Secretory Carcinoma: A Silent Mass Increasing in the Parotid Gland

BACKGROUND: Secretory carcinoma (SC) of the salivary gland, also known as mammary analog secretory carcinoma, is a rare tumor in the parotid gland. This kind of tumor is characterized by generally indolent clinical behavior and expression of a break in the ETV6 gene. CASE REPORT: We present a unique case of secretory carcinoma and show its favorable prognoses. CONCLUSION: Secretory carcinoma of the salivary gland is a low-grade carcinoma with a favorable prognosis. It has low regional lymph node and distant metastasis potential. Due to the possibility of misdiagnosis, immunohistochemical studies and FISH are suggested. The most effective treatment is complete surgical excision with negative surgical margins

Lack of Association Between Total Serum Homocysteine and Extracranial Cerebral Flow

Background/PurposeHigh homocysteine (Hcy) concentration is associated with slow coronary flow. This study examined the association between Hcy and hemodynamic status in the extracranial cerebral arteries in healthy individuals.MethodsA total of 535 healthy adults underwent physical examination and duplex ultrasonography of the extracranial carotid and vertebral arteries, and blood laboratory tests, including biochemistry and serum total Hcy. Flow hemodynamic parameters including velocity, resistance, and volume of the carotid and vertebral arteries were measured. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the association between Hcy and the flow parameters.ResultsParticipants with higher Hcy were more likely to have a lower systolic velocity of the internal carotid artery (p = 0.01) and vertebral artery (p < 0.001), and lower resistance of the vertebral artery (p = 0.004). However, the multiple-adjusted means of the flow velocity, resistance, and flow volume of the carotid or vertebral artery were not significantly different across quartiles of Hcy. When Hcy was treated as a continuous variable, there was still no significant relationship between Hcy levels and the aforementioned hemodynamic status.ConclusionOur results did not support the hypothesis that the levels of Hcy are associated with the flow velocity, resistance, and volume of the extracranial cerebral artery in healthy individuals

Speech Dereverberation Based on Integrated Deep and Ensemble Learning Algorithm

Reverberation, which is generally caused by sound reflections from walls, ceilings, and floors, can result in severe performance degradation of acoustic applications. Due to a complicated combination of attenuation and time-delay effects, the reverberation property is difficult to characterize, and it remains a challenging task to effectively retrieve the anechoic speech signals from reverberation ones. In the present study, we proposed a novel integrated deep and ensemble learning algorithm (IDEA) for speech dereverberation. The IDEA consists of offline and online phases. In the offline phase, we train multiple dereverberation models, each aiming to precisely dereverb speech signals in a particular acoustic environment; then a unified fusion function is estimated that aims to integrate the information of multiple dereverberation models. In the online phase, an input utterance is first processed by each of the dereverberation models. The outputs of all models are integrated accordingly to generate the final anechoic signal. We evaluated the IDEA on designed acoustic environments, including both matched and mismatched conditions of the training and testing data. Experimental results confirm that the proposed IDEA outperforms single deep-neural-network-based dereverberation model with the same model architecture and training data

Delay-Dependent Robust H/sub ∞/ Filtering for Time-Delay Systems with Markov Jumps

[[abstract]]This paper deals with the problem of robust H/sub ∞/ filtering for a class of jump linear continuous-time systems with delay dependence. The problem aims at designing a stable linear filtering assuring asymptotic stability and a prescribed H/sub ∞/ performance level for the filtering error system, respective of the time delays. A sufficient condition for the existence of such a filter is developed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. A numerical example demonstrates the validity of the theoretical results

THE UPPER LIMB EMG ACTIVITY COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT TABLE TENNIS FOREHAND DRIVES

The purpose of this study was to combine dynamics and surface EMG methods to analyze the movements of table tennis forehand drives by Taiwan elite table tennis players performing straight and cross court forehand drives from topspin and backspin serves. The kinematical data were collected by 10 Vicon MX13+ high-speed cameras and one Biovision system was used to record the EMG signal of seven muscles groups on the dominate hand. The results showed that there were significant differences among the four table tennis drives. The players exerted greater muscular activity in the wrist extensors, the biceps and the triceps for the backspin serve forehand drive than when returning the topspin serve forehand drive, not only on the straight but also on the cross court strokes

SWITCHING THE HORIZONTAL GRF TO THE PATH OF PROGRESSION IN THE TABLE TENNIS FOREHAND DRIVE

Knowing the kinetic strategies of the lower limbs is a crucial factor to investigate the forehand drive which comprises the changes of the foot placement. It is difficult to directly evaluate the movement of feet with the data of ground reaction force (GRF) and impulse (GRI).This study tried to analyze table tennis forehand drives via the GRF and GRI data based upon the anatomical perspective. The motion and the GRF data were collected from eight right-handed Taiwanese elite table tennis players. The horizontal GRF data were transformed to a reference frame and then integrated with time to get the GRI. During the forehand drive shot, the participants performed a greater lateral impulse to cause the trunk rotation and decelerated their body from initial to mid-phase and then accelerated the body to perform a forehand drive shot