Architecture for public safety network using D2D communication

Device to Device (D2D) communication has been proposed as an underlay to Long-Term evolution (LTE) network as a means of harvesting the proximity, reuse and hop gains. However, D2D communication can also serve as a technology for providing public safety and disaster relief services. In this article, the basic concepts of D2D communications are first introduced and then existing fundamental works on disaster communication are discussed. We focus on the performance of the network architecture by utilizing the relay assisted transmission which can effectively enhance the capacity and power saving of the network. We also propose the distance based strategy to reduce the computational complexity and power transmission. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the proposed architecture

A case of hepatic cyst-induced internal jugular venous thrombosis

• Echocardiography can demonstrate hepatic cyst–induced right atrial compression. • Hepatic cyst–induced blood flow stasis can cause internal jugular venous thrombus. • Laparoscopic deroofing of hepatic cysts is a safe and effective treatment

Intensified Antituberculosis Therapy in Adults with Tuberculous Meningitis

BACKGROUND Tuberculous meningitis is often lethal. Early antituberculosis treatment and adjunctive treatment with glucocorticoids improve survival, but nearly one third of patients with the condition still die. We hypothesized that intensified antituberculosis treatment would enhance the killing of intracerebral Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms and decrease the rate of death among patients. METHODS We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults and HIV-uninfected adults with a clinical diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis who were admitted to one of two Vietnamese hospitals. We compared a standard, 9-month antituberculosis regimen (which included 10 mg of rifampin per kilogram of body weight per day) with an intensified regimen that included higher-dose rifampin (15 mg per kilogram per day) and levofloxacin (20 mg per kilogram per day) for the first 8 weeks of treatment. The primary outcome was death by 9 months after randomization. RESULTS A total of 817 patients (349 of whom were HIV-infected) were enrolled; 409 were randomly assigned to receive the standard regimen, and 408 were assigned to receive intensified treatment. During the 9 months of follow-up, 113 patients in the intensified-treatment group and 114 patients in the standard-treatment group died (hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.73 to 1.22; P=0.66). There was no evidence of a significant differential effect of intensified treatment in the overall population or in any of the subgroups, with the possible exception of patients infected with isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis. There were also no significant differences in secondary outcomes between the treatment groups. The overall number of adverse events leading to treatment interruption did not differ significantly between the treatment groups (64 events in the standard-treatment group and 95 events in the intensified-treatment group, P=0.08). CONCLUSIONS Intensified antituberculosis treatment was not associated with a higher rate of survival among patients with tuberculous meningitis than standard treatment. (Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Li Ka Shing Foundation; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN61649292.)

Deep Learning-Based Detector for OFDM-IM

This letter presents the first attempt of exploiting deep learning (DL) in the signal detection of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (OFDM-IM) systems. Particularly, we propose a novel DL-based detector termed as DeepIM, which employs a deep neural network with fully connected layers to recover data bits in an OFDM-IM system. To enhance the performance of DeepIM, the received signal and channel vectors are pre-processed based on the domain knowledge before entering the network. Using datasets collected by simulations, DeepIM is first trained offline to minimize the bit error rate (BER) and then the trained model is deployed for the online signal detection of OFDM-IM. Simulation results show that DeepIM can achieve a near-optimal BER with a lower runtime than existing hand-crafted detectors

Association between vitamin D insufficiency and tuberculosis in a vietnamese population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent <it>in vitro </it>evidence suggests a link between vitamin D status and the risk of tuberculosis (TB). This study sought to examine the association between vitamin D status, parathyroid hormone (PTH) and the risk of TB in a Vietnamese population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study was designed as a matched case-control study, which involved 166 TB patients (113 men and 53 women), who were age-and-sex matched with 219 controls (113 men and 106 women). The average age of men and women was 49 and 50, respectively. TB was diagnosed by the presence of acid-fast bacilli on smears from sputum, and the isolation of <it>M. tuberculosis</it>. All patients were hospitalized for treatment in a TB specialist hospital. Controls were randomly drawn from the general community within the Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and PTH was measured prior to treatment by an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) on a Roche Elecsys. A serum level of 25(OH)D below 30 ng/mL was deemed to be vitamin D insufficient.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency was 35.4% in men with TB and 19.5% in controls (<it>P </it>= 0.01). In women, there were no significant differences in serum 25(OH)D and serum PTH levels between TB patients and controls. The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency in women with TB (45.3%) was not significantly different from those without TB (47.6%; <it>P </it>= 0.91). However, in both genders, serum calcium levels in TB patients were significantly lower than in non-TB individuals. Smoking (odds ratio [OR] 1.25; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.10 - 14.7), reduced 25(OH)D (OR per standard deviation [SD]: 1.14; 95% CI 1.07 - 10.7) and increased PTH (OR per SD 1.13; 95% CI 1.05 - 10.4) were independently associated with increased risk of TB in men.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that vitamin D insufficiency was a risk factor for tuberculosis in men, but not in women. However, it remains to be established whether the association is a causal relationship.</p

