A man with hypophosphataemia

Case report; A section on BMJ, 2011, v. 342, p. 715published_or_final_versio

Diabetic complications and their implications on health care in Asia.

Diabetes mellitus is a growing health problem in the Asia-Pacific region. The acute and chronic complications of diabetes mellitus are major causes of hospital admissions, blindness, renal failure, amputations, stroke, and coronary heart disease in this region. Compared with the general population, the annual per capita health care expenditure is estimated to be four-fold for people with diabetes. Recent prospective studies have provided unequivocal evidence for the crucial role of prolonged hyperglycaemia in the development of chronic diabetic complications. Although the aetiology of hyperglycaemia-induced damage of the kidneys, eyes, nerves, and arteries still remain to be elucidated, observational and interventional studies show that the occurrence and progression of these complications can be prevented by the optimal control of blood glucose, hypertension, and dyslipidaemia. Lifestyle changes such as weight control, increased physical exercise, and smoking cessation are also potentially beneficial in preventing diabetes mellitus and coronary artery disease. Furthermore, the morbidity and mortality caused by diabetes mellitus can be reduced by secondary prevention through regular screening, early detection, and appropriate treatment of chronic complications. Improved diabetes education is needed among health professionals as well as the general and diabetic populations. Government and public health officials should be mindful of the economic impact of this major health problem so that adequate health care resources can be allocated for the primary and secondary prevention of diabetic complications.published_or_final_versio

Image transmission in sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks allow fine-grained monitoring of the environment. However, as sensors have physical limitations in energy, processing power, and memory, etc., techniques have to be developed to efficiently utilize the limited resource available in a sensor network. In this paper, we study the image tranmission problem in sensor networks. Cameras are installed in various locations of a wide area to take images of targeted objects. These images have to be sent back to a centralized server, which may be very far away from the cameras. Therefore, the images have to traverse the sensors hop by hop to the server. As images usually contain a large amount of data, if they are sent individually, the communication overheads will be huge. To reduce the overheads, we can pre-process the images in the sensors before sending them back to the server, but this pre-processing requires extra energy in the sensors. In this paper, we study how images can be efficiently transmitted through a sensor network. We aim at reducing the energy needed in transmitting the images while maintaining the quality of the combined image. © 2005 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Five-year outcomes of western mental health training for Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners

published_or_final_versio

Extra unit-speed machines are almost as powerful as speedy machines for flow time scheduling

We study online scheduling of jobs to minimize the flow time and stretch on parallel machines. We consider algorithms that are given extra resources so as to compensate for the lack of future information. Recent results show that a modest increase in machine speed can provide very competitive performance; in particular, using O(1) times faster machines, the algorithm SRPT (shortest remaining processing time) is 1-competitive for both flow time [C. A. Phillips et al., in Proceedings of STOC, ACM, New York, 1997, pp. 140-149] and stretch [W. T. Chan et al., in Proceedings of MFCS, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005, pp. 236-247] and HDF (highest density first) is O(1)-competitive for weighted flow time [L. Becchetti et al., in Proceedings of RANDOM-APPROX, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001, pp. 36-47]. Using extra unit-speed machines instead of faster machines to achieve competitive performance is more challenging, as a faster machine can speed up a job but extra unit-speed machines cannot. This paper gives a nontrivial relationship between the extra-speed and extra-machine analyses. It shows that competitive results via faster machines can be transformed to similar results via extra machines, hence giving the first algorithms that, using O(1) times unit-speed machines, are 1-competitive for flow time and stretch and O(1)-competitive for weighted flow time. © 2008 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.published_or_final_versio

Electrostriction of lead zirconate titanate/polyurethane composites

Author name used in this publication: K. S. LamAuthor name used in this publication: Y. ZhouAuthor name used in this publication: Y. W. WongAuthor name used in this publication: F. G. Shin2004-2005 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Zero-configuration identity-based IP network encryptor

For corporations or individuals who wish to protect the confidentiality of their data across computer networks, network-layer encryption offers an efficient and proven method for preserving data privacy. Network layer encryption such as IPSec is more flexible than higher layer solutions since it is not application-dependent and can protect all end-to-end traffics that go between two hosts. Using IPSec, two hosts must first establish a session key through message exchanges before they can communicate. In this paper, we present an Identity Based Encryption (IBE) scheme that allows a host to calculate the per-packet encryption key based on the IP address of the destination host, without going through the expensive key exchange process as in IPSec. Our mechanism is compatible with the current IP protocol and we tested our scheme with live HTTP and ICMP traffic. Our results show that our protocol provides a zero-configuration network layer encryption solution for end-to-end secure communications that is ideal for consumer electronics applications. © 2006 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Effect of initial conditions on interaction between a boundary layer and a wall-mounted finite-length-cylinder wake

Author name used in this publication: Y. ZhouAuthor name used in this publication: C. K. ChanAuthor name used in this publication: K. S. Lam2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe