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Purpose: With the introduction of flattening filter free (FFF) linear accelerators to radiation oncology, new analytical source models for a FFF beam applicable to current treatment planning systems is needed. In this work, a multisource model for the FFF beam and the optimization of involved model parameters were designed. Methods: The model is based on a previous three source model proposed by Yang et al. ['A three-source model for the calculation of head scatter factors,' Med. Phys. 29, 2024-2033 (2002)]. An off axis ratio (OAR) of photon fluence was introduced to the primary source term to generate cone shaped profiles. The parameters of the source model were determined from measured head scatter factors using a line search optimization technique. The OAR of the photon fluence was determined from a measured dose profile of a 40×40 cm2 field size with the same optimization technique, but a new method to acquire gradient terms for OARs was developed to enhance the speed of the optimization process. The improved model was validated with measured dose profiles from 3×3 to 40×40 cm2 field sizes at 6 and 10 MV from a TrueBeam™ STx linear accelerator. Furthermore, planar dose distributions for clinically used radiation fields were also calculated and compared to measurements using a 2D array detector using the gamma index method. Results: All dose values for the calculated profiles agreed with the measured dose profiles within 0.5% at 6 and 10 MV beams, except for some low dose regions for larger field sizes. A slight overestimation was seen in the lower penumbra region near the field edge for the large field sizes by 1%-4%. The planar dose calculations showed comparable passing rates (>98%) when the criterion of the gamma index method was selected to be 3%/3 mm. Conclusions: The developed source model showed good agreements between measured and calculated dose distributions. The model is easily applicable to any other linear accelerator using FFF beams as the required data include only the measured PDD, dose profiles, and output factors for various field sizes, which are easily acquired during conventional beam commissioning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Several sesquiterpene lactones that have been isolated from medicinal plants are known to have many pharmacological activities. In this study, we investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of zedoarondiol, a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from the rhizoma of Curcuma heyneana, in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated macrophage cells. Zedoarondiol dose-dependently inhibited LPS-stimulated nitric oxide (NO), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) productions in RAW 264.7 macrophage and in mouse peritoneal macrophage cells. Consistent with these findings, in RAW 264.7 cells, zedoarondiol suppressed the LPS-stimulated protein levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and the mRNA expressions of iNOS, COX-2, TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β in a concentration-dependent manner. Moreover, molecular data revealed that zedoarondiol inhibited LPS-stimulated DNA binding activity and the transcription activity of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB), and this effect was accompanied by decreases in the degradation and phosphorylation of inhibitory κB (IκB)-α, and in the subsequent blocking of NF-κB translocations to the nucleus. Furthermore, zedoarondiol attenuated the phosphorylations of IκB kinase (IKK), extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38), and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells. Taken together, the findings of the present study indicate that zedoarondiol inhibits iNOS, COX-2, and pro-inflammatory cytokine expressions by suppressing the phosphorylations of IKK and MAPKs, and by subsequently inactivating the NF-κB pathway. These relations reveal, in part, the mechanism underlying the anti-inflammatory properties of zedoarondiol. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The effects of polishing pressure and abrasive on the chemical mechanical polishing of blanket and patterned aluminum thin films were investigated. The CMP process experiments were conducted using a soft pad and slurry mainly composed of acid solution and Al2O3 abrasive. The result of the blanket film showed that, as the concentration of abrasive in the slurry increased, surface roughness deteriorated but waviness improved. The planarity of the patterned Al films was slowly improved by the CMP when the widths of the gaps between the patterns were relatively small. An attempt was made to find the optimum CMP process conditions by which the patterned Al thin film could be planarized with a fine surface. The most satisfactory film surface was obtained when the applied pressure was low (10 kPa) and the abrasive concentration was relatively high (5 wt.%). