The Impact of Education and Physical Therapy on Oral Behaviour in Patients with Temporomandibular Disorder: A Preliminary Study

Patient education is important in the treatment of temporomandibular disorder (TMD), but little is known about its effect on oral behaviors. We aimed to determine the dominant oral behaviours in patients with TMD and assess the impact of education on such behaviours. Between July 2018 and April 2019, 54 patients diagnosed with TMD according to DC/TMD were recruited. They received physical therapy and were provided education on TMD and offered a list of recommendations for improving their oral behaviours. The patient education process usually lasted for 10–20 min. Of these patients, 48 were reexamined at the outpatient clinic, 3–9 months posttreatment. We recorded the Oral Behaviour Checklist (OBC) score, maximum painless mouth opening (mm), visual analogue scale (VAS) score for pain, and Jaw Functional Limitation Scale (JFLS) score pre- and posttreatment. Wilcoxon signed rank test and paired sample t-test were used for statistical analysis. Results showed that the most dominant oral behaviours included “putting pressure on the jaw” (59.3%); “chewing food on one side” (46.3%); “pressing, touching, or holding teeth together at times other than eating” (33.3%); and “eating between meals” (33.3%). Posttreatment, the patients reported a decrease in “chewing gum” (P=0.002), “leaning with the hand on the jaw” (P=0.013), “chewing food on one side” (P≤0.001), and “eating between meals” (P=0.007), but this change was not significant in subgroups with a follow-up interval of 9 months. We also observed a significant improvement in the maximum painless mouth opening (P≤0.001), JFLS score (P≤0.001), and VAS score (P≤0.001) for pain, posttreatment. In conclusion, patient education can facilitate management of oral behaviours and should be targeted towards specific oral behaviours

Dynamic immune response in the spleens of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) to infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus revealed by transcriptome and immune-related genes expression analysis

Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is, economically, one of the most important cultured fish in the world. Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) is a serious pathogen causing high morbidity and mortality in rainbow trout. To gain more insight into the immune response of rainbow trout to the virus, RNA sequencing technology was used to examine the transcriptome profiles in spleens of trout infected and uninfected with IHNV. A total of 9144 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, of which 3274 were upregulated and 5870 were downregulated. The expression levels of 13 DEGs were validated by quantitative real-time PCR. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis showed that most DEGs were significantly enriched in major immune terms such as immune system process, immune effector process, response to stimulus and key immune signaling pathways. Moreover, we detected the expression levels of six key immune-related genes based on transcriptomic data and protein–protein interaction analysis in four important immune signaling pathways at 0, 6, 12, 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, and 144 h post-infection, including Toll-like receptor signaling pathway (TLR2 and TLR5M), RIG-I-like receptor signaling pathway (TRIM25), NOD-like receptor signaling pathway (RIPK2 and A20) and JAK-STAT signaling pathway (SOCS2). Results revealed that the immune-related genes in these pathways were involved in the antiviral immune response. Altogether, this study provides a better understanding of the dynamic immune response of rainbow trout infected with IHNV, which will lay a foundation for further study of molecular mechanisms of anti-IHNV innate immunity

Power Optimized Single Relay Selection with an Improved Link-Adaptive-Regenerative Protocol

To improve the reliability and efficiency in cooperative communications, a power optimized single relay selection scheme is proposed by increasing the diversity effort with an improved link-adaptive-regenerative (ILAR) protocol. The protocol determines the forwarding power of a relay node by comparing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at both sides of the node; thus it improves the power efficiency. Moreover, it also proposes a single relay selection strategy to maximize the instantaneous SNR product, which ensures the approximate best channel link quality for good relay forwarding. And the system adjusts the forwarding power in real time and also selects the best relay node participated in the cooperative forwarding. In addition, the cooperation in the protocol is analyzed and the approximate expression of the bit-error-rate (BER) and the outage probability at high SNRs are also derived. Simulation results indicate that the BER and outage probability of the relay selection scheme by the ILAR protocol outperform other contrast schemes of current existing protocols. At BER of 10−2, the proposed scheme with ILAR protocol outperforms those of the decoded-and-forward (DF), the selected DF (SDF), and the amplify-and-forward (AF) protocols by 3.5, 3.5 and 7 dB, respectively. Moreover, the outage probability of the relay system decreases with the growth of the relay number. Therefore, the proposed relay selection scheme with ILAR strategies can be properly used in cooperative communications for good reliability and high power efficiency

Parallel Blind Adaptive Equalization of Improved Block Constant Modulus Algorithm With Decision-Directed Mode

To eliminate inter-symbol interferences (ISI) caused by nonlinear group delay effect in high-speed broadband satellite sensor networks, an efficient parallel adaptive blind equalization of improved block constant modulus algorithm (IBCMA) with decision-directed (DD) mode (IBCMA-DD) is proposed with block minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. First, nonlinear group delay models are introduced in satellite channels. Second, the criterion of the classical Godard’s constant modulus algorithm (CMA) is derived in the block vector form as the IBCMA for satellite signals with inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by the above satellite channels. In the IBCMA, stochastic gradient descent and block minimum mean square error are adopted to reduce excess errors in equalization by adjusting block tap-weight vectors adaptively. Finally, the IBCMA is combined with the DD mode of equalization to both accelerate the parallel blind equalization with low complexity and improve the spectrum efficiency without any training data to occupy unnecessary bandwidth. Simulation results indicate that the proposed IBCMA-DD equalization possesses good performance in approaching ideal non-ISI transmissions. It achieves good bit error rate (BER) performance just within 0.3 dB of the theoretic performance under high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), even at satellite group delay channels by high-power nonlinear broadband filters. Therefore, it obtains excellent equalization under severely deteriorated group delay channels in broadband satellite sensor networks with high data rate

Development of Vacuum Vessel Design and Analysis Module for CFETR Integration Design Platform

An integration design platform is under development for the design of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). It mainly includes the integration physical design platform and the integration engineering design platform. The integration engineering design platform aims at performing detailed engineering design for each tokamak component (e.g., breeding blanket, divertor, and vacuum vessel). The vacuum vessel design and analysis module is a part of the integration engineering design platform. The main idea of this module is to integrate the popular CAD/CAE software to form a consistent development environment. Specifically, the software OPTIMUS provides the approach to integrate the CAD/CAE software such as CATIA and ANSYS and form a design/analysis workflow for the vacuum vessel module. This design/analysis workflow could automate the process of modeling and finite element (FE) analysis for vacuum vessel. Functions such as sensitivity analysis and optimization of geometric parameters have been provided based on the design/analysis workflow. In addition, data from the model and FE analysis could be easily exchanged among different modules by providing a unifying data structure to maintain the consistency of the global design. This paper describes the strategy and methodology of the workflow in the vacuum vessel module. An example is given as a test of the workflow and functions of the vacuum vessel module. The results indicate that the module is a feasible framework for future application