Specification and validation of the common signalling transport protocol in SDL

The Resource reSerVation Protocol (RSVP) version 1 is the dominant Internet protocol for signaling Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. It has been extended for use in a wide variety of Internet signaling applications, such as traffic engineering and label distribution. However, the multiple features of the extended RSVP increase its complexity, and interactions among the features could cause confusion. In addition, due to the constraints of the original architecture, it is difficult to specify requirements for new Internet applications, such as mobile IP. The Internet Engineering Task Force has mandated discussion of a new Internet Signaling Protocol Suite (ISPS). One proposal coming from this discussion is the Internet Draft "A Two-level Architecture for Internet Signaling". It proposes a Common Signaling Transport Protocol (CSTP), concentrating on state management and reliable data delivery, coupled with separate Application Layer Signaling Protocols, which implement the features of individual signaling applications. Starting from the English specification of CSTP in the Internet Draft, a specification of CSTP has been written in the formal specification language SDL, and validated for several scenarios, which were based on the typical operation of RSVP version 1. Several errors have been found in the original specification, and solutions to these problems have been proposed

Contents in tumor-educated platelets as the novel biosource for cancer diagnostics

Liquid biopsy, a powerful non-invasive test, has been widely used in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Platelets, the second most abundant cells in peripheral blood, are becoming one of the richest sources of liquid biopsy with the capacity to systematically and locally respond to the presence of cancer and absorb and store circulating proteins and different types of nucleic acids, thus called “tumor-educated platelets (TEPs)”. The contents of TEPs are significantly and specifically altered, empowering them with the potential as cancer biomarkers. The current review focuses on the alternation of TEP content, including coding and non-coding RNA and proteins, and their role in cancer diagnostics

MCFNet: Multi-scale Covariance Feature Fusion Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation

The low-level spatial detail information and high-level semantic abstract information are both essential to the semantic segmentation task. The features extracted by the deep network can obtain rich semantic information, while a lot of spatial information is lost. However, how to recover spatial detail information effectively and fuse it with high-level semantics has not been well addressed so far. In this paper, we propose a new architecture based on Bilateral Segmentation Network (BiseNet) called Multi-scale Covariance Feature Fusion Network (MCFNet). Specifically, this network introduces a new feature refinement module and a new feature fusion module. Furthermore, a gating unit named L-Gate is proposed to filter out invalid information and fuse multi-scale features. We evaluate our proposed model on Cityscapes, CamVid datasets and compare it with the state-of-the-art methods. Extensive experiments show that our method achieves competitive success. On Cityscapes, we achieve 75.5% mIOU with a speed of 151.3 FPS

Over-parameterized Adversarial Training: An Analysis Overcoming the Curse of Dimensionality

Adversarial training is a popular method to give neural nets robustness against adversarial perturbations. In practice adversarial training leads to low robust training loss. However, a rigorous explanation for why this happens under natural conditions is still missing. Recently a convergence theory for standard (non-adversarial) supervised training was developed by various groups for {\em very overparametrized} nets. It is unclear how to extend these results to adversarial training because of the min-max objective. Recently, a first step towards this direction was made by Gao et al. using tools from online learning, but they require the width of the net to be \emph{exponential} in input dimension $d$, and with an unnatural activation function. Our work proves convergence to low robust training loss for \emph{polynomial} width instead of exponential, under natural assumptions and with the ReLU activation. Key element of our proof is showing that ReLU networks near initialization can approximate the step function, which may be of independent interest

Plasma exosomal miR-320d, miR-4479, and miR-6763-5p as diagnostic biomarkers in epithelial ovarian cancer

BackgroundExosomal miRNA had been proved as the promising biomarkers for multiple cancers including epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). This study aimed to validate the diagnostic accuracy of exosomal miR-320d, miR-4479, and miR-6763-5p for EOC.Materials and methodsExosomes isolated from the plasma by ultracentrifugation were verified using TEM, qNano and western blot. MiRNAs sequencing was used to screen out the differential exosomal miRNAs and miR-320d, miR-4479, and miR-6763-5p were selected as candidates, which were further verified by RT-qPCR in 168 healthy donors and 161 primary EOC patients. Besides, the diagnostic accuracy of these three exosomal miRNAs were evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC).ResultsMiRNAs sequencing revealed 95 differential exosomal miRNAs between EOC patients and healthy donors. Subsequently, exosomal miR-320d, miR-4479, and miR-6763-5p were significantly down regulated in EOC patients compared with healthy controls and benign patients. More importantly, these three miRNAs could serve as circulating diagnostics biomarkers for EOC, possessing areas under the curve (AUC) of 0.6549, 0.7781, and 0.6834, respectively. Moreover, these three exosomal miRNAs levels were closely associated with lymph node metastasis, meanwhile exosomal miR-320d and miR-4479 expression was related to tumor stage.ConclusionExosomal miR-320d, miR-4479, and miR-6763-5p might serve as potential biomarkers for EOC

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat