Ideally, the throughput of a Multipath TCP (MPTCP) connection should be as high as that of multiple disjoint single-path TCP flows. In reality, the throughput of MPTCP is far lower than expected. In ...this paper, we conduct an extensive simulation-based study on this phenomenon, and the results indicate that a subflow experiencing high delay and loss severely affects the performance of other subflows, thus becoming the bottleneck of the MPTCP connection and significantly degrading the aggregate goodput. To tackle this problem, we propose Fountain code-based Multipath TCP (FMTCP), which effectively mitigates the negative impact of the heterogeneity of different paths. FMTCP takes advantage of the random nature of the fountain code to flexibly transmit encoded symbols from the same or different data blocks over different subflows. Moreover, we design a data allocation algorithm based on the expected packet arriving time and decoding demand to coordinate the transmissions of different subflows. Quantitative analyses are provided to show the benefit of FMTCP. We also evaluate the performance of FMTCP through ns-2 simulations and demonstrate that FMTCP outperforms IETF-MPTCP, a typical MPTCP approach, when the paths have diverse loss and delay in terms of higher total goodput, lower delay, and jitter. In addition, FMTCP achieves high stability under abrupt changes of path quality.
Heterogeneity in bladder cancer results in variable clinical outcomes, posing challenges for clinical management of this malignancy. Recent studies suggest both tumor suppressive and oncogenic role ...of PPARγ in bladder cancer. The fuction of PPARγ signaling pathway in modulating carcinogenesis is controversial.
The expression of PPARγ and association with overall survival were analyzed in patients from two cohorts. The effect of PPARγ activation on cell proliferation, cell cycle, and cell apoptosis were determined with the agonists (rosiglitazone and pioglitazone), the inverse agonist (T0070907), and the antagonist (GW9662) in Umuc-3 and 5637 bladder cancer cells. The correlation of PPARγ activation with PI3K-Akt pathway was evaluated with RNA sequencing data from the TCGA cases and 30 human bladder cancer cell lines. The effect of PPARγ activation on tumor growth was validated with subcutaneous tumor models in vivo. The effect of PPARγ activation on PI3K-Akt signaling transduction was determined with multiple assays including immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, proteomic array, and western blotting.
We showed that PPARγ was a favorable prognostic factor in patients with bladder cancer. PPARγ activation by rosiglitazone and pioglitazone markedly induced cell cycle G2 arrest and apoptosis in bladder cancer cells, which resulted in inhibition of cell proliferation in vitro and suppression of tumor growth in vivo. The underlying mechanism involved marked inhibition of PI3K-Akt pathway.
This study reported the tumor-suppressive effect of PPARγ agonists in bladder cancer, suggesting that transactivation of PPARγ could be served as a potential strategy for the chemoprevention and therapeutic treatment of bladder cancer.
Microalbuminuria and hyperuricemia management are crucial for the integrated management of hypertensive patients. This retrospective post hoc analysis aims to evaluate the optimal ...allisartan‐isoproxil‐based combination regimen for hypertensive patients with microalbuminuria or hyperuricemia. A total of 460 hypertensive patients with microalbuminuria and 486 hypertensive patients with hyperuricemia were included in this study. All patients were initially treated with allisartan‐isoproxil for 4 weeks. Thereafter, patients with blood pressure (BP) < 140/90 mmHg continued the monotherapy for 8 weeks; patients with BP ≥140/90 mmHg were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive allisartan‐isoproxil + amlodipine (Group A + C) or allisartan‐isoproxil + indapamide (Group A + D) for 8 weeks. The changes of BP, urinary albumin and serum uric acid (UA) were measured. In patients with microalbuminuria, the urinary albumin/creatinine ratio (UACR) significantly decreased by 10.4 mg/g in Group A + C (vs. baseline p = .0035) and 24.2 mg/g in Group A + D (vs baseline p < .0001), intergroup p = NS. In patients with hyperuricemia, serum UA level decreased by 44.5 µmol/L in Group A + C (vs. baseline p = .0003), but increased by 27.2 µmol/L in Group A + D (vs. baseline p = .0167), intergroup p < .0001. The results suggest that for hypertensive patients with microalbuminuria, angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) + calcium channel blocker (CCB) or ARB+ diuretic both are good choices based on their improvement of microalbuminuria and BP. But for patients with hyperuricemia, ARB + diuretic may further increase the level of UA.
