Joint Quantization and Diffusion for Compressed Sensing Measurements of Natural Images

Recent research advances have revealed the computational secrecy of the compressed sensing (CS) paradigm. Perfect secrecy can also be achieved by normalizing the CS measurement vector. However, these findings are established on real measurements while digital devices can only store measurements at a finite precision. Based on the distribution of measurements of natural images sensed by structurally random ensemble, a joint quantization and diffusion approach is proposed for these real-valued measurements. In this way, a nonlinear cryptographic diffusion is intrinsically imposed on the CS process and the overall security level is thus enhanced. Security analyses show that the proposed scheme is able to resist known-plaintext attack while the original CS scheme without quantization cannot. Experimental results demonstrate that the reconstruction quality of our scheme is comparable to that of the original one.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Genomic signatures of heterokaryosis in the oomycete pathogen Bremia lactucae.

Lettuce downy mildew caused by Bremia lactucae is the most important disease of lettuce globally. This oomycete is highly variable and rapidly overcomes resistance genes and fungicides. The use of multiple read types results in a high-quality, near-chromosome-scale, consensus assembly. Flow cytometry plus resequencing of 30 field isolates, 37 sexual offspring, and 19 asexual derivatives from single multinucleate sporangia demonstrates a high incidence of heterokaryosis in B. lactucae. Heterokaryosis has phenotypic consequences on fitness that may include an increased sporulation rate and qualitative differences in virulence. Therefore, selection should be considered as acting on a population of nuclei within coenocytic mycelia. This provides evolutionary flexibility to the pathogen enabling rapid adaptation to different repertoires of host resistance genes and other challenges. The advantages of asexual persistence of heterokaryons may have been one of the drivers of selection that resulted in the loss of uninucleate zoospores in multiple downy mildews

THRESHOLD EFFECTS IN THE RELATIONSHIPS OF REITS AND OTHER FINANCIAL SECURITIES IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

ABSTRACT We use a Panel Smooth Transition Regression model (PSTR) to investigate the nonlinear dynamic relationship between financial variables an

Hearing Loss in Patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma after Chemotherapy and Radiation

In light of the possible adverse effects of radiation on hearing, we conducted a study to evaluate the long-term sensorineural hearing status following radiotherapy (RT) in patients suffering from nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Audiologic examinations were performed at regular intervals before and after RT. We also analyzed the effects of age, chemotherapy, pre-RT hearing status, and post-RT otitis media with effusion (OME) on post-RT hearing change. A total of 150 patients (261 ears) were enrolled in this study and followed up for a mean of 43.8 months. After RT, 8.9-28.8% of ears had at least a 10 dB loss in bone conduction threshold at speech frequency, which was defined as an average of hearing threshold at 0.5 kHz, 1 kHz, and 2 kHz, while the percentage was 18-34.2% at 4 kHz. Patient age was related to these changes at speech frequency, and the presence of post-RT OME was related to significant loss at both speech frequency and 4 kHz. Pre-RT hearing status and chemotherapy did not influence hearing change. To sum up, sensorineural hearing loss began as early as after completion of RT. Early changes may be transient, but the effect of radiation on hearing tended to be chronic and progressive

Cerebral Radionecrosis with Cystic Degeneration Following Radiotherapy for Nasal Cavity Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Case Report

A 31-year-old man with nasal cavity squamous cell carcinoma was treated in our hospital with two courses of radiotherapy (120 Gy total dose) followed by surgical tumor resection. Three years after the last irradiation, he developed seizures as well as changes in behavior and consciousness. Medical therapy with diphenylhydantoin (Dilantin(r)) terminated the seizures. Dysphagia, unsteady gait, and right-side limb weakness developed 37 months after the onset of seizures. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a large, cystic mass in the left temporal lobe with left to right midline shift. Following craniotomy with decompression of the cystic mass, the patient improved clinically. No malignant cells were found in the specimen. No further progression of neurologic symptoms was noted after a 1-year follow-up. Cerebral radionecrosis is an uncommon late complication of radiotherapy and needs to be differentiated from tumor recurrence or metastasis if the irradiation field covers the cerebral region in patients with head and neck malignancies

