Frequent Drop Research Articles

Prototipe Aplikasi Komunikasi Menggunakan Jaringan Delay Tolerant Network Pada Perangkat Seluler Android

In the current global context, the exchange of information through Internet networks has become increasingly vital, necessitating the effectiveness of communication technology. This is particularly true in areas with weak or unstable signal coverage such as intermittent areas. To address challenges such as frequent connection drops in these areas, Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) architecture is offered as an alternative solution to overcome these problems. The conducted research aims to design and test a data communication application prototype using DTN architecture implemented on the Android operating system. The approach taken involves using the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) method. In detail, the application is implemented on the Android operating system and integrates various routing protocols such as Epidemic, Spray and Wait, MaxProp, and ProphetV2 to optimize data transmission and reception under varying network conditions. Data collection techniques include measuring latency and data transfer speed in predetermined testing scenarios, while data analysis techniques involve evaluating the measurement results to determine the effectiveness of the routing protocols used. Evaluation is conducted and the results showing an average latency between 800-1400ms and speeds of 100-400kbps, depending on the distance and varying network conditions. This study validates the effectiveness of DTN in maintaining consistent communication in challenging network environments. The impact of this research on the advancement of informatics is to pave the way for further development and adaptation of DTN technology in various mobile applications and data networks.

Association of Head Injury, Neck Injury or Acoustic Trauma on Phenotype of Ménière's Disease.

The aim of the present study was to investigate adverse effects of head injury, neck trauma, and chronic noise exposure on the complaint profile in people with Ménière's disease (MD). The study used a retrospective design. Register data of 912 patients with MD from the Finnish Ménière Federation database were studied. The data comprised case histories of traumatic brain injury (TBI), neck trauma and occupational noise exposure, MD specific complaints, impact related questions, and the E-Qol health-related quality of life instrument. TBI was classified based on mild, moderate, and severe categories of transient loss of consciousness (TLoC). The mean age of the participants was 60.2 years, the mean duration of the disease was 12.6 years, and 78.7% were females. Logistic regression analysis, linear correlation, and pairwise comparisons were used in evaluating the associations. 19.2% of the participants with MD had a history of TBI. The phenotype of participants with TBI was associated with frequent vestibular drop attacks (VDA), presyncope, headache-associated vertigo, and a reduction in the E-QoL. Logistic regression analysis explained the variability of mild TBI in 6.8%. A history of neck trauma was present in 10.8% of the participants. Neck trauma associated with vertigo (NTwV) was seen in 47 and not associated with vertigo in 52 participants. The phenotype of NTwV was associated with balance problems, VDA, physical strain-induced vertigo, and hyperacusia. Logistic regression analysis explained 8.7% of the variability of the complaint profile. Occupational noise exposure was recorded in 25.4% of the participants and correlated with the greater impact of tinnitus, hyperacusis, and hearing loss. Neither the frequency, duration, or severity of vertigo or nausea were significantly different between the baseline group and the TBI, NTwV, or noise-exposure groups. The results indicate that TBI and NTwV are common among MD patients and may cause a confounder effect.

Palatalized/affricated plosives in Paris French. A sociophonetic production-perception study of a dynamic working-class and/or language contact phenomenon among middle-class speakers

A long tradition of attracting work forces to Paris from outside countries has produced a high proportion of inhabitants using other languages than French (Gadet 2008). Geographically, most of the immigrants and their descendants are housed in cheap residential areas in the northern and eastern parts of the capital and its surrounding suburbs - zones that were historically the home of working-class Parisians. Recently, sociolinguists have observed that a specific way of speaking French in these areas has emerged (Fagyal 2010; Gadet 2017), and might be spreading. There is agreement that part of the lexical phenomena in this “multiethnolectal French” is due to language contact between French and the immigrant languages, but as for phonetic features, diverging claims exist. Are the palatalized and affricated plosives (qui [kji]), voiture [vwatʃyr]), the strongly articulated /r/’s, and the frequent drops of phonetic material an effect of contact with Arabic or are they features of working-class Parisian French that have been boosted through an identity-based process of reallocation? Regardless of the answer to this complex question, we seek here to grasp the potential of the palatalized/affricated plosives to spread socially upwards to non-multicultural, middle-class speakers outside the area in question. On the basis of our recordings with upper- and lower-middle-class Parisians (Hansen ms.) and of the attitudinal data we have gathered from a listening experiment among 235 predominantly middle-class French speakers (Hansen 2015, Hansen ms.), we conclude that the phenomenon in question does show signs of active adoption and social spread upwards, while being intriguingly little salient for our participants according to the perception results, as compared to other phonetic phenomena. Only when occurring with other features (in casu strongly articulated /r/’s, with which it shares the ambiguity of being both a popular French and a possible French-Arabic language contact feature), a few listeners comment overtly on its presence and associate its users to Maghreb and/or poor suburban descent.

