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ABSTRACT: X-ray repair cross-complementing group 3 (XRCC3) plays a vital role in maintaining the stability of genome by homologous recombination repair for DNA double-strand breaks. The genetic polymorphism of XRCC3 C241T has been implicated in lung cancer risk, but the findings across published studies in Asians are inconsistent and inconclusive. To estimate the precise association of XRCC3 C241T polymorphism with lung cancer risk, a meta-analysis of all currently available studies in Asians was performed. A comprehensive search of the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases was conducted for eligible studies based on the inclusion criteria. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the association. Besides, subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis were also performed for further estimation. Seven available studies with a total of 7,398 subjects were finally included into this meta-analysis. The overall ORs indicated that the XRCC3 C241T polymorphism was not associated with a lung cancer risk among Asians in all genetic contrast modes (ORT allele vs. C allele = 1.08, 95 % CI 0.95-1.24, P OR = 0.252; ORTT vs. CC = 1.30, 95 % CI 0.69-2.45, P OR = 0.426; ORCT vs. CC = 1.07, 95 % CI 0.93-1.24, P OR = 0.363; ORTT + CT vs. CC = 1.08, 95 % CI 0.94-1.24, P OR = 0.300; ORTT vs. CC + CT = 1.29, 95 % CI 0.68-2.43, P OR = 0.439). We failed to identify significant association between the XRCC3 C241T polymorphism and risk of lung cancer in Chinese and population-based studies. Interestingly, the pooled ORs in hospital-based studies indicated that the XRCC3 C241T variant carriers were more susceptible to lung cancer (ORT allele vs. C allele = 1.27, 95 % CI 1.04-1.56, P OR = 0.019; ORCT vs. CC = 1.26, 95 % CI 1.01-1.57, P OR = 0.045; ORTT + CT vs. CC = 1.28, 95 % CI 1.03-1.59, P OR = 0.027). Sensitivity analysis confirmed the stability and liability of all results. This meta-analysis suggests that the XRCC3 C241T polymorphism may not exert a risk effect on the lung cancer risk in Asians, although a statistically significant association was observed among the hospital-based studies. Thus, the precise relationship between the XRCC3 C241T variant and lung cancer risk needs further confirmation in future studies with large available data.
Tumor Biology 06/2013; · 1.94 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor agonist FTY720 and FTY720-P have a wide variety of fundamental functions. Many studies have demonstrated that CD4+CD25+ regulatory T (Treg) cells engage in the maintenance of immunological self-tolerance by actively suppressing self-reactive lymphocytes. Although FTY720 has also recently shown to possess an additional effect that increases the functional activity of Treg cells, the mechanism leading to the enhanced Treg activity after FTY720 treatment is still not clear. We isolated Treg cells, which were co-cultured with FTY720 or FTY720-P. The proliferation of co-cultured Treg cells was detected by the cell counting kit-8. The changes of the phenotype CD25+ and forkhead box P3 (Foxp3)+ of co-cultured Treg cells were measured by flow cytometry. The levels of IL-10 and TGF-β1 in the supernatants were detected by Elisa. Cytokine mRNA expressions in co-cultured Treg cells were analyzed by real-time quantitative PCR. Mixed lymphocyte reaction assay examined the suppressive function. We found that neither FTY720 nor FTY720-P affected the proliferation of co-cultured Treg cells. The percentages of CD25+ and Foxp3+ were enhanced in the high-dose FTY720-P group. The levels of TGF-β1 in the supernatants were enhanced in the high-dose FTY720 group. Medium and high-dose FTY720-P also enhanced the levels of TGF-β1. TGF-β1 and Foxp3 mRNA expression were upregulated in the high-dose FTY720-P group. The proliferation of effector T (Teff) cells was suppressed significantly in the medium and high-dose FTY720-P group at a Treg/Teff cell ratio of 1:1. At a ratio of 1:1, the proliferation of Teff cells was also suppressed in the high-dose FTY720 group. It can be concluded that high-dose FTY720-P can enhance the immune function of co-cultured Treg cells, and that medium-dose FTY720-P and high-dose FTY720 could partly enhance the function. The reason may be attributed to enhanced levels of TGF-β1 and Foxp3.