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Simple Summary: Musculoskeletal disorder is affecting a large population globally and is becoming one of the foremost health concerns. The treatment is often expensive and may cause a severe problem in the case of misdiagnosis. Therefore, a reliable, fast, and inexpensive automatic recognition system is required that can detect and diagnose abnormalities from radiographs to support effective and efficient decision making for further treatment. In this work, the finger study type from the MURA dataset is taken into consideration owing to the fact the existing models were not able to give the desired performance and accuracy in detecting abnormalities in finger radiographs. Herein, a novel deep learning model is proposed, wherein after the preprocessing and augmentation of the finger images, they are fed into a model that learns the discriminative features through multiple hidden layers of dense neural networks and classifies them as normal or abnormal radiographs. The achieved result outperforms all existing state-of-the-art models, making it suitable for clinical settings. This will help society in the early detection of the disorder, which reduces the burden on radiologists and reduces its long-term impact on a large population. The practice of Deep Convolution neural networks in the field of medicine has congregated immense success and significance in present situations. Previously, researchers have developed numerous models for detecting abnormalities in musculoskeletal radiographs of upper extremities, but did not succeed in achieving respectable accuracy in the case of finger radiographs. A novel deep neural network-based hybrid architecture named ComDNet-512 is proposed in this paper to efficiently detect the bone abnormalities in the musculoskeletal radiograph of a patient. ComDNet-512 comprises a three-phase pipeline structure: compression, training of the dense neural network, and progressive resizing. The ComDNet-512 hybrid model is trained with finger radiographs samples to make a binary prediction, i.e., normal or abnormal bones. The proposed model showed phenomenon outcomes when cross-validated on the testing samples of arthritis patients and gives many superior results when compared with state-of-the-art practices. The model is able to achieve an area under the ROC curve (AUC) equal to 0.894 (sensitivity = 0.941 and specificity = 0.847). The Precision, Recall, F1 Score, and Kappa values, recorded as 0.86, 0.94, 0.89, and 0.78, respectively, are better than any of the previous models'. With an increasing appearance of enormous cases of musculoskeletal conditions in people, deep learning-based computational solutions can play a big role in performing automated detections in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We present a disposable thermo-pneumatic micropump with microscale check valves for easy incorporation in a fully integrated biochip. The microfluidic device is comprised of biocompatible materials: glass and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The chip consists of a glass substrate and three PDMS layers. In the chip, a Cr/Au heater is fabricated by micromachining on a glass substrate, while the flow channel, pump chamber, and valves are made by replica molding using layers of PDMS. The glass-based heater chip and the PDMS-based micropump chip are assembled and clamped together to enable operation of the system, and then the components are separable such that the heater chip can be used repeatedly and the PDMS chip can be used in a disposable manner. The operation of the micropump was investigated experimentally, as well as through simulations using fluid dynamics software. Superior pumping performance was achieved when the duty ratio of the voltage applied to the heater was 33%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The recent reverse total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) implant designs employ shorter humeral component stems; some designs even eliminate the stem completely. The short stem provides several advantages: preserved bone, less stress shielding, ease of revision surgery, and freedom of humeral component location due to the minimal stem length and non-complex shape. However, due to the reduction in contact surface and frictional fixation, this stemless design may cause failure of the implant, especially during early stages following surgery. In this study, the effect of fin shape and fin length of stemless humeral components were investigated, and hypothesis was that stress and micromotion would decrease as the ratio of fin length to baseplate radius increases and the overall size of the humerus component increased. 15 different 3D models of stemless humeral components, 5 different lengths and 3 different shapes, within reverse TSA systems were developed. Each humerus component was analyzed using finite element analysis (FEA) to investigate the effects of stem length and fin shape on the initial stability of the component. The highest stress and micromotion were observed at the shortest fin length; lowest stress and micromotion were found at the longest fin length. Results suggest that the length of the fin affects the stress at the bone as well as the amount of micromotion; 20–30% longer fin length than baseplate radius would be ideal for the stemless humeral component design. However, the various fin shapes showed mixed effects on the results and further investigation is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While immune responses to the murine hookworm Nippostrongylus brasiliensis have been investigated, signaling pathways regulating development of infectious larvae (iL3) are not well understood. We hypothesized that N. brasiliensis would use pathways similar to those controlling dauer development in the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which is formally known as the "dauer hypothesis." Methods: To investigate whether dafachronic acid activates the N. brasiliensis DAF-12 homolog, we utilized an in vitro reporter assay. We then utilized RNA-Seq and subsequent bioinformatic analyses to identify N. brasiliensis dauer pathway homologs and examine regulation of these genes during iL3 activation. Results: In this study, we demonstrated that dafachronic