bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Fractional Order Model for Viral Infection with Cure of Infected Cells and Humoral Immunity
Authors: Boukhouima Adnane , Hattaf Khalid , Yousfi Noura
Published: December 2018

In this paper, we study the dynamics of a viral infection model formulated by five fractional differential equations (FDEs) to describe the interactions between host cells, virus, and humoral immunity presented by antibodies. The infection transmission process is modeled by Hattaf-Yousfi functional response which covers several forms of incidence rate existing in the literature. We first show that the model is mathematically and biologically well-posed. By constructing suitable Lyapunov functionals, the global stability of equilibria is established and characterized by two threshold parameters. Finally, some numerical simulations are presented to illustrate our theoretical analysis.
The Effect of Tobacco Smoking on Bone Mass: An Overview of Pathophysiologic Mechanisms
Authors: Al-Bashaireh Ahmad M. , Haddad Linda G. , Weaver Michael , Chengguo Xing , Kelly Debra Lynch , Yoon Saunjoo
Published: December 2018

Recent evidence demonstrates that tobacco smoking causes an imbalance in bone turnover, leading to lower bone mass and making bone vulnerable to osteoporosis and fracture. Tobacco smoke influences bone mass indirectly through alteration of body weight, parathyroid hormone-vitamin D axis, adrenal hormones, sex hormones, and increased oxidative stress on bony tissues. Also, tobacco smoke influences bone mass through a direct effect on osteogenesis and angiogenesis of bone. A RANKL-RANK-OPG pathway is an essential regulatory pathway for bone metabolism and its importance lies in its interaction with most of the pathophysiologic mechanisms by which smoking influences bone mass. Both first- and secondhand smoke adversely affect bone mass; smoking cessation seems to reverse the effect of smoking and improve bone health. Recent advances in research on bone turnover markers could advance scientific knowledge regarding the mechanisms by which smoking may influence bone mass.
A New Design of Bridge‐Subgrade Transition Sections Applied in Beijing‐Shanghai High‐Speed Railway
Authors: Changwei Yang , Xinhao Tong , Jianjing Zhang , Haobo Zhu
Published: December 2018

This paper proposes a new design of bridge‐subgrade transition sections in high‐speed railways, in attempt to avoid typical defects observed in such sections. Field observations show that two types of defects tend to occur at bridge‐subgrade transition sections of high‐speed railways: ① the stiffness of the transition is usually too high so that tensile stress and even tensile cracks occur at the top surface of reserved trapezoid transition section and ② the compaction quality cannot be guaranteed within the first two meters from the abutment, which leads to excessive differential deformation within the transition section. For solving the above defects, a new design of the transition is proposed here: the section of the first 2 m from the abutment is filled with a graded gravel that is mixed with fly ash and cement to achieve specific stiffness and strength requirement, and the rest of the transition section is filled with roller‐compacted concrete. For this new type of transition section, its dynamic performance is evaluated with on‐site tests and numerical analysis. The results show that the bending angle of rail surface is almost constant along the route and the settlement of the rail surface along the route is in a linear distribution, which verifies the smoother transition from the rigid abutment to the flexible subgrade. Meanwhile, this new type of bridge‐subgrade transition section has been successfully applied in the 680 km‐long third bidding section of the Beijing‐Shanghai high‐speed railway, which provides valuable experiences for promoting and popularizing it in future construction of high‐speed railways. In addition, the construction cost of the new type of bridge‐subgrade transition section is verified by an economical efficiency analysis.
Influence of Molecular Mobility on Contrast Efficiency of Branched Polyethylene Glycol Contrast Agent
Authors: Hsu Yu-I , Mahara Atsushi , Yamaoka Tetsuji
Published: December 2018

For a water-soluble polyethylene glycol (PEG) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent, it has been demonstrated that the contrast efficiency was increased with increased branched structure of the contrast agent. However, the cause of enhanced contrast efficiency by the branched structure has not been clarified. Hence, we investigate the cause of the contrast agent enhancement by changing the Gd introduction ratio of the eight-arm PEG from 1.97 to 4.07; furthermore, the terminal mobility of the contrast agents with different structures was evaluated using proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectroscopy. It was shown that the relaxivity and contrast luminance of the synthesized branched PEG-Gd contrast agents are larger than those of linear PEG-Gd and commercially available contrast agents. Additionally, the change in the Gd introduction ratio did not affect the contrast efficiency. The terminal mobility results measured by NMR show that the linewidth at half height became broader with an increased number of branches, implying that the mobility of branched PEG-Gd is slower than that of linear PEG-Gd. Interestingly, the linewidth at half height of different structures did not change in an organic solvent; this phenomenon appeared specifically in water. It is suggested that the stable branched structure enabled the improvement in the relaxivity and contrast luminance.
Fixed Point Theorems forL-Contractions in Generalized Metric Spaces
Authors: Cho Seong-Hoon
Published: December 2018

