higher brightness fiber lasers. The wide spectrum of a high-power diode laser without wavelength stabilization (about 5 nm), together with thermal shift at about 0.3 nm/°C, strongly limits the conversion efficiency benefits at 976 pumping. In this paper, we will report the development of kilowatt wavelength-stabilized CW and QCW diode lasers at BWT.

This paper investigates the robust and reliable transmission problem in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where multiple gateways are deployed. We discover that the reliable routing path with the best link qualities may not always gain the reliable transmission. The main reason is that the majority of existing routing metrics generally do not consider the working state of gateways. And the gateways may significantly reduce the reliability of data transmission at the last hop when they operate at the variable duty cycles (e.g., due to insufficient energy harvesting from ambiance). Last-hop data loss will lead to the inefficient transmission in all previous hops. To address this issue, we propose a novel routing metric ETD (Expected Transmission Direction, ETD), which efficiently selects a proper set of gateways with improved reliability in variable duty-cycled IoT through estimating the working state of gateways. Based on ETD, we design an efficient opportunistic routing protocol PoR to ensure reliable data transmission. Our simulations demonstrate the superior performance of PoR. It is shown that PoR achieves over 98% packet delivery ratio even in the worst network setting, with effective load balancing among selected gateways.

With the fast increasing popularity of smart device communication technologies, the wireless networks on mobile sensing applications have received much attention. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) with a strip structure are ubiquitous in real world deployments, such as pipeline monitoring, water quality monitoring as well as Great Wall monitoring. However, the existing routing methods will select the next-hop node that deviates from the transmission direction to sink node in strip networks with high curvature, leading to the high communication failure rate and energy consumption. To this end, we propose a new geographic routing sensing opportunistic approach, named EasyGo, to cope with the routing problem, i.e., the transmission success rate decreases in the complicated strip networks. Specifically, by investigating the transmission direction, we propose a new candidate selection algorithm SLS, which introduces the concepts of layer slicing and virtual sinks to improve the transmission success rate in strip WSNs. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations illustrate the high efficiency and transmission performance of the proposed EasyGo strategy for strip WSNs. Furthermore, we implement the EasyGo on the testbed with Z-Stack™ nodes. Compared with the classic algorithms, our EasyGo improves the transmission success rate by up to 10%, reduces the communication overhead and the energy consumption rate by up to 11.8% and 5%, respectively.

Sensing and communication are foundations of the Internet of Things(IoT). Although energy efficiency is an important issue in MAC protocol design for general energy limited sensor networks, throughput is non trivial for some specific sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a new duty cycling scheme called MaxPut that can maximize throughput without sacrificing energy efficiency through the appropriate combination of random and scheduled duty cycling schemes. MaxPut attempts to identify risky nodes and enables risky nodes to maximize the utilization of active periods of their neighbors such that MaxPut can avoid potential buffer overflow due to aggregation of bursty data. We obtain overall throughput in networks with homogeneous and heterogeneous event occurrence processes respectively. Further, we compare MaxPut against a fully random duty cycling scheme. The simulation results show that MaxPut outperforms prior work with respect to the network throughput, while energy consumption is almost equivalent to the existing duty cycling scheme.

Improving dispersion of metal nanoparticles on graphene sheet still faces great challenges in fabrication of metal-graphene composite. The study reports one way for synthesis of palladium-graphene composite with histidine-functionalized graphene quantum dot (His-GQD) as linker and semiconductor. The resulting composite offers a three-dimensional architecture. Small Pd nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed on graphene sheets. The intimate contacts of His-GQD with graphene and Pd nanoparticle create the Schottky heterojunction and leads to an improved catalytic activity. Thermal-switchable sensor based on the Pd-His-GQD-G and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) exhibits better sensitivity, selectivity and long-term stability for electrochemical detection of 4-nitrophenol compared with the reported sensors. The differential pulse voltammetric current linearly increases with the increase of 4-nitrophenol in the range of 0.5–250 μM with detection limit is 0.10 μΜ (S/N = 3). The proposed analytical method has been successfully applied in detection of 4-nitrophenol in water.