Administration strategy of energy management in smart grid: system view and optimization path

Power generation and transmission infrastructure is vulnerable to the interaction of various Distributed Generations (DG), which leads to the imbalance of power system operation, frequent voltage drops or spikes, and even power outages. This phenomenon not only wastes energy, but also affects grid security. The main reason is a delayed feedback of circuit failure and load changes, and the optimization of energy management system and path is an effective way to solve the above problems. In this paper, a method of multi-objective optimization based on ANFIS algorithm is proposed which can help to improve the demand response, energy storage and management of smart power grid, reduce the volatility of DGs, reducing electricity costs and improving energy efficiency. Firstly, based on the ANFIS algorithm, the distributed power generation control mode, inverter control, real-time electricity price calculation method, energy transfer and storage scheme are improved, and the optimization path of the energy management system is defined. Secondly, the advantages of ANFIS algorithm in response speed and running stability are verified by comparing with other algorithms. Finally, a distributed energy microgrid is constructed for simulation verification. The results show that :(1) ANFIS optimization algorithm has good adaptability in smart grid, and has advantages in large amount of data processing and information transmission; (2) The verification model based on ANFIS has strong elasticity and efficient response speed. The research results will help solve various problems in the smart grid, including establishing a clear energy management system path, maintaining the stable operation of the power system, providing users with more reasonable power plans and the lowest cost of electricity.

Role of intracameral Caspofungin in the management of Aspergillus keratitis: A case report

Abstract A 48-year-old male patient with a history of fall of dust in his right eye while driving came for a second opinion. On examination, he had a dry-looking ulcer with feathery margins and a hypopyon, suggestive of fungal keratitis. Scraping showed septate fungal filaments. Aspergillus niger grew in culture, and the patient was asked to use frequent natamycin eye drops. However, the hypopyon continued to increase, so ketoconazole tablets were added. Intracameral injection of Amphotericin B was advised, but in view of a severe shortage of the drug in the region, injection of Caspofungin (CAS) was given intracamerally with patient consent. With a combination of oral, topical, and intracameral antifungal medication, the ulcer slowly resolved over a period of 1 month, leaving behind a nebulomacular corneal scar in a quiet eye. Intracameral CAS may provide a safe and effective alternative to voriconazole and amphotericin B in the setting of Aspergillus keratitis.

Влияние пола пациентов на изменения глазной поверхности после синустрабекулэктомии

Background: the effect of gender on the rate and course of ocular surface diseases (in particular, conjunctival and corneal xerosis) is fairly well known. Meanwhile, gender-dependent changes in the ocular surface after trabeculectomy have not yet been studied. Aim: to analyze the effect of gender on changes in the ocular surface after trabeculectomy. Patients and Methods: this study enrolled 443 patients (168 men and 275 women) who underwent surgical interventions for uncontrolled primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) in 2016–2020 and were followed up for 6–24 months. Trabeculectomy was performed as the first IOP- lowering procedure in 418 patients (150 men and 268 women) and reoperation in 25 patients (18 men and 7 women). Changes in subjective symptoms (OSDI) and clinical and functional signs of dry eye syndrome (tear film break-up time/TBUT and total tear production by Schirmer's I test) characterizing the ocular surface in various surgical outcomes (complete and partial success, failure) in men and women were analyzed. Results: women have more severe subjective symptoms but not functional signs of dry eye preoperatively. They are characterized by strict adherence to treatment (manifested in lower initial IOP compared with men) but more frequent eye drop instillations and greater cumulative preservative load on the ocular surface. Gender is not an independent risk factor for surgical failure. Successful trabeculectomy results in a significant reduction in the severity of conjunctival and corneal xerosis symptoms (OSDI) for at least 2 years in both genders. Despite clear postoperative improvement, women are significantly inferior to men in this parameter at all study control points. TBUT in both men and women increases significantly during the first 6 months postoperatively, and over the next 1.5 years TBUT stabilizes at the achieved level. An increase in Schirmer's I test results in men becomes significant only at the end of the second year of follow-up. In women, a significant increase in total tear production is reported as early as 6 months after trabeculectomy and changes slightly over the next 1.5 years. Restarting IOP-lowering medications in partial success and failure of trabeculectomy eliminates the improvement of ocular surface condition achieved during the drug-free period as early as after 6 months. Conclusions: regardless of gender, successful trabeculectomy results in a significant and long-term (at least 2 years) improvement of subjective symptoms (OSDI) and functional signs (in particular, TBUT) of conjunctival and corneal xerosis. Women are characterized by a clearer improvement in the parameters studied than men. Significant gender differences are found only when comparing subjective symptoms in the first year after surgery. Restarting IOP-lowering medications postoperatively brings the parameters back to baseline levels. KEYWORDS: gender, glaucoma, trabeculectomy, ocular surface, dry eye disease, OSDI, tear film break-up time, TBUT, Norn's test, Schirmer's I test. FOR CITATION: Antonova A.V., Nikolaenko V.P., Brzheskiy V.V., Vuks A.Ja. Effect of gender on the ocular surface after trabeculectomy. Russian Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology. 2023;23(3):136–145 (in Russ.). DOI: 10.32364/2311-7729-2023-23-3-5.

Packet transport for maritime communications: A streaming coded UDP approach

The maritime communication network (MCN) plays an important role in the 6th generation (6G) system development. In MCNs, packet transport over long-distance lossy links will be ubiquitous. Transmission control protocol (TCP), the dominant transport protocol in the past decades, have had performance issues in such links. In this paper, we propose a novel transport approach which uses user datagram protocol (UDP) along with a simple yet effective bandwidth estimator for congestion control, and with a proactive packet-level forward erasure correction (FEC) code called streaming code to provide low-delay loss recovery without data retransmissions at all. We show that the approach can effectively address two issues of the state-of-the-art TCP variants in the long-distance lossy links, namely 1) the low bandwidth utilization caused by the slow increase of the congestion window (CWND) due to long round-trip time (RTT) and the frequent CWND drop due to random and congestion losses, and 2) the high end-to-end in-order delivery delay when re-transmissions are incurred to recover lost packets. In addition, we show that the scheme's goodput has good smoothness and short-term intra-protocol fairness properties, which are beneficial for multimedia streaming and interactive applications that are prominent parts of today's wireless traffic.

Learning-Oriented QoS- and Drop-Aware Task Scheduling for Mixed-Criticality Systems

In Mixed-Criticality (MC) systems, multiple functions with different levels of criticality are integrated into a common platform in order to meet the intended space, cost, and timing requirements in all criticality levels. To guarantee the correct, and on-time execution of higher criticality tasks in emergency modes, various design-time scheduling policies have been recently presented. These techniques are mostly pessimistic, as the occurrence of worst-case scenario at run-time is a rare event. Nevertheless, they lead to an under-utilized system due to frequent drops of Low-Criticality (LC) tasks, and creation of unused slack times due to the quick execution of high-criticality tasks. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel optimistic scheme, that introduces a learning-based drop-aware task scheduling mechanism, which carefully monitors the alterations in the behaviour of the MC system at run-time, to exploit the generated dynamic slacks for reducing the LC tasks penalty and preventing frequent drops of LC tasks in the future. Based on an extensive set of experiments, our observations have shown that the proposed approach exploits accumulated dynamic slack generated at run-time, by 9.84% more on average compared to existing works, and is able to reduce the deadline miss rate by up to 51.78%, and 33.27% on average, compared to state-of-the-art works.

Do environmental conditions determine whether salt driven decay leads to powdering or flaking in historic Reigate Stone masonry at the Tower of London?