International Journal of Molecular Medicine 07/2012; 30(1):211-9. · 1.98 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We introduce a multifractal analysis for detecting the small-size pest (e.g., whitefly) images from a sticky trap in situ. An automatic attraction system is utilized for collecting pests from greenhouse plants. We applied multifractal analysis to segment action of whitefly images based on the local singularity and global image characteristics. According to the theory of multifractal dimension, the candidate blobs of whiteflies are initially defined from the sticky-trap image. Two schemes, fixed thresholding and regional minima obtainment, were utilized for feature extraction of candidate whitefly image areas. The experiment was conducted with the field images in a greenhouse. Detection results were compared with other adaptive segmentation algorithms. Values of F measuring precision and recall score were higher for the proposed multifractal analysis (96.5%) compared with conventional methods such as Watershed (92.2%) and Otsu (73.1%). The true positive rate of multifractal analysis was 94.3% and the false positive rate minimal level at 1.3%. Detection performance was further tested via human observation. The degree of scattering between manual and automatic counting was remarkably higher with multifractal analysis (R2=0.992) compared with Watershed (R2=0.895) and Otsu (R2=0.353), ensuring overall detection of the small-size pests is most feasible with multifractal analysis in field conditions.
Optical Engineering 03/2012; 52(2):027001. · 0.96 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: To investigate the effects of topical FTY720 and cyclosporin A (CsA) on allogeneic corneal transplantation in mice.
A total of 75 BALB/c mice received corneal grafts from C57BL/6 donors. Recipients were treated with 0.1%, 0.3%, or 0.5% FTY720 ophthalmic gel or 1% CsA eye-drops after the graft (controls received no treatment). The number of cluster of differentiation (CD)4+ T cells and CD4+CD25+forkhead box P3 (Foxp3)+ regulatory (Treg) cell phenotypes were measured by flow cytometry. Cytokine mRNA expression in corneal grafts was analyzed by real-time quantitative PCR. CD4 + T cells and cytokines in corneal samples were identified by immunohistochemical staining.
Corneal graft survival was prolonged by treatment with topical 0.5% FTY720 (mean survival time [MST], 24.1±1.6 days) or 1% CsA eye-drops (MST 25.0±1.9 days) compared with controls (MST, 13.4±0.5 days; n=9, both p<0.01). Topical 0.5% FTY720 treatment significantly increased the percentages of CD4 + T (p<0.05) and Treg cells (p<0.01; n=5) in the cervical lymph nodes compared with controls. Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) mRNA transcription in corneal grafts after topical 0.5% FTY720 increased (p<0.05, n=3), while interleukin-2 (IL-2) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) mRNA expression in corneal grafts treated with 1% CsA decreased (p<0.01, p<0.05, respectively). These cytokine results were paralleled by similar immunohistochemical staining. Topical 0.5% FTY720 and 1% CsA treatment reduced the infiltration of CD4+ Tcells in the grafts.
Topical 0.5% FTY720 and 1% CsA can effectively prolong allogeneic corneal graft survival in mice. Treatment with topical 0.5% FTY720 increases the percentage of CD4+ T cells and the percentage of Treg cells in cervical lymph nodes. The 0.5% FTY720 increased TGF-β1 mRNA expression and decreases infiltration of CD4+ T cells in corneal grafts, while topical 1% CsA down-regulated the expression of IL-2 and IFN-γ.
Molecular vision 01/2012; 18:624-33. · 2.20 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A novel instantaneous frequency measurement scheme based on phase-modulated links with interferometric detection is experimentally demonstrated. Due to the different time delays of the Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs), the free spectral ranges of the two channels transmission responses would also be different. By comparing them, we establish the amplitude comparison function (ACF). Through the unique relationship between the ACF and the microwave frequency, the microwave frequency to be measured can be estimated easily. The proof-of-concept experimental results show that the measurement errors can be kept within 0.2 GHz over a frequency range of 3.5-10 GHz. In addition, the measurement range can be adjusted by tuning the time delays of the MZIs.
IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 10/2011; · 2.19 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Precisely localizing in an image a set of feature points that form a shape of an object, such as car or face, is called alignment. Previous shape alignment methods attempted to fit a whole shape model to the observed data, based on the assumption of Gaussian observation noise and the associated regularization process. However, such an approach, though able to deal with Gaussian noise in feature detection, turns out not to be robust or precise because it is vulnerable to gross feature detection errors or outliers resulting from partial occlusions or spurious features from the background or neighboring objects. We address this problem by adopting a randomized hypothesis-and-test approach. First, a Bayesian inference algorithm is developed to generate a shape-and-pose hypothesis of the object from a partial shape or a subset of feature points. For alignment, a large number of hypotheses are generated by randomly sampling subsets of feature points, and then evaluated to find the one that minimizes the shape prediction error. This method of randomized subset-based matching can effectively handle outliers and recover the correct object shape. We apply this approach on a challenging data set of over 5,000 different-posed car images, spanning a wide variety of car types, lighting, background scenes, and partial occlusions. Experimental results demonstrate favorable improvements over previous methods on both accuracy and robustness.