acid activates the N. brasiliensis DAF-12 homolog. We then identified N. brasiliensis homologs for members in each of the four canonical dauer pathways and examined their regulation during iL3 activation by either temperature or dafachronic acid. Similar to C. elegans, we found that transcripts encoding antagonistic insulin-like peptides were significantly downregulated during iL3 activation, and that a transcript encoding a phylogenetic homolog of DAF-9 increased during iL3 activation, suggesting that both increased insulin-like and DAF-12 nuclear hormone receptor signaling accompanies iL3 activation. In contrast to C. elegans, we observed a significant decrease in transcripts encoding the dauer transforming growth factor beta ligand DAF-7 during iL3 activation, suggesting a different role for this pathway in parasitic nematode development. Conclusions: Our data suggest that canonical dauer pathways indeed regulate iL3 activation in the hookworm N. brasiliensis and that DAF-12 may be a therapeutic target in hookworm infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain transactions are decentralized, secure, and transparent, and they have altered industries. However, the emergence of quantum computing presents a severe security risk to the traditional encryption algorithms used in blockchain. Post-quantum signatures are required to preserve integrity and reliability. Furthermore, combining the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) with blockchain provides a long-term strategy for data storage and sharing. This study investigates the integration of post-quantum signatures with the IPFS in a blockchain system, which can considerably enhance blockchain system efficiency. We increase security and efficiency by recording hash values of signatures and public keys within the blockchain and storing their actual content using the IPFS. The study compares NIST-recommended post-quantum signatures with the ECDSA in a Bitcoin exchange scheme to show how effective the system is in countering quantum threats while maintaining optimal performance. This research makes an important addition to the long-term viability and dependability of blockchain technology in the face of the growing landscape of quantum computing breakthroughs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, we have encountered new situations that have imposed restrictions on our ability to visit public places. These changes have affected various aspects of our lives, including limited access to supermarkets, vegetable shops, and other essential establishments. As a response to these circumstances, we have developed a continuous review retrial queueing–inventory system featuring a single server and controlled customer arrivals. In our system, customers arriving to procure a single item follow a Markovian Arrival Process, while the service time for each customer is modeled by an exponential distribution. Inventories are replenished according to the (s , Q) reordering policy with exponentially distributed lead times. The system controls arrival in the waiting space with setup time. The customers who arrive at a not allowed situation decide to enter an orbit of infinite size with predefined probability. Orbiting customers make retrials to claim a place in the waiting space, and their inter-retrial times are exponentially distributed. The server may experience essential interruption (emergency situation) which arrives according to Poisson process. Then, the server goes for an emergency vacation of a random time which is exponentially distributed. In the steady-state case, the joint probability of the number of customers in orbit and the inventory level has been found, and the Matrix Geometric Method has been used to find the steady-state probability vector. In numerical calculations, the convexity of the system and the impact of F-policy and emergency vacation in the system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real-time vehicular traffic system is an integral part of the urban vehicular traffic system, which provides effective traffic signal control for a large multifaceted traffic network and is a highly challenging distributed control problem. Coordinating vehicular traffic enables the network model to deliver an efficient service flow. Consider that there are four lanes of vehicular traffic in this situation, allowing parallel vehicle movements to occur without causing an accident. In this instance, the vehicular system's control parameters are time and vehicle volume. In this work, vehicular traffic flow is examined, and an algorithm to estimate vehicle waiting time in each direction is estimated. The effectiveness of the proposed vehicle traffic signal distribution control system by comparing the experimental results with a real-time vehicular traffic system is verified. This is also illustrated numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational techniques can enhance personalized hyperthermia-treatment planning by calculating tissue energy absorption and temperature distribution. This study determined the effect of tumor properties on energy absorption, temperature mapping, and thermal dose distribution in mild radiofrequency hyperthermia using a mouse xenograft model. We used a capacitive-heating radiofrequency hyperthermia system with an operating frequency of 13.56 MHz for in vivo mouse experiments and performed simulations on a computed tomography mouse model. Additionally, we measured the dielectric properties of the tumors and considered temperature dependence for thermal properties, metabolic heat generation, and perfusion. Our results showed that dielectric property variations were more dominant than thermal properties and other parameters, and that the measured dielectric properties provided improved temperature-mapping results relative to the property values taken from previous study. Furthermore, consideration of temperature dependency in the bio heat-transfer model allowed elucidation of precise thermal-dose calculations. These results suggested that this method might contribute to effective thermoradiotherapy planning in clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, the Internet of Things and big data analytics have become a hot research topic in mobile edge computing (MEC) desires wide-ranging research works for intelligent decision making. In this view, this paper designs an intelligent outlier detection with machine learning empowered big data analytics (IODML-BDA) for MEC. The proposed model involves an adaptive synthetic sampling-based outlier detection technique to eradicate the existence of outliers. Besides, the oppositional swallow swarm optimization (OSSO) based feature selection technique is used to choose an effective set of features. Finally, long short-term memory based classification model is employed to identify different class labels. The design of OSSO algorithm for feature selection with ADASYN technique for big data analytics show the novelty of the work. A comprehensive experimental analysis is carried out on GPS trajectories, movement prediction, water treatment plant, hepatitis, and Twitter datasets to confirm the experimental results. The experimentation outcomes pointed out that the proposed IODML-BDA model achieves the higher accuracy of 0.9735, 0.9816, 0.9798, 0.9896, and 0.9912 on the applied datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To develop a fast and robust technique for the determination of optimized photon spectra for flattening filter free (FFF) beams to be applied in convolution/superposition dose calculations. Methods: A two-step optimization method was developed to derive optimal photon spectra for FFF beams. In the first step, a simple functional form of the photon spectra proposed by Ali ['Functional forms for photon spectra of clinical linacs,' Phys. Med. Biol. 57, 31-50 (2011)] is used to determine generalized shapes of the photon spectra. In this method, the photon spectra were defined for the ranges of field sizes to consider the variations of the contributions of scattered photons with field size. Percent depth doses (PDDs) for each field size were measured and calculated to define a cost function, and a collapsed cone convolution (CCC) algorithm was used to calculate the PDDs. In the second step, the generalized functional form of the photon spectra was fine-tuned in a process whereby the weights of photon fluence became the optimizing free parameters. A line search method was used for the optimization and first order derivatives with respect to the optimizing parameters were derived from the CCC algorithm to enhance the speed of the optimization. The derived photon spectra were evaluated, and the dose distributions using the optimized spectra were validated. Results: The optimal spectra demonstrate small variations with field size for the 6 MV FFF beam and relatively large variations for the 10 MV FFF beam. The mean energies of the optimized 6 MV FFF spectra were decreased from 1.31 MeV for a 3 × 3 cm2 field to 1.21 MeV for a 40 × 40 cm2 field, and from 2.33 MeV at 3 × 3 cm2 to 2.18 MeV at 40 × 40 cm2 for the 10 MV FFF beam. The developed method could significantly improve the agreement between the calculated and measured PDDs. Root mean square differences on the optimized PDDs were observed to be 0.41% (3 × 3 cm2) down to 0.21% (40 × 40 cm2) for the 6 MV FFF beam, and 0.35% (3 × 3 cm2) down to 0.29% (40 × 40 cm2) for the 10 MV FFF beam. The first order derivatives from the functional form were found to improve the speed of computational time up to 20 times compared to the other techniques. Conclusions: The derived photon spectra resulted in good agreements with measured PDDs over the range of field sizes investigated. The suggested method is easily applicable to commercial radiation treatment planning systems since it only requires measured PDDs as input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twisted light beams such as optical angular momentum (OAM) with numerous possible orthogonal states have drawn the prodigious contemplation of researchers. OAM multiplexing is a futuristic multi-access technique that has not been scrutinized for optical satellite communication (OSC) systems thus far, and it opens up a new window for ultra-high-capacity systems. This paper presents the 4.8 Tbps (5 wavelengths × 3 OAM beams × 320 Gbps) ultra-high capacity OSC system by incorporating polarization division multiplexed (PDM) 256-Quadrature amplitude modulation (256-QAM) and OAM beams. To realize OAM multiplexing, Laguerre Gaussian (LG) transverse mode profiles such as LG00, LG140, and LG400 were used in the proposed study. The effects of the receiver's digital signal processing (DSP) module were also investigated, and performance improvement was observed using DSP for its potential to compensate for the effects of dispersion, phase errors, and nonlinear effects using the blind phase search (BPS), Viterbi phase estimation (VPE), and the constant modulus algorithm (CMA). The results revealed that the proposed OAM-OSC system successfully covered the 22,000 km OSC link distance and, out of three OAM beams, fundamental mode LG00 offered excellent performance. Further, a detailed comparison of the proposed system and reported state-of-the-art