In order to evaluate the potential for using environmental controls as a preventive conservation strategy for Reigate Stone masonry, this paper tests the hypothesis that powdering and flaking decay patterns are a direct consequence of climatic variables. Samples of masonry affected by each decay pattern are analysed for soluble salt content using ion chromatography. The results are used to build thermodynamic models in ECOS Runsalt. These identify NaCl and NaNO3 crystallisation in both environments, with NaCl dominating in powdering masonry and NaNO3 dominating in flaking masonry. Freshly quarried samples of Reigate Stone with a range of physical characteristics are contaminated with a mixture of these salts. Replicates of each sample are subjected to two distinct accelerated ageing regimes. These regimes are based on environmental monitoring and designed to reproduce the observed decay pathways. One set is subject to partial immersion and relatively stable, high RH, to stimulate a zone of NaCl crystallisation near the surface. The replicate set is subject to occasional wetting and frequent drops in RH, to stimulate NaNO3 crystallisation within the fabric of the stone. The results provide some indication that the intended decay mechanisms were achieved, supporting the hypothesis; however, physical variation in the stone was a far greater control on the rate of decay and the emergence of distinctive decay phenomena. This extended to both the mineralogical composition of the stone and to pre-existing decay features, such as crusts and cracks. The implication of these results is that the emergence of decay patterns in Reigate Stone cannot be explained solely by environmental mechanisms; baseline mineralogy and historical contingency can play a crucial role. Whilst environmental controls may provide a conservation strategy in some cases, it is likely that detailed assessment of the case specifics will be necessary.

Electronically Monitored Corticosteroid Eye Drop Adherence after Trabeculectomy Compared to Surgical Success

To compare electronically measured adherence with topical corticosteroid (CS) drops with outcomes of glaucoma surgery. This prospective cohort study included eyes undergoing surgery from August 2019 to January 2021 and followed for up to 1 year. All patients were recruited from the Glaucoma Center of Excellence at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins. Eligible patients had primary open-angle or angle-closure glaucoma, were aged ≥18 years, and underwent trabeculectomy (with or without cataract surgery) or tube-shunt implantation. Patients were instructed on the use of an eye drop monitoring device (Kali Drop), with the knowledge that it would be used to record postoperative CS instillation in real time. Adherence to a regimen of CS eye drops during the first 5 postoperative weeks; achievement of target intraocular pressure (IOP) at 6 weeks and 6 months to 1 year after surgery; and bleb morphology at 1 year. Among 90 patients, adherence was 89.7% ± 13.7% overall and 80.9% ± 15.8% during dosing every 2 hours. Target IOP was achieved at the final visit (6 months or 1 year) in 81% (59/73) without reoperation. Eyes with a higher ratio of drops taken versus prescribed were significantly more likely to achieve target IOP at 6 months/1 year (P= 0.05). Total adherence was better in younger persons, eyes with less field loss, and patients of one particular surgeon (P < 0.03). Percent adherence during dosing every 2 hours was higher in eyes with higher target IOP (P= 0.01). No adherence outcome was significantly related to race, sex, bleb morphology, postoperative pain, or postoperative anterior chamber inflammation. Adherence values did not significantly correlate with adherence questionnaire data (predicted mean= 78% ± 17%, actual mean= 91% ± 13% adherent, P < 0.001). Adherence to frequent postoperative eye drops was high and can be successfully monitored remotely. Surgical success was greater among eyes with nearly ideal adherence and was poorer in older persons and those with more advanced glaucoma.

Endoscopic Total Corpus Callosotomy and Pan Commissurotomy for Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome.

