FlexAuc: Serving Dynamic Demands in a Spectrum Trading Market with Flexible Auction

In secondary spectrum trading markets, auctions are widely used by spectrum holders (SHs) to redistribute their unused channels to secondary wireless service providers (WSPs). As sellers, the SHs design proper auction schemes to stimulate more participants and maximize the revenue from the auction. As buyers, the WSPs determine the bidding strategies in the auction to better serve their end users. In this paper, we consider a three-layered spectrum trading market consisting of the SH, the WSPs and the end users. We jointly study the strategies of the three parties. The SH determines the auction scheme and spectrum supplies to optimize its revenue. The WSPs have flexible bidding strategies in terms of both demands and valuations considering the strategies of the end users. We design FlexAuc, a novel auction mechanism for this market to enable dynamic supplies and demands in the auction. We prove theoretically that FlexAuc not only maximizes the social welfare but also preserves other nice properties such as truthfulness and computational tractability.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, Preliminary version accepted in INFOCOM 201

Effect of montelukast/budesonide formoterol powder inhalation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Purpose: To investigate the clinical efficacy of montelukast/budesonide formoterol powder inhalation in treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and its impact on serum high-sensitivity Creactive protein (hs-CRP), cancer antigen 125 (CA-125), and interleukin (IL)-6 levels.Methods: In total, 86 COPD patients treated in the clinic of Department of Respiratory Medicine inYichun People’s Hospital between December 2019 and December 2020 were recruited and randomly assigned to group A and group B alternately at the point of admission. Group B received conventional treatment, while group A was treated with conventional treatment plus montelukast/ budesonide formoterol powder inhalation.Results: Patients receiving montelukast /budesonide formoterol powder inhalation showed lower scores for cough, sputum, and shortness of breath, compared conventional treatment (p < 0.001). Patients in group A showed lower serum levels of hs-CRP, CA-125, and IL-6 after treatment than those in group B (p < 0.05). Pulmonary function and arterial blood gas indices were significantly different between the two groups after treatment (p < 0.05). Montelukast /budesonide formoterol powder inhalation resulted in higher Generic Quality Of Life Inventory-74 (GQOLI-74) scores and 6-min walking distance (6MWD) scores in patients than conventional treatment (p < 0.001). Also, Group A had a lower incidence of adverse reactions than group B (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Montelukast/budesonide formoterol powder inhalation has a better therapeutic effect versus conventional treatment, and improves patients' lung function and exercise tolerance. Further clinical trials are, however, required prior to general use in clinical practice

Comprehensive evaluation of heat resistance in 68 Vitis germplasm resources

Temperature is a crucial factor limiting plant growth. Grapevine is frequently subjected to high temperature during its maturation stage, and this seriously influences grape growth and development. Here, we selected 68 grapevine varieties and examined the heat damage index, relative electrolyte leakage, and Fv/Fm after exposure to 50 °C. 'Red Seedless', 'Hong Yuli', 'At Suma', 'Hupei 3#', and 'Tamina' were tolerant to high-temperature stress; however, 'Brazil', 'Shenfeng', 'Gold Finger', 'Heimeixiang', 'Kaiji', and 'Zuijinxiang' varieties were sensitive to high-temperature stress and died after exposure to 50 °C. Our findings provide a valuable insight into resistance breeding programs for grapevine

Non-monotonic anisotropy in charge conduction induced by antiferrodistortive transition in metallic SrTiO3_{3}

Cubic SrTiO$_{3}$ becomes tetragonal below 105 K. The antiferrodistortive (AFD) distortion leads to clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation of adjacent TiO$_{6}$ octahedra. This insulator becomes a metal upon the introduction of extremely low concentration of n-type dopants. However, signatures of the structural phase transition in charge conduction have remained elusive. Employing the Montgomery technique, we succeed in resolving the anisotropy of charge conductivity induced by the AFD transition, in the presence of different types of dopants. We find that the slight lattice distortion ($<6 \times 10^{-4}$) gives rise to a twenty percent anisotropy in charge conductivity, in agreement with the expectations of band calculations. Application of uniaxial strain amplifies the detectable anisotropy by disfavoring one of the three possible tetragonal domains. In contrast with all other known anisotropic Fermi liquids, the anisotropy has opposite signs for elastic and inelastic scattering. Increasing the concentration of dopants leads to a drastic shift in the temperature of the AFD transition either upward or downward. The latter result puts strong constraints on any hypothetical role played by the AFD soft mode in the formation of Cooper pairs and the emergence of superconductivity in SrTiO$_3$.Comment: 6 pages with 5 figure

Differential Expression Levels of Genes Related to Myogenesis During Embryogenesis of Quail and Chicken

The present study was designed to investigate the expression dynamics of genes during myogenesis in quail and chicken. Real-time PCR was used to detect mRNA expressions of MyoD, MyoG, MLP and MSTN in breast muscle of quail and chicken embryos during the period of embryonic days E7-17. Results showed that expression profiles of each gene displayed similar trend in the experiment period between quail and chicken, however, the expression concentration between the two species differed at the same time detected. MyoD mRNA expression in quail was significantly lower in the early phase of the experiment period (E7-9) (P<0.01 on E7; P<0.05 on both E8 and E9). For MyoG and MLP, the mRNA expressions were both lower in quail than that in chicken during the experiment period. Additionally, the embryonic day when quail reached its peak expression was earlier than that in chicken (MyoG: quail E12 vs. chicken E13; MLP: quail E14 vs. chicken E15), and the peak expression for both in quail was significantly lower than that in chicken (P<0.01 for both). For MSTN, expression in quail was significantly higher in quail than that in chicken at each time detected (P<0.01). It is concluded that differential expression of these genes might or at least partially contributed to the different development of muscle development in quail and chicken

Hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers in patients with periodontitis : a systematic review and meta-analysis

Numerous studies have explored the correlation of periodontal disease (PD) with risk of hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers, but the findings were inconsistent. Therefore, we did a meta-analysis to ascertain the correlation of PD with risk of incident hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers. The authors searched relevant studies in databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and MEDLINE). The summary relative risk (RR) along with 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated by use of random or fixed effects models. Six studies were included in qualitative synthesis. The pooled analysis revealed that PD was significantly associated with an increased risk of hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers (RR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.07?1.27; P = 0). Stratified analysis showed the association of PD with hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers remained significant in the never smokers (RR = 1.28; 95% CI = 1.07?1.54; P = 0.007), and in the American population (RR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.05?1.30; P = 0.003), respectively. Never smokers population and the American population with PD have a higher risk of developing hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers. PD might be considered as a risk factor for hematopoietic and lymphatic cancers