As a sector associated with high injury and fatality rates, the construction industry requires constant caution with regard to construction laborers during project execution. Different from people in ...other industries, construction workers are less sensitive to hazards because of their long-term exposure to risks. Therefore, maintaining construction workers' vigilance and monitoring their attention levels are critical to successful safety management practices. However, current attention-assessing approaches are post hoc and subjective and difficult to implement in construction practice. To address these issues, we propose a wireless and wearable electroencephalography (EEG) system to quantitatively and automatically assess construction workers' attention level through processing human brain signals. To validate the proposed system, we conducted an on-site experiment to analyze the EEG signal patterns when construction workers avoid different obstacles in their tasks. The results suggest EEG signal properties such as frequency, power spectrum density, and spatial distribution can effectively reflect and quantify the construction workers' perceived risk level. Especially, lower gamma frequency bands and the frontal left EEG cluster provide the most direct and observable indications of their vigilance states. These conclusions could facilitate the future implementation of wearable EEG devices through data filtering and channel optimization.
•Wearable EEG sensors were used to monitor construction workers' perceived risk.•Topographical maps show the signal patterns at various vigilance levels.•On site experiment was conducted to validate the results.•Vigilance states can be assessed through EEG band powers.
A protease inhibitor, cystatin C (Cst C), is a secreted cysteine protease inhibitor abundantly expressed in body fluids. Clinically, it is mostly used to measure glomerular filtration rate as a ...marker for kidney function due to its relatively small molecular weight and easy detection. However, recent findings suggest that Cst C is regulated at both transcriptional and post‐translational levels, and Cst C production from haematopoietic cell lineages contributes significantly to the systematic pools of Cst C. Furthermore, Cst C is directly linked to many pathologic processes through various mechanisms. Thus fluctuation of Cst C levels might have serious clinical implications rather than a mere reflection of kidney functions. Here, we summarize the pathophysiological roles of Cst C dependent and independent on its inhibition of proteases, outline its change of expression by various stimuli, and elucidate the regulatory mechanisms to control this disease‐related protease inhibitor. Finally, we discuss the clinical implications of these findings for translational gains.
Safe Charging for Wireless Power Transfer Haipeng Dai; Yunhuai Liu; Guihai Chen ...
IEEE/ACM transactions on networking,
2017-Dec., 2017-12-00, 20171201, Letnik:
25, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
As battery-powered mobile devices become more popular and energy hungry, wireless power transfer technology, which allows the power to be transferred from a charger to ambient devices wirelessly, ...receives intensive interests. Existing schemes mainly focus on the power transfer efficiency but overlook the health impairments caused by RF exposure. In this paper, we study the safe charging problem (SCP) of scheduling power chargers so that more energy can be received while no location in the field has electromagnetic radiation (EMR) exceeding a given threshold Rt. We show that SCP is NP-hard and propose a solution, which provably outperforms the optimal solution to SCP with a relaxed EMR threshold (1-ε)Rt. Testbed results based on 8 Powercast TX91501 chargers validate our results. Extensive simulation results show that the gap between our solution and the optimal one is only 6.7% when ε = 0.1, while a naive greedy algorithm is 34.6% below our solution.
In this paper, we investigate the theoretical aspects of the nonuniform node distribution strategy used to mitigate the energy hole problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We conclude that in a ...circular multihop sensor network (modeled as concentric coronas) with nonuniform node distribution and constant data reporting, the unbalanced energy depletion among all the nodes in the network is unavoidable. Even if the nodes in the inner coronas of the network have used up their energy simultaneously, the ones in the outermost corona may still have unused energy. This is due to the intrinsic many-to-one traffic pattern of WSNs. Nevertheless, nearly balanced energy depletion in the network is possible if the number of nodes increases in geometric progression from the outer coronas to the inner ones except the outermost one. Based on the analysis, we propose a novel nonuniform node distribution strategy to achieve nearly balanced energy depletion in the network. We regulate the number of nodes in each corona and derive the ratio between the node densities in the adjacent (i + 1)th and ith coronas by the strategy. Finally, we propose (q-switch routing, a distributed shortest path routing algorithm tailored for the proposed nonuniform node distribution strategy. Extensive simulations have been performed to validate the analysis.
