Saliva Viral Load Better Correlates with Clinical and Immunological Profiles in Children with Coronavirus Disease 2019

BACKGROUND: Pediatric COVID-19 studies exploring the relationships between NPS and saliva viral loads, clinical and immunological profiles are lacking. METHODS: Demographics, immunological profiles, nasopharyngeal swab (NPS), and saliva samples collected on admission, and hospital length of stay (LOS) were assessed in children below 18 years with COVID-19. FINDINGS: 91 patients were included between March and August 2020. NPS and saliva viral loads were correlated (r=0.315, p=0.01). Symptomatic patients had significantly higher NPS and saliva viral loads than asymptomatic patients. Serial NPS and saliva viral load measurements showed that the log10 NPS (r=-0.532, p<0.001) and saliva (r=-0.417, p<0.001) viral loads for all patients were inversely correlated with the days from symptom onset with statistical significance. Patients with cough, sputum, and headache had significantly higher saliva, but not NPS, viral loads. Higher saliva, but not NPS, viral loads were associated with total lymphopenia, CD3 and CD4 lymphopenia (all p<0.05), and were inversely correlated with total lymphocyte (r=-0.43), CD3 (r=-0.55), CD4 (r=-0.60), CD8 (r=-0.41), B (r=-0.482), and NK (r=-0.416) lymphocyte counts (all p<0.05). Interpretation: Saliva viral loads on admission in children correlated better with clinical and immunological profiles than NPS

Oncogenic Signaling Pathways in The Cancer Genome Atlas

Genetic alterations in signaling pathways that control cell-cycle progression, apoptosis, and cell growth are common hallmarks of cancer, but the extent, mechanisms, and co-occurrence of alterations in these pathways differ between individual tumors and tumor types. Using mutations, copy-number changes, mRNA expression, gene fusions and DNA methylation in 9,125 tumors profiled by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we analyzed the mechanisms and patterns of somatic alterations in ten canonical pathways: cell cycle, Hippo, Myc, Notch, Nrf2, PI-3-Kinase/Akt, RTK-RAS, TGFb signaling, p53 and beta-catenin/Wnt. We charted the detailed landscape of pathway alterations in 33 cancer types, stratified into 64 subtypes, and identified patterns of co-occurrence and mutual exclusivity. Eighty-nine percent of tumors had at least one driver alteration in these one alteration potentially targetable by currently available drugs. Thirty percent of tumors had multiple targetable alterations, indicating opportunities for combination therapy

On channel adaptive multiple access control with queued transmission requests for wireless ATM

In this paper, we propose a new multiple access control (MAC) protocol for wireless ATM systems. in which user demands are highly heterogeneous and can be classified as CBR, VBR, and ABR. Our protocol is motivated by two of the most significant drawbacks of existing protocols: (1) channel condition is ignored or not exploited, and (2) inflexible or biased time slots allocation algorithms are used. Indeed, existing protocols mostly ignore the burst errors due to fading and shadowing, which are inevitable in a mobile and wireless communication environment. A few protocols take into account the burst errors but just “handle ” the errors in a passive manner. On the other hand, most of the existing protocols employ an inflexible or biased allocation algorithm such that over-provisioning may occur for a certain class of users at the expense of the poor service quality received by other users. Our proposed protocol, called SCAMA (synergistic channel adaptive multiple access), does not have these two drawbacks. The proposed protocol works closely with the underlying physical layer in that through observing the channel state information (CSI) of each mobile user, the MAC protocol first segregates a set of users with good CSI from requests gathered in the request contention phase of an uplink frame. The MAC protocol then judiciously allocates information time slots to the users according to their traffic types, CSI, urgency, and throughput, which are collectively represented by a novel and flexible priority function. Extensive simulations have been conducted to evaluate the SCAMA protocol.

Channel Capacity Fair Queueing in Wireless Networks: Issues and A New Algorithm

Abstract-- Wireless fair queueing algorithms have been extensively studied recently. However, a major drawback in existing approaches is that the channel model is overly simplified—a two states (good or bad) channel is assumed. While it is relatively easy to analyze the system using such a simple model, the algorithms so designed are of a limited applicability in a practical environment, in which the level of burst errors are time-varying and can be exploited by using channel adaptive coding and modulation techniques. In this paper, we first argue that the existing algorithms cannot cater for a more realistic channel model and the traditional notion of fairness is not suitable. We then propose a new notion of fairness, which bounds the actual throughput normalized by channel capacity of any two sessions. Using the new fairness definition, we propose a new fair queueing algorithm called CAFQ (Channel Adaptive Fair Queueing), which, as indicated in our numerical studies, outperforms other algorithms in terms of overall system throughput and fairness among error prone sessions

Efficient packet scheduling using channel adaptive fair queueing in distributed mobile computing systems

Abstract. In a distributed mobile computing system, an efficient packet scheduling policy is a crucial component to achieve a high utilization of the precious bandwidth resources while satisfying users ’ QoS (quality of service) demands. An important class of scheduling techniques, namely, the wireless fair queueing algorithms, have been extensively studied recently. However, a major drawback in existing approaches is that the channel model is overly simplified – a two-state channel (good or bad) is assumed. While it is relatively easy to analyze the system using such a simple model, the algorithms so designed are of a limited applicability in a practical environment, in which the level of burst errors is time-varying and can be exploited by using channel adaptive coding and modulation techniques. In this paper, we first argue that the existing algorithms cannot cater for a more realistic channel model and the traditional notion of fairness is not suitable. We then propose a new notion of fairness, which bounds the actual throughput normalized by channel capacity of any two data connections. Using the new fairness definition, we propose a new fair queueing algorithm called CAFQ (Channel Adaptive Fair Queueing), which, as indicated in our numerical studies, outperforms other algorithms in terms of overall system throughput and fairness among error prone connections