Content caching is emerging as a vital mechanism of Wireless Cellular Network. It could reduce the content transmission distance and balance the network load efficiently. Current content caching systems have exploited the content popularity with temporal locality and users’ interests to solving the major questions: when and what to cache? But cannot point out where to cache. Past proposals for addressing these problems rely on online web caching and distributed storage systems, these works focus on wired networks or wireless networks that handsets (also called users) are independent and hence perform inefficiently when faced with complicated correlation in the practical social network, where the request probabilities of the handsets are easily affected by the others. In this paper, we introduce a wireless network content caching algorithm called PreCache that consider the social influence on users’ content requests. Our design exploit social correlation to content popularity, the intuition underlying our design is that the content request probability of handset could be affected by others handsets’ action in a same social network, and thus the content popularity exhibits a feature of spatial locality in the social network, we called the feature as virtual spatial locality. We adopt virtual spatial locality of content popularity for the change of content request probability by using a social influence model. We then design the heuristic algorithm PreCache for the selection of base stations, in which the contents are cached. We evaluate the performance of the PreCache in different network setups. The results show that PreCache could improve the successful content request ratio up to 90 % , and gain an average of 2 hop count reduction compared with ProbCache and Random Caching.

We propose a thermally tunable terahertz narrow band filter by combining two different periodic waveguides. When the terahertz tube wall is corrugated periodically, the transparent spectrum presents a very complex structure as various pass and stopbands emerging. The terahertz wave cannot propagate through the waveguide when its frequency falls into the stopbands. When we connected two tubes with different types of stopbands, it is very intriguing that we have found an unexpected ultra-narrow-band transparency in the frequency gap. Our findings provide a more feasible and effective terahertz waveguide filter beyond these existing ones. By using the finite-element method, we have obtained the filtering characteristics of the proposed structures. The filter bandwidth could be narrowed from 2.3 GHz to 0.29 MHz by increasing the number of waveguide segments and the highest $Q$ -factor achieved is about $3.5 \times 10^{6}$ . Moreover, the tunability on temperature is obtained in a waveguide device of Au based on the combination of opaque structures.

Objective. To investigate the effect of abnormal savda munziq (ASM) on the pulmonary function and expression of lung-specific aquaporins in the rat model of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with abnormal savda syndrome (ASSCOPD). Methods. Eighty male rats were randomized into ASSCOPD, COPD, and control groups. ASSCOPD was further categorized into ASM and non-ASM groups. COPD model was established by combining fumigation with airway instillation of elastase; ASSCOPD model was developed based on COPD by induction with dry cold diet, cold dry environment, and plantar electric stimulation. ASM was administered twice daily. The pulmonary function was evaluated based on respiration. The mRNA and protein levels of AQPs were estimated by real-time PCR and Western blot, respectively. Results. MV, TV, the mRNA level of AQP5, and the protein expression of AQP1, AQP4, and AQP5 were increased in ASMCOPD compared to ASSCOPD. Conclusion. The pulmonary function was impaired in ASSCOPD group; the expression of AQP1, AQP4, and AQP5 was decreased at protein and mRNA levels in ASSCOPD group. ASM can improve the pulmonary function in ASSCOPD for MV and TV. ASM could elevate the protein expression of AQP1, AQP4, and AQP5 and the mRNA level of AQP5 in lung tissue.

Transparency associated with a single second mode in a frequency band-gap, caused by orthogonality-breaking-induced multimode interactions, is investigated in a TM-polarized terahertz waveguide with an arbitrary wall profile. It is found that a pure single mode can penetrate through the Bragg gap originating from the lower-mode resonances. We propose a method of achieving bandwidth-agile transparency in a periodic cylindrical waveguide by means of a suitable wall profile. Perturbation theory with respect to the wall corrugation amplitude reveals the underlying physics of the single-mode transparency, in that the major Fourier component of the wall profile affects the width of the stopband proportionally, whereas the transparent passband within the stopband varies in inverse proportion. Numerical simulations of four different types of wall profile confirm that the width of the transparent band can be manipulated as proposed. When other Fourier components are present, simulations demonstrate only a small variation of the frequency band structure around 1 THz, indicating the validity of the proposed method. More extensive investigations of single-mode transparency will provide significant benefits in future mode-control engineering of terahertz devices.