In this paper, the notion ofL-contractions is introduced and a new fixed point theorem for such contractions is established.
Improving Children’s Experience on a Mobile EdTech Platform through a Recommender System
Authors: Ruiz-Iniesta Almudena , Melgar Luis , Baldominos Alejandro , Quintana David
Published: December 2018

Smile and Learn is an EdTech digital publisher that offers a smart library of close to 100 educational stories and gaming apps for mobile devices aimed at children aged 2 to 10 and their families. Given the complexity of navigating the content, a recommender system was developed. The system consists of two major components: one that generates content recommendations and another that provides explanations and recommendations relevant to parents and educators. The former was implemented as a hybrid recommender system that combines three kinds of recommendations. Among these, we introduce a collaborative filtering adapted to overcome specific limitations associated with younger users. The approach described in this work was tested on real users of the platform. The experimental results suggest that this recommendation model is suitable to suggest apps to children and increase their engagement in terms of usage time and number of games played.
Incorporating Accessibility Elements to the Software Engineering Process
Authors: Andrade Wesley Tessaro , Branco Rodrigo Gonçalves de , Cagnin Maria Istela , Paiva Débora Maria Barroso
Published: December 2018

The expansion of web is a phenomenon that brings several challenges in different segments of the society. Accessibility is one of these challenges and it is related to the digital inclusion and social welfare of the population. Thus, making accessible software available can contribute to solution of problems that currently exist in relation to access to information and services by all citizens. The purpose of this article is to present an approach that integrates accessibility to the Software Engineering process. We also present the Acero tool, which provides computational support to the proposed approach. Results were evaluated and we concluded that the use of the proposal reached the objectives, supporting different stages of the development process and contributing to obtain accessible software products.
PO-MPTCP: Priorities-Oriented Data Scheduler for Multimedia Multipathing Services
Authors: Lu Wei , Yu Dandan , Huang Minghe , Guo Bin
Published: December 2018

With the diversified wireless network access technology and large-scale equipment of multinetwork interface devices expanding, network transmission performance for multi-homed terminals has been widely concerned by academic circles. More and more scholars have paid attention to Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) as one of the representative methods for studying path transmission performance. However, their studies ignore the impact of dynamic network environments on data transmission performance and seldom consider the priority of data transmission. Undoubtedly, not prioritizing packets will have a dramatic effect on the users experience in the heterogeneous networks. In this paper, we propose a novel priority-aware streaming media multipath data scheduler mechanism (PO-MPTCP) to achieve the following goals: (1) detecting the priority of all streaming media data; (2) achieving multiattribute-aware path evaluation and switching mechanism; (3) introducing a path-quality priority-driven data distribution mechanism to improve streaming multipath transmission performance. The simulation experiment shows that PO-MPTCP proposed by this paper improves the transmission performance of streaming media and reduces the transmission delay. For the result of simulation experiment, it is easy for us to find that PO-MPTCP is more efficient in data delivery than the standard MPTCP mechanism.
Semantic Contextual Search Based on Conceptual Graphs over Encrypted Cloud
Authors: Wang Zhenghong , Fu Zhangjie , Sun Xingming
Published: December 2018

Currently, searchable encryption becomes the focus topic with the emerging cloud computing paradigm. The existing research schemes are mainly semantic extensions of multiple keywords. However, the semantic information carried by the keywords is limited and does not respond well to the content of the document. And when the original scheme constructs the conceptual graph, it ignores the context information of the topic sentence, which leads to errors in the semantic extension. In this paper, we define and construct semantic search encryption scheme for context-based conceptual graph (ESSEC). We make contextual contact with the central key attributes in the topic sentence and extend its semantic information, so as to improve the accuracy of the retrieval and semantic relevance. Finally, experiments based on real data show that the scheme is effective and feasible.
Drug-Target Interaction Prediction via Dual Laplacian Graph Regularized Matrix Completion
Authors: Wang Minhui , Tang Chang , Chen Jiajia
Published: December 2018

Drug-target interactions play an important role for biomedical drug discovery and development. However, it is expensive and time-consuming to accomplish this task by experimental determination. Therefore, developing computational techniques for drug-target interaction prediction is urgent and has practical significance. In this work, we propose an effective computational model of dual Laplacian graph regularized matrix completion, referred to as DLGRMC briefly, to infer the unknown drug-target interactions. Specifically, DLGRMC transforms the task of drug-target interaction prediction into a matrix completion problem, in which the potential interactions between drugs and targets can be obtained based on the prediction scores after the matrix completion procedure. In DLGRMC, the drug pairwise chemical structure similarities and the target pairwise genomic sequence similarities are fully exploited to serve the matrix completion by using a dual Laplacian graph regularization term; i.e., drugs with similar chemical structure are more likely to have interactions with similar targets and targets with similar genomic sequence similarity are more likely to have interactions with similar drugs. In addition, during the matrix completion process, an indicator matrix with binary values which indicates the indices of the observed drug-target interactions is deployed to preserve the experimental confirmed interactions. Furthermore, we develop an alternative iterative strategy to solve the constrained matrix completion problem based on Augmented Lagrange Multiplier algorithm. We evaluate DLGRMC on five benchmark datasets and the results show that DLGRMC outperforms several state-of-the-art approaches in terms of 10-fold cross validation based AUPR values and PR curves. In addition, case studies also demonstrate that DLGRMC can successfully predict most of the experimental validated drug-target interactions.
Effects of Diameters on Countercurrent Flow Limitation at a Square Top End in Vertical Pipes
Authors: Murase Michio , Nishida Koji , Torige Toshihide , Takaki Toshiya , Goda Raito , Tomiyama Akio
Published: December 2018

