User Location Determination Strategy in a Low Earth Orbit Satellite Network

Recently, many Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems have been proposed for the purpose of global communication and one of those systems is planned to start the commercial service in 1998. These LEO satellite systems are providing most of current communication services (voice, fax, data, paging, and even real time video service) without any limitation on place and time. However, little is published about their detail system methodology on user tracking and managing schemes. This thesis presents two user location tracking algorithms in a LEO environment. One (Gateway Approach) is the most likely approach under present system proposals, while the other (Satellite Approach) requires more risk in implementing the proposed scheme. These two approaches are compared via computer simulation in an Iridium-like satellite network system environment. Comparative measures of call setup delay and number of hops needed to establish initial call request are examined, and minimum requirements for the Satellite Approach are discussed. It is concluded that the Satellite Approach performs better than the Gateway Approach when the memory space and computational ability of each satellite can satisfy the minimum conditions discussed in this paper. Also, the Satellite Approach experienced well balanced message distribution than the Gateway Approach. Moreover, as far as system survivability and service continuity, the Satellite Approach showed more advantageous factors than the Gateway Approach

Painsight: An Extendable Opinion Mining Framework for Detecting Pain Points Based on Online Customer Reviews

As the e-commerce market continues to expand and online transactions proliferate, customer reviews have emerged as a critical element in shaping the purchasing decisions of prospective buyers. Previous studies have endeavored to identify key aspects of customer reviews through the development of sentiment analysis models and topic models. However, extracting specific dissatisfaction factors remains a challenging task. In this study, we delineate the pain point detection problem and propose Painsight, an unsupervised framework for automatically extracting distinct dissatisfaction factors from customer reviews without relying on ground truth labels. Painsight employs pre-trained language models to construct sentiment analysis and topic models, leveraging attribution scores derived from model gradients to extract dissatisfaction factors. Upon application of the proposed methodology to customer review data spanning five product categories, we successfully identified and categorized dissatisfaction factors within each group, as well as isolated factors for each type. Notably, Painsight outperformed benchmark methods, achieving substantial performance enhancements and exceptional results in human evaluations.Comment: WASSA at ACL 202

Host Blood Transcriptional Signatures as Candidate Biomarkers for Predicting Progression to Active Tuberculosis

A recent understanding of the dynamic continuous spectrum of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection has led to the recognition of incipient tuberculosis, which refers to the latent infection state that has begun to progress to active tuberculosis. The importance of early detection of these individuals with a high-risk of progression to active tuberculosis is emphasized to efficiently implement targeted tuberculosis preventive therapy. However, the tuberculin skin test or interferon-γ release assay, which is currently used for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection, does not aid in the prediction of the risk of progression to active tuberculosis. Thus, a novel test is urgently needed. Recently, simultaneous and systematic analysis of differentially expressed genes using a high-throughput platform has enabled the discovery of key genes that may serve potential biomarkers for the diagnosis or prognosis of diseases. This host transcriptional investigation has been extended to the field of tuberculosis, providing promising results. The present review focuses on recent progress and challenges in the field of blood transcriptional signatures to predict progression to active tuberculosis

The Implication of Substance P in the Development of Tendinopathy: A Case Control Study.

It was reported that substance P had beneficial effects in the healing of acute tendon injury. However, the relationship between substance P and degenerative tendinopathy development remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of substance P in the pathogenesis of tendinopathy. Healthy and tendinopathy tendon were harvested from human and tenocytes were cultured individually. The expression levels of genes associated with tendinopathy were compared. Next, substance P was exogenously administered to the healthy tenocyte and the effect was evaluated. The results showed that tendinopathy tenocytes had higher levels of COL3A1, MMP1, COX2, SCX, ACTA2, and substance P gene expression compared to healthy tenocytes. Next, substance P treatment on the healthy tenocyte displayed similar changes to that of the tendinopathy tenocytes. These differences between the two groups were also determined by Western blot. Additionally, cells with substance P had the tendinopathy change morphologically although cellular proliferation was significantly higher compared to that of the control group. In conclusion, substance P enhanced cellular proliferation, but concomitantly increased immature collagen (type 3 collagen). Substance P plays a crucial role in tendinopathy development and could be a future therapeutic target for treatment

A Novel Method for Functional Annotation Prediction Based on Combination of Classification Methods

Automated protein function prediction defines the designation of functions of unknown protein functions by using computational methods. This technique is useful to automatically assign gene functional annotations for undefined sequences in next generation genome analysis (NGS). NGS is a popular research method since high-throughput technologies such as DNA sequencing and microarrays have created large sets of genes. These huge sequences have greatly increased the need for analysis. Previous research has been based on the similarities of sequences as this is strongly related to the functional homology. However, this study aimed to designate protein functions by automatically predicting the function of the genome by utilizing InterPro (IPR), which can represent the properties of the protein family and groups of the protein function. Moreover, we used gene ontology (GO), which is the controlled vocabulary used to comprehensively describe the protein function. To define the relationship between IPR and GO terms, three pattern recognition techniques have been employed under different conditions, such as feature selection and weighted value, instead of a binary one

