Association Between VDR Polymorphisms and Breast Cancer: An Updated and Comparative Meta-analysis of Crude and Adjusted Odd Ratios

Huang, Qian-Qian,Liao, Yu-Yi,Ye, Xiao-Hua,Fu, Jin-Jian,Chen, Si-Dong Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.2

There is a lot of debate on the relationship between vitamin D receptor polymorphisms and risk of breast cancer. Herein, we quantitatively analyzed the published case-control studies on this relationship by meta-analysis, performing a bibliographic search from Pubmed and CNKI up to July 31, 2013. The included case-control studies for Fok1, Bsm1, Taq1, Apa1, Cdx2 and Poly-A were 16, 19, 20, 10, 4, 6, respectively. Crude and adjusted odd ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated to present and compare the strength of any associations. The results of combined analyses indicated that Fok1, Bsm1, Apa1, Cdx2 and Poly-A were not significantly associated with the risk of breast cancer. In contrast, the tt genotype of Taq1 was a modest risk factor for breast cancer development (tt vs. TT: OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.01-1.44). To further confirm the above results, adjusted effects for the six polymorphisms were pooled based on adjusted ORs reported in the original studies. Adjusted ORs of Fok1, Apa1, Cdx2 and Poly-A were similar to the crude ORs. However, Bsm1 and Taq1 showed inconsistent results. For Bsm1, OR for BB vs. bb was 0.85, 95% CI: 0.74-0.98; for Taq1, OR for tt vs. TT was 1.03, 95% CI: 0.92-1.15, and not associated with risk. Subgroup analyses for crude ORs showed some association between Bsm1, Taq1 and breast cancer in Caucasians only, but for adjusted ORs, no associations were found. This meta-analysis suggests that the roles that Fok1, Apa1, Cdx2 and Poly-A polymorphisms play in breast cancer risk are negligible, with Bsm1 and Taq1 as possible exceptions. To be conservative, we still assumed that they may play a modest role in determining breast cancer risk. Further studies are needed to validate our findings.

CLOSE-IN STELLAR COMPANIONS IN CLOSE BINARY STARS

LIAO, FIRST M. WENPING,QIAN, SHENGBANG,ZHU, LIYING,LIU, LIANG The Korean Astronomical Society 2015 天文學論叢 Vol.30 No.2

Close binary stars are so close that one component has an effect on the evolution of the other. But how do they form and evolve? This is an unsolved problem. One speculation is that the binary is a part of a hierarchical triple and its orbit shrinks due to interaction with the third component. Therefore, searching for and investigating tertiary components, especially close-in ones, in close binary stars are important for understanding their origin, as well as to test theories of star formation and stellar dynamical interaction.

MAGNETIC CVs AS A BRIGHT REPRESENTATIVE OF CLOSE BINARIES

QIAN, S.-B.,HAN, Z.-T.,ZHU, L.-Y.,LIAO, W.-P.,LAJUS, E. FERNANDEZ,ZEJDA, M.,LIU, L.,SOONTHORNTHUM, B.,ZHOU, X. The Korean Astronomical Society 2015 天文學論叢 Vol.30 No.2

Due to the lack of an accretion disk in a polar (magnetic cataclysmic variable, MCV), the material transferred from the secondary is directly accreted onto the white dwarf, forming an accretion stream and a hot spot on the white-dwarf component. During the eclipses, different light components can be isolated. Therefore, the monitoring of eclipsing polars could provide valuable information on several modern astrophysical problems, e.g., CVs as planetary hosting stars, mass transfer and mass accretion in CVs, and the magnetic activity of the most rapidly rotating cool dwarfs. In the past five years, we have monitored about 10 eclipsing polars (e.g., DP Leo and HU Aqr) using several 2-m class telescopes and about 100 eclipse profiles were obtained. In this paper, we will introduce the progress of our research group at YNOs. The first direct evidence of variable mass transfer in a CV is obtained and we show that it is the dark-spot activity that causes the mass transfer in CVs. Magnetic activity cycles of the cool secondary were detected and we show that the variable mass transfer is not caused by magnetic activity cycles. These results will shed light on the structure and evolution of close binary stars (e.g., CVs and Algols).

