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NiFe2O4 anode materials are prepared by chemical co-precipitation method using Na2CO3, NaOH, and Na2C2O4 as precipitants, respectively, and PEG 20000 as dispersants. Through various characterization methods, the structure, morphology, and electrochemical properties of NiFe2O4 materials prepared with different precipitants are studied. By comparison, it is found that the NiFe2O4 prepared with Na2C2O4 as the precipitant has a porous sheet-like structure with good dispersibility. In addition, the capacity remains at 502.3 mAh·g−1 and after 100 cycles at 100 mA·g−1. At high current densities of 400 and 1000 mA·g−1, the discharge capacities after 100 cycles are 462.7 and 401.1 mAh·g−1. Additionally, cyclic voltammetry (CV) tests show that the NiFe2O4 de/lithium intercalation process is stable and reversible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For high-rate linear systematic maximum distance separable (MDS) codes, most early constructions could initially optimally repair all the systematic nodes but not all the parity nodes. Fortunately, this issue was first solved by Li et al. in (IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 64(9), 6257-6267, 2018), where a transformation that can convert any nonbinary MDS array code into another one with desired properties was proposed. However, the transformation does not work for binary MDS array codes. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing another generic transformation that can convert any $[n, k]$ binary MDS array code into a new one, which endows any $r=n-k\ge 2$ chosen nodes with optimal repair bandwidth and optimal rebuilding access properties, and at the same time, preserves the normalized repair bandwidth/rebuilding access for the remaining $k$ nodes under some conditions. As two immediate applications, we show that 1) by applying the transformation multiple times, any binary MDS array code can be converted into one with optimal rebuilding access for all nodes, 2) any binary MDS array code with optimal repair bandwidth or optimal rebuilding access for the systematic nodes can be converted into one with the corresponding optimality property for all nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The segmentation of neuronal morphology in electron microscopy images is crucial for the analysis and understanding of neuronal function. However, most of the existing segmentation methods are not suitable for challenging datasets where the neuronal structure is contaminated by noise or has interrupted parts. In this paper, we propose a segmentation method based on deep learning to determine the location information of neurons and reduce the influence of image noise in the data. Specifically, we adapt our neuron dataset based on UNet by using convolution with BN fusion and multi-input feature fusion. The method is named REDAFNet. The model simplifies the model structure and enhances the generalization ability by fusing the convolution layer and BN layer. The noise interference in the data was reduced by multi-input feature fusion, and the ability to understand and express the data was enhanced. The method takes a neuron image as input and its pixel segmentation map as output. Experimental results show that the segmentation accuracy of the proposed method is 91.96%, 93.86% and 80.25% on the ISBI2012 dataset, U-RISC retinal neuron dataset and N2DH-GOWT1 stem cell dataset, respectively. Compared with the existing segmentation methods, the proposed method can extract more complete feature information and achieve more accurate segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Ni-Mn-In Heusler alloy is a typical system with large elastocaloric and magnetocaloric effects due to the coupling of structural transformation and magnetic transition, which provides a way to improve the refrigerant performance by coupling the external mechanical stress and magnetic field. Here, we investigate the phase constitution, martensitic transformation behavior, mechanical properties, and elastocaloric effect in (Ni52Mn31In17-xCux)B0.2 (x = 0, 1, 2, 3)alloys. It is found that the (Ni52Mn31In16Cu1)B0.2 polycrystal exhibits a giant adiabatic cooling of −9.5 K at a low stress of 220 MPa which has a large value of |ΔTad unloading|/σ about 43.2 K/GPa. This is a remarkable |ΔTad unloading|/σ obtained among all the reported Ni-Mn-In Heusler alloys. It also maintains a good functional stability with the ΔTad unloading of −6.8 K after 100 cycles at a high strain of 3%, indicating that it is a promising candidate for an elastocaloric refrigeration material with excellent comprehensive properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a generic transformation that can convert any nonbinary $(n=k{+}r,k)$ maximum distance separable (MDS) code into another $(n,k)$ MDS code over the same field such that: 1) some arbitrarily chosen $r$ nodes have the optimal repair bandwidth and the optimal rebuilding access; 2) for the remaining $k$ nodes, the normalized repair bandwidth and the normalized rebuilding access (over the file size) are preserved; and 3) the sub-packetization level is increased only by a factor of $r$. Two immediate applications of this generic transformation are then presented. The first application is that we can transform any nonbinary MDS code with the optimal repair bandwidth or the optimal rebuilding access for the systematic nodes only, into a new MDS code which possesses the corresponding repair optimality for all nodes. The second application is that by applying the transformation multiple times, any nonbinary $(n,k)$ scalar MDS code can be converted into an $(n,k)$ MDS code with the optimal repair bandwidth and the optimal rebuilding access for all nodes, or only a subset of nodes, whose sub-packetization level is also optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binary sequences with