Preamble design using embedded signalling for OFDM broadcast systems based on reduced-complexity distance detection

The second generation digital terrestrial television broadcasting standard (DVB-T2) adopts the so-called P1 symbol as the preamble for initial synchronization. The P1 symbol also carries a number of basic transmission parameters, including the fast Fourier transform size and the single-input/single-output as well as multiple-input/single-output mode, in order to appropriately configure the receiver for carrying out the subsequent processing. In this contribution, an improved preamble design is proposed, where a pair of training sequences is inserted in the frequency domain and their distance is used for transmission parameter signalling. At the receiver, only a low-complexity correlator is required for the detection of the signalling. Both the coarse carrier frequency offset and the signalling can be simultaneously estimated by detecting the above-mentioned correlation. Compared to the standardised P1 symbol, the proposed preamble design significantly reduces the complexity of the receiver while retaining high robustness in frequency-selective fading channels. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed preamble design achieves a better signalling performance than the standardised P1 symbol, despite reducing the numbers of multiplications and additions by about 40% and 20%, respectively

Prognostics of Lithium-Ion Batteries Based on Wavelet Denoising and DE-RVM

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in many electronic systems. Therefore, it is significantly important to estimate the lithium-ion battery’s remaining useful life (RUL), yet very difficult. One important reason is that the measured battery capacity data are often subject to the different levels of noise pollution. In this paper, a novel battery capacity prognostics approach is presented to estimate the RUL of lithium-ion batteries. Wavelet denoising is performed with different thresholds in order to weaken the strong noise and remove the weak noise. Relevance vector machine (RVM) improved by differential evolution (DE) algorithm is utilized to estimate the battery RUL based on the denoised data. An experiment including battery 5 capacity prognostics case and battery 18 capacity prognostics case is conducted and validated that the proposed approach can predict the trend of battery capacity trajectory closely and estimate the battery RUL accurately

The MLH1 2101C>A (Q701K) variant increases the risk of gastric cancer in Chinese males

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting East Asians, and <it>MLH1 </it>could play a critical role during tumorigenesis in this condition.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Samples from 236 Chinese patients suffering from gastric cancer were screened for <it>MLH1 </it>germline mutations. Carrier frequencies of the mutations were compared between gastric cancer patients and 240 cancer-free controls. Bioinformatic analysis was used to predict the effect of these mutations on protein function and mRNA splicing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Six <it>MLH1 </it>sequence alterations were identified in gastric cancer patients including two promoter region substitutions, -93G>A and -28A>G, and four missense mutations 649C>T (R217C), 655A>G (I219V), 1151T>A (V384D) and 2101C>A (Q701K). Compared with the <it>MLH1 </it>2101CC genotype, the 2101CA genotype was associated with a risk of gastric cancer (OR = 8.42, 95% CI = 1.04-68.06) in males. Furthermore, the <it>MLH1 </it>2101C>A mutant was predicted by <it>in silico </it>analysis to affect exon splicing ability. Immunohistochemistry of one index patient carrying the <it>MLH1 </it>2101C>A mutation demonstrated a loss of MLH1 protein and normal expression of MSH2 and E-cadherin. No significant differences were demonstrated between cases and controls for the other five <it>MLH1 </it>variants but the data indicated an ethnic difference in the frequency of these variations between Eastern Asians and Western populations.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>An ethnic-specific <it>MLH1 </it>mutation spectrum occurred in Chinese gastric cancer patients. The <it>MLH1 </it>2101C>A mutation could be a marker for susceptibility to gastric cancer, particularly in males.</p

Variance-constrained dissipative observer-based control for a class of nonlinear stochastic systems with degraded measurements

The official published version of the article can be obtained from the link below.This paper is concerned with the variance-constrained dissipative control problem for a class of stochastic nonlinear systems with multiple degraded measurements, where the degraded probability for each sensor is governed by an individual random variable satisfying a certain probabilistic distribution over a given interval. The purpose of the problem is to design an observer-based controller such that, for all possible degraded measurements, the closed-loop system is exponentially mean-square stable and strictly dissipative, while the individual steady-state variance is not more than the pre-specified upper bound constraints. A general framework is established so that the required exponential mean-square stability, dissipativity as well as the variance constraints can be easily enforced. A sufficient condition is given for the solvability of the addressed multiobjective control problem, and the desired observer and controller gains are characterized in terms of the solution to a convex optimization problem that can be easily solved by using the semi-definite programming method. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed algorithm.This work was supported in part by the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering of the UK, the Royal Society of the UK, the GRF HKU 7137/09E, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61028008, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Project of China under Grant 2009DFA32050, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Bovine milk fat globule epidermal growth factor VIII activates PI3K/Akt signaling pathway and attenuates sarcopenia in rat model induced by d-galactose

To develop a more effective and safer treatment for sarcopenia, this research investigated the anti-sarcopenia mechanism of Milk Fat Globule Epidermal Growth Factor Ⅷ (MFG-E8) from the liver function and metabolism in sarcopenic model rat. After 4 weeks nutritional intervention experiment, MFG-E8 can significantly increase the gastrocnemius mass in rat. The mechanism of MFG-E8 in improving sarcopenia was related to its promotional capacity to the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in serum, Glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT) and glutamic-pyruvic transaminase (GPT) in liver. Meanwhile, MFG-E8 could also down-regulate obesity-related indicators, such as triglyceride (TG) and Non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA). The analysis of liver and gastrocnemius histopathology found that MFG-E8 could reduce the accumulation of fatty vesicles, improve liver function, thereby alleviating gastrocnemius tissue inflammation. In vitro experiments, myoblasts obtained from gastrocnemius tissue showed that MFG-E8 could reduce mitochondrial autophagy and inhibit cell apoptosis. In addition, MFG-E8 could up-regulate the phosphorylation level of PI3K via activating PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in gastrocnemius tissue, and promote the formation of muscle fibers, thereby increasing muscle mass. Moreover, MFG-E8 could also promote the formation of neuromuscular junctions by up-regulating the mRNA and protein expression of MusK in gastrocnemius

Selection of suitable reference genes for abiotic stress-responsive gene expression studies in peanut by real-time quantitative PCR

Background: Because of its strong specificity and high accuracy, real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) has been a widely used method to study the expression of genes responsive to stress. It is crucial to have a suitable set of reference genes to normalize target gene expression in peanut under different conditions using RT-qPCR. In this study, 11 candidate reference genes were selected and examined under abiotic stresses (drought, salt, heavy metal, and low temperature) and hormone (SA and ABA) conditions as well as across different organ types. Three statistical algorithms (geNorm, NormFinder and BestKeeper) were used to evaluate the expression stabilities of reference genes, and the comprehensive rankings of gene stability were generated. Results: The results indicated that ELF1B and YLS8 were the most stable reference genes under PEG-simulated drought treatment. For high-salt treatment using NaCl, YLS8 and GAPDH were the most stable genes. Under CdCl2 treatment, UBI1 and YLS8 were suitable as stable reference genes. UBI1, ADH3, and ACTIN11 were sufficient for gene expression normalization in low-temperature experiment. All the 11 candidate reference genes showed relatively high stability under hormone treatments. For organs subset, UBI1, GAPDH, and ELF1B showed the maximum stability. UBI1 and ADH3 were the top two genes that could be used reliably in all the stress conditions assessed. Furthermore, the necessity of the reference genes screened was further confirmed by the expression pattern of AnnAhs. Conclusions: The results perfect the selection of stable reference genes for future gene expression studies in peanut and provide a list of reference genes that may be used in the future