Wearable Communications in 5G: Challenges and Enabling Technologies

As wearable devices become more ingrained in our daily lives, traditional communication networks primarily designed for human being-oriented applications are facing tremendous challenges. The upcoming 5G wireless system aims to support unprecedented high capacity, low latency, and massive connectivity. In this article, we evaluate key challenges in wearable communications. A cloud/edge communication architecture that integrates the cloud radio access network, software defined network, device to device communications, and cloud/edge technologies is presented. Computation offloading enabled by this multi-layer communications architecture can offload computation-excessive and latency-stringent applications to nearby devices through device to device communications or to nearby edge nodes through cellular or other wireless technologies. Critical issues faced by wearable communications such as short battery life, limited computing capability, and stringent latency can be greatly alleviated by this cloud/edge architecture. Together with the presented architecture, current transmission and networking technologies, including non-orthogonal multiple access, mobile edge computing, and energy harvesting, can greatly enhance the performance of wearable communication in terms of spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, latency, and connectivity.Comment: This work has been accepted by IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazin

Empire, Nation, and the Islamic World: Bosnian Muslim Reformists between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1901-1914

This dissertation is a study of the early 20th-century Pan-Islamist reform movement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, tracing its origins and trans-imperial development with a focus on the years 1901-1914. Its central figure is the theologian and print entrepreneur Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević (1870-1938), who returned to his Austro-Hungarian-occupied home province from extended studies in the Ottoman lands at the start of this period with an ambitious agenda of communal reform. Čaušević’s project centered on tying his native land and its Muslim inhabitants to the wider “Islamic World”—a novel geo-cultural construct he portrayed as a viable model for communal modernization. Over the subsequent decade, he and his followers founded a printing press, standardized the writing of Bosnian in a modified Arabic script, organized the country’s Ulema, and linked these initiatives together in a string of successful Arabic-script, Ulema-led, and theologically modernist print publications. By 1914, Čaušević’s supporters even brought him to a position of institutional power as Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Reis-ul-Ulema (A: raʾīs al-ʿulamāʾ), the country’s highest Islamic religious authority and a figure of regional influence between two empires. Methodologically, the project functions on two primary levels. The first is a close reading of the reform movement’s multilingual and multi-scriptural periodical press and publishing scene, situating this fin-de-siècle Muslim print culture in its late imperial and trans-regional context. The second is a prosopographical approach to the polyglot generation of writers and theologians who stood behind it, emphasizing networks of collaboration, education, and kinship that tied them both to the wider world and previous generations of Bosnian scholars. The dissertation ultimately argues that Čaušević and his movement emerged from and represented a locally grounded tradition of Muslim cosmopolitan reform, which insisted on religious instruction in the Bosnian vernacular not at the expense of the classical languages of higher Islamic learning or the Ottoman (and later Habsburg) imperial order, but rather as a foundation that would enable Muslims to pursue the former and buttress the latter as well. In making this case, the project contributes to the wider historiography on empires and nationalism in Eastern and Southeast Europe, reconsidering the role of multilingualism in imperial demise and moving beyond the prevailing top-down focus on Muslims and other ethno-religious minorities as beleaguered subjects of nationalizing states. At the same time, it serves as a Bosnian case study for outstanding concerns in global Islamic intellectual history, arguing that the late and post-Ottoman Balkans played an active and underappreciated role in the formation of transnational Pan-Islamist thought during the late imperial period

Impact of HSD11B1 polymorphisms on BMI and components of the metabolic syndrome in patients receiving psychotropic treatments

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) associated with psychiatric disorders and psychotropic treatments represents a major health issue. 11β-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) is an enzyme that catalyzes tissue regeneration of active cortisol from cortisone. Elevated enzymatic activity of 11β-HSD1 may lead to the development of MetS

BMI evolution during psychotropic treatment according to protective or risk <i>MCHR2</i> rs7754794C>T genotype.

<p>Caucasian patients carrying protective (TT) or risk (CC or CT) rs7754794C>T variant. Median, interquartiles and number of observations for each box are indicated.</p

Use of IV Iron and Risk of Anaphylaxis: A Multinational Observational Post-Authorisation Safety Study in Europe

PURPOSE: This post-authorisation safety study estimated the risk of anaphylaxis in patients receiving intravenous (IV) iron in Europe, with interest in iron dextran and iron non-dextrans. Studies conducted in the United States have reported risk of anaphylaxis to IV iron ranging from 2.0 to 6.8 per 10 000 first treatments. METHODS: Cohort study of IV iron new users, captured mostly through pharmacy ambulatory dispensing, from populations covered by health and administrative data sources in five European countries from 1999 to 2017. Anaphylaxis events were identified through an algorithm that used parenteral penicillin as a positive control. RESULTS: A total of 304 210 patients with a first IV iron treatment (6367 iron dextran), among whom 13–16 anaphylaxis cases were identified and reported as a range to comply with data protection regulations. The pooled unadjusted incidence proportion (IP) ranged from 0.4 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.2–0.9) to 0.5 (95% CI, 0.3–1.0) per 10 000 first treatments. No events were identified at first dextran treatments. There were 231 294 first penicillin treatments with 30 potential cases of anaphylaxis (IP = 1.2; 95% CI, 0.8–1.7 per 10 000 treatments). CONCLUSION: We found an IP of anaphylaxis from 0.4 to 0.5 per 10 000 first IV iron treatments. The study captured only a fraction of IV iron treatments administered in hospitals, where most first treatments are likely to happen. Due to this limitation, the study could not exclude a differential risk of anaphylaxis between iron dextran and iron non-dextrans. The IP of anaphylaxis in users of penicillin was consistent with incidences reported in the literature

Early changes of blood lipid levels during psychotropic drug treatment as predictors of long-term lipid changes and of new onset dyslipidemia

Cardiovascular diseases and dyslipidemia represent a major health issue in psychiatry. Many psychotropic drugs can induce a rapid and substantial increase of blood lipid levels