schemes was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph theory is a useful mathematical structure used to model pairwise relations between sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. Graph equations are nothing but equations in which the unknown factors are graphs. Many problems and results in graph theory can be formulated in terms of graph equations. In this paper, we solved some graph equations of detour two-distance graphs, detour three-distance graphs, detour antipodal graphs involving with the line graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the server activation policy (SAP) in a multi-server queuing-inventory system (MQIS). The queue has a total of c number of multi-threshold stages as well as c-homogeneous servers. The activation of each server begins one by one if there is an adequate queue length and inventory in the system; otherwise, they remain idle. The server deactivation process continues until the queue length exceeds the manageable level (predetermined stages) or there is insufficient stock. In addition, when we assume the length of the two successive threshold levels is one, the server activation policy model becomes a regular multi-server model. The Neuts matrix geometric approach is used to discuss the stability condition, stationary probability vector. The Laplace–Stieltjes transform (LST) is used to analyse the waiting time distributions of the queue and orbital customers. Additionally, significant system performance metrics and sensitivity analysis are used to investigate the effects of various parameters and cost values. In the comparative result between the server activation model (SAM) and without the server activation model (WSAM) on the expected total cost, we obtain the minimised cost in the SAM. Moreover, the results are obtained by assuming that the length of the intervals between the two successive threshold levels is to be taken into account as the non-uniform length. The expected inventory level, reorder rate, and waiting time of a customer in the waiting hall and orbit were explored numerically by the parameter analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To retrospectively determine the effect of an arm traction device on image quality and radiation exposure during a neck computed tomography (CT) scan.Materials and Methods: Standard neck CT examinations with an automatic tube current modulation technique were compared for two groups (intervention group: patients with an arm traction device, n=45; control group: no particular positioning optimization, n=45). Image quality was the primary outcome and was assessed using image noise and the streak artifact. The secondary outcome was radiation exposure, which was measured by the volume CT dose index (CTDIvol) and dose-length product. Potential confounders, including the effective diameter of the neck and scan length, were also assessed.Results: Image noise and the streak artifact at the lower neck and the supraclavicular fossa were significantly improved in the intervention group compared with the control group (p<0.001). There was a significant decrease in the CTDIvol in the intervention group versus the control group (p=0.042). DLP showed a tendency toward a decrease in the intervention group that was non-significant (p=0.106). The effective diameter and scan length showed no statistical difference between the two groups.Conclusion: An arm traction device improves the image quality in the lower neck and the supraclavicular fossa during a neck CT. Application of this device also reduces the tendency for radiation exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimization of the energy efficiency, fairness, and rates of the system is a vital part of communication systems. Multiple access techniques have a huge potential to enhance such performance parameters. This paper studies the performance of NOMA and OMA systems in a singular cell environment, where the cellular users are distributed randomly, and cooperative relays are considered for better system reliability. The relay nodes forward the signals to the cell-edge users. This paper considers a practical scenario where all the relay equipment is distributed with non-uniform battery power levels. The performance of OMA and NOMA schemes is compared based on the key performance indicators: sum rate, fairness, and energy efficiency. The fairness factor determines fairness in the allocation of resources to all the system's users. The performance of the two schemes is assessed in three deployment scenarios: urban, suburban, and rural scenarios. Through numerical results, it is proved that the performance of the NOMA dominates the OMA scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an integrated and interconnected stochastic queuing-inventory system with a fresh item, a returned item, and a refurbished item. This system provides a multi-type service facility to an arriving multi-class customer through a dedicated channel. It sells fresh and refurbished items, buys used items from customers, refurbishes the used items for resale, and provides a repair service for defective items. The assumption of purchasing a used item from the customer and allowing them to buy a fresh item is a new idea in stochastic queuing-inventory modeling. To do so, this system has four parallel queues to receive four classes of customers and five dedicated servers to provide a multi-type service facility. Customers are classified according to the type of service they require. Each class of arrival follows an independent Poisson process. The service time of each dedicated server is assumed to be exponentially distributed and independent. This system assumes an instantaneous ordering policy for the replenishment of a fresh item. In the long run of this considered system, the joint probability distribution of the seven-dimensional stochastic process, significant system performance measures, and the optimum total cost are to be derived using the Neuts matrix geometric technique. The main objective of the system was to increase the occurrence of all kinds of customers by providing a multi-type service facility in one place. Buying a used item is unavoidable in an emerging society because it helps form a green society. Furthermore, the numerical result shows that the assumption of a system that allows a customer to sell their used item and purchase a new item will increase the number of customers approaching the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To move freely, in-pipe robots must be able to adapt to the various geometric changes of pipes. Previously, we described an in-pipe robot that can adapt to changes in diameter and curvature of center curves. This robot is able to estimate the forces exerted on the inner surface of the pipes and balance its posture inside the pipe using angular sensors attached to its rotational joints. In this paper, a method is proposed to estimate the relative attitude between the robot's main body and the pipe using the angular sensors attached to a pantograph mechanism. The use of angular sensors makes the structure of the robot simpler and more effective than the use of force or vision sensors because the normal forces and attitude can be estimated from measured angle information. This geometric estimation of attitude relative to the pipes enables the robot to recognize the inclination of the pipes. The PAROYS-II robot can control its normal force according to the variation in pipe inclination. Thus, the proposed method could reduce power consumption and stress on the robot's parts. The algorithm has been validated by multiple experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. The purpose of this investigation was to assess the cognitive effects of adjuvant hormone replacement therapy (HRT) when used to treat premenopausal women with chronic schizophrenia using an 8-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial. Method. Women of childbearing age with chronic schizophrenia were recruited and randomized into placebo and HRT groups, the latter of which was administered 0.625 mg of conjugated oestrogen with 2.5 mg of medroxyprogesterone acetate daily. Each group contained 14 subjects. The principal outcome measure was a cognitive function assessment comprised of the following; the Immediate Visual Recognition Scale, List Recall Scale, Oral Fluency Test, Trail-Making Tests A and B, and Digit Symbol Test. Psychopathology was measured using the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia. Extrapyramidal symptoms were evaluated using the Drug-Induced Extra-Pyramidal Symptoms Scale. Results. Improvements in SANS and in cognitive function as assessed using the List Recall Scale, Oral Fluency Test, and Trail-Making Test A, were significantly greater in the HRT group than in the placebo group. Conclusion. The results of this study suggest that short-term HRT is an effective adjuvant modality for improving cognitive function in women of childbearing age with chronic schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperthermia is a potent radiosensitizer, and its effect varies according to the different types of cancer cells. In the present study, the radiosensitizing effect of hyperthermia on lung cancer cell lines A549 and NCI-H1299 was determined based on the equivalent radiation dose escalation. In vitro cell experiments were conducted using lung cancer cell lines A549 and NCI-H1299 to determine thermal radiosensitivity. In vivo experiments were conducted using mouse heterotopic xenograft models to determine the treatment response and increase in the temperature of tumors using a 13.56 MHz radiofrequency (RF) hyperthermia device. Using the α and β values of the linear-quadratic equations of cell survival curves, numerical simulations were performed to calculate the equivalent radiation dose escalations. The dielectric properties of tumors were measured, and their effect on the calculated equivalent radiation dose was analyzed. Hyperthermia increased the equivalent radiation dose of lung cancer xenografts and a higher escalation was found in NCI-H1299 cells compared with that observed in A549 cells. An underestimation of the calculated equivalent radiation dose was observed when the dielectric property of the tumor was varied. This study may contribute to the effective planning of thermoradiotherapy in clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a standard digital signature may be verified by anybody, it is unsuitable for personal or economically sensitive applications. The chameleon signature system was presented by Krawczyk and Rabin as a solution to this problem. It is based on a hash then sign model. The chameleon hash function enables the trapdoor information holder to compute a message digest collision. The holder of a chameleon signature is the recipient of a chameleon signature. He could compute collision on the hash value using the trapdoor information. This keeps the recipient from disclosing his conviction to a third party and ensures the privacy of the signature. The majority of the extant chameleon signature methods are built on the computationally infeasible number theory problems, like integer factorization and discrete log. Unfortunately, the construction of quantum