High-temperature steam oxidation behaviors of a ZrO₂/CrAlSi composite coating on Zr-2 alloy deposited by PEO duplex FCVA treatments

Qian Zhou,Yizhao Liao,Hui Li,Hu Chen,Chi Xu,Xiaoyue Jin,Wenbin Xue 한국표면공학회 2023 한국표면공학회 학술발표회 초록집 Vol.2023 No.11-1

ASESDP : An Efficient Service Discovery Protocol in Pervasive Computing Environments

Ma, Qianli,Liao, Minghong,Jiang, Shouxu,Hong, Wan-Pyo,Gao, Zhenguo The Korea Institute of Information and Commucation 2008 Journal of information and communication convergen Vol.6 No.4

Service discovery is the technology of finding needed services in networks, and a key point in pervasive computing environments. This paper presents a novel service discovery protocol: ASESDP(AIP and SRR Enhanced Service Discovery Protocol). In ASESDP, tow schemes are proposed to enhance its performance: AIP(Advertisement Information Piggybacked) and SRR(Shortest Reply Route). In AIP, parts of advertisement information are piggybacked in the service reply packet, which makes the advertisement information propagating along the reply path, and spreads its transmission area. In SRR, in order to reduce the service response time, the shortest reply route is chosen to forward the service reply packet to the source node sending the service request. With the theoretical analysis and Glomosim simulation results, it is verified that ASESDP can reduce the number of service request packets, save the response time, and improve the efficiency of service discovery.

Laser decontamination for radioactive contaminated metal surface: A review

Wang Qian,Wang Feisen,Cai Chuang,Chen Hui,Ji Fei,Yong Chen,Liao Dasong 한국원자력학회 2023 Nuclear Engineering and Technology Vol.55 No.1

With the improvement of laser technology, the strategic needs of efficient and precise decontamination of various components in nuclear application units can be fulfilled by laser decontamination. The surface contaminants of nuclear facilities mainly exist both as loose contaminated layer and fixed oxide layer. The types of radionuclides and contamination layer thickness are closely related to the operation status of nuclear facilities, which have an important influence on the laser decontamination process. This study reviewed the mechanism of laser surface treatment and the influence of laser process parameters on the decontamination thickness, decontamination factor, decontamination efficiency and the distribution of aerosol particle. Although multiple studies have been performed on the mechanism of laser processing and laser decontamination process, there are few studies on the microscopic process mechanism of laser decontamination and the influence of laser decontamination on surface properties. In particular, the interaction between laser and radioactive contaminants needs more research in the future.

Differential Diagnosis of Axillary Inflammatory and Metastatic Lymph Nodes in Rabbit Models by Using Diffusion-Weighted Imaging: Compared with Conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Junping Wang,Qian Liao,Yunting Zhang,Chunshui Yu,Renju Bai,Haoran Sun 대한영상의학회 2012 Korean Journal of Radiology Vol.13 No.4

Objective: This experiment aims to determine the diagnostic value of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the differentiation of axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes in rabbit models in comparison with conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Materials and Methods: Conventional MRI and DWI were performed at 4 weeks after successful inoculation into the forty female New Zealand white rabbits’ mammary glands. The size-based and signal-intensity-based criteria and the relative apparent diffusion coefficient (rADC) value were compared between the axillary inflammatory lymph nodes and metastatic lymph nodes, with histopathological findings as the reference standard. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the aforementioned criteria and rADC value in differentiating the axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes. Results: Thirty-two axillary inflammatory lymph nodes and 46 metastatic ones were successfully isolated and taken into pathological analysis. The differences of the aforementioned criteria between the two groups were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). However, the rADC value of the inflammatory lymph nodes (0.9 ± 0.14) was higher than that of metastatic ones (0.7 ± 0.18), with significant difference (p = 0.016). When the rADC value was chosen as 0.80, the area under the ROC curve is greater than all other criteria, and the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for differentiating two groups were 86.2%, 79.3%, 81.2%, 84.2%, and 85.6%, respectively. Conclusion: Diffusion-weighted imaging is a promising new technique for differentiating axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes. Compared with routine magnetic resonance sequences, DWI could provide more useful physiological and functional information for diagnosis. Objective: This experiment aims to determine the diagnostic value of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the differentiation of axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes in rabbit models in comparison with conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Materials and Methods: Conventional MRI and DWI were performed at 4 weeks after successful inoculation into the forty female New Zealand white rabbits’ mammary glands. The size-based and signal-intensity-based criteria and the relative apparent diffusion coefficient (rADC) value were compared between the axillary inflammatory lymph nodes and metastatic lymph nodes, with histopathological findings as the reference standard. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the aforementioned criteria and rADC value in differentiating the axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes. Results: Thirty-two axillary inflammatory lymph nodes and 46 metastatic ones were successfully isolated and taken into pathological analysis. The differences of the aforementioned criteria between the two groups were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). However, the rADC value of the inflammatory lymph nodes (0.9 ± 0.14) was higher than that of metastatic ones (0.7 ± 0.18), with significant difference (p = 0.016). When the rADC value was chosen as 0.80, the area under the ROC curve is greater than all other criteria, and the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for differentiating two groups were 86.2%, 79.3%, 81.2%, 84.2%, and 85.6%, respectively. Conclusion: Diffusion-weighted imaging is a promising new technique for differentiating axillary inflammatory lymph nodes from metastatic lymph nodes. Compared with routine magnetic resonance sequences, DWI could provide more useful physiological and functional information for diagnosis.