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 10/2011; · 4.91 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In this paper, we discuss in time domain the convergence of the iterative process for fractional-order nonlinear systems. The PD<sup>α</sup>-type iterative learning updating laws are considered. Most of the classical fractional-order cases for linear or nonlinear systems fall into the scheme of this paper. A number of numerical simulations are illustrated to validate the concepts.
American Control Conference (ACC), 2011; 08/2011
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ABSTRACT: The relay-assisted Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) cellular system is one of the most promising technology thanks to the enhancements of the system capacity and coverage it provides. However, some special features may lower its positive aspects. In multiple relay case, the asymmetric link problem in the two stages forming the relaying process may result in important resource wastage. Such resource wastage can even be more serious than in the case where only a single relay is used in the system. Only few works consider this resource wastage problem. In this paper, we first define a new term, channel holes, to denote the potential resource wastage in single and multiple relay systems. Then based on this new concept, we propose a novel resource management scheme for multiple relay systems, i.e. channel-hole based cooperative scheduling in multiple relay systems. In order to evaluate the performances of such resource management schemes, we build a system model and propose the corresponding analytical derivation, which helps analyzing the average queue length and the average packet delay. Simulations are used to validate and reinforce our theoretical analysis. Then using simulations, we compare our proposed scheduling algorithm to other algorithms from the literature. Hence, we show that our proposed algorithm performs better than others. In addition we also observe that our proposed scheduling algorithm performs a resource-aware relay selection that is more efficient than the one obtained using the ideal relay selection scheme.
Communications (ICC), 2011 IEEE International Conference on; 07/2011
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ABSTRACT: Advancement of silicon and packaging technologies toward lower power and higher functionality requires better understanding between materials and process interactions. This paper illustrates the applications of 2-D X-ray metrology incorporated with a hot stage system for the first time in the literature, which allows one to simulate heating profiles of up to 300<sup>°</sup>C and observe the behavior of materials in situ within the packages. Three case studies are discussed: 1) segregation of metal particles in the next-generation thermal interface material, leading to corner thermal resistance ( Rjc ) degradation; (2) first level interconnect (FLI) solder bump bridging during chip attach of a large die server package with high substrate die area warpage in which limits of the die area substrate warpage need to be set in order to avoid FLI solder bump bridging during the chip attach solder reflow process; and 3) second level interconnect solder joint bridging at the surface mounting process of a large die package attached with an integrated heat spreader. By being able to study failures in situ at high temperatures, a new dimension to the package failure analysis is presented in this paper.
IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability 04/2011; · 1.54 Impact Factor
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Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference. 03/2011;
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ABSTRACT: Prior research in IS offshoring has highlighted issues in software development projects arising from differences in culture, from status differences and resource inequalities, as well as from asset-related characteristics. Based on Practice Theory and Transaction Cost Economics, we integrate these three perspectives into a single research model explaining the relation between the outcome of offshore ISD projects and cultural, social, and asset-related characteristics of the projects. We substantiate our model with a multiple-case study in two settings in which German companies have offshored ISD projects to India and China. Thereby, we also address a severe drawback of contemporary intercultural IS offshoring research: the neglect of China as the most rapidly growing IS offshoring location at present.
System Sciences (HICSS), 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on; 02/2011
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ABSTRACT: A differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSS) is always used to broadcast augmentation messages for GNSS to receivers in the covering areas through geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellites to improve the accuracy, reliability, and integrity of navigation. GEO broadcasting is an efficient strategy for avionic applications and other modes of transport. For some applications though, it may be of interest to broadcast additional augmentation messages through other transmission means. For instance, it may be difficult for GEO reception in cities or indoors because of building obstacles. Real-time broadcasting of navigation augmentation messages through the internet is an important hot-spot of research. Based on characteristics of navigation augmentation messages, combined application layers multicast with i3 (internet indirection infrastructure) multicast, is presented herein with a hierarchy mix multicast system based on node heterogeneity to broadcast differential correction messages. The qualities of the system network structure are analyzed. After the securities requirements are analyzed, the types and solutions of security issues were briefly studied.
IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine 02/2011; · 0.30 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A new method is proposed in this paper to detect emotions in music. Four audio features are used to classify emotions into six clusters with the RAKEL (Random klabelsets)multi-label classification. The Experiments show the rationality of proposed method and good performance on classification with the feature of beat spectrum.
