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This updated meta-analysis sought to explore whether pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) could serve as an independent predictor for survival outcomes in patients with cervical cancer. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of science and Scopus for studies on the association of pretreatment serum NLR with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) among patients with cervical cancer. Included studies with a hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) or a p-value were weighted by generic inverse-variance and pooled in a random effects meta-analysis. Subgroup analyses were conducted according to regions, NLR cut-off values and treatments. Publication bias was analyzed by Egger's and Begg's tests. A total of 14 studies comprising 6041 patients were included. The median cut-off value for NLR was 2.46 (range from 1.60 to 3.80). The higher NLR was associated to worse OS (HR 1.86, 95% CI 1.44–2.40) and PFS (HR 1.67, 95% CI 1.25–2.23), compared with lower NLR. This association still exited when analyzed according to regions, NLR cut-off values. Moreover, Significant association between NLR and OS was observed in studies which included patients with early stage disease and receiving radical surgeries. High NLR is independently associated with decreased OS and PFS in patients with cervical cancer. Pretreatment NLR is of independent value to predict the survival outcomes in patients with cervical cancer, regardless of regions and primary treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the dynamic change of the opportunistic network topology and the lack of stable information transmission paths between nodes, the traditional topology-based routing algorithm cannot achieve the desired routing performance. To address of this problem, this paper proposes a routing algorithm based on trajectory prediction (RATP). The routing protocol based on trajectory prediction can efficiently and quickly adapt to the network link quality instability and the dynamic changes of network topology. RATP algorithm constructs a node mobility model by analyzing the historical mobility characteristics of the nodes. According to the node prediction information, the metric value of the candidate node is calculated, and the node with the smaller metric value is selected as the data forwarding node, which can effectively reduce the packet loss rate and avoids excessive consumption. Simulation results show that compared with other algorithms, the proposed algorithm has higher data delivery ratio, and end-to-end data delay and routing overhead are significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cuckoo Search (CS) is a Meta-heuristic method, which exhibits several advantages such as easier to application and fewer tuning parameters. However, it has proven to very easily fall into local optimal solutions and has a slow rate of convergence. Therefore, we propose Modified cuckoo search algorithm with variational parameter and logistic map (VLCS) to ameliorate these defects. To balance the exploitation and exploration of the VLCS algorithm, we not only use the coefficient function to change step size a and probability of detection pa at next generation, but also use logistic map of each dimension to initialize host nest location and update the location of host nest beyond the boundary. With fifteen benchmark functions, the simulations demonstrate that the VLCS algorithm can over come the disadvantages of the CS algorithm.In addition, the VLCS algorithm is good at dealing with high dimension problems and low dimension problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]