A Performance Analysis Model of TCP over Multiple Heterogeneous Paths for 5G Mobile Services

Driven by the primary requirement of emerging 5G mobile services, the demand for concurrent multipath transfer (CMT) is still prominent. Yet, multipath transport protocols are not widely adopted and TCP-based CMT schemes will still be in dominant position in 5G. However, the performance of TCP flow transferred over multiple heterogeneous paths is prone to the link quality asymmetry, the extent of which was revealed to be significant by our field investigation. In this paper, we present a performance analysis model for TCP over multiple heterogeneous paths in 5G scenarios, where both bandwidth and delay asymmetry are taken into consideration. The evaluation adopting parameters from field investigation shows that the proposed model can achieve high accuracy in practical environments. Some interesting inferences can be drawn from the proposed model, such as the dominant factor that affect the performance of TCP over heterogeneous networks, and the criteria of determining the appropriate number of links to be used under different circumstances of path heterogeneity. Thus, the proposed model can provide a guidance to the design of TCP-based CMT solutions for 5G mobile services

Bis(μ-4,4;6,6-bis­(biphenyl-2,2′-diyldi­oxy)-2,2-bis­{2-[5-(pyridin-4-yl)-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl]phen­oxy}cyclo­triphosphazene)di-μ-chlorido-bis­[chlorido­copper(II)]

In the crystal of the title compound, [Cu2Cl4(C50H32N9O8P3)2], the binuclear mol­ecule is located across an inversion center. Each Cu2+ cation is coordinated by two pyridine N atoms from symmetry-related 4,4;6,6-bis­(biphenyl-2,2′-diyldi­oxy)-2,2-bis­{2-[5-(pyridin-4-yl)-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl]phen­oxy}cyclo­triphosphazene (L) ligands, a pair of bridging Cl− anions and a terminal Cl− anion, forming a distorted CuCl3N2 square-pyramidal geometry. Weak intra­molecular C—H⋯O and inter­molecular C—H⋯N inter­actions occur in the crystal

Retracted “Serum amyloid P down-regulates CCL-1 expression, and inhibits Ras/MAPK signaling and development of breast cancer”

This article previously published in Volume 17 Issue 16 of this journal in September 2017 has been retracted in line with the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE,http://publicationethics.org/ resources/guidelines). Retraction: Ding S, Li H, Li X, Wang W, Du X, Dong G, Zhang P. Serum amyloid P down-regulates CCL-1 expression, and inhibits Ras/MAPK signaling and development of breast cancer. Trop J Pharm Res 2017; 16(9):2089-2095 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/tjpr.v16i9.7 To the editor: The figures in the paper were plagiarized partly from an earlier published article, Qi et al, P-selectinmediated tablet adhesion promoters tumor growth. Oncotarget 2015;30:6(9):6584–6596, and data from a master's thesis submitted by Bin Li under the supervision of Professor Lijing Wang and Professor Cuiling Qi. Sincerely, Cuiling Qi and Lijing Wang

Serum amyloid P down-regulates CCL-1 expression, and inhibits Ras/MAPK signaling and development of breast cancer

Purpose: To investigate the role of serum amyloid component P (SAP) on Ras/MAPK pathway in the development of breast cancer (BC) via regulation of chemokine (CC motif) ligand 1 (CCL-1).Methods: Breast cancer (BC) and metastasis models were established using SAP-Tg transgenic mice and WT C57BL/6 mice. The effect of SAP on growth and metastasis was observed. Differentially expressed proteins in SAP-Tg and C57BL/6 serum were analyzed, and further determined by enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). The effect of SAP on CCL1/Ras/MAPK signaling pathway was studied by immunoblotting.Results: Compared with WT control, SAP-Tg BC model showed a significant reduction in tumor volume and prolonged survival (p < 0.05). In the lung metastasis model, SAP-Tg mice showed a decreased number of nodules on the organ surface (p < 0.05). Protein microarray screening results showed that SAP inhibited CCL-1 expression (p < 0.05). CCL-1 mRNA level in SAP-Tg mice was significantly lower than WT control (p < 0.05). After stimulating RAW cells (mouse macrophage line) with SAP recombinant protein, ELISA results showed that CCL-1 secretion significantly decreased (p < 0.05). In both models, P38 and ERK1/2 activation in SAP-Tg mice were significantly lower than that in C57BL/6 mice.Conclusion: SAP inhibits the growth and metastasis of BC, possibly by reducing the secretion of CCL- 1 and inhibiting Ras/MAPK signaling pathway, thus suggesting a possible treatment strategy for breast cancer.Keywords: Serum amyloid component P (SAP), chemokine (CC motif) ligand 1 (CCL-1), Breast cancer, NF-κB, Ras/MAPK signaling pathwa

Coexistence of two dune growth mechanisms in a landscape-scale experiment

In landscape-scale experiments at the edge of the Gobi desert, we show that various dune types develop simultaneously under natural wind conditions. Using 4 years of high-resolution topographic data, we demonstrate that, depending on sand availability, the same wind regime can lead to two different dune orientations, which reflect two independent dune growth mechanisms. As periodic oblique dunes emerge from a sand bed and develop to 2 meters in height, we analyze defect dynamics that drive the non-linear phase of pattern coarsening. Starting from conical sand heaps deposited on gravels, we observe the transition from dome to barchan and asymmetric barchan shapes. We identify a minimum size for arm elongation and evaluate the contribution of wind reversals to its longitudinal alignment. These experimental field observations support existing theoretical models of dune dynamics boosting confidence in their applicability for quantitative predictions of dune evolution under various wind regimes and bed conditions

The bZIP Transcription Factor MoAP1 Mediates the Oxidative Stress Response and Is Critical for Pathogenicity of the Rice Blast Fungus Magnaporthe oryzae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Yap1 protein is an AP1-like transcription factor involved in the regulation of the oxidative stress response. An ortholog of Yap1, MoAP1, was recently identified from the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae genome. We found that MoAP1 is highly expressed in conidia and during invasive hyphal growth. The Moap1 mutant was sensitive to H2O2, similar to S. cerevisiae yap1 mutants, and MoAP1 complemented Yap1 function in resistance to H2O2, albeit partially. The Moap1 mutant also exhibited various defects in aerial hyphal growth, mycelial branching, conidia formation, the production of extracellular peroxidases and laccases, and melanin pigmentation. Consequently, the Moap1 mutant was unable to infect the host plant. The MoAP1-eGFP fusion protein is localized inside the nucleus upon exposure to H2O2, suggesting that MoAP1 also functions as a redox sensor. Moreover, through RNA sequence analysis, many MoAP1-regulated genes were identified, including several novel ones that were also involved in pathogenicity. Disruption of respective MGG_01662 (MoAAT) and MGG_02531 (encoding hypothetical protein) genes did not result in any detectable changes in conidial germination and appressorium formation but reduced pathogenicity, whereas the mutant strains of MGG_01230 (MoSSADH) and MGG_15157 (MoACT) showed marketed reductions in aerial hyphal growth, mycelial branching, and loss of conidiation as well as pathogenicity, similar to the Moap1 mutant. Taken together, our studies identify MoAP1 as a positive transcription factor that regulates transcriptions of MGG_01662, MGG_02531, MGG_01230, and MGG_15157 that are important in the growth, development, and pathogenicity of M. oryzae

Generative AI for Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks (SAGIN)

Recently, generative AI technologies have emerged as a significant advancement in artificial intelligence field, renowned for their language and image generation capabilities. Meantime, space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) is an integral part of future B5G/6G for achieving ubiquitous connectivity. Inspired by this, this article explores an integration of generative AI in SAGIN, focusing on potential applications and case study. We first provide a comprehensive review of SAGIN and generative AI models, highlighting their capabilities and opportunities of their integration. Benefiting from generative AI's ability to generate useful data and facilitate advanced decision-making processes, it can be applied to various scenarios of SAGIN. Accordingly, we present a concise survey on their integration, including channel modeling and channel state information (CSI) estimation, joint air-space-ground resource allocation, intelligent network deployment, semantic communications, image extraction and processing, security and privacy enhancement. Next, we propose a framework that utilizes a Generative Diffusion Model (GDM) to construct channel information map to enhance quality of service for SAGIN. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Finally, we discuss potential research directions for generative AI-enabled SAGIN.Comment: 9page, 5 figure

Metagenomic Evidence for a Methylocystis Species Capable of Bioremediation of Diverse Heavy Metals