Localization is emerging as a vital functionality of various wireless applications. Existing localization methods generally partition irregular regions with huge obstacles into regular ones, and rely on at least three anchor nodes to localize unkonwn nodes in each sub-region. If there are no sufficient number of anchor nodes and exist heterogeneous nodes in a particular sub-region, the corresponding localization accuracy can be greatly decreased. In this paper, we propose a new localization method RePC, which consists of low-complexity regional partition and sub-region cooperation for accurate localization. Although regional partition is a general approach, our proposed partition method differs from existing ones by achieving a low complexity of O(n). If a sub-region includes less than three anchor nodes, RePC enables a cooperation between this sub-region and other neighboring sub-regions, which offer additional anchor nodes to improve localization accuracy, even when the anchor nodes are sparsely deployed across the whole network. Due to these features, RePC is not only energy and cost efficient, but also robust and scalable for large-scale wild environment with huge obstacles. Notably, our method only needs to know the connectivity among sensor nodes, rather than the hop distance. Extensive simulations demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method as compared with the classic range-free localization method.

To reveal the effects on expression of airway mucus-associated proteins in rats with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and a cold-dryness symptom pattern induced by elastase and smoking.The COPD model was established with an elastase dose into the trachea combined with exposure to smoking; the COPD model cold-dryness symptom pattern was further developed by exposure to a cold, dry environment. After 90 days, pathologic lung sections, inflammatory cytokine levels (measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay), mRNA and protein expression of mucus-associated proteins and aquaporins (measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blots) were examined.Cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in the COPD and the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD groups were all significantly higher than in controls (each P0.01). IL-6 and IL-8 levels were higher in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group than in the COPD group (each P0.05). The AQP5 mRNA expression in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD and COPD groups was lower than in the control group (P0.01), and that in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group was lower than the COPD group (P0.05). The expression of MUC5AC and MUC5B mRNAs in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group and COPD group was higher than in the control group (each P0.01), and that in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group was higher than the COPD group (P0.01, and P0.05, respectively). The ratio of MUC5AC mRNA/MUC5B mRNA was COPD groupthe cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD groupthe control group. AQP4 and AQP5 protein expression in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group was lower than that in the COPD group which was lower again than in the control group. MUC5AC and MUC5B expression in the cold-dryness symptom pattern COPD group was higher than in the COPD group and higher again than in the control group.Cold-dryness affects the expression of mucus-associated protein mRNA and its corresponding proteins, reducing the secretion of aquaporins and increasing the secretion of mucins. Imbalance in aquaporins and mucins can affect the function of mucus, increasing airway obstruction.

We propose a classical analog of electromagnetically induced transparency in a cylindrical waveguide with undulated metallic walls. The transparency, induced by multi-mode interactions in waveguides, not only has a narrow line-width, but also consists of a single second-order transverse mode, which corresponds to the Bessel function distributions investigated extensively due to their unique characteristics. By increasing the thickness of sputtered gold layers of the waveguide, we demonstrate a frequency-agile single mode transparency phenomenon in a terahertz radiation. It is found that the center frequency of the transparency is linearly related to the gold thickness, indicating the achievement of a controllable single mode terahertz device. The field distributions at the cross-sections of outlets verify the single second mode transparency and indicate the mechanism of its frequency manipulation, which will significantly benefit the mode-control engineering in terahertz applications.

Alcohol abuse and anxiety disorders often occur concurrently, but their underlying cellular mechanisms remain unclear. N-methyl-D-aspartic acid receptors (NMDARs) have recently received attention from those interested in the neurobiology of anxiety. A chronic alcohol exposure rat model (28 consecutive days of 20% alcohol intake and 6 h of withdrawal) was established. Here, we investigated the NMDAR1 (NR1), Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK) pathway in the modulation of anxiety-like behaviors in rats exposed to an open field and elevated plus maze (EPM) through systematic injections of memantine (a NMDAR inhibitor). We found that the NR1-CaMKII-ERK signaling pathway was activated after alcohol withdrawal in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh) but not core (NAcC). Memantine treatment greatly ameliorated anxiety-like behavior in the rats experiencing alcohol withdrawal. Moreover, memantine uniformly suppressed the phosphorylation of NR1-CaMKII-ERK pathway induced by alcohol withdrawal. Our results suggest that activation of the NR1-CaMKII-ERK pathway in the mPFC and NAcSh is an important contributor to the molecular mechanisms underlying alcohol withdrawal-induced anxiety behaviors. NMDAR signaling pathway inhibitors are thus potential therapeutics for treating alcohol abuse.