low odd correlation have important applications in communication systems to reduce interference. In this paper, using the interleaving technique, we present a generic connection between binary sequences with low odd correlation and quaternary sequences with low even correlation. As a result, some new binary sequences with optimal odd auto-correlation magnitude are obtained. Besides, two sets consisting of 2^n+1 binary sequences of period 2(2^n-1) with the maximum odd correlation magnitude 2^((n+1)/ 2)+2 are derived, which are the first two optimal classes of binary sequence sets achieving the Sarwate bound on the odd correlation magnitude in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A family \mathcal IP8 of sequences over the 8-ary quadrature-pulse amplitude modulation (Q-PAM) constellation with asymptotically optimal correlation property was presented by Anand and Kumar in 2008. This is the only known family of sequences over the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation whose correlation magnitude asymptotically achieves the Welch bound. In this paper, a larger family \mathcal IP8^{\text {new}} of sequences with the same correlation magnitude as that of \mathcal IP8 but double family size is obtained. Moreover, the correlation distributions of \mathcal IP8 and \mathcal IP8^{\text {new}} are also determined for two particular cases in terms of the property of a class of exponential sums over Galois rings. It is also shown that more classes of QAM and Q-PAM sequences with low correlation and larger family size can be obtained from our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an optimal combinatorial object, zero-difference balanced (ZDB) functions introduced by Ding in 2008, are a generalization of the well-known perfect nonlinear functions. ZDB functions have received much attention in recent years due to its important applications in coding theory and sequence design. One objective of this paper is to present a construction of ZDB functions based on a kind of generalized cyclotomy. It generates ZDB functions over cyclic group with new parameters which can not be produced by earlier constructions. Another objective of this paper is to employ these ZDB functions to obtain at the same time: 1) optimal constant-composition codes; 2) perfect difference systems of sets; and 3) optimal frequency-hopping sequences, all with new parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rotation symmetric bent functions and their generation two-rotation symmetric bent functions are two classes of cryptographically significant Boolean functions. However, few constructions have been presented in the literature, which either have restriction on integer $n$ or have algebraic degree no more than 4. In this paper, for any even integer $n\ge 4$ , three classes of bent functions are presented respectively. Most notably, the proposed $n$ -variable rotation symmetric bent functions and two-rotation symmetric bent functions can have any possible algebraic degree ranging from 2 to $n/2$ . Besides, we obtain bent idempotent functions with the maximal algebraic degree $n/2$ . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Lung carcinoma is one of the most frequently diagnosed malignancy and threats human life and health. In clinical practice, gefitinib, one of the most well-known epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, was frequently used in the treatment of non-small cell lung carcinoma. However, this drug is not useful for all non-small cell patients. In this study, the biomarkers were found out to predict the therapeutic effects of gefitinib for lung carcinoma patients. Serum samples were collected from patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma. The ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC)-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (Q-TOF MS) was conducted to obtain the metabolic data for each patient. Partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) was performed to indicate the differences between metabolites of patients, and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to eliminate the interference of the patient’s gender, age, smoking history and disease stage. Thus, differential biomarkers were found. The combination of these biomarkers was statistically significant predictors based on progression-free survival. If these biomarkers can be further confirmed by the clinic, it could suggest the proper therapeutic schedule, and help to reduce patients’ economic burden and medication side effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reinterpret the $(k+2,k)$ zigzag code in coding matrix and then propose an optimal exact repair strategy for its parity nodes, whose repair disk I/O approaches a lower bound derived in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Piggybacking is an efficient method to decrease the repair bandwidth of maximum distance separable codes. In this paper, in order to reduce the repair bandwidth of parity nodes of the known minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes with high rate, which is usually the whole amount of the original data, i.e., the maximal, a new systematic piggybacking design is proposed through an in-depth analysis of the design of piggybacking. As a result, new MSR codes are obtained with almost optimal repair bandwidth of parity nodes while retaining the optimal repair bandwidth of systematic nodes. Furthermore, MSR codes with balanced download during node repair process are presented based on the new piggybacking design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The newly presented $(k+m,k)$ Hadamard minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are a class of high rate storage codes with optimal repair property for single node failure. In this paper, we propose a new simple optimal repair strategy for $(k+m,k)$ Hadamard MSR codes, which can considerably reduce the computation compared with the original one during the node repair. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Besides being building blocks for protein synthesis, amino acids serve a wide variety of cellular functions, including acting as metabolic intermediates for ATP generation and for redox homeostasis. Upon amino acid deprivation, free uncharged tRNAs trigger GCN2-ATF4 to mediate the well-characterized transcriptional amino acid response (AAR). However, it is not clear whether the deprivation of different individual amino acids triggers identical or distinct AARs. Here, we characterized the global transcriptional response upon deprivation of one amino acid at a time. With the exception of glycine, which was not required for the proliferation of MCF7 cells, we found that the deprivation of most amino acids triggered a shared transcriptional response that included the activation of ATF4, p53 and TXNIP. However, there was also significant heterogeneity among different individual AARs. The most dramatic transcriptional response was triggered by methionine deprivation, which activated an extensive and unique response in different cell types. We uncovered that the specific methionine-deprived transcriptional response required creatine biosynthesis. This dependency on creatine biosynthesis was caused by the consumption of S-Adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM) during creatine biosynthesis that helps to deplete SAM under methionine deprivation and reduces histone methylations. As such, the simultaneous deprivation of methionine and sources of creatine biosynthesis (either arginine or glycine) abolished the reduction of histone methylation and the methionine-specific transcriptional response. Arginine-derived ornithine was also required for the complete induction of the methionine-deprived specific gene response. Collectively, our data identify a previously unknown set of heterogeneous amino acid responses and reveal a distinct methionine-deprived transcriptional response that results from the crosstalk of arginine, glycine and methionine metabolism via arginine/glycine-dependent creatine biosynthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a generic framework for constructing systematic minimum storage regenerating codes with two parity nodes based on the invariant subspace technique. Codes constructed in our framework not only contain some best known codes as special cases, but also include some new codes with key properties, such as the optimal access property and the optimal update property. In particular, for a given storage capacity of an individual node, one of the new codes has the largest number of systematic nodes and two of the new codes have the largest number of systematic nodes with the optimal update property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New quadratic bent functions in polynomial form are constructed in this paper. The constructions give new Boolean bent, generalized Boolean bent and \(p\) -ary bent functions. Based on \(\boldsymbol {\mathbb {Z}}_{4}\) -valued quadratic forms, a simple method provides several new constructions of generalized Boolean bent functions. From these generalized Boolean bent functions a method is presented to transform them into Boolean bent and semi-bent functions. Moreover, many new \(p\) -ary bent functions can also be obtained by applying similar methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An (n = 2k + s,k) Suh–Ramchandran code is shown, where s > 0 is a positive integer, is a minimum storage regeneration code, and can also achieve the optimal repair bandwidth for multiple systematic nodes failure repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit a method to produce binary sequences using the most significant bit map from \bf Z4 to the binary field. This method is useful for the construction of binary sequences with low correlation and large family size. There may be more cases where starting with \bf Z4 could help researchers design new low correlation sequences for code-division multiple access application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Cusick conjectured that certain elementary symmetric Boolean functions of the form \sigma2^{t+1l-1, 2^{t}} are the only nonlinear balanced ones, where t, l are any positive integers, and \sigman,d=\bigoplus1\leq i1 < \cdots < id\leq nxi1xi2\cdots xid for positive integers n, 1\leq d\leq n. In this paper, by analyzing the weight of \sigman,2^{t} and \sigman, d, we prove that wt(\sigman,d) < 2^{n-1} holds in most cases, and so does the conjecture. According to the remainder modulo 4, we also consider the weight of \sigman, d from two aspects: n\equiv 3(mod\;4) and n\not\equiv 3(mod\;4). In particular, our results not only cover the most known results, but also contain some new cases. Thus, we can reduce the conjecture to few remaining cases. We do not fully solve the conjecture, but we also consider the weight of \sigman, 2^{t+2^{s}} and also give some experimental results on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an upper bound for a hybrid incomplete exponential sum over finite fields is derived. This bound is then used to obtain lower and upper bounds for aperiodic Hamming correlation of frequency-hopping sequences based on power functions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Zero-difference balanced (ZDB) functions were introduced recently by Ding for the construction of optimal constant-composition codes, and optimal and perfect difference systems of sets. They are closely related to partitioned difference families. In this paper, we present generic constructions of ZDB functions from functions with difference-balanced property. In particular, two classes of ZDB functions with new and flexible parameters are reported. Employing these new ZDB functions, we obtain at the same time optimal (1) constant-composition codes, (2) constant-weight codes, and (3) perfect difference systems of sets, all with new and flexible parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the partial Hamming correlation properties of frequency-hopping sequences (FHSs) are discussed. The Peng–Fan bounds on sets of FHSs are generalized to the case of partial correlation. Both individual FHSs with optimal partial autocorrelation and sets of FHSs with optimal partial correlation are presented. The former has more new parameters compared with the known individual FHSs with optimal partial autocorrelation, while the later is obtained in the literature for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we derive a new bound on maximum nontrivial Hamming correlation of frequency hopping (FH) sequences from the Singleton bound in error correcting code literature, and we discuss the relation between the new bound and the known ones on FH sequences. Further, we construct two classes of FH sequences from punctured Reed–Solomon codes and one class of FH sequences from polynomial functions, which meet the new bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let m and k be positive integers with m/gcd(m,k) being odd, for a\in \BBR and b\in \BBL, the exponential sum \sumx\in \BBLi^{Tr(ax+2bx^{2^{k}+1})} is studied systematically in this paper, where i=\sqrt -1, \BBR =\BBG \BBR (4,m) is a Galois ring, \BBL is the Teichmüller set of \BBR and Tr(\cdot) is the trace function from the Galois ring \BBR to \BBZ4. Through the discussions on the solutions of certain equations and the newly developed theory of \BBZ4-valued quadratic forms, the distribution of the exponential sum is completely determined. As its applications, we can determine the Lee weight and Hamming weight distributions of a class of codes \cal C^k over \BBZ4 and the correlation distribution of a quaternary sequence family \cal U^k, respectively. Furthermore, the Hamming weight distributions of the binary codes obtained from \cal C^k under the most significant bit (MSB) and Gray maps are also determined. For the MSB map sequences of \cal U^k, the nontrivial maximal correlation value is given and the correlation distribution is determined for the Gray map sequences of \cal U^k. It should be noted that the distribution of the exponential sum for the case \gcd (m,k)\ne 1 is obtained for the first time, and then the corresponding codes and sequences are novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three classes of binary sequences of period 4N with optimal autocorrelation value/magnitude have been constructed by Tang and Gong based on interleaving certain kinds of sequences of period N, i.e., the Legendre sequence, twin-prime sequence and generalized GMW sequence. In this paper, by means of sequence polynomials of the underlying sequences, the properties of roots of the corresponding sequence polynomials of the interleaved sequences with period 4N and optimal autocorrelation value/magnitude are discussed in the splitting field of x^N-1. As a consequence, both the minimal polynomials and linear complexities of these three classes of sequences are completely determined except for the case of the sequences obtained from the generalized GMW sequences. For the latter, the minimal polynomial and linear complexity can be specially obtained if the sequence is constructed based on m-sequences instead of generalized GMW sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we establish a general connection between authentication codes and difference balanced functions. Consequently, we present three new classes of authentication codes without secrecy from difference balanced functions. This is the first time that the difference balanced functions, which were used in literature mainly to construct sequences with good correlations, have been used to construct authentication codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Let be an odd prime and . Based on the theory of quadratic forms over finite fields of odd characteristic, we generalize the binary construction by Yu and Gong to -ary case. As a result, we obtain a new family of -ary sequences of period for arbitrary positive integers and with . It is shown that, for a given , has family size , maximum correlation , and maximum linear span . In particular, the new family contains Tang, Udaya, and Fan’s construction as a subset, if an -sequence is excluded. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, for an odd prime p and positive integers n, m, and e such that n = me, a new family $${\mathcal{S}}$$ of p-ary sequences of period p − 1 with low correlation and large linear span is constructed. It is shown that $${\mathcal{S}}$$ has maximum correlation $${1+p^{n+2e\over 2}}$$, family size p, and maximal linear span $${{(m+3)n\over 2}}$$. When m is even, the proposed family $${\mathcal{S}}$$ contains Tang, Udaya, and Fan's construction as a subset. Furthermore, when n is even and $${e=1, \mathcal{S}}$$ has the same correlation and family size, but larger linear span compared with the construction by Seo, Kim, No, and Shin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two generic constructions of optimal frequency-hopping sequence (FHS) sets employing d-form functions with difference-balanced property are presented. They generalize the previous constructions of optimal FHS sets using m-sequences and produce new optimal FHS sets that cannot be produced by the earlier constructions. By choosing appropriate d-form functions with difference-balanced property, both constructions lead to FHSs with large linear complexity. In addition, one of the proposed constructions gives new optimal parameters of FHS sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, new optimal Families \cal S and \cal U of quaternary sequences have been presented, and the optimal binary sequence Family \cal V obtained from Family \cal