Corpus callosotomy (CC) is a major disconnection procedure that functionally isolates the cerebral hemispheres, thereby interrupting the spread of epileptic activity from one hemisphere to the other. It is extremely useful in children suffering from non-localized drug refractory epilepsy, especially drop attacks. The technique has evolved from microscopic to minimally invasive endoscopic surgery. The extent of callosotomy also varies based on the institutional practices ranging from anterior 1/3rd to total corpus callosotomies (TCC). The performance of TCC in conjunction with anterior, posterior, and hippocampal commissurotomies was described for the first time by the senior author from our institution. To describe the technique of performing endoscopic total corpus callosotomy, and pan commissurotomy using the interhemispheric corridor. A seven-year-old right-handed male child with seizure onset at the age of six months presented with three types of semiologies consisting of myoclonic jerks, frequent head drops and tonic posturing involving right upper and lower limbs with secondary generalization. Video electroencephalography (VEEG) revealed diffuse slowing of the background, and slow spike and wave pattern. Generalized paroxysmal fast activity (GPFA) was noted in the VEEG, suggestive of LGS. MRI brain revealed bilateral parieto-occipital gliosis and gross brain atrophy. Ictal SPECT localized to left temporo-occipital area, while magnetoencephalography revealed bilateral temporal localization. Patient underwent TCC with pancommissurotomy. The patient was seizure-free (ILAE Class 3) at one-year follow up with no drop attacks, and significant reduction noted in other seizure types. Endoscopic corpus callosotomy and pan commissurotomy using the interhemispheric corridor is an elegant and minimally invasive technique best suited for appropriately selected children with refractory epilepsy.

Reducing traffic burstiness for MPTCP in data center networks

Modern industrial and data center networks adopt multipath TCP (MPTCP) to achieve low communication latency. To make full use of multiple paths, MPTCP divides one TCP connection into multiple subflows. Due to the connection-level ACK blocking, however, MPTCP suffers from the traffic burstiness, which leads to large queueing delay, frequent packet drops, and even TCP timeout. To mitigate the traffic burstiness caused by ACK blocking, we propose MPTCP-RB (Multipath TCP with Reduced Burstiness), which interleaves consecutive packets across multiple subflows, instead of assigning consecutive packets to individual subflows. MPTCP-RB is implemented as a loadable Linux kernel module, working on any traditional MPTCP-based schemes without any other modifications on existing network stacks. The testbed and NS2 experiments show that, MPTCP-RB reduces the average flow completion time by up to 91% compared with the state-of-the-art MPTCP-based schemes.

An ion-paired moxifloxacin nanosuspension eye drop provides improved prevention and treatment of ocular infection.

There are numerous barriers to achieving effective intraocular drug administration, including the mucus layer protecting the ocular surface. For this reason, antibiotic eye drops must be used multiple times per day to prevent and treat ocular infections. Frequent eye drop use is inconvenient for patients, and lack of adherence to prescribed dosing regimens limits treatment efficacy and contributes to antibiotic resistance. Here, we describe an ion‐pairing approach used to create an insoluble moxifloxacin–pamoate (MOX–PAM) complex for formulation into mucus‐penetrating nanosuspension eye drops (MOX–PAM NS). The MOX–PAM NS provided a significant increase in ocular drug absorption, as measured by the area under the curve in cornea tissue and aqueous humor, compared to Vigamox in healthy rats. Prophylactic and treatment efficacy were evaluated in a rat model of ocular Staphylococcus aureus infection. A single drop of MOX–PAM NS was more effective than Vigamox, and completely prevented infection. Once a day dosing with MOX–PAM NS was similar, if not more effective, than three times a day dosing with Vigamox for treating S. aureus infection. The MOX–PAM NS provided increased intraocular antibiotic absorption and improved prevention and treatment of ocular keratitis, and the formulation approach is highly translational and clinically relevant.

Effect of the price drop on customer's perceived evaluation across selected product categories

A price drop is a very common promotional tool used by brands and marketers to stimulate impulse buying as well as to improve stagnant sales. This study is primarily directed to study the effect of the price drop on the customer's perceived evaluation across selected product categories. For this study, the top three product categories based on the category wise sales data revealed by various online as well as offline shopping players during price drop sales have been selected, namely apparel, footwear, and electronics, as these product categories were most preferably shopped by customers and witnessed frequent price drop during festival seasons. For collecting data in National Capital Region (NCR), using purposive sampling 250 shoppers were surveyed who shopped for these product categories at Big Bazaar, Pantaloons, Spencer, Reliance trends, Amazon, Flipkart during discount days. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) has been run to identify the factors of customers’ perceived evaluation in case of a price drop. Further Multivariate Analysis Of Variance (MANOVA) has been used to check the effect of a price drop on identified perceived evaluation across selected product categories. This study explored that in case of price drop customers become concerned about the product quality, value, brand reputation, and innovativeness. Based on the mean value, the study found that customers were more concerned about perceived quality in case of price drop followed by perceived innovativeness, perceived value, and perceived brand reputation. The research further demonstrated that product categories were significantly related to perceived evaluators in case of a price drop.

Opt-ACM: An Optimized load balancing based Admission Control Mechanism for Software Defined Hybrid Wireless based IoT (SDHW-IoT) network

The wide network applications of Internet of Things (IoT) urge to integrate the different wireless networking technologies. However, the future generation technologies like Software Defined Networking (SDN) can be useful to alleviate the associated challenges such as security, installation issues, coverage, etc. The growing number of IoT users produce massive volume of traffic causing heavy network load conditions, resulting in the state of network congestion. The network congestion may cause severe performance degradation issues such as frequent packet drops, longer delays, low throughput, etc. Thus, a promising solution is needed to reduce and/or prevent the network congestion. This paper presents an Optimized load balancing based Admission Control Mechanism (Opt-ACM) for effective network flow management resulting in the reduced network congestion. In addition to this, the paper highlights the challenges of the existing solutions, and discusses a Software Defined Hybrid Wireless based IoT (SDHW-IoT) network architecture consisting of Software Defined Wireless Sensor Network (SDWSN) and Software Defined Wireless Mesh Network (SDWMN). To validate the efficiency of Opt-ACM, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) based optimization problem is formulated and tested using a well-known mathematical optimization solver called Gurobi. Additionally, Opt-ACM is also emulated in Mininet-Wifi with varying network scenarios against some traditional (OLSR and OSPF) and state-of-the-art (FACOR and EASDN) approaches. Opt-ACM achieves an overall efficiency of 9.47% and 12.32% over other approaches for Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and Packet Loss Ratio (PLR) respectively. Similarly, an average improved efficiency of 26.77% and 33.10% is achieved with respect to the Average Delay (AD) and Average Jitter (AJ) metrics respectively.

Analysis of Quality of Service in VANET

VANET as Inter-vehicle communication is becoming a promising area of research, standardization, and growth with the ever-growing number of vehicles equipped with computer technology and wireless communication tools. Due to its erratic portability and the interrupted availability of a network, VANET is relatively incomprehensible for a strong end to end communication, In Vehicular Network the main advantage is that it communicates by using nodes. Because of its simple and basic method of communication, MANET is used most often in the military, just like data sharing between different computers. VANET and some modifications are identical to MANET. VANET encompass the mobile nodes which are indicated as (MN), The vehicle networking system has drawn significant interest from academia and industry since its establishment. Its technology is used for military purposes by several foreign manufacturing and government sectors, it also enables a wide range of applications, including collision prevention, security, blind crossing, dynamic route planning, traffic condition monitoring on a real-time basis, etc but there are certain loopholes or drawbacks like frequent network drop, high mobility which affected the overall QoS, In this paper, there are brief analyses on Quality of Service which include certain Routing Protocol like DIVERT, FBAODV, DSR and also to decrease the congestion control, there is a comparative study of the different protocol which evaluates in increasing the throughput and network efficiency.

Postharvest Treatments and Shipping Conditions for Reducing Fruit Drop in Cut &lt;i&gt;Sarcandra glabra&lt;/i&gt; Branches

In Japan, cut Sarcandra glabra branches with fruit are used as a New Year’s decoration, but frequent fruit drop reduces ornamental value. This study investigated the effects of the harvest season, postharvest treatments, and shipping conditions on the fruit drop of branches, in order to propose a suitable postharvest handling method for the shipment of cut S. glabra branches. Ethylene treatments accelerated fruit drop, especially in cut branches on which the pericarp turned red early in the growing season. Silver thiosulfate complex (STS), an ethylene action inhibitor, was effective in reducing fruit drop regardless of ethylene treatments. However, treatment with 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), another ethylene action inhibitor, increased the cumulative percentage of dropped fruit after seven days with or without ethylene treatment. A synthetic auxin, 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), had an effect similar to that of STS, but NAA tended to accelerate leaf abscission. Treatments with 0.03 to 1.0 mM STS for three days at 10°C reduced fruit drop. Treatments with 0.03 to 0.1 mM STS for three days at 23°C also reduced fruit drop, but the cut ends of branches turned brown with more than 0.3 mM STS. For pretreatment with tap water, the cumulative percentage of dropped fruit after simulated shipment at 10°C increased earlier than at 2°C. Pretreatment with STS strongly suppressed fruit drop after simulated shipment at 2°C and 10°C. Sugar and antibacterial agents in the vase solution were also effective in reducing fruit drop. Finally, the cut branches of S. glabra were treated with 0.1 to 0.3 mM STS for three days in the grower’s stockroom, and then dry-transported by reefer container at 2°C for 11 days. As a result, the cumulative percentage of dropped fruit from the branches was very low for ten days in a quality test room.

