A Super Fast Algorithm for Estimating Sample Entropy

: Sample entropy, an approximation of the Kolmogorov entropy, was proposed to characterize complexity of a time series, which is essentially defined as − log(B/A), where B denotes the number of matched template pairs with length m and A denotes the number of matched template pairs with m + 1, for a predetermined positive integer m. It has been widely used to analyze physiological signals. As computing sample entropy is time consuming, the box-assisted, bucket-assisted, x-sort, assisted sliding box, and kd-tree-based algorithms were proposed to accelerate its computation. These algorithms require O(N2) or O(N2− 1/m+1 ) computational complexity, where N is the length of the time series analyzed. When N is big, the computational costs of these algorithms are large. We propose a super fast algorithm to estimate sample entropy based on Monte Carlo, with computational costs independent of N (the length of the time series) and the estimation converging to the exact sample entropy as the number of repeating experiments becomes large. The convergence rate of the algorithm is also established. Numerical experiments are performed for electrocardiogram time series, electroencephalogram time series, cardiac inter-beat time series, mechanical vibration signals (MVS), meteorological data (MD), and 1/ f noise. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can gain 100–1000 times speedup compared to the kd-tree and assisted sliding box algorithms while providing satisfactory approximate accuracy

Targeted drug delivery for the treatment of blood cancers

Blood cancers are a type of liquid tumor which means cancer is present in the body fluid. Multiple myeloma, leukemia, and lymphoma are the three common types of blood cancers. Chemotherapy is the major therapy of blood cancers by systemic administration of anticancer agents into the blood. However, a high incidence of relapse often happens, due to the low efficiency of the anticancer agents that accumulate in the tumor site, and therefore lead to a low survival rate of patients. This indicates an urgent need for a targeted drug delivery system to improve the safety and efficacy of therapeutics for blood cancers. In this review, we describe the current targeting strategies for blood cancers and recently investigated and approved drug delivery system formulations for blood cancers. In addition, we also discuss current challenges in the application of drug delivery systems for treating blood cancers

Communication-Free Distributed Charging Control for Electric Vehicle Group

The disordered charging of electric vehicles (EVs) in residential areas leads to a rapid increase of the peak load, causing transformer overload, but the charging control of EV group can effectively alleviate this phenomenon. However, existing charging control methods need reliable two-way communication infrastructure, which brings high operation costs and security risks. To offer a backup strategy for charging control of EVs after communication facilities fail, this paper proposes a communication-free charging control scheme to provide a decentralized on-site charging strategy for EV group. First, an uncontrollable EV group baseline estimation considering charging behaviors enabled by Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is proposed to acquire the capacity margin forecasting for controllable EVs. Next, this paper proposes a probabilistic distributed control method to assist users formulate the charging plan autonomously. Here, the charging behavior of EV group is regulated from an optimization with uncertain boundary conditions to a sampling with uncertain feasible regions expressed by a probability distribution. Finally, the scheme is verified via real-world EV charging data from a residential area in Hangzhou, China. The results show that this method can reduce the probability of transformer overload caused by out-of-order EV charging after a communication failure.Comment: This paper is submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid for revie

Carbapenem and cefoxitin resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae strains associated with porin OmpK36 loss and DHA-1 β-lactamase production

Clinical isolates of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) strains are being increased worldwide. Five pan-resistant K. pneumoniae strains have been isolated from respiratory and ICU wards in a Chinese hospital, and reveal strong resistance to all β-lactams, fluoroquinolones and aminoglycosides. Totally 27 β-lactamase genes and 2 membrane pore protein (porin) genes in 5 K. pneumoniae strains were screened by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The results indicated that all of 5 K. pneumoniae strains carried blaTEM-1 and blaDHA-1 genes, as well as base deletion and mutation of OmpK35 or OmpK36 genes. Compared with carbapenem-sensitive isolates by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), the resistant isolates markedly lacked the protein band of 34-40 kDa, which might be the outer membrane proteins of OmpK36 according to the electrophoresis mobility. In addition, the conjugation test was confirmed that blaDHA-1 mediated by plasmids could be transferred between resistant and sensitive strains. When reserpine (30 µg/mL) and carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP) (50 µg/mL) were added in imipenem and meropenem, the MICs had no change against K. pneumoniae strains. These results suggest that both DHA-1 β-lactamase and loss or deficiency of porin OmpK36 may be the main reason for the cefoxitin and carbapenem resistance in K. pneumoniae strains in our hospital

