Consensus guidelines for the use and interpretation of angiogenesis assays

The formation of new blood vessels, or angiogenesis, is a complex process that plays important roles in growth and development, tissue and organ regeneration, as well as numerous pathological conditions. Angiogenesis undergoes multiple discrete steps that can be individually evaluated and quantified by a large number of bioassays. These independent assessments hold advantages but also have limitations. This article describes in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro bioassays that are available for the evaluation of angiogenesis and highlights critical aspects that are relevant for their execution and proper interpretation. As such, this collaborative work is the first edition of consensus guidelines on angiogenesis bioassays to serve for current and future reference

Two composite fading models for diversity reception in mobile wireless networks

Composite Rayleigh-lognormal fading, also known as Suzuki fading, is a cascaded product of a multipath fast fading channel and a shadowing slow fading channel. In spatial diversity reception using maximum ratio combining, the Suzuki fading model only provides diversity in the local multipath fast fading Rayleigh component, here called the micro-diversity fading model. In this paper, we propose the macro-diversity composite fading model by which diversity is obtained over the whole transmission link from the transmitter to the mobile receiver, ie. in both the slow lognormal fading and the fast Rayleigh fading. Methods for solving the "sum of Suzuki random variables" problem involved in the macro-diversity model is presented in the paper. The GaussHermite quadrature polynomial is extensively used to avoid sensitive integrations and to derive elegant and computationally fast closed-form expressions for bit error rate of micro-diversity and macro-diversity reception in mobile networks. © Institution of Engineers Australia 2013

Quad-band antenna for GSM/WSN/WLAN/LTE-A application in IoT devices

© 2017 IEEE. We designed, fabricated, and experimented a quad-band Double-PIFA (Planar Inverted-F Antenna) for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Using the Double-PIFA structure allowed us to fabricate the antenna easily and optimize the operating bands for desired frequencies. Combining DGS (Defected Ground Structure) and two shorting pin of PIFA structure, the antenna is compact in size with radiating patch of 184 mm2 basing on RO4350B substrate with height of 1.52 mm. Operating at 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.6GHz and 5GHzwith large bandwidth of 6.67%, 11.11%, 5.77% and 16%, respectively. As the proposed antenna can operate for ZigBee, Z-Wave, RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), and LTE-A (Long Term Evolution - Advanced), it is suitable for both IoT devices and wide-band wireless communication systems

Antibiotic sales in rural and urban pharmacies in northern Vietnam: an observational study.

BACKGROUND: The irrational overuse of antibiotics should be minimized as it drives the development of antibiotic resistance, but changing these practices is challenging. A better understanding is needed of practices and economic incentives for antibiotic dispensing in order to design effective interventions to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use. Here we report on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of antibiotic sales in private pharmacies in northern Vietnam. METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted in which all drug sales were observed and recorded for three consecutive days at thirty private pharmacies, 15 urban and 15 rural, in the Hanoi region in 2010. The proportion of antibiotics to total drug sales was assessed and the revenue was calculated for rural and urban settings. Pharmacists and drug sellers were interviewed by a semi-structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews to understand the incentive structure of antibiotic dispensing. RESULTS: In total 2953 drug sale transactions (2083 urban and 870 rural) were observed. Antibiotics contributed 24% and 18% to the total revenue of pharmacies in urban and rural, respectively. Most antibiotics were sold without a prescription: 88% in urban and 91% in rural pharmacies. The most frequent reported reason for buying antibiotics was cough in the urban setting (32%) and fever in the rural area (22%). Consumers commonly requested antibiotics without having a prescription: 50% in urban and 28% in rural area. The qualitative data revealed that drug sellers and customer's knowledge of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance were low, particularly in rural area. CONCLUSION: Over the counter sales of antibiotic without a prescription remains a major problem in Vietnam. Suggested areas of improvement are enforcement of regulations and pricing policies and educational programs to increase the knowledge of drug sellers as well as to increase community awareness to reduce demand-side pressure for drug sellers to dispense antibiotics inappropriately

The chromatin remodelling factor ATRX suppresses R-loops in transcribed telomeric repeats

ATRX is a chromatin remodelling factor found at a wide range of tandemly repeated sequences including telomeres (TTAGGG)n. ATRX mutations are found in nearly all tumours that maintain their telomeres via the alternative lengthening of telomere (ALT) pathway, and ATRX is known to suppress this pathway. Here we show that recruitment of ATRX to telomeric repeats depends on repeat number, orientation and, critically, on repeat transcription. Importantly, the transcribed telomeric repeats form RNA-DNA hybrids (Rloops) whose abundance correlates with the recruitment of ATRX. Here we show loss of ATRX is also associated with increased R-loop formation. Our data suggest that the presence of ATRX at telomeres may have a central role in suppressing deleterious DNA secondary structures that form at transcribed telomeric repeats, and this may account for the increased DNA damage, stalling of replication and homology directed repair previously observed upon loss of ATRX function