With certain emitter beam quality and BPP allowed by fiber, we have derived a spatial beam combination structure that approaches the BPP limit of the fiber. Using the spatial beam combination structure and polarization beam combination, BWT has achieved 1.1KW output from a fiber (one end coated) with NA 0.22 and core diameter of 200μm. The electro- optical efficiency is nearly 47%. Multiple emitters with wavelength of 976nm are packaged in a module with size of 600 ×350×80mm3.

Objective. To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Yi Qi Gu Biao (YQGB) pill in treating frequent exacerbator phenotype in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (lung and spleen qi deficiency syndrome) (FEPCOPD). Methods. This prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled study assessed 112 cases (64 included) of FEPCOPD treated at the outpatient department in our hospital in January–August 2016. The patients were randomly divided into YQGB and placebo (Pb) and treated for three months. Lung function, CAT, mMRC, and TCM symptom scores (TCMs) were observed. Results. Compared with Pb, YQGB showed decreased wheezing symptom scores (WSs) and TCMs at one month and decreased CAT and TCMs at three months. From one to three months, CAT, cough, sputum, WSs, and TCMs in YQGB were lower than pretreatment values. But in Pb, CAT was lower than pretreatment values after one month; CAT, sputum, and TCMs were lower than pretreatment values after two months; CAT, cough, sputum, WSs, and TCMs were lower than pretreatment values after three months. Conclusion. Yi Qi Gu Biao pill can improve wheezing, health status, and TCMs in FEPCOPD and also can shorten the durations of cough, sputum, and wheezing. This trial is registered in the Clinical Trials Registry of China: ChiCTR-IOR-15007542 (on 8 December 2015).

With regard to concerns about an electric vehicle’s driving range extension in a cold climate, an air-conditioning heat pump (ACHP) shows considerable advantage over thermoelectric heaters for battery energy conservation. The effect of refrigerant charge amount for cooling and heating performance of the ACHP system is significant. The optimal charge, realizing the optimal system performance, is usually determined by experiments of cooling and heating performance. In this paper, the optimal charge determination process based on a newly designed ACHP applied in electric vehicles was introduced. Relationships of characteristics with charge in two modes were investigated by experimental and theoretical methods. Firstly, the performance of the ACHP system was respectively investigated at different charge amounts in cooling and heating operating conditions according to key parameters of system cycles. Secondly, the intersection platforms of subcooling and superheat variation curves with refrigerant charge amount were obtained for determining optimal charge amount of the system further by comprehensive analysis. Finally, the theoretical calculation of charge with three instructive and classical void friction correlation models were applied for better comparisons. It was found that charge amount calculated by the Hughmark model proved to be most consistent with the comprehensive experimental results.

Tungsten-doped SnO2 (WTO) thin films with a given thickness of about 300 nm have been prepared by magnetron sputtering with a substrate temperature in the range 400°C–700°C. The effects of substrate temperature on the structural, optical, and electrical properties and of WTO thin films have been investigated. A texture transition from (1 1 0) to (2 1 1) crystallographic orientations has experimentally been found by X-ray diffraction measurements as substrate temperature is raised. It was found that all thin films showed smooth surface with no cracks and high transparency (>85%) with the optical band gap ranging from 4.22 to 4.32 eV. The mobility varied from 12.89 to 22.48 cm2·(V·s)−1 without reducing the achieved high carrier concentration of about 1.6 × 1020 cm−3. Such an increase in mobility is shown to be clearly associated with the development of (2 0 0) but concurrent degradation of (1 1 0) in WTO thin films.

With the rapid economic development of our country in the 21th Century, the plant landscape design of city has changed. The scale of plant landscape design in city is improved into more large level gradually in its developing process. In this paper, we explore the green plant landscape ecological design methods and have the analysis of plant landscape situation and existing problems. Combines the city region characteristic property and culture, the arbor is backbone's biological community, abides by law of nature shown by this locality forest plants vegetation zone middle. From a macroscopic planning angle, we make clear and definite the notion of city plant landscape in the level of theoretical research, separate the plant landscape in city from in countryside or in the natural protection area, and reveal the characteristic of plant landscape in city which is a special ecological environment.