Safety and clinical outcomes of regional anaesthesia in Chinese patients with non-small cell lung cancer undergoing non-intubated lobectomy

Purpose: To determine the safety and clinical outcomes of epidural anaesthesia (EA) relative to internal intercostal nerve block (INB) in Chinese patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who were undergoing non-intubated thoracoscopic lobectomy.Methods: Chinese patients with NSCLC (stage I or II) with no evidence of metastasis were given either EA or INB, with equal number of patients in both groups. The peri-operative outcomes determined were duration of anaesthesia /duration of surgery, SpO2/PaCO2 levels, cases of hypotension, and blood loss. The post-operative outcome indices measured were pain score (determined using visual analogue scale (VAS), post-operative complications, chest drainage, duration of hospital stay, and deaths/mortality.Multiple regression analysis was used to confirm the results obtained in this study by adjusting potential covariates. Peri-operative and post-operative complications were compared between the two groups. The results obtained from 220 patients were subjected to statistical analysis.Results: Peri-operative results showed that patients who underwent INB had shorter duration of anaesthesia (12.3 vs 31.4 min, p < 0.05) and shorter duration of surgery (164.4 vs 197.2 min, p < 0.05) than patients who underwent EA for non-intubated lobectomy. Post-operative results showed that patients who underwent INB had significantly lower number of post-operative complications than those who received EA (29 vs 44 %, p < 0.05). The most common post-operative complications among patients in both treatment groups were nausea, vomiting, emphysema and pulmonary complications. Patients who underwent INB had shorter hospital stay than those who underwent EA (5.1 vs 7.5 days, p < 0.05). These results were confirmed through multiple regression analysis.Conclusion: These findings favour the use of INB for regional anaesthesia in NSCLC patients undergoing non-intubated lobectomy

Pharmacokinetics of lansoprazole injection in peptic ulcer and healthy volunteers

The pharmacokinetics of lansoprazole after a single intravenous dose of 30 mg was determined in 10 healthy volunteers and 10 peptic ulcers patients. In this work, a liquid-liquid extraction and enrichment method with RP-HPLC determination route was taken with high sensitivity and low limit detection of 5 ng/mL. The concentration-time curves in the two groups were best fitted to a two-compartment model, but their main kinetic parameters were remarkably different between healthy and ulcers volunteers. The mean maximum plasma concentration (Cmax ) and area under the curve (AUC0t ) were increased from 975.8 ng/mL to 1298.7 ng/mL and from 1439 ng·h/mL to 2301 ng·h/mL, respectively, and peak time (tmax ) decreased from 0.36 h to 0.26 h. Meanwhile, the half life (t1/2 ) prolonged from 2.25 h to 2.91 h and the clearance (CL) reduced from 20.04 L/h to 13.96 L/h. That variability of lansoprazole pharmakinetic parameter indicates that ulcers have significant effect on its metabolic process.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire

Predictors of lung adenocarcinoma with leptomeningeal metastases: A 2022 targeted-therapy-assisted molGPA model

Objective: To explore prognostic indicators of lung adenocarcinoma with leptomeningeal metastases (LM) and provide an updated graded prognostic assessment model integrated with molecular alterations (molGPA). Methods: A cohort of 162 patients was enrolled from 202 patients with lung adenocarcinoma and LM. By randomly splitting data into the training (80%) and validation (20%) sets, the Cox regression and random survival forest methods were used on the training set to identify statistically significant variables and construct a prognostic model. The C-index of the model was calculated and compared with that of previous molGPA models. Results: The Cox regression and random forest models both identified four variables, which included KPS, LANO neurological assessment, TKI therapy line, and controlled primary tumor, as statistically significant predictors. A novel targeted-therapy-assisted molGPA model (2022) using the above four prognostic factors was developed to predict LM of lung adenocarcinoma. The C-indices of this prognostic model in the training and validation sets were higher than those of the lung-molGPA (2017) and molGPA (2019) models. Conclusions: The 2022 molGPA model, a substantial update of previous molGPA models with better prediction performance, may be useful in clinical decision making and stratification of future clinical trials