Hip fracture risk assessment: Artificial neural network outperforms conditional logistic regression in an age- and sex-matched case control study

Copyright @ 2013 Tseng et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background - Osteoporotic hip fractures with a significant morbidity and excess mortality among the elderly have imposed huge health and economic burdens on societies worldwide. In this age- and sex-matched case control study, we examined the risk factors of hip fractures and assessed the fracture risk by conditional logistic regression (CLR) and ensemble artificial neural network (ANN). The performances of these two classifiers were compared. Methods - The study population consisted of 217 pairs (149 women and 68 men) of fractures and controls with an age older than 60 years. All the participants were interviewed with the same standardized questionnaire including questions on 66 risk factors in 12 categories. Univariate CLR analysis was initially conducted to examine the unadjusted odds ratio of all potential risk factors. The significant risk factors were then tested by multivariate analyses. For fracture risk assessment, the participants were randomly divided into modeling and testing datasets for 10-fold cross validation analyses. The predicting models built by CLR and ANN in modeling datasets were applied to testing datasets for generalization study. The performances, including discrimination and calibration, were compared with non-parametric Wilcoxon tests. Results - In univariate CLR analyses, 16 variables achieved significant level, and six of them remained significant in multivariate analyses, including low T score, low BMI, low MMSE score, milk intake, walking difficulty, and significant fall at home. For discrimination, ANN outperformed CLR in both 16- and 6-variable analyses in modeling and testing datasets (p?<?0.005). For calibration, ANN outperformed CLR only in 16-variable analyses in modeling and testing datasets (p?=?0.013 and 0.047, respectively). Conclusions - The risk factors of hip fracture are more personal than environmental. With adequate model construction, ANN may outperform CLR in both discrimination and calibration. ANN seems to have not been developed to its full potential and efforts should be made to improve its performance.National Health Research Institutes in Taiwa

Characterization of Proximal Small Intestinal Microbiota in Patients With Suspected Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth: A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVES: The composition of the small intestinal microbiota has not yet been characterized thoroughly using culture-independent techniques. We compared small intestinal microbial communities in patients with and without small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) using culture-dependent and culture-independent bacterial identification approaches. METHODS: Small bowel aspirate and mucosal samples were collected from patients with suspected SIBO. The aspirates were cultured to diagnose SIBO, defined as ≥10 colony-forming units/mL coliform or ≥10 colony-forming units/mL upper aerodigestive tract bacteria. Bacteria in the aspirates and mucosa were identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We compared small intestinal microbiome composition between groups with and without a culture-based SIBO diagnosis. RESULTS: Analysis of the aspirate and mucosal microbial communities from 36 patients revealed decreased α-diversity but no differences in β-diversity in patients with SIBO compared with those without SIBO. There were no significant differences in the relative abundance of individual taxa from the aspirates or mucosa after adjustment for false discovery rate between patients with and without SIBO. Subgroup analysis revealed significant differences in mucosal β-diversity between the coliform and upper aerodigestive tract subgroups. Relative abundances of a mucosal Clostridium spp. (P = 0.05) and an aspirate Granulicatella spp. (P = 0.02) were higher in coliform SIBO vs non-SIBO subgroups. The microbial composition and relative abundance of multiple taxa significantly differed in the mucosal and aspirate specimens. DISCUSSION: Culture-based results of small bowel aspirates do not correspond to aspirate microbiota composition but may be associated with species richness of the mucosal microbiota

Identifying the structure of Zn-N-2 active sites and structural activation

Identification of active sites is one of the main obstacles to rational design of catalysts for diverse applications. Fundamental insight into the identification of the structure of active sites and structural contributions for catalytic performance are still lacking. Recently, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and density functional theory (DFT) provide important tools to disclose the electronic, geometric and catalytic natures of active sites. Herein, we demonstrate the structural identification of Zn-N-2 active sites with both experimental/theoretical X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra. Further DFT calculations reveal that the oxygen species activation on Zn-N-2 active sites is significantly enhanced, which can accelerate the reduction of oxygen with high selectivity, according well with the experimental results. This work highlights the identification and investigation of Zn-N-2 active sites, providing a regular principle to obtain deep insight into the nature of catalysts for various catalytic applications