Add-on cannabidiol significantly decreases seizures in 3 patients with SYNGAP1 developmental and epileptic encephalopathy.

Mutations in SYNGAP1 are associated with developmental delay, epilepsy, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Epilepsy is often drug‐resistant in this syndrome with frequent drop attacks. In a prospective study of add‐on cannabidiol (CBD), we identified three patients with SYNGAP1 mutations: two boys and one girl. Seizure onset was at 3.5, 8, and 18 months (M), respectively, with numerous atypical absences per day associated with eyelid myoclonia (2/3 patients), upper limb myoclonic jerks (2/3 patients), and drop attacks (all patients). Seizures were resistant to at least 5 antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). After CBD introduction, two patients were responders since M2 and achieve a seizure reduction of 90% and 80%, respectively, at M9 with disappearance of drop attacks. EEGs showed an improvement regarding background activity and interictal anomalies. The last patient showed a late response at M7 of treatment with an 80% decrease in seizure frequency. Caregiver in all three evaluated as much improved the status of their children. Treatment was well‐tolerated in all, and no major adverse events (AEs) were reported. CBD showed efficacy in patients with drug‐resistant epilepsy due to SYNGAP1 mutations. Other patients with rare genetic developmental and epileptic encephalopathies with drug‐resistant epilepsies might benefit from CBD.

Systematic review of corpus callosotomy utilizing MRI guided laser interstitial thermal therapy

Corpus callosotomy is a palliative surgical option for patients with refractory epilepsy and frequent drop attacks, decreasing seizure frequency and severity by disconnecting the cerebral hemispheres. Though often successful, open surgery is not without risk. Corpus callosotomy by MRI-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy (MRgLITT) is a minimally invasive alternative to the standard open procedure. This report aims to present an illustrative case and systematically review the current literature on the surgical technique. A systematic review of the English literature through January 2019 was performed. Articles were searched by title utilizing the following key word combinations: “laser” and “callosotomy”, “callosotomy” and “ablation”, “laser” and “corpus”, “callosotomy” and “thermal”, and “stereotactic” and callosotomy”. The articles recovered were then classified by level of evidence and summarized. Fifteen papers were reviewed, of which 6 met inclusion and exclusion criteria. All included studies were classified as level IV evidence. There was a total of 13 patients ranging from 13 months to 44 years old (mean 23.5 years old). The number of laser fibers utilized ranged from 1 to 3. Engel class I was achieved in 5 patients, II in 4, III in 2, IV in 1. Reported patient follow up was 4–39.7 months (mean 15.43). Corpus callosotomy utilizing MRI-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy results in improvement in seizure frequency and severity with minimal complications. Prospective trials are needed to compare its seizure control and long-term outcomes to that of standard open callosotomy.

WLAN Aware Cognitive Medium Access Control Protocol for IoT Applications

Internet of Things (IoT)-based devices consist of wireless sensor nodes that are battery-powered; thus, energy efficiency is a major issue. IEEE 802.15.4-compliant IoT devices operate in the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band of 2.4 GHz and are subject to interference caused by high-powered IEEE 802.11-compliant Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) users. This interference causes frequent packet drop and energy loss for IoT users. In this work, we propose a WLAN Aware Cognitive Medium Access Control (WAC-MAC) protocol for IoT users that uses techniques, such as energy detection based sensing, adaptive wake-up scheduling, and adaptive backoff, to reduce interference with the WSN and improve network lifetime of the IoT users. Results show that the proposed WAC-MAC achieves a higher packet reception rate and reduces the energy consumption of IoT nodes.