The falling liquid flow rate under flooding conditions is limited at a square top end of a vertical pipe in the pressurizer surge line with the diameter of about 300 mm that consists of a vertical pipe, a vertical elbow, and a slightly inclined pipe with elbows. In this study, therefore, we evaluated effects of diameters on countercurrent flow limitation (CCFL) at the square top end in vertical pipes by using existing air-water data in the diameter range of D = 19-250 mm. As a result, we found that there was a strong relationship between the constant CK and the slope m in the Wallis-type correlation where the Kutateladze parameters were used for the dimensionless gas and liquid velocities. The constant CK and the slope m increased when the water level is increased in the upper tank h. CCFL at the square top end of the vertical pipes could be expressed by the Kutateladze parameters with CK = 1.53±0.11 and m = 0.97 for D ≥ 30 mm. The CK values were smaller for D = 19-25 mm than those for D ≥ 30 mm.
WIPI1, BAG1, and PEX3 Autophagy‐Related Genes Are Relevant Melanoma Markers
Authors: D’Arcangelo Daniela , Giampietri Claudia , Muscio Mario , Scatozza Francesca , Facchiano Francesco , Facchiano Antonio
Published: December 2018

ROS and oxidative stress may promote autophagy; on the other hand, autophagy may help reduce oxidative damages. According to the known interplay of ROS, autophagy, and melanoma onset, we hypothesized that autophagy‐related genes (ARGs) may represent useful melanoma biomarkers. We therefore analyzed the gene and protein expression of 222 ARGs in human melanoma samples, from 5 independent expression databases (overall 572 patients). Gene expression was first evaluated in the GEO database. Forty‐two genes showed extremely high ability to discriminate melanoma from nevi (63 samples) according to ROC (AUC ≥ 0.85) and Mann‐Whitney (p < 0.0001) analyses. The 9 genes never related to melanoma before were then in silico validated in the IST online database. BAG1, CHMP2B, PEX3, and WIPI1 confirmed a strong differential gene expression, in 355 samples. A second‐round validation performed on the Human Protein Atlas database showed strong differential protein expression for BAG1, PEX3, and WIPI1 in melanoma vs control samples, according to the image analysis of 80 human histological sections. WIPI1 gene expression also showed a significant prognostic value (p < 0.0001) according to 102 melanoma patients’ survival data. We finally addressed in Oncomine database whether WIPI1 overexpression is melanoma‐specific. Within more than 20 cancer types, the most relevant WIPI1 expression change (p = 0.00002; fold change = 3.1) was observed in melanoma. Molecular/functional relationships of the investigated molecules with melanoma and their molecular/functional network were analyzed via Chilibot software, STRING analysis, and gene ontology enrichment analysis. We conclude that WIPI1 (AUC = 0.99), BAG1 (AUC = 1), and PEX3 (AUC = 0.93) are relevant novel melanoma markers at both gene and protein levels.
Bilateral Angle Narrowing and Acute Myopia Induced by Indapamide: A Case Report
Authors: Pedrosa Ana Catarina , Araújo Joana Rodrigues , Macedo João Paulo , Silva Sérgio Estrela , Melo António , Falcão-Reis Fernando
Published: December 2018

Purpose. To describe a clinical case of indapamide induced bilateral angle narrowing and acute myopia. Materials and Methods. Clinical case report. Results. A 37-year-old Caucasian emmetropic man presented to the Emergency Department with complaints of acute-onset bilateral blurry vision, nine days after starting treatment for arterial hypertension with a combination of indapamide and amlodipine. Clinical examination revealed the presence of myopia and appositional closure of the anterior chamber angle. Ultrasound biomicroscopy and mode B ultrasonography disclosed bilateral ciliochoroidal effusion with anterior rotation of the ciliary body and iridocorneal angle narrowing. After intraocular pressure control with brimonidine and timolol, and replacement of indapamide/amlodipine by amlodipine only, the patient was discharged. Complete resolution of the clinical manifestations was observed after three weeks, with no sequelae. Conclusions. Indapamide may cause acute myopia and angle closure secondary to ciliochoroidal effusion that are fully reversible after drug withdrawal, as long as timely diagnosis is established. Therefore, indapamide, as well as other sulfonamide-derived drugs, must always be considered in the differential diagnosis of acute myopia and angle closure.
Seismic Response and Safety Assessment of an Existing Concrete Chimney under Wind Load
Authors: Cheng Xuansheng , Qian Hongjie , Wang Chao , Fu Xuedong
Published: December 2018