Computational and Information Sciences (ICCIS), 2010 International Conference on; 01/2011
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ABSTRACT: Since the IEEE 802.11 DCF adopted the Binary Exponential Back-off (BEB) algorithm in its contention window adjustment scheme, many alternative back-off algorithms were proposed in order to enhance the performance. Among them is an Exponential Increase Exponential Decrease (EIED) back-off algorithm, whose performance was simulated and analyzed in a special case of doubling or halving the contention window size. This paper provides an analytical analysis for the general EIED algorithm. A closed form saturation throughput and a closed form saturation delay are derived. Our analytical results further establish the performance improvement of the general EIED algorithm over the BEB algorithm and the basic EIED algorithm.
Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM 2010), 2010 IEEE; 01/2011
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ABSTRACT: In this paper, we propose a methodology of the automated bitstream generation for conducting high-testability FPGA tests. In order to study the efficiency of our solution we will explore our methodology in the test of an SOI-based FPGA. We use a semi-automated approach of the bitstream generation for ease of test vector design with high functionality and fault coverage. The methodology from this research is extensively exercised in the design process. The quality of this methodology is proven by the efficiency of the test vector suite used in the wafer and packaged tests. The same approach can also be used in the bitstream generation for FPGA application.
Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology (ICSICT), 2010 10th IEEE International Conference on; 12/2010
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ABSTRACT: A novel method utilizing state space neural network (SSNN) with adaptive filters is proposed to estimate the traffic flow parameters. The SSNN's network topology is derived from delays and stops estimation problem, so the design of SSNN reflects the relationships that exist in physical traffic systems. To improve SSNN effectiveness, the adaptive filters is proposed to train the SSNN instead of conventional approaches. Model performance was tested with raw traffic data of an intersections group at Odem. Performance of the proposed model is compared with that of SSNN and BP neural network. Results of the comparisons indicate that the proposed model predicts complex nonlinear delays and stops with satisfying effectiveness, robustness and reliability.
Intelligent System Design and Engineering Application (ISDEA), 2010 International Conference on; 11/2010
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ABSTRACT: This paper firstly addresses the convergence analysis of iterative learning control of a class of fractional order nonlinear systems using the generalized Gronwall-Bellman lemma. Detailed problem definition and convergence proof are presented together with an agenda for future research efforts.
Intelligent Control (ISIC), 2010 IEEE International Symposium on; 10/2010
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ABSTRACT: This paper introduces an efficient method for wind speed prediction, namely the Elman recursion neural network. The prediction model is proposed for one step ahead wind speed prediction based on the Elman recursion neural networks. The obtained results from the prediction model are shown when using different numbers of neurons to the different tested input data. The prediction model based on the Elman recursion neural networks is applied to a case study about a Chinese wind farm history data. Then, prediction error following Weibull distribution is confirmed compared with Gaussian distribution. The case shows that the prediction model is effective for one step ahead average ten-minute wind speed prediction.
Modelling, Identification and Control (ICMIC), The 2010 International Conference on; 08/2010
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ABSTRACT: In monitoring the depth of anaesthesia, raw EEG signals are recorded by means of an adhesive sensor attached to the forehead. The raw EEG signal is often corrupted by spike, low frequency and high frequency noise. Removal of such noise improves clinical utility and this paper presents a novel method which uses a double wavelet-based de-noising algorithm. The results of experimental simulations show that the proposed method reproduces the EEG signal almost noiselessly. The resultant data is suitable input for monitoring the depth of anaesthesia. We propose to build up a wavelet-based Depth of Anaesthesia (WDoA) based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and power spectral density (PSD) function. Findings give very close correlation between the WDoA and BIS Index values, through the whole scale from 100 to 0 with full recording time on patient. Simulation results demonstrate that this new index, WDoA, represents the DoA in all anaesthesia states reliably and accurately.
Complex Medical Engineering (CME), 2010 IEEE/ICME International Conference on; 08/2010
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ABSTRACT: For years the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has been the algorithm for non-linear systems due to its simplicity and suitability to real time implementations. Because of its shortfalls, however, the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) was introduced to be an algorithm which was more accurate. Since then researches have been conducted to investigate the suitability of both algorithms in different areas. This paper presents a comparison of the estimation quality for the two algorithms when applied to a real time system - Electroencephalography (EEG).
Complex Medical Engineering (CME), 2010 IEEE/ICME International Conference on; 08/2010