Human-machine interface (HMI) is an emerging technology to exchange information between humans and electric devices. In current HMI devices, their crucial sensing components are mainly based on the ...interaction of physical movements and languages. However, these conventional HMI interacting methods are not friendly to some disabled persons owing to the difficulty to clearly express their intentions with gestures, limb motions, or languages. Additionally, these HMI sensing parts rely on traditional batteries, which require frequent charging or replacing. Here, we report a breath-driven single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) serving as a self-powered sensor to deliver control command through breathing for the HMI interaction. The TENG is on the basis of a flexible nanowire-structured polyethylene terephthalate (PET) polymer thin film, which can harvest mechanical energy of the airflow from human breathing and produce responsive electrical signals. By using this TENG as a self-powered sensor together with signal processing and transmitting circuits, a smart wireless breath-driven HMI system is further developed. Compared with the conventional HMI interacting methods, this smart system can convert real-time human breathing into command signals to control electrical appliances without relying on physical movements or languages. This work introduces a self-powered breath-based interacting method to the field of HMI technology. It could greatly reduce the threshold of using modern electrical equipment and personal electronics for disabled people, and make the HMI interaction become more convenient and captivating.
A breath-driven single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is successful developed, which serves as a self-powered sensor to deliver control command through breathing for the human-machine interface (HMI) interaction. A smart wireless breath-driven HMI system based on the TENG is applied to control electrical appliances. Display omitted
•We developed a breath-driven single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) serving as a self-powered sensor to provide control command from real-time human breathing for human-machine interface (HMI) interacting.•Compared with the conventional HMI interacting methods, the developed smart system can convert real-time human breathing into command signals to control electrical appliances without relying on physical movements or languages.•This work introduces an self-powered breath-based interacting method to the field of HMI technology, which could make the interaction between human and machines become more convenient and captivating.
In recent years, there have been several solutions to medical image segmentation, such as U-shaped structure, transformer-based network, and multi-scale feature learning method. However, their ...network parameters and real-time performance are often neglected and cannot segment boundary regions well. The main reason is that such networks have deep encoders, a large number of channels, and excessive attention to local information rather than global information, which is crucial to the accuracy of image segmentation. Therefore, we propose a novel multi-branch medical image segmentation network MBSNet. We first design two branches using a parallel residual mixer (PRM) module and dilate convolution block to capture the local and global information of the image. At the same time, a SE-Block and a new spatial attention module enhance the output features. Considering the different output features of the two branches, we adopt a cross-fusion method to effectively combine and complement the features between different layers. MBSNet was tested on five datasets ISIC2018, Kvasir, BUSI, COVID-19, and LGG. The combined results show that MBSNet is lighter, faster, and more accurate. Specifically, for a Formula: see text input, MBSNet's FLOPs is 10.68G, with an F1-Score of Formula: see text on the Kvasir test dataset, well above Formula: see text for UNet++ with FLOPs of 216.55G. We also use the multi-criteria decision making method TOPSIS based on F1-Score, IOU and Geometric-Mean (G-mean) for overall analysis. The proposed MBSNet model performs better than other competitive methods. Code is available at https://github.com/YuLionel/MBSNet .