A safety assessment of a chimney under the action of wind and earthquake is performed on one of the reinforced concrete chimneys in the Jinchuan company in China. The assessment is based on the linear filtering method, and wind loads of several heights on one field are simulated by MATLAB. The displacement of the structure under the action of wind load and earthquake is analyzed using maximum value superposition, and the stress on the chimney is calculated in four cases using the equal curvature criterion method. The time‐history responses of the tall chimney structure under linear and nonlinear elastic conditions are discussed. The results show that for a chimney under wind load or frequent earthquakes, the displacement limit can meet the code requirements; however, under the combined action of frequent earthquakes and wind load, the structural displacement is bigger than other conditions. When the chimney is acted upon by a wind load, frequent earthquake action, or the combined action of wind load and frequent earthquake action, the maximum compressive stress, maximum tensile stress, and maximum shear stress are concentrated at the bottom of the chimney. The ultimate bearing capacity of a reinforced concrete chimney under three conditions can meet the original design requirements, but the maximum compressive stress at the bottom approaches the designed tensile limit value under the action of rare earthquakes; under these conditions, the bottom of the chimney may experience partial damage.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Cervix and Age: New Insights into CIN Regression Rate
Authors: Orciani Monia , Caffarini Miriam , Lazzarini Raffaella , Delli Carpini Giovanni , Tsiroglou Dimitrios , Di Primio Roberto , Ciavattini Andrea
Published: December 2018

Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) is a precancerous lesion of the uterine cervix that can regress or progress to cervical cancer; interestingly, it has been noted that young women generally seem to have higher rates of spontaneous regression and remission, suggesting a correlation between the patient’s age and regression/progression rates of CIN. Even if the underlying mechanisms are still unclear, inflammation seems to play a pivotal role in CIN fate and inflammatory processes are often driven by mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). This study was aimed at evaluating if age affects the behavior of MSCs from the cervix (C‐MSCs) that in turn may modulate inflammation and, finally, regression rate. Fourteen samples of the human cervix were recovered from two groups of patients, “young” (mean age 28 ± 2) and “old” (mean age 45 ± 3), during treatment using the loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) technique. Progenitor cells were isolated, deeply characterized, and divided into young (yC‐MSCs) and old cervixes (oC‐MSCs); the senescence, expression/secretion of selected cytokines related to inflammation, and the effects of indirect cocultures with HeLa cells were analyzed. Our results show that isolated cells satisfy the fixed criteria for stemness and display age‐related properties; yC‐MSCs express a higher level of cytokines related to acute inflammation than oC‐MSCs. Finally, in the crosstalk with HeLa cells, MSCs derived from the cervixes of young patients play a stronger antitumoral role than oC‐MSCs. In conclusion, the immunobiology of MSCs derived from the cervix is affected by the age of donors and this can correlate with the regression rate of CIN by influencing their paracrine effect. In addition, MSCs from a young cervix drives an antitumoral effect by sustaining an acute inflammatory environment.
A Fast Imbalanced Binary Classification Approach to NLOS Identification in UWB Positioning
Authors: Song Bo , Li Sheng-Lin , Tan Mian , Ren Qing-Hui
Published: December 2018

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation is an important factor affecting the positioning accuracy of ultra-wide band (UWB). In order to mitigate the NLOS ranging error caused by various obstacles in UWB ranging process, some scholars have applied machine learning methods such as support vector machine and support vector data description to the identification NLOS signals for mitigation NLOS error in recent years. Therefore, the identification of NLOS signals is of great significance in UWB positioning. The traditional machine learning method is based on the assumption that the number of samples of the line-of-sight (LOS) and NLOS signals are balanced. However, in reality, the number of LOS signals in UWB positioning is much larger than the NLOS signals. So the samples are characterized by class-imbalance. In response to this fact, we applied a fast imbalanced binary classification method based on moments (MIBC) to identify NLOS signals. The method uses the mean and covariance of the two first moments of the LOS signal samples to represent its probability distribution and then uses the probability distribution and all a small amount of NLOS signal samples to establish a model. This method does not depend on the number of LOS signals and is suitable for dealing with the problem of classification of the imbalance between the number of LOS and NLOS signals. Numerical simulations also verify that the method has better performance than LS-SVM and SVDD.
The Value of Peripheral Enhancement Pattern for Diagnosing Thyroid Cancer Using Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound
Authors: Zhang Yan , Zhang Ming-bo , Luo Yu-kun , Li Jie , Wang Zhi-li , Tang Jie
Published: December 2018