S under Gray map has been investigated as well. The two sequence Families \cal U and \cal V are optimal with respect to the well-known Sidelnikov bound and Welch bound, but their exact correlation distributions are not known until now. In this paper, their exact correlation distributions are completely determined in some cases by making use of exponential sums and the theory of \bf Z_4-valued quadratic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a simple but generic method is proposed for transforming any family of quaternary sequences, with low correlation, of any odd period N to another family of quaternary sequences of period 2N with low correlation. As an application of the generic method to sequence Family \cal A, a new optimal quaternary sequence family with length 2(2^n-1), family size 2^n+1, and maximal nontrivial correlation value 2^n+1\over 2+2, where n is an odd integer, is obtained. Most notably, unlike all the known optimal quaternary sequence families, the new family has a unique property that the odd integers 1, 3 and the even integers 0, 2 are allocated alternatively in all the sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sequences with optimal autocorrelation property are needed in certain communication systems and cryptography. In this paper, a construction of balanced quaternary sequences with period N \equiv 2 (mod\ 4) and optimal autocorrelation value and a construction of almost balanced binary sequences with period N \equiv 0 (mod\ 4) and optimal autocorrelation value are presented. Both constructions are a generalization of earlier ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this note, by using a modification of the families B and C, we obtain a larger family of optimal quadriphase sequences, V over Z4. In contrast to the families B and C, the family D has the same length and the same maximal nontrival correlation value, but with double the size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a study on the construction of a class of pseudonoise sequences based on Gordon-Mills-Welch sequences. Construction of low correlation zone sequences; Proof of the main theorem on on pseudonoise sequences; Conclusion.

The Singleton-type bound that offers an upper limit on the minimum Hamming distance for locally repairable codes (LRCs) has been studied by a lot of literatures. However, the work to determine tight Singleton-type bound for LRCs under all parameters is still incomplete. This paper focuses on the tightness of Singleton-type bound for general LRCs (linear and nonlinear). By exploring how the structure of repair sets affects the minimum Hamming distance, some properties for minimum Hamming distance of LRCs are derived. Through these properties, the following results are obtained: 1. The necessary conditions for LRCs whose minimum Hamming distance reaches the previous Singleton-type bound are provided. Due to these necessary conditions, the previous Singleton-type bound is proved to be unreachable under a number of parameters, and the tight Singleton-type bounds are given under some of these parameters. 2. Under a class of parameters where the previous Singleton-type bound for linear LRCs has been proved unreachable in the literatures, we improve Singleton-type bound and show that the new Singleton-type bound is tight. In addition, based on the existing LRC constructions, the previous Singleton-type bound for LRCs is shown to be tight under some other parameters. Finally, for an importance case of LRCs (i.e., every repair set is a 1-erasure correcting code), the Singleton-type bound under three classes of parameters is further improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study of a patient who was diagnosed with both Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS). The patient experienced symptoms such as dry mouth, dry eyes, and joint swelling and pain. The article provides details of the diagnosis process, including laboratory tests and imaging results. It also discusses the surgical procedure and pathological findings that confirmed the diagnosis. The authors explore the relationship between immune system diseases and the onset of PVNS, as well as treatment options for this condition. The study suggests that early diagnosis and treatment can lead to better clinical outcomes. [Extracted from the article]

Recently, some high-rate maximum distance separable (MDS) array codes were designed to optimally repair a single failed node by connecting all the surviving nodes. However, in practical systems, sometimes not all the surviving nodes are available. To facilitate the practical storage system, a few constructions of $(n,k)$ MDS array codes with the property that any single failed node can be optimally repaired by accessing any $d$ surviving nodes (i.e., minimum-storage regenerating (MSR) codes) have been proposed, where $d\in [k+1:n-1)$. However, all high-rate MDS array codes with this property either have large sub-packetization levels or are not explicit for all the parameters. To address these issues, we propose a generic transformation that can convert any $(n',k')$ MDS array/scalar code to another $(n=n'-\delta,k=k'-\delta)$ MDS array code with the optimal repair property and optimal access property for an arbitrary set of two nodes, while the repair efficiency of the remaining $n-2$ nodes can be kept, where $2\le \delta \le n'-k'$. By recursively applying the generic transformation to an MDS scalar code multiple times, we get a high-rate MDS array code with the optimal repair property and the optimal access property for all nodes, which outperforms previous known high-rate MDS array codes in terms of either the sub-packetization level or the flexibility of the parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the problem of Secure Multi-party Batch Matrix Multiplication (SMBMM), where a user aims to compute the pairwise products $\mathbf {A}\divideontimes \mathbf {B}\triangleq (\mathbf {A}^{(1)}\mathbf {B}^{(1)},\ldots,\mathbf {A}^{(M)}\mathbf {B}^{(M)})$ of two batch of massive matrices $\mathbf {A}$ and $\mathbf {B}$ that are generated from two sources, through $N$ honest but curious servers which share some common randomness. The matrices $\mathbf {A}$ (resp. $\mathbf {B}$) must be kept secure from any subset of up to $X_{\mathbf {A}}$ (resp. $X_{\mathbf {B}}$) servers even if they collude, and the user must not obtain any information about $(\mathbf {A},\mathbf {B})$ beyond the products $\mathbf {A}\divideontimes \mathbf {B}$. A novel computation strategy for single secure matrix multiplication problem (i.e., the case $M=1$) is first proposed, and then is generalized to the strategy for SMBMM by means of cross subspace alignment. The SMBMM strategy focuses on the tradeoff between recovery threshold (the number of successful computing servers that the user needs to wait for), system cost (upload cost, the amount of common randomness, and download cost) and system complexity (encoding, computing, and decoding complexities). Notably, compared with the known result by Chen et al., the strategy for the degraded case $X= X_{\mathbf {A}}=X_{\mathbf {B}}$ achieves better recovery threshold, amount of common randomness, download cost and decoding complexity when $X$ is less than some parameter threshold, while the performance with respect to other measures remain identical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To evaluate the efficiency and safety of combined local bladder hyperthermia and intravesical chemotherapy (IVC) for the treatment of patients with pT1 stage bladder cancer. Method: A total of 189 patients with pT1 who underwent transurethral resection of bladder cancer (TURBT) were retrospectively reviewed. After TURBT, the patients with low‐grade urothelial carcinoma (UC) were treated with either an IVC with pirarubicin (THP) protocol or chemo‐thermotherapy (CHT) with THP protocol, whereas patients with high‐grade UC were treated with either an intravesical immunotherapy (IVI) with bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) protocol or CHT protocol, patients' characteristics, tumor biological features, and follow‐up data were analyzed and compared between CHT and IVC group in low‐grade UC, CHT, and IVI group in high‐grade UC, respectively. Results: The median follow‐up time was 24 months. In patients with low‐grade UC, the median recurrence free survival (RFS) interval and costs of treatment in CHT group were significantly higher than those in IVC group (p =.01, p <.001, respectively), CHT was associated with higher RFS compared with IVC by Kaplan–Meier analysis, and three patients in IVC group upgraded to high grade when tumor recurred, whereas no cases were found upgraded in CHT group, p =.38. In patients with high‐grade UC, tumor recurrence rates at 12 (p =.004) and 24 months (p =.004) after TURBT, rate of complications (p =.04)—especially for hematuresis (p =.03) and irritation symptoms (p =.04)—the median costs of treatment (p <.001) in CHT group were significantly lower than those in IVI group, RFS interval, health‐related quality of life) at 12 and 24 months after TURBT in CHT group was significantly higher than those in IVI group (p <.001, p =.002, and p <.001, respectively), and CHT was associated with higher RFS compared with IVI by Kaplan–Meier analysis. The rate of patients upstaged to pT2 in CHT group seemed lower than that in IVI group, but there was no significantly statistical difference (14.3% vs. 24%, p =.58). Conclusion: CHT has a beneficial prophylactic effect in patients with pT1 bladder cancer, especially in patients with high‐grade UC, which is much more effective and safer than BCG, meanwhile it costs less compared with BCG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates reducing sub-packetization of capacity-achieving schemes for uncoded Storage Constrained Private Information Retrieval (SC-PIR) systems. In the SC-PIR system, a user aims to download one out of K files from N servers while revealing nothing about the identity of the requested file to any individual server, in which the K files are stored at the N servers in an uncoded form and each server can store up to μK equivalent files, where μ is the normalized storage capacity of each server. We first prove that there exists a capacity-achieving SC-PIR scheme for a given storage design if and only if all the packets are stored exactly at M ≜ μN servers for μ such that M = μN ∈ {2,3, . . . ,N}. Then, the optimal sub-packetization for capacity-achieving linear SC-PIR schemes is characterized as the solution to an optimization problem, which is typically hard to solve since it involves non-continuous indicator functions. Moreover, a new notion of array called Storage Design Array (SDA) is introduced for the SC-PIR system. With any given SDA, an associated capacity-achieving SC-PIR scheme is constructed. Next, the SC-PIR schemes that have equal-size packets are investigated. Furthermore, the optimal equal-size sub-packetization among all capacity-achieving linear SC-PIR schemes characterized by Woolsey et al. is proved to be N(M−1)/gcd (N,M), which is achieved by a construction of SDA. Finally, by allowing unequal size of packets, a greedy SDA construction is proposed, where the sub-packetization of the associated SC-PIR scheme is upper bounded by N(M−1)/gcd (N,M). Among all capacity-achieving linear SC-PIR schemes, the sub-packetization is optimal when min{M,N−M}|N or M = N, and within a multiplicative gap min{M,N−M}/gcd (N,M) of the optimal one in general. In particular, for the special case N = d ⋅ M ± 1 where the positive integer d ≥ 2, we propose another SDA construction to obtain lower sub-packetization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly malignant type of breast cancer and lacks effective therapy. Targeting cysteine-dependence