CAttNet: A Compound Attention Network for Depth Estimation of Light Field Images

Dingkang Hua,Qian Zhang,Wan Liao,Bin Wang,Tao Yan 한국정보처리학회 2023 Journal of information processing systems Vol.19 No.4

Depth estimation is one of the most complicated and difficult problems to deal with in the light field. In thispaper, a compound attention convolutional neural network (CAttNet) is proposed to extract depth maps fromlight field images. To make more effective use of the sub-aperture images (SAIs) of light field and reduce theredundancy in SAIs, we use a compound attention mechanism to weigh the channel and space of the featuremap after extracting the primary features, so it can more efficiently select the required view and the importantarea within the view. We modified various layers of feature extraction to make it more efficient and useful toextract features without adding parameters. By exploring the characteristics of light field, we increased thenetwork depth and optimized the network structure to reduce the adverse impact of this change. CAttNet canefficiently utilize different SAIs correlations and features to generate a high-quality light field depth map. Theexperimental results show that CAttNet has advantages in both accuracy and time.

Vibration Suppression Analysis of a Long-Span Bridge Subjected to Combined Service and Extreme Loads

Xinfeng Yin,Wanli Yan,Qian Liao,Xiang Chen,Yang Liu 한국강구조학회 2023 International Journal of Steel Structures Vol.23 No.5

The long-span bridge structures are loaded by service loads including traffic and/or wind loads almost every day. The earthquake load may occur on the bridges simultaneously except for these two common service loads. The vibration response of long-span bridges under earthquake and service loads usually exceeds the expected values. Therefore, the suppressed system should be extensively studied to control the vibration of the bridges. In the work, a pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) system was designed, which can be effectively used for the dissipation of impact energy. It is mainly made up of a tuned mass and an additional limit device. Based on the earthquake/wind/traffic/bridge coupled system, the numerical simulation of multiple PTMDs (MPTMDs) was carried out. Different parameters of MPTMDs were studied including different numbers, mass ratio, pounding stiffness, and the gap values. The simulations show that the MPTMDs are very effective in suppressing the displacements of the bridge caused by both the traffic flows/wind and traffic/earthquake, and the suppressing effectiveness for bridge vibration under traffic and earthquake is more than that under traffic and wind.

Stability Analysis of Grid-connected Inverter System Containing Virtual Synchronous Generator under Time Delay and Parameter Uncertainty

Le Jian,Zhao Liangang,Liao Xiaobing,Zhou Qian,Liang Hongke 대한전기학회 2021 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.16 No.4

Virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control is an eff ective way to increase the equivalent inertia of grid connected inverter system and improve the stability of the power grid. However, the infl uence of this control on the stability of the whole system with time delay and parameter uncertainty should be researched further. In this paper, the state space model of the whole grid connected inverter system adopting VSG under control time-delay and parameter uncertainty is established. The Lyapunov functional with time-delay is constructed by employing time-delay dependent free weight matrix transformation. Furthermore, Lyapunov stability theorem is used to obtain the more conservative time-delay stability conditions with and without parameter uncertainty, linear matrix inequality is used to calculate the time-delay stability margin of the system under uncertainty, and the infl uence of the parameters of VSG control on the delay stability margin is analyzed. The validity of the proposed stability analysis and stability margin solution method are verifi ed by simulation examples.