Background. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) scanning can detect differences between thyroid tumors and surrounding tissues. However, enhancement patterns within nodules are insufficient for the diagnosis of thyroid carcinomas. The peripheral enhancement patterns of nodules may provide useful diagnostic information. The objective of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of the peripheral enhancement patterns during CEUS scanning of thyroid nodules. Material and Methods. 120 nodules with peripheral rings during CEUS and definite pathology confirmed by surgery were included in this study. The internal and peripheral CEUS enhancement patterns of these nodules were assessed, and the diagnostic value of CEUS was compared with the conventional ultrasound. The relationship of types of peripheral rings and sizes of nodules was analyzed, respectively. Results. There were 78 benign and 42 malignant nodules. Peripheral irregular ring performs well in detecting malignancy. It improves the diagnostic performance of CEUS by combining with internal enhancement patterns (diagnostic sensitivity of 97.6%, specificity of 98.7%, and accuracy of 98.3%) and adds value to conventional ultrasound (95.2%, 70.5%, and 79.2%). The sizes of the nodules with regular high-enhanced rings (2.34 ± 1.33 cm) were larger than the other three types of peripheral rings (P<0.05). Conclusions. Features of peripheral ring on CEUS are important for the diagnosis of thyroid cancer; they can further contribute to the accuracy combining with the internal enhancement pattern, which could avoid the unnecessary biopsy.
Forest Fire Prevention, Detection, and Fighting Based on Fuzzy Logic and Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Toledo-Castro Josué , Caballero-Gil Pino , Rodríguez-Pérez Nayra , Santos-González Iván , Hernández-Goya Candelaria , Aguasca-Colomo Ricardo
Published: December 2018

Huge losses and serious threats to ecosystems are common consequences of forest fires. This work describes a forest fire controller based on fuzzy logic and decision‐making methods aiming at enhancing forest fire prevention, detection, and fighting systems. In the proposal, the environmental monitoring of several dynamic risk factors is performed with wireless sensor networks and analysed with the proposed fuzzy‐based controller. With respect to this, meteorological variables, polluting gases and the oxygen level are measured in real time to estimate the existence of forest fire risks in the short‐term and to detect the recent occurrence of fire outbreaks over different forest areas. Besides, the Analytic Hierarchy Process method is used to determine the level of fire spread, and, when necessary, environmental alerts are sent by a Web service and received by a mobile application. For this purpose, integrity, confidentiality, and authenticity of environmental information and alerts are protected with implementations of Lamport’s authentication scheme, Diffie‐Lamport signature, and AES‐CBC block cipher.
Organic Phosphorus Compounds as Inhibitors of Corrosion of Carbon Steel in Circulating Cooling Water: Weight Loss Method and Thermodynamic and Quantum Chemical Studies
Authors: Liu Liang , Cao Ting-Ting , Zhang Qi-Wei , Cui Chong-Wei
Published: December 2018

Circulating cooling water plays an important role in industrial water use. In this study, the corrosion inhibition effects of PBTCA, HEDP, and ATMP organic phosphorus inhibitors were investigated using the weight loss method by varying the dosage of inhibitors, ClO2 concentrations, and pH values on carbon steel in recirculating cooling water with a low concentration of ClO2 solution. The results showed that the three corrosion inhibitors had a satisfactory corrosion inhibition effect and that corrosion inhibition efficiency is positively correlated with the concentration of organic phosphorus inhibitors and pH. The average corrosion inhibition efficiency of the three inhibitors was about 80% at the concentration of inhibitors = 35 mg/L, pH = 9.0, and the concentration of ClO2 = 7.0 mg/L, of which the single‐phosphorus molecular corrosion inhibitor proved to be the best inhibitor. When the ClO2 concentration was 7 mg/L, the corrosion inhibition efficiencies of the three corrosion inhibitors were relatively stable. Using the density functional theory (DFT) algorithm in the Gaussian 09 program, the optimization calculation was completed by the B3LYP/6‐31G (d, p) method at the microlevel. The molecular structures of the three organic phosphorus inhibitors and the number of phosphorus‐containing atoms were compared to the sustained‐release properties. Organic phosphorus inhibitors, as an electronic buffer, not only provided electrons but also received electrons. They formed a complex with iron and zinc ions in water in order to attach to the surface of the carbon steel and to alleviate corrosion. In addition, the adsorption with a metal surface followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm.
Impact of Temperature and Relative Humidity on PMD in Directly Buried Optical Fibre Cables in Semi-Arid and Tropical Highlands in Kenya
Authors: Ndunda Moses , Dehayem-Kamadjeu Alix , Waswa David
Published: December 2018

The telecommunication industry has implemented fibre deployment guidelines that reliably safeguard cable health during installation in the field. While installed fibre cables remain buried in the field, temperature and moisture in the locality subject them to mechanical expansions and corrosion. Directly buried fibre cables experience accelerated degradation that results from exposure to harsh environments. This increases pulse spreading and overlaps, with a mean time duration, known as Differential Group Delay (DGD), on the signal, as it propagates along the cable. DGD is stochastic; thus, Mean DGD is determined and presented as Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD). This work undertook a real life assessment of how fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity influence PMD in directly buried fibre optical links, in a case study that focused on the fibre cable network owned by Liquid Telecom Kenya. The network spans across two key climatic ecosystems, namely, rift valley highlands and northern lowlands. The analysis revealed that fibre cables experience higher PMD in semi-arid areas by a factor of 2.6, compared to highland areas.
Gallic Acid Attenuates Dimethylnitrosamine-Induced Liver Fibrosis by Alteration of Smad Phosphoisoform Signaling in Rats
Authors: Chen Yuxin , Zhou Ziping , Mo Qigui , Zhou Gao , Wang Youwei
Published: December 2018

Dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) is a potent hepatotoxin, carcinogen, and mutagen. In our previous study, a candidate gallic acid (GA) that widely exists in food and fruit was selected for its capability to alleviate DMN toxicity in vivo. We aimed to investigate the therapeutic potential of GA against DMN-induced liver fibrosis. During the first four weeks, DMN was administered to rats via intraperitoneal injection every other day, except the control group. GA or silymarin was given to rats by gavage once daily from the second to the sixth week. GA significantly reduced liver damage in serum parameters and improved the antioxidant capacity in liver and kidney tissues. Cytokines involved in liver fibrosis were measured at transcriptional and translational levels. These results indicate that GA exhibits robust antioxidant and antifibrosis effects and may be an effective candidate natural medicine for liver fibrosis treatment.
Neural Adaptive Sliding‐Mode Control of a Bidirectional Vehicle Platoon with Velocity Constraints and Input Saturation
Authors: Yan Maode , Song Jiacheng , Yang Panpan , Zuo Lei
Published: December 2018

This paper investigates the vehicle platoon control problems with both velocity constraints and input saturation. Firstly, radial basis function neural networks (RBF NNs) are employed to approximate the unknown driving resistance of a vehicle’s dynamic model. Then, a bidirectional topology, where vehicles can only communicate with their direct preceding and following neighbors, is used to depict the relationship among the vehicles in the platoon. On this basis, a neural adaptive sliding‐mode control algorithm with an anti‐windup compensation technique is proposed to maintain the vehicle platoon with desired distance. Moreover, the string stability and the strong string stability of the whole vehicle platoon are proven through the stability theorem. Finally, numerical simulations verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control method.
Exponential Stabilization of Coupled Hybrid Stochastic Delayed BAM Neural Networks: A Periodically Intermittent Control Method
Authors: Peng Yunjian , Zhao Birong , Sun Weijie , Deng Feiqi
Published: December 2018

This paper considers exponential stabilization for a class of coupled hybrid stochastic delayed bidirectional associative memory neural networks (HSD‐BAM‐NN) with reaction‐diffusion terms. A periodically intermittent controller is proposed to exponentially stabilize such an unstable HSD‐BAM‐NN, and sufficient conditions of the closed‐loop BAM‐NN system with exponential stabilization are derived by using Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional method, stochastic analysis techniques, and integral inequality property, which decide the basic parameters of the proposed controller. Furthermore, a framework to establish simulation algorithm with sampled states is presented to implement the stabilization controller. With a HSD‐BAM‐NN model of power synchronization in a photovoltaic (PV) array field, we illustrate numerical simulation results to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed controller.
Use of Data Visualisation for Zero-Day Malware Detection
Authors: Venkatraman Sitalakshmi , Alazab Mamoun
Published: December 2018

With the explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) worldwide, there is an increasing threat from malicious software (malware) attackers that calls for efficient monitoring of vulnerable systems. Large amounts of data collected from computer networks, servers, and mobile devices need to be analysed for malware proliferation. Effective analysis methods are needed to match with the scale and complexity of such a data-intensive environment. In today’s Big Data contexts, visualisation techniques can support malware analysts going through the time-consuming process of analysing suspicious activities thoroughly. This paper takes a step further in contributing to the evolving realm of visualisation techniques used in the information security field. The aim of the paper is twofold: (1) to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing visualisation techniques for detecting suspicious behaviour of systems and (2) to design a novel visualisation using similarity matrix method for establishing malware classification accurately. The prime motivation of our proposal is to identify obfuscated malware using visualisation of the extended x86 IA-32 (opcode) similarity patterns, which are hard to detect with the existing approaches. Our approach uses hybrid models wherein static and dynamic malware analysis techniques are combined effectively along with visualisation of similarity matrices in order to detect and classify zero-day malware efficiently. Overall, the high accuracy of classification achieved with our proposed method can be visually observed since different malware families exhibit significantly dissimilar behaviour patterns.
Apparatus Developments of Ultrasonic Vibration‐Assisted Microabrasive Waterjet Polishing
Authors: Hou Rongguo , Wang Tao , Lv Zhe , Feng Yansen
Published: December 2018

The experiment apparatus of ultrasonic vibration‐assisted microabrasive waterjet polishing is developed. The simulation model of ultrasonic nozzle is analyzed with the help of ANSYS software. The simulation result shows that the ultrasonic vibration leads to a good result that the maximum frequency with the value of 20908 Hz is obtained at the outlet of ultrasonic nozzle, and the vibration type is axial mode. Then the vibration frequency and amplitude of the developed experiment apparatus are tested using the ultrasonic transducer impedance analyzer and the laser displacement sensor. The measured result indicates that the vibration frequency is 19099 Hz and the amplitude is 22 μm, which means the experiment apparatus is well developed and satisfies the work requirements. The verifying experimental result shows that the ultrasonic vibration helps to enhance the machining ability of the abrasive waterjet, and the removal material volume and erosion depth are increased obviously.
Effects of Chicory on Serum Uric Acid, Renal Function, and GLUT9 Expression in Hyperuricaemic Rats with Renal Injury and In Vitro Verification with Cells
Authors: Jin Yong-Nan , Lin Zhi-Jian , Zhang Bing , Bai Yun-Fei
Published: December 2018

Hyperuricaemia (HUA) is an independent risk factor for chronic kidney disease. Urate crystals are deposited in the kidney and can cause renal tubular interstitial fibrosis, leading to renal dysfunction. Chicory extract (hereafter referred to as chicory) clearly reduced serum uric acid levels in rats with HUA induced by 10% fructose. This is the first study to observe the effect of chicory on serum uric acid levels and renal function in rats with HUA and renal injury. In vivo studies using hyperuricaemic rats with renal injury induced by yeast and adenine demonstrated that chicory decreased serum uric acid level, and its effect of delaying the progression of kidney injury was better than that of benzbromarone. In vitro cell experiments showed that this effect is related to the inhibition of GLUT9 protein expression in renal tubules and that lowering blood uric acid concentrations is one of the factors that alleviates renal damage. The results of this study indicate that chicory can be used as an alternative for alleviating renal dysfunction in hyperuricaemia.
Nomogram Based on Systemic Immune-Inflammation Index to Predict Overall Survival in Gastric Cancer Patients
Authors: Shi Hongtai , Jiang Youqin , Cao Honggang , Zhu Haiwen , Chen Bin , Ji Weiwei
Published: December 2018

Background. The systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), based on peripheral lymphocytes, neutrophils, and platelet count, has been used as a prognostic marker for several tumors. However, use of the SII has not been reported for gastric cancer. Methods. We evaluated the prognostic value of the SII in primary and validation cohorts. We also established an effective prognostic nomogram for gastric cancer based on R language. The predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram were determined using the concordance index (C index) and a calibration curve and were compared with TNM classifications. Results. The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis results showed that the high SII was associated with poor prognosis of gastric cancer patients in the primary and validation cohorts. SII proved to be related to tumor location, histological grade, tumor size, TNM stage, and perineural infiltration in patients with gastric cancer and was an independent prognostic factor for patients with gastric cancer. SII has a better predictive ability than other existing prognostic indexes based on inflammation, such as NLR, PLR, and MLR. The nomogram established can accurately predict the 3- and 5-year survival rates of patients with gastric cancer after operation, and its accuracy is significantly higher than that of the 8th edition of the AJCC staging system. Conclusion. SII can independently predict the overall survival of patients with gastric cancer after operation, which is superior to the existing systemic inflammatory indexes. The prognostic nomogram based on SII is a reliable model for predicting the postoperative survival of patients with gastric cancer.
Adaptive Inverse Control Based on Kriging Algorithm and Lyapunov Theory of Crawler Electromechanical System
Authors: Zhang Guanyu , Wang Yitian , Fan Yiyao , Chen Chen
Published: December 2018

The electromechanical system of a crawler is a multi‐input, multioutput strongly coupled nonlinear system. In this study, an adaptive inverse control method based on kriging algorithm and Lyapunov theory is proposed to improve control accuracy during adaptive driving. The electromechanical coupling model of the electromechanical system is established on the basis of the dynamic analysis of the crawler. In accordance with the kriging algorithm, the inverse model of the electromechanical system of the crawler is established by offline data. The adaptive travel control law of the crawler is obtained on the basis of Lyapunov theory. Combined with the kriging algorithm, the adaptive driving reverse control method is designed, and the online system is used to update and perfect the inverse system model in real time. Finally, the virtual prototype model of the crawler is established, and the control effect of the adaptive inverse control method is verified by theoretical analysis and virtual prototype simulation.
SRAF: A Service-Aware Resource Allocation Framework for VM Management in Mobile Data Networks
Authors: Liu Kang , Zheng Ruijuan , Zhang Mingchuan , Han Chao , Zhu Junlong , Wu Qingtao
Published: December 2018

Service latency and resource utilization are the key factors which limit the development of mobile data networks. To this end, we present a service-aware resource allocation framework, called SRAF, to allocate the basic resources by managing virtual machine (VM). In SRAF, we design two new methods for better virtual machine (VM) management. Firstly, we propose the self-learning classification algorithm (SCA) which executes the service request classification. Then, we use the classification results to schedule different types of VMs. Secondly, we design a sharing mode to jointly execute service requests, which can share the CPU and bandwidth simultaneously. In order to enhance the utilization of resources with the sharing mode, we also design two scaling algorithms, i.e., the horizontal scaling and the vertical scaling, which execute the operation of resource-level scaling and VM-level scaling, respectively. Furthermore, to enhance the stability of SRAF and avoid the frequent operation of scaling, we introduce a Markov decision process (MDP) to control VM migration. The experimental results reveal that SRAF greatly reduces service latency and enhances resource utilization. In addition, SRAF also has a good performance on stability and robustness for different situations of congestion.
Macroscopic Irreversibility and Decay to Kinetic Equilibrium of the 1-Body PDF for Finite Hard-Sphere Systems
Authors: Tessarotto Massimo , Cremaschini Claudio
Published: December 2018

