The Selection Strategy for Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) Isolation and Enumeration: Technical Features, Methods, and Clinical Applications

The key aim of the proposed chapter is to provide readers a brief description for the most important parts of the field of circulating tumor cells (CTCs): the core techniques, including negative and positive selection‐based CTC isolation, and the differences between them. Most importantly, we will also review the clinical applications and important findings in clinical trials. The evidence‐based review will not only help clinicians use CTCs to predict recurrence and foresee the disease‐related outcomes but also to inspire the researchers in this field to conduct further investigations

The Impacts of Establishing Enterprise Information Portals on e-Business Performance

The Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) provides access - a single point of personalized, on-line access - to business information and knowledge sources, and real-time access to core application and processes. EIP is defined as an ultimate window that presents e-business fruitful results. Our research focuses on investigating the relationship between organizational characteristics and whether EIP is adopted in the business operations and the relationship among the function application degree, implementation type, integration ability, and users of EIP and e-Business performances. The result of our study shows that: (1) Between those organizations have and those have not adopted EIP, there are significant differences in the maturity and familiarity of information technologies, and organizational size; (2) In the way of implementation EIP, the relationship among function application degree, implementation type, integration ability, and e-Business performance are also significantly influence; (3) The impact between function application degree of EIP and e-Business performance will be enhanced by high e-business degree; (4) The impact between implementation type of EIP and e-Business performance will be intervened by e-business degree; (5) The implementation time of EIP has no significant impact on the relationship between implementation EIP and e-Business performance

Enterprise Information Security Management Based on Context-Aware RBAC and Communication Monitoring Technology

Information technology has an enormous influence in many enterprises. Computers have not only become important devices that people rely on in their daily lives and work, but have also become essential tools for enterprises. More and more enterprises have shifted their focus to how to prevent outer forces from invading and stealing from networks. However, many enterprises have disregarded the significance of internal leaking, which also plays a vital role in information management. This research proposes an information security management approach that is based on context-aware role-based access control (RBAC) and communication monitoring technology, in order to achieve enterprise information security management. In this work, it is suggested that an enterprise may, first, use an organizational chart to list job roles and corresponding permissions. RBAC is a model that focuses on different work tasks and duties. Subsequently, the enterprise may define a security policy to enforce the context-aware RBAC model. Finally, the enterprise may use communication monitoring technology in order to implement information security management. The main contribution of this work is the potential it provides to both reduce information security incidents, such as internal information leakage, and allow for effective cost control of information systems

Widespread translational control contributes to the regulation of Arabidopsis photomorphogenesis

Environmental light regulates and optimizes plant growth and development. Genomic profiling of polysome-associated mRNA reveals that light stimulates dramatic changes in translational regulation, which contribute more to light-induced gene expression changes than transcriptional regulation

Poincaré Plot of Fingertip Photoplethysmogram Pulse Amplitude Suitable to Assess Diabetes Status

Multiscale entropy (MSE), an estimate of the complexity of physiological signals has been used for assessing diabetes status. This method requires much computation effort. Our study aimed to examine the Poincaré plot, an easier method for computation to differentiate the diabetes status. We selected subjects and divided them into three groups including the non- diabetes (HbA1c ≤ 6.5%, n=22), diabetes with good control (6.5% < HbA1c < 8%, n=23), and diabetes with poor control (HbA1c ≥ 8%, n=17). Poincaré method used consecutive 250 data points of PPG pulse amplitudes from each subject’s right index fingertip. This method resulted in SSR, the standard deviation of the original photoplethysmogram (PPG) pulse amplitude (SD1) and the standard deviation of the interval 1 PPG pulse amplitude (SD2) ratio. The SSR in the three groups of non-diabetes, diabetes with good control and diabetes with poor control were 0.50, 0.28, and 0.23, respectively and differed between groups (P < 0.05).  Our findings suggested that the Poincaré plot of right-hand PPG pulse amplitude may be convenient to evaluate diabetes status

Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy in the Enteral Feeding of the Elderly

SummaryToday we are faced with an aging society that may develop malnutrition because of dysphagia related to dementia, stroke, and malignancy seen often in the elderly. The preferred form of nutritional supplementation for this group is enteral nutrition, and the most appropriate long-term method is by use of a gastrostomy. Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) was first introduced in 1980 as an alternative to the traditional operative procedure and rapidly became the preferred procedure. In geriatric patients, the principal indications are neurological dysphagia and malnutrition, related to an underlying disease or anorexia-cachexia in very elderly. PEG is contraindicated in the presence of respiratory distress, previous gastric resection, total esophageal obstruction, coagulation disorders and sepsis in the elderly. Common complications include wound infection, leakage, hemorrhage, and fistula in the general population, but aspiration pneumonia is the major case of death in this group. Risks and complications of PEG must be discussed with patients and their families; and the decision for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy insertion should only be made after careful consideration and discussion between managing physicians, allied health professionals, and the patient and/or family. Four ethical principles may help make feeding decisions: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice. Attentive long-term care after tube replacement is mandatory. Acceptance of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy placement by patients and their families tends to increase once favorable outcomes are offered

Influence of electrode thermal conductivity on resistive switching behavior during reset process

Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is the most promising candidate for non-volatile memory (NVM) due to its extremely low operation voltage, extremely fast write/erase speed, and excellent scaling capability. However, an obstacle hindering mass production of RRAM is the non-uniform physical mechanism in its resistance switching process. This study examines the influence of different electrode thermal conductivity on switching behavior during the reset process. Electrical analysis methods and an analysis of current conduction mechanism indicate that better thermal conductivity in the electrode will require larger input power in order to induce more active oxygen ions to take part in the reset process. More active oxygen ions cause a more complete reaction during the reset process, and cause the effective switching gap (dsw) to become thicker. The effect of the electrode thermal conductivity and input power are explained by our model and clarified by electrical analysis methods. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

An MRL-Based Design Solution for RIS-Assisted MU-MIMO Wireless System under Time-Varying Channels

Utilizing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) assisted wireless communication has been extensively researched. However, existing DRL methods either act as a simple optimizer or only solve problems with concurrent Channel State Information (CSI) represented in the training data set. Consequently, solutions for RIS-assisted wireless communication systems under time-varying environments are relatively unexplored. However, communication problems should be considered with realistic assumptions; for instance, in scenarios where the channel is time-varying, the policy obtained by reinforcement learning should be applicable for situations where CSI is not well represented in the training data set. In this paper, we apply Meta-Reinforcement Learning (MRL) to the joint optimization problem of active beamforming at the Base Station (BS) and phase shift at the RIS, motivated by MRL's ability to extend the DRL concept of solving one Markov Decision Problem (MDP) to multiple MDPs. We provide simulation results to compare the average sum rate of the proposed approach with those of selected forerunners in the literature. Our approach improves the sum rate by more than 60% under time-varying CSI assumption while maintaining the advantages of typical DRL-based solutions. Our study's results emphasize the possibility of utilizing MRL-based designs in RIS-assisted wireless communication systems while considering realistic environment assumptions.Comment: To be published in proceedings of the 2023 IEEE Conference on Global Communications (GLOBECOM