Physical Layer Security in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Under A Hybrid Full-/Half-Duplex Receiver Deployment Strategy

This paper studies physical layer security in a wireless ad hoc network with numerous legitimate transmitter-receiver pairs and eavesdroppers. A hybrid full-/half-duplex receiver deployment strategy is proposed to secure legitimate transmissions, by letting a fraction of legitimate receivers work in the full-duplex (FD) mode sending jamming signals to confuse eavesdroppers upon their information receptions, and letting the other receivers work in the half-duplex mode just receiving their desired signals. The objective of this paper is to choose properly the fraction of FD receivers for achieving the optimal network security performance. Both accurate expressions and tractable approximations for the connection outage probability and the secrecy outage probability of an arbitrary legitimate link are derived, based on which the area secure link number, network-wide secrecy throughput and network-wide secrecy energy efficiency are optimized respectively. Various insights into the optimal fraction are further developed and its closed-form expressions are also derived under perfect self-interference cancellation or in a dense network. It is concluded that the fraction of FD receivers triggers a non-trivial trade-off between reliability and secrecy, and the proposed strategy can significantly enhance the network security performance.Comment: Journal paper, double-column 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 201

Aging male symptoms scale (AMS) for health-related quality of life in aging men: translation and adaptation in Malay

The Aging Male Symptoms Scale (AMS) measures health-related quality of life in aging men. The objective of this paper is to describe the translation and validation of the AMS into Bahasa Melayu (BM). The original English version of the AMS was translated into BM by 2 translators to produce BM1 and BM2, and subsequently harmonized to produce BM3. Two other independent translators, blinded to the English version, back-translated BM3 to yield E2 and E3. All versions (BM1, BM2, BM3, E2, E3) were compared with the English version. The BM pre-final version was produced, and pre-tested in 8 participants. Proportion Agreement, Weighted Kappa, Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient, and verbatim responses were used. The English and the BM versions showed excellent equivalence (weighted Kappa and Spearman Rank Coefficients, ranged from 0.72 to 1.00, and Proportion Agreement values ranged from 75.0% to 100%). In conclusion, the BM version of the AMS was successfully translated and adapted

An Epidemiological Study of Concomitant Use of Chinese Medicine and Antipsychotics in Schizophrenic Patients: Implication for Herb-Drug Interaction

Background: Herb-drug interactions are an important issue in drug safety and clinical practice. The aim of this epidemiological study was to characterize associations of clinical outcomes with concomitant herbal and antipsychotic use in patients with schizophrenia. Methods and Findings: In this retrospective, cross-sectional study, 1795 patients with schizophrenia who were randomly selected from 17 psychiatric hospitals in China were interviewed face-to-face using a structured questionnaire. Association analyses were conducted to examine correlates between Chinese medicine (CM) use and demographic, clinical variables, antipsychotic medication mode, and clinical outcomes. The prevalence of concomitant CM and antipsychotic treatment was 36.4% [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 34.2%-38.6%]. Patients using concomitant CM had a significantly greater chance of improved outcomes than non-CM use (61.1% vs. 34.3%, OR = 3.44, 95% CI 2.80-4.24). However, a small but significant number of patients treated concomitantly with CM had a greater risk of developing worse outcomes (7.2% vs. 4.4%, OR = 2.06, 95% CI 2.06-4.83). Significant predictors for concomitant CM treatment-associated outcomes were residence in urban areas, paranoid psychosis, and exceeding 3 months of CM use. Herbal medicine regimens containing Radix Bupleuri, Fructus Gardenia, Fructus Schisandrae, Radix Rehmanniae, Akebia Caulis, and Semen Plantaginis in concomitant use with quetiapine, clozapine, and olanzepine were associated with nearly 60% of the risk of adverse outcomes. Conclusions: Concomitant herbal and antipsychotic treatment could produce either beneficial or adverse clinical effects in schizophrenic population. Potential herb-drug pharmacokinetic interactions need to be further evaluated. © 2011 Zhang et al.published_or_final_versio

C-Terminal Binding Protein 2 Is a Novel Tumor Suppressor Targeting the Myc-Irf4 axis in Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) cells are addicted to MYC and its direct transactivation targets IRF4 for proliferation and survival. MYC and IRF4 are still considered undruggable, as most small-molecule inhibitors suffer from low potency, suboptimal pharmacokinetic properties, and undesirable off-target effects. Indirect inhibition of MYC/IRF4 emerges as a therapeutic vulnerability in MM. Here, we uncovered an unappreciated tumor-suppressive role of C-terminal binding protein 2 (CTBP2) in MM via strong inhibition of the MYC-IRF4 axis. In contrast to epithelial cancers, CTBP2 is frequently downregulated in MM, in association with shortened survival, hyperproliferative features, and adverse clinical outcomes. Restoration of CTBP2 exhibited potent antitumor effects against MM in vitro and in vivo, with marked repression of the MYC-IRF4 network genes. Mechanistically, CTBP2 impeded the transcription of MYC and IRF4 by histone H3 lysine 27 deacetylation (H3K27ac) and indirectly via activation of the MYC repressor IFIT3. In addition, activation of the interferon gene signature by CTBP2 suggested its concomitant immunomodulatory role in MM. Epigenetic studies have revealed the contribution of polycomb-mediated silencing and DNA methylation to CTBP2 inactivation in MM. Notably, inhibitors of Enhance of zeste homolog 2, histone deacetylase, and DNA methyltransferase, currently under evaluation in clinical trials, were effective in restoring CTBP2 expression in MM. Our findings indicated that the loss of CTBP2 plays an essential role in myelomagenesis and deciphers an additional mechanistic link to MYC-IRF4 dysregulation in MM. We envision that the identification of novel critical regulators will facilitate the development of selective and effective approaches for treating this MYC/IRF4-addicted malignancy

Milk Consumption Across Life Periods in Relation to Lower Risk of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A Multicentre Case-Control Study

Background: The much higher incidence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in men suggests sex hormones as a risk factor, and dairy products contain measurable amounts of steroid hormones. Milk consumption has greatly increased in endemic regions of NPC. We investigated the association between NPC and milk consumption across life periods in Hong Kong.Methods: A multicentre case-control study included 815 histologically confirmed NPC incident cases and 1,502 controls who were frequency-matched on age and sex at five major hospitals in Hong Kong in 2014–2017. Odds ratios (ORs) of NPC (cases vs. controls) for milk consumption at different life periods were estimated by unconditional logistic regression, adjusting for sex, age, socioeconomic status score, smoking and alcohol drinking status, exposure to occupational hazards, family history of cancer, IgA against Epstein-Barr virus viral capsid antigen, and total energy intake.Results: Compared with abstainers, lower risks of NPC were consistently observed in regular users (consuming ≥5 glasses of milk [fresh and powdered combined] per month) across four life periods of age 6–12 (adjusted OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.54–0.86), 13–18 (0.68, 0.55–0.84), 19–30 (0.68, 0.55–0.84), and 10 years before recruitment (0.72, 0.59–0.87). Long-term average milk consumption of ≤2.5, >2.5, and ≤12.5, >12.5 glasses per month yielded adjusted OR (95% CI) of 1.00 (0.80–1.26), 0.98 (0.81–1.18), 0.95 (0.76–1.18), and 0.55 (0.43–0.70), respectively (all P-values for trend < 0.05).Conclusion: Consumption of milk across life periods was associated with lower risks of NPC. If confirmed to be causal, this has important implications for dairy product consumption and prevention of NPC