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive form of breast cancer, presents severe threats to women’s health. Therefore, it is critical to find novel treatment approaches. Ferroptosis, ...a newly identified form of programmed cell death, is marked by the buildup of lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS) and high iron concentrations. According to previous studies, ferroptosis sensitivity can be controlled by a number of metabolic events in cells, such as amino acid metabolism, iron metabolism, and lipid metabolism. Given that TNBC tumors are rich in iron and lipids, inducing ferroptosis in these tumors is a potential approach for TNBC treatment. Notably, the metabolic adaptability of cancer cells allows them to coordinate an attack on one or more metabolic pathways to initiate ferroptosis, offering a novel perspective to improve the high drug resistance and clinical therapy of TNBC. However, a clear picture of ferroptosis in TNBC still needs to be completely revealed. In this review, we provide an overview of recent advancements regarding the connection between ferroptosis and amino acid, iron, and lipid metabolism in TNBC. We also discuss the probable significance of ferroptosis as an innovative target for chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, nanotherapy and natural product therapy in TNBC, highlighting its therapeutic potential and application prospects.
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•TNBC is more prone to ferroptosis than other subtypes of breast cancer.•Targeting metabolic alterations may modulate susceptibility to ferroptosis in TNBC.•Ferroptosis shows great potential in TNBC immunotherapy and nanotherapy.•The development of ferroptosis inducers from traditional herbs is a potential way.
The development of general catalytic methods for the regio- and stereoselective construction of phosphoryl derivatives from identical substrates remains a formidable challenge in organic synthesis. ...Enabled by the newly developed BDPP-type ligands, we disclosed a nickel-catalyzed allenylation of phosphine oxides rationally and predictably, allowing the construction of versatile chiral allenylphosphoryl derivatives with high enantiopurity (up to 94% e.e.). Alternatively, using an achiral phosphine ligand dcypbz under acidic conditions, we achieved a regiochemical switch of the 1,3-dienylation to afford functionalized phosphinoyl 1,3-butadienes (up to 93% yield). The salient features of this method include switchable reactivity, broad substrate scope, readily available feedstock, single-step preparation, and high asymmetric induction.
BACKGROUNDNocturnal blood pressure (BP) is correlated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events and is an important predictor of cardiovascular death in hypertensive patients.OBJECTIVENocturnal ...BP control is of great importance for cardiovascular risk reduction. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to explore the efficacy of angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) for nocturnal BP reduction in patients with mild to moderate hypertension.METHODSPICOS design structure was used to formulate the data extraction. All statistical calculations and analyses were performed with R.RESULTSSeventy-seven studies with 13,314 participants were included. The overall analysis indicated that nocturnal BP drop varied considerably among different ARBs. Allisartan (13.04 95% CI (-18.41, -7.68) mmHg), olmesartan (11.67 95% CI (-14.12, -9.21) mmHg), telmisartan (11.11 95% CI (-12.12, -10.11) mmHg) were associated with greater reduction in nocturnal systolic BP. In the aspect of the nocturnal-diurnal BP drop ratio, only allisartan was greater than 1. While, the variation tendency of last 4-6 h ambulatory BP was basically consistent with nocturnal BP. Additionally, allisartan showed improvement effect in the proportion of patients with dipping BP pattern.CONCLUSIONSThis study demonstrates that for patients with mild to moderate hypertension, allisartan, olmesartan and telmisartan have more advantages in nocturnal BP reduction among the ARBs, while allisartan can reduce nighttime BP more than daytime BP and improve the dipping pattern.
Taurine-upregulated gene 1 (TUG1) is a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) that has previously been linked to the development and progression of several cancer types. Its expression and mechanistic role in ...retinoblastoma (RB), however, remains to be established. Herein, we found that RB tissue samples exhibited TUG1 upregulation. RB cell lines similarly exhibited marked TUG1 upregulation. Real-time cellular analysis (RTCA) and colony formation assays were then used to gauge RB cell proliferation, while transwell assays were conducted to assess the metastatic and invasive potential of these cells. In these assays, TUG1 upregulation was found to promote RB cell proliferative, migratory, and invasive activity while inducing the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). Subsequent quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and Western blotting indicated that this lncRNA functions at least in part by influencing the expression of Notch signaling pathway genes, which were downregulated following TUG1 knockdown in RB cells. Together, these data suggested that TUG1 can promote RB cell malignancy via the Notch signaling and EMT pathways, contributing to negative patient outcomes.
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