A physical layer network coding based modify-and-forward with opportunistic secure cooperative transmission protocol

This paper investigates a new secure relaying scheme, namely physical layer network coding based modify-and-forward (PMF), in which a relay node linearly combines the decoded data sent by a source node with an encrypted key before conveying the mixed data to a destination node. We first derive the general expression for the generalized secrecy outage probability (GSOP) of the PMF scheme and then use it to analyse the GSOP performance of various relaying and direct transmission strategies. The GSOP performance comparison indicates that these transmission strategies offer different advantages depending on the channel conditions and target secrecy rates, and relaying is not always desirable in terms of secrecy. Subsequently, we develop an opportunistic secure transmission protocol for cooperative wireless relay networks and formulate an optimisation problem to determine secrecy rate thresholds (SRTs) to dynamically select the optimal transmission strategy for achieving the lowest GSOP. The conditions for the existence of the SRTs are derived for various channel scenarios

Prevalence of Streptococcus pneumoniae in conjunctival flora and association with nasopharyngeal carriage among children in a Vietnamese community.

Conjunctival pneumococcal serotypes among members of a community have not been investigated well. We determined the prevalence and association of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the nasopharynx and conjunctiva among children in a community before pneumococcal conjugate vaccine introduction. In October 2016, conjunctival and nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from children (< 24 months old) and nasopharyngeal swabs from mothers in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Quantitative lytA PCR and DNA microarray were performed to detect and serotype S. pneumoniae. The association between S. pneumoniae in the nasopharynx and conjunctiva was evaluated using multivariable logistic regression model. Among 698 children, 62 (8.9%, 95% CI 6.9-11.2%) were positive for S. pneumoniae in the conjunctiva. Non-encapsulated S. pneumoniae were most commonly identified, followed by serotypes 6A, 6B, and 14. Nasopharyngeal and conjunctival detection were positively associated (aOR 47.30, 95% CI 24.07-92.97). Low birth-weight, day-care attendance, and recent eye symptoms were independently associated with S. pneumoniae detection in the conjunctiva (aOR 11.14, 95% CI 3.76-32.98, aOR 2.19, 95% CI 1.45-3.31, and aOR 3.59, 95% CI 2.21-5.84, respectively). Serotypes and genotypes in the conjunctiva and nasopharynx matched in 87% of the children. Three mothers' nasopharyngeal pneumococcal samples had matched serotype and genotype with their child's in the conjunctiva and nasopharynx. S. pneumoniae presence in nasopharynx and conjunctiva were strongly associated. The high concordance of serotypes suggests nasopharyngeal carriage may be a source of transmission to the conjunctiva

A power-splitting relaying protocol for wireless energy harvesting and information processing in NOMA systems

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) along with cooperative communications have been recognized as promising candidates for the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks and have attracted many researchers. Every networked device however has its own limited power supply. To this extent, this paper investigates a power-splitting relaying (PSR) protocol for wireless energy harvesting and information processing in the NOMA systems to prolong the lifetime of the energy-constrained relay nodes in wireless networks so as to avail the ambient radio-frequency (RF) signal as well as to simultaneously harvest the energy and process the information. Decode-and-forward relaying is employed at the relay node where the energy from the received RF signal is harvested and exploited to forward the information to the destination. Specifically, the outage probability and ergodic rate of the PSR protocol are derived to realize the impacts of energy harvesting time, energy harvesting efficiency, power splitting ratio, source data rate, and the distance between nodes. It is also shown that an increased energy harvesting efficiency results in an enhanced performance and an outperformance in terms of the energy efficiency is achieved with the employment of the NOMA when compared to the conventional orthogonal multiple access. Numerical results are provided to verify the findings

The Sudden Dominance of blaCTX–M Harbouring Plasmids in Shigella spp. Circulating in Southern Vietnam

Shigellosis is a disease caused by bacteria belonging to Shigella spp. and is a leading cause of bacterial gastrointestinal infections in infants in unindustrialized countries. The Shigellae are dynamic and capable of rapid change when placed under selective pressure in a human population. Extended spectrum beta lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes capable of degrading cephalosporins (a group of antimicrobial agents) and the genes that encode them are common in pathogenic E. coli and other related organisms in industrialized countries. In southern Vietnam, we have isolated multiple cephalosporin-resistant Shigella that express ESBLs. Furthermore, over two years these strains have replaced strains isolated from patients with shigellosis that cannot express ESBLs. Our work describes the genes responsible for this characteristic and we investigate one of the elements carrying one of these genes. These finding have implications for treatment of shigellosis and support the growing necessity for vaccine development. Our findings also may be pertinent for other countries undergoing a similar economic transition to Vietnam's and the corresponding effect on bacterial populations