Heavy metal pollution has become an increasingly serious problem worldwide. Co-contamination with toxic mercury (Hg) and arsenic (As) presents a particularly difficult bioremediation trouble. By oxidizing the greenhouse gas methane, methanotrophs have been demonstrated to have high denitrification activity in eutrophic waters, indicating their possible potential for use in bioremediation of Hg(II) and As(V) in polluted water. Using metagenomics, a novel Methylocystis species (HL18), which was one of the most prevalent bacteria (9.9% of the relative abundance) in a CH4-based bio-reactor, is described here. The metagenomic-assembled genome (MAG) HL18 had gene products whose average amino acid identity against other known Methylocystis species varied from 69 to 85%, higher than the genus threshold but lower than the species boundary. Genomic analysis indicated that HL18 possessed all the genes necessary for the reduction of Hg(II) and As(V). Phylogenetic investigation of mercuric reductase (MerA) found that the HL18 protein was most closely affiliated with proteins from two Hg(II)-reducing bacteria, Bradyrhizobium sp. strain CCH5-F6 and Paracoccus halophilus. The genomic organization and phylogeny of the genes in the As(V)-reducing operon (arsRCCB) had significant identity with those from a As(V)-reducing bacterium belonging to the Rhodopseudomonas genus, indicating their reduction capability of As(V). Further analysis found that at least eight genera of methanotrophs possess both Hg(II) and As(V) reductases, illustrating the generally overlooked metabolic potential of methanotrophs. These results suggest that methanotrophs have greater bioremediation potential in heavy metal contaminated water than has been appreciated and could play an important role in the mitigation of heavy metal toxicity of contaminated wastewater

An adaptive network coding scheme for multipath transmission in cellular-based vehicular networks

With the emergence of vehicular Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, it is a significant challenge for vehicular IoT systems to obtain higher throughput in vehicle-to-cloud multipath transmission. Network Coding (NC) has been recognized as a promising paradigm for improving vehicular wireless network throughput by reducing packet loss in transmission. However, existing researches on NC do not consider the influence of the rapid quality change of wireless links on NC schemes, which poses a great challenge to dynamically adjust the coding rate according to the variation of link quality in vehicle-to-cloud multipath transmission in order to avoid consuming unnecessary bandwidth resources and to increase network throughput. Therefore, we propose an Adaptive Network Coding (ANC) scheme brought by the novel integration of the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) into the NC scheme to efficiently adjust the coding rate according to the estimated packet loss rate (PLR). The ANC scheme conquers the rapid change of wireless link quality to obtain the utmost throughput and reduce the packet loss in transmission. In terms of the throughput performance, the simulations and real experiment results show that the ANC scheme outperforms state-of-the-art NC schemes for vehicular wireless multipath transmission in vehicular IoT systems.This work was supported in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No.2019YJS015, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant 61872029, and in part by the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation under Grant 4182048

Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of St Andrew′s Nutrition Screening Instrument

Objective·To translate St Andrew′s Nutrition Screening Instrument (SANSI), and test its reliability and validity.Methods·With the consent of the authors, the SANSI was translated into Chinese in accordance with the "Brislin translation-back translation method" and the Chinese version underwent cross-cultural debugging. Five clinical medical staff were selected to a pre-survey on 10 patients, and the expression and structure of the scale items were fine-tuned according to the feedback. A total of 221 inpatients with mental disorders were selected by convenient sampling method in Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine as research objects from January to February 2022, and the general clinical data of these patients were collected. The correlation between the items in Part Ⅲ and the identified risks in that part was evaluated by Spearman correlation analysis, and some items were deleted according to the results. Eight experts in mental disorders or nutrition were selected to evaluate the items of Chinese version of SANSI, and then the content validation indexes (CVIs) were calculated. With the standard of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002), Spearman correlation analysis was used to evaluate the calibration validity of Chinese version of SANSI. Cronbach′s α coefficient, split half reliability and inter-rater reliability (κ consistency coefficient) were used to evaluate the reliability of the Part Ⅲ of the scale.Results·Through literal translation, back translation, cross-cultural debugging and pre-investigation, Chinese version of SANSI was formed. Among the 221 patients with mental disorders, 174 (78.73%) were males, the mean age was (64.12±13.87) years, and the duration of diseases was (26.06±17.65) years. There were 128 cases of schizophrenia (57.92%), 75 cases of organic mental disorders (33.94%), 10 cases of mood disorders (4.52%) and 8 cases of other mental disorders (3.62%). According to the results of correlation analysis in Part Ⅲ, the original items 1, 3, and 10 were deleted. The correlation coefficients between the remaining 7 items and the risk degree in this part were 0.391－0.734 (all P0.05).Conclusion·Chinese version of SANSI has good reliability and validity for hospitalized patients with mental disorders