A Method for Pedestrian Position Estimation using Inter-Vehicle Communication

GLOBECOM2008 : IEEE Global Communications Conference , Nov 30-Dec 4, 2008 , New Orleans, LA, USAIn this paper, we propose a method for detecting the positions of pedestrians by cooperation of multiple cars with directional antennas to support drivers for pedestrian safety. In the method, each pedestrian carries a device which periodically transmits a beacon with a unique ID, and each car passing near the pedestrian receives the beacon by a directional antenna and measures the distance and the angle of arrival. We assume the distribution of the measurement errors to be a normal distribution, and the system calculates the existence probabilities of each pedestrian at each point. By exchanging information of the probabilities between cars, the area with high existence probability is narrowed down. In this paper, we first describe the situations where detecting positions of pedestrians greatly contribute to pedestrian safety, and then we describe the probability model used in our method, the method for calculating existence probabilities from information from multiple cars, and the protocol for exchanging the probability information between cars. We evaluated our method on QualNet simulator, and confirmed that the positions can be detected accurately enough for practical uses

Advantages of peripheral blood stem cells from unrelated donors versus bone marrow transplants in outcomes of adult acute myeloid leukemia patients

[Background aims] In allogeneic stem cell transplantation, unrelated donors are chosen in cases where appropriate related donors are not available. Peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) are more often selected as a graft source than bone marrow (BM). However, the prognostic benefits of PBSCs versus BM transplants from unrelated donors have not been carefully examined in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This study compared outcomes of adult AML patients who underwent unrelated PBSC and BM transplantation, evaluating post-transplant complications, including engraftment, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and infections, and determined subgroups of patients who are most likely to benefit from unrelated PBSCs compared with BM transplants. [Methods] The authors analyzed 2962 adult AML patients who underwent unrelated PBSC or BM transplants between 2011 and 2018 (221 PBSC and 2741 BM) using the Japanese nationwide registry database, in which graft source selection is not skewed toward PBSCs. [Results] In 49.7% of patients, disease status at transplantation was first complete remission (CR1). In 57.1% of cases, HLA-matched donors were selected. Myeloablative conditioning was performed in 75.1% of cases, and anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) was added to conditioning in 10.5%. Multivariate analyses showed a trend toward favorable non-relapse mortality (NRM) in PBSC recipients compared with BM recipients (hazard ratio [HR], 0.731, P = 0.096), whereas overall survival (OS) (HR, 0.959, P = 0.230) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR, 0.868, P = 0.221) were comparable between PBSC and BM recipients. Although the rate of chronic GVHD (cGVHD) was significantly higher in PBSC patients (HR, 1.367, P = 0.016), NRM was not increased, mainly as a result of significantly reduced risk of bacterial infections (HR, 0.618, P = 0.010), reflecting more prompt engraftments in PBSC recipients. Subgroup analyses revealed that PBSC transplantation was advantageous in patients transplanted at CR1 and in those without ATG use. PBSC recipients experienced significantly better OS and/or DFS compared with BM recipients in this patient group. [Conclusions] The authors' results confirmed the overall safety of unrelated PBSC transplantation for adult AML patients and suggested an advantage of PBSCs, especially for those in CR1. Further optimization of the prophylactic strategy for cGVHD is required to improve the overall outcome in transplantation from unrelated PBSC donors

An Improved Backoff Scheme and Its Performance Analysis for Full Duplex MAC Protocols in VLC Networks

IEEE 802.15.7 Visible Light Communication (VLC) networks suffer from performance degradation caused by the hidden device collisions due to the directional transmission with narrow beamwidth. One of the solutions for mitigating the hidden device collisions is to employ a full-duplex transmission technique. As a side effect of the full-duplex transmission in the VLC networks, however, the data-packet discard due to the retransmission limitation occurs frequently in the networks. This paper proposes an improved backoff scheme and its performance analysis to suppress the packet discard. The proposed backoff scheme increases the Backoff Exponent (BE) and the Number of Backoff stage (NB) in IEEE 802.15.7 only when the data packet transmission fails. To evaluate the system performance theoretically, this paper also provides the Markov-chain model for channel access with the proposed scheme. The performance evaluations through simulation and theoretical analysis show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme

Chimeric anti-podoplanin antibody suppresses tumor metastasis through neutralization and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity

Podoplanin is a platelet aggregation-inducing factor associated with tumor metastasis, malignant progression, and cancer stem cells. We produced a rat-human chimeric anti-podoplanin mAb, NZ-8, from rat anti-podoplanin mAb (NZ-1). Although both NZ-1 and NZ-8 possess high binding affinities and high neutralizing activities of platelet aggregation, the antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity and complement-dependent cytotoxicity of NZ-8 were much higher than NZ-1. Furthermore, both NZ-1 and NZ-8 inhibited the growth of podoplanin-expressing tumors in vivo. Both NZ-1 and NZ-8 also suppressed hematogenous metastasis of podoplanin-expressing tumors. These results suggest that antipodoplanin mAbs suppressed hematogenous metastasis by both neutralization and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity/complement-dependent cytotoxicity activities. Targeting therapy to podoplanin-expressing tumors should be useful as a novel immunotherapy. (Cancer Sci, doi: 10.1111/j.1349-7006.2012.02385.x, 2012 P odoplanin is a platelet aggregation-inducing factor, and its expression has been reported in many tumors including malignant brain tumors, mesotheliomas, and squamous cell carcinoma. (1-10) Importantly, recent investigations have suggested that expression of podoplanin is associated with tumor metastasis, malignant progression, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. (11-18) Podoplanin expression has also been reported to be associated with clinical outcome. (23) Because TICs are thought to be resistant to conventional therapies, and are responsible for relapse, targeting TICs could be a promising approach to cancer therapy. (24) Podoplanin has been reported to be a TIC marker; We previously produced an anti-podoplanin antibody, NZ-1. (5) NZ-1 should have not only high specificity and sensitivity but also high binding-affinity against podoplanin to be applied for radioimmunotherapy or immunotoxin therapy. Previous studies showed that NZ-1 is a suitable candidate for therapy against malignant gliomas because NZ-1 was highly internalized into glioma cell lines, and also well accumulated into tumors in vivo. (26) Moreover, NZ-1 inhibited tumor cellinduced platelet aggregation and tumor metastasis by its neutralizing activity. (12) However, it has not been clarified whether NZ-1 possesses antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) or complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) against podoplanin-expressing tumor cells. In this study, we produced rat-human chimeric anti-podoplanin antibody (NZ-8) from rat anti-podoplanin neutralizing antibody (NZ-1), and characterized NZ-8 activity in flow cytometry, Western blot, platelet aggregation, and ADCC/CDC analyses in vitro. Next, we investigated the antitumor and antimetastatic activities of the anti-podoplanin mAbs in vivo

Residual disease is a strong prognostic marker in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia with chemotherapy‐refractory or relapsed disease prior to allogeneic stem cell transplantation

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is one of the curative treatment options for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). However, the outcomes in patients transplanted without complete remission (non-CR) have not yet been fully reported, and detailed analyses are required to identify subgroups in which optimal prognosis is expected and to optimize pre-transplant therapeutic strategies. Hence, we performed a multicentred retrospective cohort study including a total of 663 adult ALL patients transplanted at non-CR status; the median bone marrow (BM) blast counts at HSCT was 13·2%, and 203 patients (30·6%) were treated at primary induction failure status. The overall survival (OS) was 31·1% at two years, and the multivariate analyses identified five prognostic risk factors, including older age (≥50 years), increased BM blasts (≥10%), poor performance status, high haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT)-comorbidity index, and relapsed disease status, among which BM blast was the most significantly related. A predictive scoring system composed of these risk factors clearly stratified OS (15·6-59·5% at two years). In conclusion, this is the first large-scale study to analyze the correlation of patient characteristics with post-transplant prognosis in ALL transplanted at non-CR status. The importance of blast control before HSCT should be focused on for better patient prognosis

Impact of anti-thymocyte globulin on survival outcomes in female-to-male allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Abstract Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation between female donors and male recipients (female-to-male allo-HCT) is a well-established risk factor for inferior survival outcomes due to a higher incidence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). However, a clinical significance of anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) in the female-to-male allo-HCT has not been elucidated. In this study, we retrospectively evaluated male patients who underwent allo-HCT between 2012 and 2019 in Japan. In the female-to-male allo-HCT cohort (n = 828), the use of ATG was not associated with a decreased risk of GVHD (HR of acute GVHD 0.691 [95% CI: 0.461–1.04], P = 0.074; HR of chronic GVHD 1.06 [95% CI: 0.738–1.52], P = 0.76), but was associated with favorable overall survival (OS) and a decreased risk of non-relapse mortality (NRM) (HR of OS 0.603 [95% CI: 0.400–0.909], P = 0.016; HR of NRM 0.506 [95% CI: 0.300–0.856], P = 0.011). The use of ATG in female-to-male allo-HCT resulted in survival outcomes that were almost equivalent to those in the male-to-male allo-HCT group. Therefore, GVHD prophylaxis with ATG might overcome the inferiority of survival outcomes in female-to-male allo-HCT