Performance of a Multiple-Access DCSK-CC System over Nakagami-mm Fading Channels

In this paper, we propose a novel cooperative scheme to enhance the performance of multiple-access (MA) differential-chaos-shift-keying (DCSK) systems. We provide the bit-error-rate (BER) performance and throughput analyses for the new system with a decode-and-forward (DF) protocol over Nakagami-$m$ fading channels. Our simulated results not only show that this system significantly improves the BER performance as compared to the existing DCSK non-cooperative (DCSK-NC) system and the multiple-input multiple-output DCSK (MIMO-DCSK) system, but also verify the theoretical analyses. Furthermore, we show that the throughput of this system approximately equals that of the DCSK-NC system, both of which have prominent improvements over the MIMO-DCSK system. We thus believe that the proposed system can be a good framework for chaos-modulation-based wireless communications.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted, IEEE ISCAS, 201

Clinical Features and Genetic Analysis of 20 Chinese Patients with X-Linked Hyper-IgM Syndrome

X-linked hyper-IgM syndrome (XHIGM) is one type of primary immunodeficiency diseases, resulting from defects in the CD40 ligand/CD40 signaling pathways. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical and molecular features of 20 Chinese patients diagnosed and followed up in hospitals affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine from 1999 to 2013. The median onset age of these patients was 8.5 months (range: 20 days–21 months). Half of them had positive family histories, with a shorter diagnosis lag. The most common symptoms were recurrent sinopulmonary infections (18 patients, 90%), neutropenia (14 patients, 70%), oral ulcer (13 patients, 65%), and protracted diarrhea (13 patients, 65%). Six patients had BCGitis. Six patients received hematopoietic stem cell transplantations and four of them had immune reconstructions and clinical remissions. Eighteen unique mutations in CD40L gene were identified in these 20 patients from 19 unrelated families, with 12 novel mutations. We compared with reported mutation results and used bioinformatics software to predict the effects of mutations on the target protein. These mutations reflected the heterogeneity of CD40L gene and expanded our understanding of XHIGM

Spectroscopic Observation and Analysis of HII regions in M33 with MMT: Temperatures and Oxygen Abundances

The spectra of 413 star-forming (or HII) regions in M33 (NGC 598) were observed by using the multifiber spectrograph of Hectospec at the 6.5-m Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT). By using this homogeneous spectra sample, we measured the intensities of emission lines and some physical parameters, such as electron temperatures, electron densities, and metallicities. Oxygen abundances were derived via the direct method (when available) and two empirical strong-line methods, namely, O3N2 and N2. In the high-metallicity end, oxygen abundances derived from O3N2 calibration were higher than those derived from N2 index, indicating an inconsistency between O3N2 and N2 calibrations. We presented a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of gas-phase oxygen abundances in M33 and confirmed the existence of the axisymmetric global metallicity distribution widely assumed in literature. Local variations were also observed and subsequently associated with spiral structures to provide evidence of radial migration driven by arms. Our O/H gradient fitted out to 1.1 $R_{25}$ resulted in slopes of $-0.17\pm0.03$, $-0.19\pm0.01$, and $-0.16\pm0.17$ dex $R_{25}^{-1}$ utilizing abundances from O3N2, N2 diagnostics, and direct method, respectively.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Diagnostic prediction of complex diseases using phase-only correlation based on virtual sample template

Motivation: Complex diseases induce perturbations to interaction and regulation networks in living systems, resulting in dynamic equilibrium states that differ for different diseases and also normal states. Thus identifying gene expression patterns corresponding to different equilibrium states is of great benefit to the diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases. However, it remains a major challenge to deal with the high dimensionality and small size of available complex disease gene expression datasets currently used for discovering gene expression patterns. Results: Here we present a phase-only correlation (POC) based classification method for recognizing the type of complex diseases. First, a virtual sample template is constructed for each subclass by averaging all samples of each subclass in a training dataset. Then the label of a test sample is determined by measuring the similarity between the test sample and each template. This novel method can detect the similarity of overall patterns emerged from the differentially expressed genes or proteins while ignoring small mismatches. Conclusions: The experimental results obtained on seven publicly available complex disease datasets including microarray and protein array data demonstrate that the proposed POC-based disease classification method is effective and robust for diagnosing complex diseases with regard to the number of initially selected features, and its recognition accuracy is better than or comparable to other state-of-the-art machine learning methods. In addition, the proposed method does not require parameter tuning and data scaling, which can effectively reduce the occurrence of over-fitting and bias