Comparison of Radio Frequency and Visible Light Propagation Channels for Vehicular Communications

Recent research has shown that both radio and visible light waves can be used to enable communications in highly dynamic vehicular environments. However, the roles of these two technologies and how they interact with each other in future vehicular communication systems remain unclear. Understanding the propagation characteristics is an essential step in investigating the benefits and shortcomings of each technology. To this end, we discuss salient properties of radio and visible light propagation channels, including radiation pattern, path loss modeling, noise and interference, and channel time variation. Comparison of these properties provides an important insight that the two communication channels can complement each other’s capabilities in terms of coverage and reliability, thus better satisfying the diverse requirements of future cooperative intelligent transportation systems

Experimental demonstration of RGB LED-based optical camera communications

Red, green, and blue (RGB) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are widely used in everyday illumination, particularly where color-changing lighting is required. On the other hand, digital cameras with color filter arrays over image sensors have been also extensively integrated in smart devices. Therefore, optical camera communications (OCC) using RGB LEDs and color cameras is a promising candidate for cost-effective parallel visible light communications (VLC). In this paper, a single RGB LED-based OCC system utilizing a combination of undersampled phase-shift on off keying (UPSOOK), wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques is designed, which offers higher space efficiency (3 bits/Hz/LED), long-distance, and nonflickering VLC data transmission. A proof-of-concept test bed is developed to assess the bit-error-rate performance of the proposed OCC system. The experimental results show that the proposed system using a single commercially available RGB LED and a standard 50-frame/s camera is able to achieve a data rate of 150 bits/s over a range of up to 60 m

Role of apamin sensitive small conductance calcium-activated potassium currents in long term cardiac memory in rabbits

Background Apamin-sensitive small conductance calcium-activated K current (IKAS) is upregulated during ventricular pacing and masks short-term cardiac memory (CM). Objective – To determine the role of IKAS in long-term CM. Methods – CM was created with 3-5 weeks of ventricular pacing and defined by a flat or inverted T-wave off pacing. Epicardial optical mapping was performed in both paced and normal ventricles. Action potential duration (APD80) was determined during RA pacing. Ventricular stability was tested before and after IKAS blockade. Four paced hearts and 4 normal hearts were used for western blotting and histology. Results – There were no significant differences in either the echocardiographic parameters or in fibrosis levels between groups. Apamin induced more APD80 prolongation in CM than in normal ventricles (9.6% [8.8%-10.5%] vs 3.1% [1.9%-4.3%], p<0.001). Apamin significantly lengthend the APD80 in the CM model at late activation sites, indicating significant IKAS upregulation at those sites. The CM model also had altered Ca2+ handling as the 50% Ca2+ transient duration and amplitude were increased at distal sites compared to a proximal site (near the pacing site). After apamin, the CM model had increased VF inducibility (paced vs control, 33/40 (82.5%) vs 7/20 (35%) P<0.001), and longer VF durations (124 vs 26 seconds, P<0.001). Conclusions Chronic ventricular pacing increases Ca2+ transients at late activation sites which activates IKAS to maintain repolarization reserve. IKAS blockade increases VF vulnerability in chronically paced rabbit ventricles

