V2PSense: Enabling Cellular-based V2P Collision Warning Service Through Mobile Sensing

The C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) technology is developing in full swing. One of its mainstream services can be the Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) service. It can protect pedestrians who are mostly vulnerable on the road. In this work, we seek to enable a V2P service that can identify which pedestrians may be nearby a dangerous driving event and then notify them of warning messages. To enable this V2P service, there are two major challenges. First, a low-latency V2P message transport is required for this infrastructure-based service. Second, the pedestrian’s smartphone requires an energy-efficient outdoor positioning method instead of power-hungry GPS due to its limited battery life. We thus propose a novel solution, V2PSense, which trades off positioning precision for energy savings while achieving low-latency message transport with LTE high-priority bearers. It does a coarse-grained positioning by leveraging intermittent GPS information and mobile sensing data, which includes step count from the pedometer and cellular signal strength changes. Though the V2PSense’s positioning is not as precise as the GPS, it can still ensure that all the pedestrians nearby dangerous spots can be notified. Our results show that it can achieve the average precision ratio 92.6% for estimating where the pedestrian is while saving 20.8% energy, compared with the GPS always-on case.This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Tech-nology, Taiwan, under grant numbers 106-2622-8-009-017 and 106-2218-E-009-018, and by the H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-CORAL (grant num. 761586

Lowly Expressed Ribosomal Protein S19 in the Feces of Patients with Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) has become one of the most common fatal cancers. CRC tumorigenesis is a complex process involving multiple genetic changes to several sequential mutations or molecular alterations. P53 is one of the most significant genes; its mutations account for more than half of all CRC. Therefore, understanding the cellular genes that are directly or indirectly related to p53 is particularly crucial for investigating CRC tumorigenesis. In this study, a p53-related ribosomal protein, ribosomal protein S19 (RPS19), obtained from the feces of CRC patients is evaluated by using specifically quantitative real-time PCR and knocked down in the colonic cell line by gene silencing. This study found that CRC patients with higher expressions of RPS19 in their feces had a better prognosis and consistent expressions of RPS19 and BAX in their colonic cells. In conclusion, the potential mechanism of RPS19 in CRC possibly involves cellular apoptosis through the BAX/p53 pathway, and the levels of fecal RPS19 may function as a prognostic predictor for CRC patients

Secure and Reliable IPTV Multimedia Transmission Using Forward Error Correction

With the wide deployment of Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure and rapid development of digital technologies, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has emerged as one of the major multimedia access techniques. A general IPTV transmission system employs both encryption and forward error correction (FEC) to provide the authorized subscriber with a high-quality perceptual experience. This two-layer processing, however, complicates the system design in terms of computational cost and management cost. In this paper, we propose a novel FEC scheme to ensure the secure and reliable transmission for IPTV multimedia content and services. The proposed secure FEC utilizes the characteristics of FEC including the FEC-encoded redundancies and the limitation of error correction capacity to protect the multimedia packets against the malicious attacks and data transmission errors/losses. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme obtains similar performance compared with the joint encryption and FEC scheme

Taiwan Oscillation Network

The Taiwan Oscillation Network (TON) is a ground-based network to measure solar intensity oscillations to study the internal structure of the Sun. K-line full-disk images of 1000 pixels diameter are taken at a rate of one image per minute. Such data would provide information onp-modes withl as high as 1000. The TON will consist of six identical telescope systems at proper longitudes around the world. Three telescope systems have been installed at Teide Observatory (Tenerife), Huairou Solar Observing Station (near Beijing), and Big Bear Solar Observatory (California). The telescopes at these three sites have been taking data simultaneously since October of 1994. Anl – v diagram derived from 512 images is included to show the quality of the data

Is chronic kidney disease associated with diabetic retinopathy in Asian adults?

Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is commonly associated with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Few studies have demonstrated that chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with DR. However, it is not clear if CKD in the absence of albuminuria is associated with DR. Methods: We included 301 participants with diabetes (Chinese, Malay and Indian ethnicity aged ≥24 years who participated in the Singapore Prospective Study Program (2003-2007). Retinal photographs taken from both eyes were graded for DR using the modified Airlie House Classification. We examined the association of CKD defined by low estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) (&lt;60mL/min per 1.73m2, n=54), and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio ≥30, n = 116) with any-DR (n=99) in logistic regression models. We replicated this analysis in another independent population-based sample of Malay adults (n=265) with similar methodology in Singapore. Results: 41% of those with low-eGFR had normoalbuminuria. In separate models, while albuminuria was significantly associated with any-DR, low-eGFR was not significantly associated with any-DR. In a model combining both markers, compared to the referent group (normal-eGFR+normoalbuminuria), the odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval [CI]) of any-DR were: 2.33 (1.27-4.27) for normal-eGFR+albuminuria, 1.38 (0.49-3.91) for low-eGFR + normoalbuminuria, and 2.64 (1.05-6.63) for low-eGFR+albuminuria. Similar findings for any-DR were observed in the replication cohort of Malay persons (3.56 [1.49-8.54] for normal-eGFR+albuminuria, 1.69 (0.52-5.55) for low-eGFR+normoalbuminuria, 4.34 [1.68-11.24] for low-eGFR+albuminuria.Conclusion: We demonstrated that CKD is associated with DR only in the presence of albuminuria suggesting that CKD is more likely related to diabetes in the presence of albuminuria.</p

Magnesium-enriched deep-sea water inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation and dampens inflammation.

The NLRP3 inflammasome is an essential component of the innate immune system, but excessive activation can lead to inflammatory diseases. Ion fluxes across the plasma membrane or from intracellular stores are known to regulate NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Deep-sea water (DSW) contains high concentrations of many mineral ions, which could potentially influence NLRP3 inflammasome activation. However, the impact of DSW on NLRP3 inflammasome activation has not been investigated. Here, we demonstrated that DSW with water hardness levels up to 500&nbsp;mg/L did not affect cell viability or the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome components in macrophages derived from THP-1&nbsp;cells. However, the DSW significantly inhibited IL-1β secretion and caspase-1 activation in response to NLRP3 activators such as nigericin, ATP, or monosodium urate (MSU) crystals. Mechanically, it was discovered that the presence of 5&nbsp;mM magnesium ions (Mg2+), equivalent to the Mg2+ concentration found in the DSW with a water hardness of 500&nbsp;mg/L, inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation. This indicates that Mg2+ contributes to the mechanism by which DSW mitigates NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Moreover, DSW administration effectively lessens MSU-triggered peritonitis in mice, a commonly used model for examining the impacts of NLRP3 inflammasome activation. These results show that DSW enriched with Mg2+ could potentially be beneficial in modulating NLRP3 inflammasome-associated diseases

Morphological and Molecular Defects in Human Three-Dimensional Retinal Organoid Model of X-Linked Juvenile Retinoschisis

X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS), linked to mutations in the RS1 gene, is a degenerative retinopathy with a retinal splitting phenotype. We generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from patients to study XLRS in a 3D retinal organoid in vitro differentiation system. This model recapitulates key features of XLRS including retinal splitting, defective retinoschisin production, outer-segment defects, abnormal paxillin turnover, and impaired ER-Golgi transportation. RS1 mutation also affects the development of photoreceptor sensory cilia and results in altered expression of other retinopathy-associated genes. CRISPR/Cas9 correction of the disease-associated C625T mutation normalizes the splitting phenotype, outer-segment defects, paxillin dynamics, ciliary marker expression, and transcriptome profiles. Likewise, mutating RS1 in control hiPSCs produces the disease-associated phenotypes. Finally, we show that the C625T mutation can be repaired precisely and efficiently using a base-editing approach. Taken together, our data establish 3D organoids as a valid disease model