With the advent of the knowledge economy and the rapid development of information technology era, people's demand for the living environment has been far more than mere material comfort. In this paper, good landscape design for residential quarter not only provides appropriate living conditions for dweller, satisfies people's yearning for home, improves the quality of urban environment, but also is the main prerequisites which measure the green quality and management of the community. Landscape planning and design of residential environment exists failed plant landscape design, weak user-friendly design, ignoring landscape such as issues. We have identified the principles of landscape planning and design community, and allocation of green plants. It is the important weights that real estate developers sell their items, which is an important success factor that the real estate developers operate company, and people will pay more and more attention to the landscape design.

In today's information society with fierce market competition, the image of the well-known enterprises develop with the eras and adapt to enterprise development process, strengthening moderately, strengthening image planning design and subsequent modification are very necessary. Enterprise CI image and the spread of web design have become corporate image strategies, web image recognition design must create the corporate image which can represent the enterprise image, business strategy of the brand image. This paper analysis web page design from the enterprise CI brand characteristics, representing beauty and harmony, and have a visual experience.

Establishing enterprise web page in the field of multimedia is a direct route to consumer, we can get more product information, can add more value to the brand of the enterprise. When Web Pages successfully are established, it can increase the new value of enterprise historic brand, modern web design is an effective way of accessing to consumer information.

The Bi 1.5 MgNb 1.5 O 7 (BMN) thin films were deposited on ITO/glass, FTO/glass and Pt/Si (100) substrate by rf magnetron sputtering. The dielectric properties of BMN thin films on different substrates were investigated. All the BMN thin films showed cubic pyrochlore structure with (222) preferred orientation. The BMN thin film deposited on ITO glass exhibited dielectric constant of 109, low dielectric loss of 0.0013 at 1 MHz, and maximum tunability of 34% at the bias field of 1.2 MV/cm, which is better than that prepared on FTO/glass and Si substrate. The leakage current of BMN thin film on different substrates was also studied and a possible explanation was proposed. These results suggest that the ITO/glass is a promising option substrate for better properties of BMN thin film.

The paper introduces the structure and basic theory of the intrinsic safety explosion-proof, the parameters of each part and the principles of selection. Emphasizes the features、work theory and earthing of the isolated barrier, which is used in intrinsic safety explosion-proof industry process control system .

This article summarizes the methods of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT),including the CVT, P&O, INC and intelligent control, and merits and demerits are narrated in detail. Their recent research results are analyzed, finally the prospect of the development trend in MPPT photovoltaic power generation system is discussed.

SnO 2 /Ag/SnO 2 tri-layer films were prepared on quartz glass substrates by RF magnetron sputtering of SnO 2 and DC magnetron sputtering of Ag. The influence of Ag layer thickness and SnO 2 layer thickness on electrical and optical properties of the tri-layer films was investigated. Several analytical tools such as Hall measurements, four-point probe and ultraviolet–visible-near infrared spectrophotometer were used to explore the causes of the changes in electrical and optical properties. For the tri-layer film with top and bottom SnO 2 thickness of 50 nm and intermediate Ag thickness of 5 nm, it exhibits the maximum figure of merit of 6.0 × 10 − 2 Ω − 1 with sheet resistance of 9.67 Ω/sq., resistivity of 1.0 × 10 − 4 Ω·cm and the average transmittance is 94.8% in the visible light region (400–800 nm).

In order to compare the thermal sensitivity of several typical explosives, this article solved numerically one-dimensional transient heat conduction equation including thermal decomposition for explosives with finite difference method. The explicit difference equations under different boundary conditions were established, and the corresponding stability criterion was derived. The ignition times for typical explosives were calculated, which was used to evaluate thermal sensitivity of explosives.

We tried to develop an efficient strategy to isolate geniposide from Gardenia fruit and use it to treat chronic pain. Eight extraction solvents and three extraction methods were respectively compared with each other for the efficiency of geniposide extraction from Gardenia fruit. Extraction with 80% ethanol under reflux was found to give the highest yield of geniposide. Orthogonal experiment was conducted to optimize the reflux conditions and the optimal conditions are a mass(of Gardenia jasminoides Ellis powder) to volume(of solvent, 80% ethanol) ratio of 1:7 and reflux twice for 60 min each. The geniposide obtained by the reflux method was tested on the rats with chronic constriction injury(CCI) for pain relief. The results show that geniposide can enhance pain threshold and relieve pain via repressing tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α) expression in either ipsilateral or contralateral dorsal root ganglion( DRG) cells. These results suggest that geniposide treatement may be an effective clinical method to relieve pain based on the mechanism of molecular biology at DRG due to nerve injury.