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

Mining Spatial Association Rules with 9D-SPA Representation

在本篇論文中，我們提出一個新的空間資料探勘演算法「9DSPA-Miner」。從一個所有影像都是用9D-SPA表示法呈現的影像資料庫中去探勘出空間關聯規則。我們提出的方法包含了三個階段。第一階段，掃瞄資料庫一次並且建立一個索引結構。第二階段，掃瞄索引結構以找出所有長度為二的頻繁樣式。第三階段，利用長度為k的頻繁樣式（k≧2）去產生長度為k+1的候選樣式，並且藉著索引結構確認每個候選樣式的出現頻率是否不小於使用者定義的最小出現頻率門檻值。然後持續重複第三階段的步驟直到不能再找得到頻繁樣式為止。因為9DSPA-Miner利用9D-SPA表示法的特性刪除許多不可能的候選樣式，並利用索引結構加速探勘的程序，實驗結果顯示9DSPA-Miner比改良式的Apriori方法更有效率且更具擴充性。In this thesis, we propose a novel spatial data mining algorithm, called 9DSPA-Miner, to mine the spatial association rules from an image database, where every image is represented by the 9D-SPA representation. Our proposed method consists of three phases. In the first phase, we scan the database once and create an index structure. In the second phase, we scan the index structure to find all frequent patterns of length two. In the third phase, we use the frequent k-patterns (k≧2) to generate candidate (k+1)-patterns and check each generated candidate if its support is not less than the user-specified minimum support threshold by using the index structure. Then, the steps in phase 3 are repeated until no more frequent patterns can be found. Since 9DSPA-Miner uses the characteristics of the 9D-SPA representation to prune most of impossible candidates and the index structure to speed up the mining process, the experiment results demonstrate that it is more efficient and scalable than the modified Apriori method.Table of Contents i List of Figures iii List of Tables v Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Problem Definition and Preliminary Concept 5 2.1 9D-SPA Representation 5 2.2 Problem Definition 8 Chapter 3 The Method for Rectangular Objects 10 3.1 A Two-level Index Structure 10 3.2 Candidate Generation 12 3.3 The Pruning Strategies 14 3.3.1 Reasoning Dij 15 3.3.2 Reasoning Dji 23 3.3.3 Reasoning Tij 24 3.4 The Mining Algorithm 25 Chapter 4 The Method for Difform Objects 32 4.1 Reasoning Dij 32 4.1.1 Reasoning Region[0] 34 4.1.2 Reasoning Region[1] 34 4.1.3 Reasoning the state of the other regions 37 4.1.4 Deciding candidates of Dij 44 4.2 Reasoning Dji 45 4.3 Reasoning Tij 45 4.4 The Mining Algorithm 45 Chapter 5 Performance Evaluation 47 5.1 Synthetic Data and Parameters 47 5.2 Experiments on Rectangular Synthetic Data 48 5.3 Experiments on Difform Synthetic Data 52 5.4 Experiments on Real Data 57 Chapter 6 Conclusions and Future Work 62 References 6

Experimental demonstration of RGB LED-based optical camera communications

Red, green, and blue (RGB) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are widely used in everyday illumination, particularly where color-changing lighting is required. On the other hand, digital cameras with color filter arrays over image sensors have been also extensively integrated in smart devices. Therefore, optical camera communications (OCC) using RGB LEDs and color cameras is a promising candidate for cost-effective parallel visible light communications (VLC). In this paper, a single RGB LED-based OCC system utilizing a combination of undersampled phase-shift on off keying (UPSOOK), wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques is designed, which offers higher space efficiency (3 bits/Hz/LED), long-distance, and nonflickering VLC data transmission. A proof-of-concept test bed is developed to assess the bit-error-rate performance of the proposed OCC system. The experimental results show that the proposed system using a single commercially available RGB LED and a standard 50-frame/s camera is able to achieve a data rate of 150 bits/s over a range of up to 60 m

Comparison of OFDM and OOK modulations for vehicle-to-vehicle visible light communication in real-world driving scenarios

International audienceVisible light communication (VLC) is seen as an interesting technology to complement the IEEE 802.11p-based systems commonly used for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. However, the reliability of such a V2V-VLC link in real-world driving scenario had not been demonstrated up to very recently. The results obtained, at that time with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) at 2 kbps, are complemented in this paper with additional results using on-off keying (OOK) at 100 kbps. The overall performances of this second modulation are rather close to those of OFDM. The packet reception rate (PRR) remains more than 90% over a service area of 30 m lengthwise and the link is not affected by multipath propagation. Error-free transmission is even demonstrated over 60 m using repetition coding, at the cost of a reduced data rate of 10 kbps. However, it is shown that OFDM is able to cope with the narrow-band interferences generated by outdoor lighting such as LED signs whereas the OOK link is completely jammed. Despite its simplicity and good overall performances, OOK is thus not as robust as OFDM to the variety of situations experienced in real-world driving scenario

Use of platelet-rich plasma and platelet-derived patches to treat chronic wounds

Objective: To compare the healing results between platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and platelet-derived patches versus traditional advanced wound dressings in patients with chronic wounds. Method: Patients with and without diabetes were divided into two groups, each of which received either PRP patch treatments or the advanced wound dressings. All wounds were cleaned, debrided and assessed by physicians. The data were analysed and represented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). Student's t-test was used to calculate the significance of differences between both groups. Values of p<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Patients with and without diabetes receiving PRP patch treatments saw improvement in wound healing in two weeks (p=0.0083). Patients with diabetes who received platelet-derived patch treatment and PRP injection experienced wound size reduction to 90% of the subjects had wounds of <10% their original size in the last three weeks of the trial. Conversely, the wound area in the control subjects receiving traditional advanced wound dressings remained at 25-50% of their original size from the fourth week of treatment to the end of the trial. The healing process of the PRP patch experimental group was statistically significant compared with the control group (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Combining treatments of PRP injections and platelet-derived patches significantly improved the healing outcomes of patients with chronic wounds, most notably in patients with diabetes, when compared with a traditional treatment of advanced wound dressings