is an emerging strategy to treat the mesenchymal TNBC. However, many TNBC cells are non-mesenchymal and unresponsive to cysteine deprivation. To overcome such resistance, three selective HDAC6 inhibitors (Tubacin, CAY10603, and Tubastatin A), identified by epigenetic compound library screening, can synergize with cysteine deprivation to induce cell death in the non-mesenchymal TNBC. Despite the efficacy of HDAC6 inhibitor, knockout of HDAC6 did not mimic the synthetic lethality induced by its inhibitors, indicating that HDAC6 is not the actual target of HDAC6 inhibitor in this context. Instead, transcriptomic profiling showed that tubacin triggers an extensive gene transcriptional program in combination with erastin, a cysteine transport blocker. Notably, the zinc-related gene response along with an increase of labile zinc was induced in cells by the combination treatment. The disturbance of zinc homeostasis was driven by PKCγ activation, which revealed that the PKCγ signaling pathway is required for HDAC6 inhibitor-mediated synthetic lethality. Overall, our study identifies a novel function of HDAC6 inhibitors that function as potent sensitizers of cysteine deprivation and are capable of abolishing cysteine-independence in non-mesenchymal TNBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, all the known high-rate MDS codes with the optimal repair bandwidth possess a significantly large sub-packetization level, which may prevent the codes to be implemented in practical systems. To build MDS codes with small sub-packetization level, existing constructions and theoretical bounds imply that one may sacrifice the optimality of the repair bandwidth. Partly motivated by the work of Tamo et al. (IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 59(3), 1597–1616, 2013), in this paper, we present a transformation that can greatly reduce the sub-packetization level of MDS codes with the optimal repair bandwidth with respect to the same code length n. As applications of the transformation, four high-rate MDS codes having both small sub-packetization level and near-optimal repair bandwidth can be obtained, where three of them are explicit and the required field sizes are around or even smaller than the code length ${n}$. Additionally, we propose another explicit MDS code which has a similar structure as that of the first resultant code obtained by the generic transformation, but can be built on a smaller finite field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coded caching systems have been widely studied to reduce the data transmission during the peak traffic time. In practice, two important parameters of a coded caching system should be considered, i.e., the transmission rate which is the maximum amount of the data transmission during the peak traffic time, and the subpacketization level, the number of divided packets of each file when we implement a coded caching scheme. Although there exists a tradeoff between transmission rate and subpacketization, we prefer to design a scheme with transmission rate and subpacketization as small as possible since they reflect the transmission efficiency and complexity of the caching scheme, respectively. In this paper, we first characterize a coded caching scheme from the viewpoint of linear algebra and show that designing a linear coded caching scheme is equivalent to constructing three classes of matrices satisfying some rank conditions. Then based on the invariant subspaces in linear algebra and combinatorial design theory, a new class of coded caching schemes over $\mathbb {F}_{2}$ is obtained by constructing these three classes of matrices. It turns out that the transmission rate of our new scheme is the same as the scheme construct by Yan et al. (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 63, 5821-5833, 2017), but the subpacketization is significantly reduced. Finally by means of these matrices, we show that the minimum storage regenerating codes can also be used to construct coded caching schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coded caching system, we prefer to design a scheme with the rate $R$ and the packet number $F$ of each file split as small as possible since the efficiency of transmission in the peak traffic times increases with the decreasing of $R$ and the realizing complexity increases with the increasing of $F$. Up to now, almost all of the previously known schemes can be realized by the combinatorial structure which is called placement delivery array (PDA). In this paper, we also study the schemes by means of PDAs. We first show that given the minimum rate, the scheme proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MN scheme) has the minimum packet number which is too large in practice. From the view point of combinatorial design, two variant MN schemes, which can significantly reduce the packet number by increasing some rate, are obtained. Especially one of these schemes has better performance than the scheme generated by the well known grouping method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a kind of erasure code, piggybacking has been applied in practice since it can significantly reduce the repair bandwidth of distributed storage systems. Currently, several efficient piggybacking designs have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a more efficient “one-to-one” piggybacking design (OOP) to further reduce the repair bandwidth. Different from the existing piggybacking designs, OOP adopts a simple encoding principle that one parity node only piggybacks symbols from one substripe. Particularly, OOP takes into account the efficient repair of systematic nodes and parity nodes simultaneously. It is shown that for OOP design, the optimal number of substripes is $(\sqrt {r-1}+r-1)$ , the average repair bandwidth ratio of systematic nodes can be as low as $\frac {2\sqrt {r-1}+1}{2\sqrt {r-1}+r}$ , and the average repair bandwidth ratio of parity nodes reaches $\left({\frac {\sqrt {r-1}+1}{r}+\frac {(r-1)^{2}-\sqrt {(r-1)^{3}}}{rk}}\right)$. In contrast to the existing piggybacking designs, OOP can further reduce the repair bandwidth of both system nodes and parity nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many applications, including integer-forcing linear multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) receiver design, one needs to solve a successive minima problem (SMP) on an $n$ -dimensional lattice to get an optimal integer coefficient matrix $\boldsymbol {A}^\star \in {Z}^{n\times n}$. In this paper, we first propose an efficient optimal SMP algorithm with an ${\mathcal {O}}(n^{2})$ memory complexity. The main idea behind the new algorithm is it first initializes with a suitable suboptimal solution, which is then updated via a novel algorithm with only ${\mathcal {O}}(n^{2})$ flops in each updating, until $\boldsymbol {A}^{\star }$ is obtained. Different from existing algorithms which find $\boldsymbol {A}^\star $ column by column through using a sphere decoding search strategy $n$ times, the new algorithm uses a search strategy once only. We then rigorously prove the optimality of the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze its complexity. In particular, we not only show that the new algorithm is $\Omega (n)$ times faster than the most efficient existing algorithm with polynomial memory complexity, but also assert that it is even more efficient than the most efficient existing algorithm with exponential memory complexity. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the optimality and efficiency of our novel SMP algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the buffer-aided two-way wireless energy harvesting (EH) relay network comprising two users and one relay, where two users exchange information with the help of the relay via three phases ofEH, multiple-access, and broadcast. By transforming the opportunistic scheduling design problem into an equivalent convex problem, we present the adaptive design for the buffer-aided two-way EH relay network to maximize the long-term achievable rate region. To fulfill the delay sensitive transmission requirements, a delay-aware adaptive transmission (DAAT) scheduling scheme is proposed to guarantee the average end-to-end delivery delay by employing the Lyapunov optimization framework. Our analysis discloses that the average achievable rate region of the two-way wireless EH relay network can be improved when fully considering the potentials by deploying data buffer and energy storage at the relay. There exists an inherent tradeoff among the achievable sum rate, the delivery delay, and the power consumption. It is shown that, when a certain time delay is tolerable, the DAAT scheduling scheme is able to realize a rate region arbitrarily close to the achievable rate region of the buffer-aided two-way wireless EH relay network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to now, many $(k+r,k,N)$ minimum-storage regenerating (MSR) codes with $k$ information nodes, $r$ parity nodes, and node capacity $N$ have been proposed. However, most of them are constructed over a relatively large finite field. In this paper, we propose three high-rate MSR codes over small finite fields. First, the new MSR code $\mathcal {C}_{1}$ with the optimal access property for all nodes is constructed over small finite field $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ , for example $q=3$ for even $r$ or $q\ge r+1$ for odd $r$ , which is much smaller than that of the known one given by Ye and Barg. Further, considering to reduce the node capacity, another new MSR code $\mathcal {C}_{2}$ over $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ with $q\ge r+2$ is generated based on $\mathcal {C}_{1}$ , which can effectively reduce the node capacity of $\mathcal {C}_{1}$ by a factor of $r^{r-1}$. However, only the first $k$ nodes of $\mathcal {C}_{2}$ have the optimal access property. Therefore, the new MSR code $\mathcal {C}_{3}$ over $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ with $q\ge r+2$ which has the optimal access property for all nodes is proposed by modifying $\mathcal {C}_{2}$. Notably, in contrast to $\mathcal {C}_{1}$ , the node capacity of $\mathcal {C}_{3}$ is decreased by a factor of $r^{r-2}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caching is a promising solution to satisfy the ever-increasing demands for the multi-media traffics. In caching networks, coded caching is a recently proposed technique that achieves significant performance gains over the uncoded caching schemes. However, to implement the coded caching schemes, each file has to be split into F packets, which usually increases exponentially with the number of users K . Thus, designing caching schemes that decrease the order of F is meaningful for practical implementations. In this paper, by reviewing the Ali-Niesen caching scheme, the placement delivery array (PDA) design problem is first formulated to characterize the placement issue and the delivery issue with a single array. Moreover, we show that, through designing appropriate PDA, new centralized coded caching schemes can be discovered. Second, it is shown that the Ali-Niesen scheme corresponds to a special class of PDA, which realizes the best coding gain with the least F . Third, we present a new construction of PDA for the centralized coded caching system, wherein the cache size M at each user (identical cache size is assumed at all users) and the number of files N ( q is an integer, such that q\geq 2 ). The new construction can decrease the required F of Ali-Niesen scheme to O(e^{K\cdot ({M}/{N})\ln \!\,({N}/\!{M})}) or O(e^{K\cdot (1-({M}/\!{N}))\ln \!\,(N/(N-M))})$ , respectively, while the coding gain loss is only 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]