The conditions for the occurrence of the so-called macroscopic irreversibility property and the related phenomenon of decay to kinetic equilibrium which may characterize the 1-body probability density function (PDF) associated with hard-sphere systems are investigated. The problem is set in the framework of the axiomatic “ab initio” theory of classical statistical mechanics developed recently and the related establishment of an exact kinetic equation realized by the Master equation for the same kinetic PDF. As shown in the paper the task involves the introduction of a suitable functional of the 1-body PDF, identified here with the Master kinetic information. It is then proved that, provided the same PDF is prescribed in terms of suitably smooth, i.e., stochastic, solution of the Master kinetic equation, the two properties indicated above are indeed realized.
Helicobacter pylori Infection as a Risk Factor for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Case-Control Study in Ethiopia
Authors: Mekonnen Hailemichael Desalegn , Fisseha Henok , Getinet Tewodros , Tekle Fisseha , Galle Peter R.
Published: December 2018

Background and Aims.Hepatocellular carcinoma is a major cause of cancer death worldwide, accounting for over half a million deaths per year. Its incidence varies with geographic locations and the type of etiologic factors. In Ethiopia, unidentified causes of liver disease are of sizeable proportion. Recent studies have shown an association of H. pylori infection with different spectrums of chronic liver disease. This study was conducted at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College in Ethiopia and assesses liver cancer and the association with H. pylori infection.Method.A prospective case-control study conducted on patients with chronic liver disease presenting with a suspicious liver lesion and diagnosed to have HCC in the Gastrointestinal (GI) Clinic of St. Paul’s Hospital MMC from Dec 30, 2016, to Nov 1, 2017 G.C. Descriptive surveys on clinical history and physical examination and laboratory profiles were obtained, and the clinical course of the patients including the type of treatment was followed prospectively. Control cases were taken from adult patients without evidence of liver disease in the internal medicine clinic coming for routine evaluation. After collection data were analyzed using SPSS version 23 and associations were assessed using chi-square test. Binary logistic regression was used to assess the association of HCC with different variables and H. pylori infection. All variables with p-value <0.05 were considered as statistically significant.Results.One hundred twenty patients were analyzed with equal representation of cases and controls. The majority of patients with HCC were male with a mean age of 36 years. Older age adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) (95%CI, p-value) 1.07(1.03-1.09, <0.001), viral hepatitis B (AOR) (95%CI, p-value) 6.19 (1.92-19.93, 0.002), and H. pylori infection (AOR) (95%CI, p-value) 5.22 (2.04–13.31, <0.001) were statistically significantly associated with HCC.Conclusion.H. pylori infection is associated with HCC in this case-control study. This study supports the emerging evidence of H. pylori association with other extra-gastric manifestations.
Food Web Topology and Nested Keystone Species Complexes
Authors: Capocefalo Daniele , Pereira Juliana , Mazza Tommaso , Jordán Ferenc
Published: December 2018

Important species may be in critically central network positions in ecological interaction networks. Beyond quantifying which one is the most central species in a food web, a multinode approach can identify the key sets of the most central n species as well. However, for sets of different size n, these structural keystone species complexes may differ in their composition. If larger sets contain smaller sets, higher nestedness may be a proxy for predictive ecology and efficient management of ecosystems. On the contrary, lower nestedness makes the identification of keystones more complicated. Our question here is how the topology of a network can influence nestedness as an architectural constraint. Here, we study the role of keystone species complexes in 27 real food webs and quantify their nestedness. After quantifying their topology properties, we determine their keystone species complexes, calculate their nestedness, and statistically analyze the relationship between topological indices and nestedness. A better understanding of the cores of ecosystems is crucial for efficient conservation efforts, and to know which networks will have more nested keystone species complexes would be a great help for prioritizing species that could preserve the ecosystem’s structural integrity.
A Turn-On Fluorescent Sensor for Glutathione Based on Bovine Serum Albumin-Stabilized Gold Nanoclusters
Authors: Qiu Yan , Huang Jianlin , Jia Li
Published: December 2018

A fluorescence sensor for the detection of glutathione based on the fluorescence recovering of the bovine serum albumin-stabilized gold nanoclusters is reported. This study indicates that glutathione restores the copper-ion-quenched fluorescence by coordinating the bound copper ion in the bovine serum albumin molecule used for stabilizing the gold nanocluster through its sulfydryl. Under the experimental conditions, the fluorescence response showed a linear relationship with the concentration of glutathione over the range from 10 µM to 400 µM. The fluorescence sensor successfully detected glutathione in commercial drug products.