Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is aggressive cancer usually diagnosed in young women with no effective prognosis prediction model to use. The present study was performed to develop a useful ...prognostic model for predicting overall survival (OS) for TNBC patients.
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC) databases were used as training and validation data sets, respectively, in which the gene expression levels and clinical prognostic information of TNBC were collected. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between TNBC and non-TNBC (NTNBC) were identified with the thresholds of false discovery rate < 0.05 and |log2 Fold Change| > 1. DEGs in AmiGO2 and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases were retained for further study. Univariate, multivariate Cox, and logistic regression analysis were conducted for detecting DEG signature with the threshold of log-rank P < 0.05. The prognosis models of mRNA signature, clinical factors were constructed and compared.
One five-DEG signature, including CHST4, COCH, CST9, SOX11, and TDGF1 was identified in DEG prognosis model. Stratified analysis showed that the patients aged over 60, with higher pathologic stage (III-IV) and recurrence induced a significantly lower survival rate than those aged below 60, lower pathologic stage and without recurrence. Compared with patients with low-risk scores, those presented high-risk scores demonstrated significantly lower survival rate in the subgroup aged over 60 HR = 3.780 (1.801-7.933), P < 0.0001. For patients who obtained a higher pathologic stage and recurrence, high-risk scores were correlated with a significantly lower survival rate than patients with low-risk scores. The five-mRNA signature combined with clinical model (AUC = 0.950) predicted better than single clinical model (AUC = 0.795) or five-mRNA signature model (AUC = 0.823).
Our present study identified a prognostic prediction model (combined with five-mRNA signature and clinical factors) for TNBC patients receiving immunotherapy, which will benefit future research and clinical therapies.
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China (SARS‐CoV‐2) that began in December 2019 presents a significant and urgent threat to global health. This study was conducted to provide the ...international community with a deeper understanding of this new infectious disease. Epidemiological, clinical features, laboratory findings, radiological characteristics, treatment, and clinical outcomes of 135 patients in northeast Chongqing were collected and analyzed in this study. A total of 135 hospitalized patients with COVID‐19 were enrolled. The median age was 47 years (interquartile range, 36‐55), and there was no significant gender difference (53.3% men). The majority of patients had contact with people from the Wuhan area. Forty‐three (31.9%) patients had underlying disease, primarily hypertension (13 9.6%), diabetes (12 8.9%), cardiovascular disease (7 5.2%), and malignancy (4 3.0%). Common symptoms included fever (120 88.9%), cough (102 76.5%), and fatigue (44 32.5%). Chest computed tomography scans showed bilateral patchy shadows or ground glass opacity in the lungs of all the patients. All patients received antiviral therapy (135 100%) (Kaletra and interferon were both used), antibacterial therapy (59 43.7%), and corticosteroids (36 26.7%). In addition, many patients received traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) (124 91.8%). It is suggested that patients should receive Kaletra early and should be treated by a combination of Western and Chinese medicines. Compared to the mild cases, the severe ones had lower lymphocyte counts and higher plasma levels of Pt, APTT, d‐dimer, lactate dehydrogenase, PCT, ALB, C‐reactive protein, and aspartate aminotransferase. This study demonstrates the clinic features and therapies of 135 COVID‐19 patients. Kaletra and TCM played an important role in the treatment of the viral pneumonia. Further studies are required to explore the role of Kaletra and TCM in the treatment of COVID‐19.
Research Highlights
83.7% of the patients had contact history in Wuhan or had been to Wuhan or had contact with people from Wuhan.
Common symptoms included fever, cough, and fatigue. Other symptoms include myalgia, fatigue, dyspnea, anorexia, etc.
Common complications of the patients include acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute cardiac injury, acute kidney injury, secondary infection and shock. ICU patients were more likely to have these complications than non‐ICU patients.
Compared with non‐ICU patients, ICU patients had lower lymphocyte count, and higher plasma levels of the Pt, APTT, D‐dimer, LDH, PCT, ALB, CRP, AST.
All patients received antiviral therapy (kaletra or interferon), antibacterial therapy and corticosteroid and many received traditional chinese medicine. It was suggested that patients should use kaletra early.
Selecting and designing the optimum ultrasonic probe is vital for ultrasonic measurements and experiments. The amplitude of the emitted ultrasonic wave excitation signal as well as the diameter and ...the natural frequency of the probe seriously affect the validity of the probe results. In this paper, we analyze the significance of the key parameters of the ultrasonic probe theoretically. Further, an external fixed-point liquid level monitoring system was assembled according to the principle of ultrasonic reflection and transmission. On this experimental platform, we study the key parameters of the ultrasonic probe that affect the system evaluation through a simulation and experiment, and select the optimal sensor parameters for this experiment. The evaluations show that under the experimental conditions where the tested container is made of aluminum alloy and its wall thickness is 3 mm, the best results are obtained when the diameter of the ultrasonic sensor is 15 mm, the amplitude of the emitted excitation signal is ±15 V, and the frequency is 1 MHz. The results' average deviation is less than ±0.22 V. The evaluations are consistent with the simulation results. This research can effectively monitor the liquid in the closed, ultra-thin-walled container, and can realize non-contact measurement. It provides an effective basis for the parameters selection and design of the ultrasonic probe in the ultrasonic-based experiments and tests.
The three polypyrrole (PPy) films with different mixture ratios, namely PPy1, PPy2, and PPy3, were synthesized by chemical oxidation with pyrrole and ferric chloride (FeCl
). The roughened plastic ...optical fiber (POF) taper assembled PPy films (POF-PPy1, POF-PPy2, and POF-PPy3) were facilely prepared and bentU shape structure for testing ethanol gas at room temperature. The morphologies of the PPy films and the roughened POF taper were studied using electron microscopy. The effect of the three PPy films on the gas response was investigated and the results showed that the POF-PPy2 exhibited a high sensitivity of 5.08 × 10
dB/ppm. The detection limit of the sensor was 140 ppm and its response and recovery times were 5 s and 8 s, respectively. The results also showed that as the bending radius decreased, the response and recovery times gradually shortened, while the output power increased. In addition, the proposed sensor has advantages of a low cost and simple structure.
