Throughput Optimization in High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)

In this paper, we investigate throughput optimization in High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Specifically, we propose offline and online algorithms for adjusting the Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) used by the network to schedule data transmission. In the offline algorithm, a given target BLER is achieved by adjusting CQI based on ACK/NAK history. By sweeping through different target BLERs, we can find the throughput optimal BLER offline. This algorithm could be used not only to optimize throughput but also to enable fair resource allocation among mobile users in HSDPA. In the online algorithm, the CQI offset is adapted using an estimated short term throughput gradient without specifying a target BLER. An adaptive stepsize mechanism is proposed to track temporal variation of the environment. We investigate convergence behavior of both algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed offline algorithm can achieve the given target BLER with good accuracy. Both algorithms yield up to 30% HSDPA throughput improvement over that with 10% target BLER

Prevention of Paclitaxel-induced allodynia by Minocycline: Effect on loss of peripheral nerve fibers and infiltration of macrophages in rats

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although paclitaxel is a frontline antineoplastic agent for treatment of solid tumors, the paclitaxel-evoked pain syndrome is a serious problem for patients. There is currently no valid drug to prevent or treat the paclitaxel-induced allodynia, partly due to lack of understanding regarding the cellular mechanism. Studies have shown that minocycline, an inhibitor of microglia/macrophage, prevented neuropathic pain and promoted neuronal survival in animal models of neurodegenerative disease. Recently, Cata <it>et al </it>also reported that minocycline inhibited allodynia induced by low-dose paclitaxel (2 mg/kg) in rats, but the mechanism is still unclear.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we investigate by immunohistochemistry the change of intraepidermal nerve fiber (IENF) in the hind paw glabrous skin, expression of macrophage and activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3) in DRG at different time points after moderate-dose paclitaxel treatment (cumulative dose 24 mg/kg; 3 × 8 mg/kg) in rats. Moreover, we observe the effect of minocycline on the IENF, macrophages and ATF3. The results showed that moderate-dose paclitaxel induced a persisted, gradual mechanical allodynia, which was accompanied by the loss of IENF in the hind paw glabrous skin and up-regulation of macrophages and ATF3 in DRG in rats. The expressions of ATF3 mainly focus on the NF200-positive cells. More importantly, we observed that pretreatment of minocycline at dose of 30 mg/kg or 50 mg/kg, but not 5 mg/kg, prevented paclitaxel-evoked allodynia. The evidence from immunohistochemistry showed that 30 mg/kg minocycline rescued the degeneration of IENF, attenuated infiltration of macrophages and up-regulation of ATF3 induced by paclitaxel treatment in rats.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Minocycline prevents paclitaxel-evoked allodynia, likely due to its inhibition on loss of IENF, infiltration of macrophages and up-regulation of ATF3 in rats. The finding might provide potential target for preventing paclitaxel-induced neuropathic pain.</p

DivAvatar: Diverse 3D Avatar Generation with a Single Prompt

Text-to-Avatar generation has recently made significant strides due to advancements in diffusion models. However, most existing work remains constrained by limited diversity, producing avatars with subtle differences in appearance for a given text prompt. We design DivAvatar, a novel framework that generates diverse avatars, empowering 3D creatives with a multitude of distinct and richly varied 3D avatars from a single text prompt. Different from most existing work that exploits scene-specific 3D representations such as NeRF, DivAvatar finetunes a 3D generative model (i.e., EVA3D), allowing diverse avatar generation from simply noise sampling in inference time. DivAvatar has two key designs that help achieve generation diversity and visual quality. The first is a noise sampling technique during training phase which is critical in generating diverse appearances. The second is a semantic-aware zoom mechanism and a novel depth loss, the former producing appearances of high textual fidelity by separate fine-tuning of specific body parts and the latter improving geometry quality greatly by smoothing the generated mesh in the features space. Extensive experiments show that DivAvatar is highly versatile in generating avatars of diverse appearances

Global Context Aggregation Network for Lightweight Saliency Detection of Surface Defects

Surface defect inspection is a very challenging task in which surface defects usually show weak appearances or exist under complex backgrounds. Most high-accuracy defect detection methods require expensive computation and storage overhead, making them less practical in some resource-constrained defect detection applications. Although some lightweight methods have achieved real-time inference speed with fewer parameters, they show poor detection accuracy in complex defect scenarios. To this end, we develop a Global Context Aggregation Network (GCANet) for lightweight saliency detection of surface defects on the encoder-decoder structure. First, we introduce a novel transformer encoder on the top layer of the lightweight backbone, which captures global context information through a novel Depth-wise Self-Attention (DSA) module. The proposed DSA performs element-wise similarity in channel dimension while maintaining linear complexity. In addition, we introduce a novel Channel Reference Attention (CRA) module before each decoder block to strengthen the representation of multi-level features in the bottom-up path. The proposed CRA exploits the channel correlation between features at different layers to adaptively enhance feature representation. The experimental results on three public defect datasets demonstrate that the proposed network achieves a better trade-off between accuracy and running efficiency compared with other 17 state-of-the-art methods. Specifically, GCANet achieves competitive accuracy (91.79% $F_{\beta}^{w}$, 93.55% $S_\alpha$, and 97.35% $E_\phi$) on SD-saliency-900 while running 272fps on a single gpu

Otolith morphology and total length relationships in <em>Schizothorax grahami</em>