computers would be rendered insecure to those schemes. This creates a solid requirement for construct chameleon signatures for the quantum world. Hence, this paper proposes a novel quantum secure chameleon signature scheme based on hash functions. As a hash-based cryptosystem is an essential candidate of a post-quantum cryptosystem, the proposed hash-based chameleon signature scheme would be a promising alternative to the number of theoretic-based methods. Furthermore, the proposed method is key exposure-free and satisfies the security requirements such as semantic security, non-transferability, and unforgeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. Neurochem. (2012) 122, 952-961. Abstract While free radicals and inflammation constitute major routes of neuronal injury occurring in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), neither antioxidants nor non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have shown significant efficacy in human clinical trials. We examined the possibility that concurrent blockade of free radicals and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2)-mediated inflammation might constitute a safe and effective therapeutic approach to ALS. We have developed 2-hydroxy-5-[2-(4-trifluoromethylphenyl)-ethylaminobenzoic acid] (AAD-2004) as a derivative of aspirin. AAD-2004 completely removed free radicals at 50 nM as a potent spin-trapping molecule and inhibited microsomal PGE2 synthase-1 (mPGES-1) activity in response to both lipopolysaccharide-treated BV2 cell with IC50 of 230 nM and recombinant human mPGES-1 protein with IC50 of 249 nM in vitro. In superoxide dismutase 1G93A transgenic mouse model of ALS, AAD-2004 blocked free radical production, PGE2 formation, and microglial activation in the spinal cords. As a consequence, AAD-2004 reduced autophagosome formation, axonopathy, and motor neuron degeneration, improving motor function and increasing life span. In these assays, AAD-2004 was superior to riluzole or ibuprofen. Gastric bleeding was not induced by AAD-2004 even at a dose 400-fold higher than that required to obtain maximal therapeutic efficacy in superoxide dismutase 1G93A. Targeting both mPGES-1-mediated PGE2 and free radicals may be a promising approach to reduce neurodegeneration in ALS and possibly other neurodegenerative diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Methamphetamine, a derivative of amphetamine, has been well known to cause mental problems in humans; however, its physical effects are little known. Despite relevant information on the effect of methamphetamine abuse on bone quality being available, data regarding the frequency of osteoporosis in methamphetamine abusers are limited.Methods: We selected 46 hospitalized male methamphetamine abusers and 188 reference male controls in whom any conditions affecting bone metabolism were ruled out. Bone mineral density (BMD) in the lumbar spine was measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). We compared the BMD between methamphetamine abusers and controls and evaluated the frequency of osteoporosis in both groups.Results: The mean BMD value was lower in methamphetamine abusers (mean+/-SD, 0.71+/-0.07 g/cm(2)) than in the controls (mean+/-SD, 0.98+/-0.14 g/cm(2)). The frequency of osteoporosis was 22% according to WHO diagnostic guidelines, and osteopenia at the lumbar spine was 76%. The correlation between the extent of methamphetamine abuse and BMD was very clear.Conclusion: There was considerable loss of bone mineral in a high percentage of methamphetamine abusers. Our study is the first clinical study to determine the frequency of osteoporosis in male methamphetamine abusers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider the Diophantine equation y n = x + x (x + 1) + ⋯ + x (x + 1) ⋯ (x + k) , where x, y, n, and k are integers. In 2016, a research article, entitled – 'power values of sums of products of consecutive integers', primarily proved the inequality n = 19,736 to obtain all solutions (x , y , n) of the equation for the fixed positive integers k ≤ 10 . In this paper, we improve the bound as n ≤ 10,000 for the same case k ≤ 10 , and for any fixed general positive integer k, we give an upper bound depending only on k for n. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Conventional immunoassays are labor intensive, expensive and time consuming and require large pieces of equipment for detection. Therefore, we have developed and characterized a novel immunoassay methodology comprised of microbeads and microbiochips. In this method, microbeads are used to filter and immobilize antibodies and an immuno-gold silver staining (IGSS) method is then used to amplify electrical signals that correspond to the bound antibodies. The chip used for this system is composed of an inexpensive and biocompatible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer over a Pyrex glass substrate that contains a platinum (Pt) microelectrode, which is used to detect the electrical signal in this system, the microelectrode is fabricated on the substrate and a microchannel and pillar-type microfilter is formed in the PDMS layer. A sandwich immunoassay approach was applied to detect alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), a cancer biomarker, using this system. The results of this study showed that the time required for a complete assay was reduced by 1h and a detection limit as low as 1ng/mL was attained when this system used, which indicates that similar bead-based electrical detection systems could be used for the diagnosis of many forms of cancer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]