An Emergency Driving Intervention System Designed for Driver Disability Scenarios Based on Emergency Risk Field.

Driver disability has become an increasing factor leading to traffic accidents, especially for commercial vehicle drivers who endure high mental and physical pressure because of long periods of work. Once driver disability occurs, e.g., heart disease or heat stroke, the loss of driving control may lead to serious traffic incidents and public damage. This paper proposes a novel driving intervention system for autonomous danger avoidance under driver disability conditions, including a quantitative risk assessment module named the Emergency Safety Field (ESF) and a motion-planning module. The ESF considers three factors affecting hedging behavior: road boundaries, obstacles, and target position. In the field-based framework, each factor is modeled as an individual risk source generating repulsive or attractive force fields. Individual risk distributions are regionally weighted and merged into one unified emergency safety field denoting the level of danger to the ego vehicle. With risk evaluation, a path-velocity-coupled motion planning module was designed to generate a safe and smooth trajectory to pull the vehicle over. The results of our experiments show that the proposed algorithms have obvious advantages in success rate, efficiency, stability, and safety compared with the traditional method. Validation on multiple simulation and real-world platforms proves the feasibility and adaptivity of the module in traffic scenarios.

A six-long non-coding RNA signature predicts prognosis in melanoma patients.

The aim of this study was to identify long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) which may prove useful for risk-classifying patients with melanoma. For this purpose, based on a dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we selected and analyzed samples from melanoma stages I, II, III and IV, from which differentially expressed lncRNAs were identified. The lncRNAs were classified using two-way hierarchical clustering analysis and analysis of support vector machine (SVM), followed by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. The prognostic capacity of the signature was verified on an independent dataset. lncRNA-mRNA networks were built using signature lncRNAs and corresponding target genes. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis was conducted on the target genes. A total of 48 differentially expressed lncRNAs were identified, from which 6 signature lncRNAs (AL050303 and LINC00707, LINC01324, RP11-85G21, RP4-794I6.4 and RP5-855F16) were identified. Two-way hierarchical clustering analysis revealed that the accuracy of the six-lncRNA signature in risk-stratifying samples was 84.84%, and the accuracy of the SVM classifier was 85.9%. This predictive signature performed well on the validation dataset [accuracy, 86.76; area under the ROC curve (AUROC), 0.816]. A total of 720 target genes of the 6 lncRNAs were selected for the lncRNA-mRNA networks. These genes were significantly related to mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), the neurotrophin signaling pathway, focal adhesion pathways, and several immune and inflammation-related pathways. On the whole, we identified a six-lncRNA prognostic signature for risk-stratifying patients with melanoma. These lncRNAs may affect prognosis by regulating the MAPK pathway, immune and inflammation­related pathways, the neurotrophin signaling pathway and focal adhesion pathways.

A highly infectious chimeric adenovirus expressing basic fibroblast growth factor exerts potent targeted therapy for rabbit ear chronic ischemic wounds.

BACKGROUND: Poor angiogenesis and impaired proliferation of cells responsible for the repair of chronic ischemic wounds result in impaired wound healing. The continuous and efficient expression of therapeutic factors by means of gene transfection is an ideal adjuvant treatment method to promote cell proliferation and angiogenesis. METHODS: A chimeric recombinant adenoviral vector, Ad5F35ET1-bFGF, was constructed that carried the basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) gene and used the endothelin-1 promoter to control the targeted expression of bFGF in endothelial cells and fibroblasts. Thus, the authors established a targeted gene therapy for chronic ischemic wounds. RESULTS: The chimeric adenovirus Ad5F35ET1-bFGF efficiently infected the endothelin-1-positive endothelial cells and fibroblasts, specifically expressed bFGF, and promoted cell proliferation. In the rabbit wound healing model, the chimeric recombinant adenovirus expressed a high level of bFGF in wound tissues, which continuously promoted angiogenesis and cell proliferation and thus accelerated wound healing. CONCLUSION: Targeted gene therapy that uses bFGF as a therapeutic gene provides an effective candidate strategy for the treatment of chronic ischemic wounds.