Topology architecture has a decisive influence on network reliability. In this paper, we design a novel redundancy topology and analyze the structural robustness, the number of redundant paths ...between two terminal nodes, and the reliability of the proposed topology by using natural connectivity and time-independent and time-dependent terminal pair reliability, k-terminal reliability, and all-terminal reliability comprehensively and quantitatively, and we compare these measures of the proposed topology with AFDX in three scenarios. The evaluations show that in the structural robustness analysis, when no nodes are removed, the natural connectivity of the proposed topology with 10 nodes, 16 nodes, and 20 nodes is 77.8%, 26.95%, and 81.39% higher than that of AFDX, respectively. In the time-independent reliability analysis, when the link reliability is 0.9, terminal pair reliability of the proposed topology with 10 nodes, 16 nodes, and 20 nodes is 5.78%, 17.75%, and 34.65% higher than that of AFDX, respectively; k-terminal reliability is 10.04%, 31.97%, and 53.74% higher than that of AFDX, respectively; and all-terminal reliability is 29.36%, 74.37%, and 107.91% higher than that of AFDX, respectively. In the time-dependent reliability analysis, when the operating time is 8000 h, the terminal pair reliability of the proposed topology with 10 nodes, 16 nodes, and 20 nodes is 3.53%, 10.87%, and 21.08% higher than that of AFDX, respectively; the k-terminal reliability is 6.20%, 19.65%, and 32.58% higher than that of AFDX, respectively; and the all-terminal reliability is 18.25%, 45.04%, and 63.86% higher than that of AFDX, respectively. The proposed topology increases the redundant paths of data transmission. It ensures reliable data transmission and has high robustness and reliability. It provides a new idea for improving the reliability of industrial buses.
In this study, a novel high-reliability liquid leakage sensor with a V-shaped defect coupling structure (VDCS) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated using polymer optical fibers (POFs) based on ...a light-emitting diode (LED) side-coupled light source. Liquid leakage detection is achieved with changes in the refractive index as the coupling medium transforms from air to liquid. The LED lamp both provides a light source and assists positioning. The coupling efficiency of the POF liquid leakage sensor varies with the depth and angle of the VDCS. Experimental results show that the coupling efficiency of the POF leakage sensor is high when the VDCS depth is 0.5 mm and the inclination angle is 60°. Compared to an existing leakage sensor with a hole-shape defect coupling structure (HDCS), the VDCS has a faster response time and higher reversibility. The average reliability of the liquid leakage sensor is increased to 5.92 μW/mL. This research provides a powerful structural reference for POF side-coupling leak measurement and can also be applied to the fields of gas and humidity sensing.
WiFi-based indoor localization techniques are critical for location-based services. Among them, fingerprint-based method gains considerable interest due to its high accuracy and low equipment ...requirement. One of the major challenges faced by fingerprint-based position system is that in some places there are not enough access points (AP) to provide features for accurate location. To address that, we propose a novel fingerprint-based system using only a single AP. We propose a novel phase decomposition method to obtain the phase of multipath provided by a AP and use the decomposed phase as a fingerprint after the feature exaction by principal component analysis (PCA). Performance in the laboratory, meeting room, and corridor is investigated, and our system is also compared with a RSSI-based and a CSI-based fingerprint localization system. As the experimental results suggest, the minimum mean distance error is 0.6 m in the laboratory, 0.45 m in the meeting room, and 1.08 m in the corridor, outperforming the other two systems.
Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a promising technique to support the emerging delay-sensitive and compute-intensive applications for user equipment (UE) by means of computation offloading. However, ...designing a computation offloading algorithm for the MEC network to meet the restrictive requirements towards system latency and energy consumption remains challenging. In this paper, we propose a joint user-association, task-partition, and resource-allocation (JUTAR) algorithm to solve the computation offloading problem. In particular, we first build an optimization function for the computation offloading problem. Then, we utilize the user association and smooth approximation to simplify the objective function. Finally, we employ the particle swarm algorithm (PSA) to find the optimal solution. The proposed JUTAR algorithm achieves a better system performance compared with the state-of-the-art (SOA) computation offloading algorithm due to the joint optimization of the user association, task partition, and resource allocation for computation offloading. Numerical results show that, compared with the SOA algorithm, the proposed JUTAR achieves about 21% system performance gain in the MEC network with 100 pieces of UE.
With the more and more amelioration of our quality of life, our needs for clothing have altered from having clothes to wearing good-looking, among which the wrinkle resistance of clothing fabric owns ...a giant effect on the beauty of clothing. Nowadays, artificial subjective evaluation is mainly used to evaluate the wrinkle grade of garment fabrics in the textile industry. This evaluation method owns the shortcoming of poor accuracy, being time-consuming and poor objectivity. For solving this problem, it is very important to put forward an objective evaluation model of fabric wrinkle grade. In this paper, we proposed a fabric wrinkle objective evaluation model with the optimized random vector functional link. The model applies DarkNet19 deep neural network to abstract the high-order visual features of the wrinkled surface image of the fabric, uses the improved artificial hummingbird optimization algorithm to ameliorate the import bias and weight of the random vector function link's hidden layer, and uses
$$ {{\rm{L}}_{2,1}}$$
L
2
,
1
norm regularization computes output weights for random vector function links. The relative tests reveal that the objective evaluation model of fabric wrinkles put forward in this paper has excellent performance.
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