In view of the present our country underground lighting power grid comprehensive protection device existing problems, this paper introduces a DSP-based long distance lighting comprehensive protection device. Short-circuit protection using adaptive random setting mode. Leakage protection using additional DC measurement theory.The device has the function of cable insulation level, the network current is monitored real-time and grid parameters are displayed in turn, which make the protection system more perfect and reliable.

Cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitors are widely used for postoperative pain control in clinical practice. However, it is unknown whether spinal sensitization is involved in the analgesic effects of COX-2 inhibitors on surgical pain. Extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) in the spinal cord is implicated in various types of pain, including surgical pain. The present study investigated the role of spinal ERK signaling in the analgesic effect of the COX-2 inhibitor parecoxib on surgical pain. Surgical pain was produced in rats by surgical incision of the hind paw. Phosphorylated (p)-ERK1/2 expression was determined by immunohistochemistry. Pain hypersensitivity was evaluated by measuring the paw withdrawal threshold using the von Frey test. The selective COX-2 inhibitor parecoxib was delivered 20 min before or 20 min after the incision by intraperitoneal injection. Pretreatment with parecoxib markedly attenuated the pain hypersensitivity induced by incision. However, post-treatment with parecoxib produced minimal analgesic effects. Parecoxib inhibited the increase in spinal p-ERK expression following surgical incision. The present study thus suggests that the COX-2 inhibitor parecoxib exerts its analgesic effect on surgical pain through the inhibition of neuronal ERK activation in the spinal cord. COX-2 inhibitor delivery prior to surgery has more potent analgesic effects, suggesting the advantage of preventive analgesia for post-operative pain control.

With continuous increase in output power of fiber lasers, small volume, low weight, high electro-optic efficiency and high brightness diode laser pump source has become the trend of development. Using spatial beam combining and polarization beam combining methods, BWT has developed a compact pump laser achieving 600W level out of a fiber of 0.22 NA and 200 μm core diameter. At 12A, electro-optical efficiency is higher than 49%. Its brightness is higher than that of the commercially available 158W pump from BWT.

Network coding is emerging as a promising technique that can provide significant improvements in the throughput of Internet of Things (IoT). Previous network coding schemes focus on several nodes, regardless of the topology and communication range in the whole network. Consequently, these schemes are greedy. Namely, all opportunities of combinations of packets in these nodes are exploited. We demonstrate that there is still room for whole network throughput improvement for these greedy design principles. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel network coding scheme, ECS (Efficient Coding Scheme), which is designed to achieve a higher throughput improvement with lower computational complexity and buffer occupancy compared to current greedy schemes for wireless mesh networks. ECS utilizes the knowledge of the topologies to minimize interference and obtain more throughput. We also prove that the widely used expected transmission count metric (ETX) in opportunistic listening has an inherent error ratio that would lead to decoding failure. ECS therefore exploits a more reliable broadcast protocol to decrease the impact of this inherent error ratio in ETX. Simulation results show that ECS can greatly improve the performance of network coding and decrease buffer occupancy.

Extracellular signal‑regulated kinase (ERK) 1/2 in the spinal cord has been implicated in the development of neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain. However, a limited number of studies have investigated the role of spinal ERK in incisional pain. The present study aimed to determine the role of ERK in the spinal cord in incisional pain. Incisional pain was established in rats by a unilateral hind paw incision. ERK1/2 expression was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Hypersensitivity to pain was evaluated by measuring the paw withdrawal threshold using the von Frey test. The mitogen‑activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitor, U0126, was administered 20 min prior to or 10 min following the incision by intrathecal or intraperitoneal injection. Phosphorylated ERK1/2 in the ipsilateral L4‑5 spinal superficial dorsal horn was activated 1 min following the incision, reached its peak level at 5 min and then returned to the basal level 20 min following the incision. Pretreatment, but not post‑treatment with U0126 markedly attenuated the pain hypersensitivity induced by the incision. Therefore, the present study indicates that the transient activation of spinal ERK1/2 contributes to the initiation of pain hypersensitivity following surgical incision.