Small cells are introduced to cellular systems to enhance coverage and improve capacity. Densely deploying small cells can not only offload the traffic of macrocells but also provide an energyand ...cost-efficient way to meet the sharp increase in traffic demands in mobile networks. However, such a cell deployment paradigm also leads to heterogeneous network (HetNet) infrastructure and raises new challenges for cell planning. In this paper, we study the cell planning issue in the HetNet. Our optimization task is to select a subset of candidate sites to deploy macro or small cells to minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) or the energy consumption of the cellular system while satisfying practical constraints. We introduce approximation algorithms to cope with two different cell-planning cases, which are both NP-hard. First, we discuss the macrocell-only case. Our proposed algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of O(log R) in this scenario, where R is the maximum achievable capacity of macrocells. Then, we introduce an O(log R̃)-approximation algorithm to the smallcell scenario, where R̃ is the maximum achievable capacity of a macrocell with small cells overlaid on it. Numerical results indicate that the HetNet can significantly reduce the TCO and the energy consumption of the cellular system.
To estimate the prevalence of childhood maltreatment among college students in China by a systematic review and meta-analysis.
A systematic search of relevant articles in Pubmed, Wanfang Data, ...Chinese Scientific Journals Fulltext Database (CQVIP), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and China Biology Medicine disc (CBMdisc) was conducted on September 1, 2017. A random-effects model was used to estimate the pooled prevalence and sources of heterogeneity were explored using subgroup analyses.
In total, 32 studies were included in our review. The pooled prevalence of childhood maltreatment among college students was 64.7% (CI: 52.3%-75.6%). For childhood physical abuse(CPA), childhood emotional abuse(CEA), childhood sexual abuse(CSA), childhood physical neglect(CPN)and childhood emotional neglect (CEN), the pooled estimates were 17.4% (13.8%-21.3%), 36.7%(25.1%-49.1%), 15.7%(11.6%-20.2%), 54.9%(41.2%-68.1%) and 60.0% (45.0%-74.0%), respectively. Use of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) yielded a higher pooled estimate than any other measurement tools in the subgroup analyses of CPA, CEA, CSA, CPN and CEN. The Egger's tests revealed no evidence of publication bias(P>0.05).
Childhood maltreatment is common among college students in China. Prevention policies and programmes should be urgently developed to stop the occurrence of child maltreatment, and special attention should be paid to maltreated college students.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The full scale of human miRNome in specific cell or tissue, especially in cancers, remains to be determined. An in-depth analysis of miRNomes in human normal liver, hepatitis liver, and ...hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was carried out in this study. We found nine miRNAs accounted for ∼88.2% of the miRNome in human liver. The third most highly expressed miR-199a/b-3p is consistently decreased in HCC, and its decrement significantly correlates with poor survival of HCC patients. Moreover, miR-199a/b-3p can target tumor-promoting PAK4 to suppress HCC growth through inhibiting PAK4/Raf/MEK/ERK pathway both in vitro and in vivo. Our study provides miRNomes of human liver and HCC and contributes to better understanding of the important deregulated miRNAs in HCC and liver diseases.
► Identification of miRNomes in human normal liver, hepatitis liver and HCC ► miR-199a/b-3p is the most consistently decreased miRNA in HCC ► Low miR-199-3p expression correlates with poor survival of HCC patients ► miR-199-3p inhibits PAK4/Raf/MEK/ERK prosurvival pathway in HCC
Quality of Energy Provisioning for Wireless Power Transfer Dai, Haipeng; Chen, Guihai; Wang, Chonggang ...
