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Human body communication (HBC), which uses the human body tissue as the transmission medium to transmit health informatics, serves as a promising physical layer solution for the body area network (BAN). The human centric nature of HBC offers an innovative method to transfer the healthcare data, whose transmission requires low interference and reliable data link. Therefore, the deployment of HBC system obtaining good communication performance is required. In this regard, a tutorial review on the important issues related to HBC data transmission such as signal propagation model, channel characteristics, communication performance, and experimental considerations is conducted. In this work, the development of HBC and its first attempts are firstly reviewed. Then a survey on the signal propagation models is introduced. Based on these models, the channel characteristics are summarized; the communication performance and selection of transmission parameters are also investigated. Moreover, the experimental issues, such as electrodes and grounding strategies, are also discussed. Finally, the recommended future studies are provided.

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is an important perennial forage, with high nutritional value, which is widely grown in the world. Because of low freezing tolerance, its distribution and production are threatened and limited by winter weather. To understand the complex regulation mechanisms of freezing tolerance in alfalfa, we performed transcriptome sequencing analysis under cold (4 °C) and freezing (-8 °C) stresses. More than 66 million reads were generated, and we identified 5767 transcripts differentially expressed in response to cold and/or freezing stresses. These results showed that these genes were mainly classified as response to stress, transcription regulation, hormone signaling pathway, antioxidant, nodule morphogenesis, etc., implying their important roles in response to cold and freezing stresses. Furthermore, nine CBF transcripts differentially expressed were homologous to CBF genes of Mt-FTQTL6 site, conferring freezing tolerance in M. truncatula, which indicated that a genetic mechanism controlling freezing tolerance was conservative between M. truncatula and M. sativa. In summary, this transcriptome dataset highlighted the gene regulation response to cold and/or freezing stresses in alfalfa, which provides a valuable resource for future identification and functional analysis of candidate genes in determining freezing tolerance.

Purpose-The successful and commercial use of self-driving/driverless/unmanned/automated car will make human life easier. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach-This paper reviews the key technology of a self-driving car. In this paper, the four key technologies in self-driving car, namely, car navigation system, path planning, environment perception and car control, are addressed and surveyed. The main research institutions and groups in different countries are summarized. Finally, the debates of self-driving car are discussed and the development trend of self-driving car is predicted. Findings-This paper analyzes the key technology of self-driving car and illuminates the state-of-art of the self-driving car. Originality/value-The main research contents and key technology have been introduced. The research progress as well as the research institution has been summarized.

Recently, de novo mutations of transcription factor 20 (TCF20) were found in patients with autism by large-scale exome sequencing. However, how TCF20 modulates brain development and whether its dysfunction causes ASD remain unclear. Here, we show that TCF20 deficits impair neurogenesis in mouse. TCF20 deletion significantly reduces the number of neurons, which leads to abnormal brain functions. Furthermore, transcriptome analysis and ChIP-qPCR reveal that the DNA demethylation factor TDG is a downstream target gene of TCF20. As a nonspecific DNA demethylation factor, TDG potentially affects many genes. Combined TDG ChIP-seq and GO analysis of TCF20 RNA-Seq identifies T-cell factor 4 (TCF-4) as a common target. TDG controls the DNA methylation level in the promoter area of TCF-4, affecting TCF-4 expression and modulating neural differentiation. Overexpression of TDG or TCF-4 rescues the deficient neurogenesis of TCF20 knockdown brains. Together, our data reveal that TCF20 is essential for neurogenesis and we suggest that defects in neurogenesis caused by TCF20 loss are associated with ASD.

Medicago ruthenica is a perennial forage legume with the remarkable ability to survive under unfavorable environmental conditions. It has been identified as an excellent species of Medicago that can adapt to various environmental stresses including low temperature, drought, and salinity. To investigate its potential as a genetic resource, we performed transcriptome sequencing and analysis in M. ruthenica under abiotic stresses. We generated >120 million reads from six cDNA libraries, resulting in 79,249 unique transcripts, most of which were highly similar to transcripts from M. truncatula (44,608, 56.3%) and alfalfa (M. sativa, 48,023, 60.6%). Based on gene expression profiles, 2,721 transcripts were identified as abiotic stress responsive genes which were predicted to be mainly involved in phytohormone signaling pathways, transcriptional regulation, and ROS-scavenging. These results suggest that they play critical roles in the response to abiotic stress. In summary, we identified genes in our transcriptome dataset involved in the regulation of the abiotic stress response in M. ruthenica which will provide a valuable resource for the future identification and functional analysis of candidate genes for adaption to unfavorable conditions. The genes identified here could be also useful for improving stress tolerance traits in alfalfa through molecular breeding in the future.

BackgroundIntra-Body Communication (IBC), which utilizes the human body as the transmission medium to transmit signal, is a potential communication technique for the physiological data transfer among the sensors of remote healthcare monitoring system, in which the doctors are permitted to remotely access the healthcare data without interrupt to the patients’ daily activities.MethodsThis work investigates the effects of human limb gestures including various joint angles, hand gripping force and loading on galvanic coupling IBC channel. The experiment results show that channel gain is significantly influenced by the joint angle (i.e. gain variation 1.09–11.70 dB, p < 0.014). The extension, as well as the appearance of joint in IBC channel increases the channel attenuation. While the other gestures and muscle fatigue have negligible effect (gain variation <0.77 dB, p > 0.793) on IBC channel. Moreover, the change of joint angle on human limb IBC channel causes significant variation in bit error rate (BER) performance.ConclusionsThe results reveal the dynamic behavior of galvanic coupling IBC channel, and provide suggestions for practical IBC system design.

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