The Resolution of Periodontal Inflammation Promotes Changes in Cytokine Expression in the Intestine and Gingival Tissues of Aged Rats with DSS-Induced Colitis

Our research aimed to explore how resolving periodontal inflammation impacts cytokine expression in the colons of aged Wistar rats. Research studies involving animals have been conducted to investigate the two-way relationship between periodontitis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), where chronic inflammation in either the mouth or intestines can negatively affect the other. We allocated seventeen male Wistar rats aged between 8 and 11 months to one of four groups: (1) ligature-induced periodontitis (LIP) without the resolution of periodontal inflammation (RPI) (LIP; n = 4), (2) LIP + RPI (n = 4), (3) LIP + dextran-sulphate-sodium-induced colitis (DIC) without RPI (n = 4), and LIP + DIC + RPI (n = 5). We performed histopathological and immunological analyses on periodontal and intestinal tissues and analysed cytokine expressions using a Rat Cytokine 23-Plex Immunoassay. Our findings showed that animals with and without DIC who underwent RPI showed significantly lower levels of IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-10, IL-13, IL-17, IL-18, and TNF-α in the intestine compared to those without treatment. The RPI effectively reduced the number of inflammatory cells in the lamina propria and restored the epithelial barrier in the intestine in animals with DIC. The resolution of periodontal inflammation significantly reduced the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in the intestines of aged rats with and without DSS-induced colitis

Clinical relevance of ground glass opacity in 105 patients with miliary tuberculosis

SummaryBackgroundAfter the application of chest computed tomography (CT), ground glass opacity (GGO) was introduced as one of major accompanying findings of miliary tuberculosis (MT) in addition to miliary nodules. However, little is known about whether GGO is associated with the clinical manifestations and outcomes of MT. Therefore, the present study examined the clinical relevance of GGO in patients with MT.MethodsChest radiographs and CT scans of MT patients were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical manifestations and outcomes were compared in terms of the extent of GGO revealed by chest CT.ResultsConfirmed 105 MT patients were included. GGO was observed in 70 (67%) patients. MT patients with an extent of GGO >50% (n = 21) had symptoms of shorter duration, more frequent dyspnea, and more pronounced changes in the levels of acute phase reactants. Miliary nodules were less discernible on CT in those with an extent of GGO >50%. MT patients with an extent of GGO >50% were significantly associated with a longer hospital stay (p = 0.02) and with acute respiratory failure (p < 0.001) than those with an extent of GGO ≤50%. However, mortality among MT patients was not associated with the extent of GGO.ConclusionMT patients with an extent of GGO >50% had more rapidly progressive manifestations and a greater potential for delayed diagnosis and poorer prognosis. Nevertheless, mortality was not higher in confirmed MT patients with an extent of GGO >50% than in those with an extent of GGO ≤50%

Joint Identification of Genetic Variants for Physical Activity inKorean Population

Abstract: There has been limited research on genome-wide association with physical activity (PA). This study ascertained genetic associations between PA and 344,893 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in 8842 Korean samples. PA data were obtained from a validated questionnaire that included information on PA intensity and duration. Metabolic equivalent of tasks were calculated to estimate the total daily PA level for each individual. In addition to single- and multiple-SNP association tests, a pathway enrichment analysis was performed to identify the biological significance of SNP markers. Although no significant SNP was found at genome-wide significance level via single-SNP association tests, 59 genetic variants mapped to 76 genes were identified via a multiple SNP approach using a bootstrap selection stability measure. Pathway analysis for these 59 variants showed that maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY) was enriched. Joint identification of SNPs could enable the identification of multiple SNPs with good predictive power for PA and a pathway enriched for PA

Numeric Analysis for Relationship-Aware Scalable Streaming Scheme

Frequent packet loss of media data is a critical problem that degrades the quality of streaming services over mobile networks. Packet loss invalidates frames containing lost packets and other related frames at the same time. Indirect loss caused by losing packets decreases the quality of streaming. A scalable streaming service can decrease the amount of dropped multimedia resulting from a single packet loss. Content providers typically divide one large media stream into several layers through a scalable streaming service and then provide each scalable layer to the user depending on the mobile network. Also, a scalable streaming service makes it possible to decode partial multimedia data depending on the relationship between frames and layers. Therefore, a scalable streaming service provides a way to decrease the wasted multimedia data when one packet is lost. However, the hierarchical structure between frames and layers of scalable streams determines the service quality of the scalable streaming service. Even if whole packets of layers are transmitted successfully, they cannot be decoded as a result of the absence of reference frames and layers. Therefore, the complicated relationship between frames and layers in a scalable stream increases the volume of abandoned layers. For providing a high-quality scalable streaming service, we choose a proper relationship between scalable layers as well as the amount of transmitted multimedia data depending on the network situation. We prove that a simple scalable scheme outperforms a complicated scheme in an error-prone network. We suggest an adaptive set-top box (AdaptiveSTB) to lower the dependency between scalable layers in a scalable stream. Also, we provide a numerical model to obtain the indirect loss of multimedia data and apply it to various multimedia streams. Our AdaptiveSTB enhances the quality of a scalable streaming service by removing indirect loss