IEEE transactions on parallel and distributed systems,
2015-Feb., 2015-2-00, 20150201, Letnik:
26, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
One fundamental question for wireless power transfer technology is the energy provisioning problem, i.e., how to provide sufficient energy to mobile rechargeable nodes for their continuous operation. ...Most existing works overlooked the impacts of node speed and battery capacity. However, we find that if the constraints of node speed and battery capacity are considered, the continuous operation of nodes may never be guaranteed, which invalidates the traditional energy provisioning concept. In this paper, we propose a novel metric-Quality of Energy Provisioning (QoEP)-to characterize the expected portion of time that a node sustains normal operation by taking into account node speed and battery capacity. To avoid confining the analysis to a specific mobility model, we study spatial distribution instead. As there exist more than one mobility models corresponding to the same spatial distribution, and different mobility models typically lead to different QoEPs, we investigate upper and lower bounds of QoEP in 1D and 2D cases. We derive tight upper and lower bounds of QoEP for 1D case with a single source, and tight lower bounds and loose upper bounds for general 1D and 2D cases with multiple sources. Finally, we perform extensive simulations to verify our theoretical findings.
BRCA1 and BRCA2 play essential roles in maintaining the genome stability. Pathogenic germline mutations in these two genes disrupt their function, lead to genome instability and increase the risk of ...developing breast and ovarian cancers. BRCA mutations have been extensively screened in Caucasian populations, and the resulting information are used globally as the standard reference in clinical diagnosis, treatment and prevention of BRCA‐related cancers. Recent studies suggest that BRCA mutations can be ethnic‐specific, raising the question whether a Caucasian‐based BRCA mutation information can be used as a universal standard worldwide, or whether an ethnicity‐based BRCA mutation information system need to be developed for the corresponding ethnic populations. In this study, we used Chinese population as a model to test ethnicity‐specific BRCA mutations considering that China has one of the latest numbers of breast cancer patients therefore BRCA mutation carriers. Through comprehensive data mining, standardization and annotation, we collected 1,088 distinct BRCA variants derived from over 30,000 Chinese individuals, one of the largest BRCA data set from a non‐Caucasian population covering nearly all known BRCA variants in the Chinese population (https://dbBRCA-Chinese.fhs.umac.mo). Using this data, we performed multi‐layered analyses to determine the similarities and differences of BRCA variation between Chinese and non‐Chinese ethnic populations. The results show the substantial differences of BRCA data between Chinese and non‐Chinese ethnicities. Our study indicates that the current Caucasian population‐based BRCA data is not adequate to represent the BRCA status in non‐Caucasian populations. Therefore, ethnic‐based BRCA standards need to be established to serve for the non‐Caucasian populations.
What's new?
Currently, Caucasian population‐based BRCA mutation data are used worldwide as the standard reference for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of BRCA‐associated cancers. Recent studies however suggest that BRCA variation can be ethnic specific. Here, the authors carried out a comprehensive comparison of BRCA mutation data between the Chinese and worldwide non‐Chinese populations and found substantial differences. The study suggests that BRCA mutations are highly ethnic specific and that the current Caucasian population‐based BRCA data is not adequate to represent the BRCA status in non‐Caucasian populations. Developing new standard references using ethnic‐based BRCA mutation data is needed to better serve non‐Caucasian ethnic populations.
Investing heavily in the transition to renewable energy is essential for global sustainability. Companies in the renewable energy sector often use bank financing for day-to-day operations and capital ...expenditures. This research looks at the effect of financial ties between renewable energy companies and banks on both industries’ viability as they make the switch to renewable power sources. We analyze a large worldwide sample of renewable energy firms and banks to see how these interdependencies affect the long-term viability of both industries. According to our findings, the effectiveness of the shift is heavily impacted by the degree of interconnection between renewable energy businesses and banks. Financing costs are reduced and investments in renewable energy projects are encouraged when banks have a higher exposure to renewable energy enterprises. In addition to highlighting the importance of these linkages, our research also emphasizes the possible hazards associated with them, such as financial contagion and systemic risk, and underscores the necessity for effective risk management methods. In conclusion, this study highlights the need for a coordinated strategy to the renewable energy transition that weighs the advantages and disadvantages of interconnection. We show that there are both positive and negative outcomes that can result from the relationship between financial institutions and renewable energy enterprises, and we highlight the duty of policymakers and regulators to ensure that banks have adequate exposure to the industry while closely monitoring associated risks.
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