Otolith is important for studying fish populations and life histories. In this study, the dominant species of Schizothorax grahami in the source section of the Chishui River was taken to understand the relationships between otolith morphology and total length (TL). Results showed a large difference between the four TL groups (A/B/C/D), except group B is similar to group C. The combined discrimination success rate of linear discriminant analysis was 62.2%. Group A and D's success rate is the highest, at around 75%. Meanwhile, the success rate for Group B and Group C is below 65%. The one-way ANOVA of the Shape Index and the Canonical analysis of Principal Coordinates with two coefficients (Fourier coefficients and Wavelet coefficients) showed that Group B is similar to Group C, with a large difference from the other two groups. When TL was greater than 100 mm (the pearl organs appearing), the otolith growth was lower changing. Otolith morphology still changes with growth after sexual maturity in fish, so the larger fish is more useful for conducting otolith morphology studies for accurate evaluation and management of local fishery resources

Colorectal cancer screening with fecal occult blood test: A 22-year cohort study.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening with a three-tier fecal occult blood test (FOBT) in the Chinese population. The study was performed between 1987 and 2008 at the Beijing Military General Hospital, in a cohort of army service males and females aged &gt;50 years. Between 1987 and 2005, a three-tier screening program, comprising guaiac-based FOBTs (gFOBTs), followed by immunochemical FOBTs for positive guaiac test samples and then colonoscopy for positive immunochemical test subjects, was performed annually. The cohort was followed up until 2008. The cohort included 5,104 subjects, of which, 3,863 subjects participated in screening (screening group) and 1,241 did not (non-screening group). The two groups did not differ in age, gender or other major risk factors for colon cancer. Overall, 36 CRCs occurred in the screening group and 21 in the non-screening group. Compared with the non-screening group, the relative risk for the incidence and mortality of CRC was 0.51 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.30-0.87] and 0.36 (95% CI, 0.18-0.71), respectively, in the screening group. The general sensitivity of this three-tier FOBT was 80.6% (95% CI, 65.3-91.1). Thus, annual screening using the three-tier FOBT program may reduce the CRC incidence and mortality rate

Influence of vitamin D status and mechanical loading on the morphometric and mechanical properties of the mouse tibia

It is well known that vitamin D and mechanical loading play important roles in bone growth and development. However, the combined effect of the maternal vitamin D status and mechanical loading on the bone quality of growing and mature bones is still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the antenatal vitamin D status and mechanical loading on bone morphometric and mechanical properties in juvenile and adult bones. C57BL/6J mice were used to generate vitamin D-replete and vitamin D-depleted dams. The left tibiae of 8-week-old and 16-week-old offspring were mechanically loaded in vivo for two weeks. Both tibiae were dissected and scanned using a μCT imaging system. It was found that in the bones of 10-week-old juvenile offspring, the antenatal vitamin D-replete group significantly increased trabecular bone volume fraction (Tb.BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), cortical thickness (Ct.Th), bone stiffness and failure load; significantly decreased trabecular separation (Tb.Sp) and cortical marrow area (Ct.MA) only in loaded tibiae; and markedly increased Tb.Sp and Ct.MA only in non-loaded tibiae. In the bones of the 18-week-old adult offspring, the antenatal vitamin D status had a minimal effect on the bone morphometric and mechanical parameters. These data imply that antenatal vitamin D repletion results in increased responses to mechanical loading only in the juvenile state, emphasizing the importance of a sufficient vitamin D supply during pregnancy and sufficient physical activities during the juvenile period to increase bone quality

Tetra­kis(2,2′-bipyrid­yl)dichlorido­di-μ3-hydroxido-di-μ2-hydroxido-tetra­copper(II) dinitrate hexa­hydrate

The tetra­nuclear copper(II) title complex, [Cu4Cl2(OH)4(C10H8N2)4](NO3)2·6H2O, has a crystallographically imposed centre of symmetry. The metal atoms display a distorted tetragonal-pyramidal coordination geometry, and are linked by two μ 2- and two μ3-hydroxo groups, assuming a chair-like conformation for the Cu4O2 core. In the crystal, the complex mol­ecules are linked into a three-dimensional network by inter­molecular O—H⋯O, O—H⋯Cl, C—H⋯O and C—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds and π–π stacking inter­actions with centroid–centroid separations of 3.724 (2) and 3.767 (3) Å

Visual High-Throughput Screening for Developing a Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase Natural Inhibitor Based on an Enzyme-Activated Fluorescent Probe

Fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) is an important drug target for the treatment of many disease related conditions such as pain, inflammation, and mood disorders due to its vital role in the metabolism of endocannabinoid. In our present work, a FAAH-activated fluorescent probe named THPO was developed, which possessed high selectivity and excellent sensitivity for FAAH in complex systems. Critically, its metabolite 7-amino-3H-phenoxazin-3-one (AHPO) has long excitation and emission wavelengths and high fluorescence quantum yield, which are necessary for monitoring the activity of FAAH in living systems. In addition, a visual high-throughput screening method for FAAH inhibitors was established using THPO, which resulted in the discovery of an efficient natural inhibitor Neobavaisoflavone that was identified from 68 traditional herbal medicines. These results indicated that THPO can be used as a molecular tool for the rapid evaluation of FAAH activity in complex systems as well as providing an effective approach to screen FAAH inhibitors and providing a boost for the discovery of therapeutic agents toward FAAH related diseases. </p