Specific networks of plasma acute phase reactants are associated with the severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a case-control study.

A detailed understanding of the intricate relationships between different acute phase reactants (APRs) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can shed new light on its clinical course. In this case-control study, we sought to identify the interaction networks of a number of plasma APRs in COPD, with a special focus on their association with disease severity. COPD cases and healthy smoking controls (3:1 ratio) were recruited in our outpatient pulmonary clinic.

An adaptive jitter mechanism for reactive route discovery in sensor networks.

This paper analyses the impact of jitter when applied to route discovery in reactive (on-demand) routing protocols. In multi-hop non-synchronized wireless networks, jitter--a small, random variation in the timing of message emission--is commonly employed, as a means to avoid collisions of simultaneous transmissions by adjacent routers over the same channel. In a reactive routing protocol for sensor and ad hoc networks, jitter is recommended during the route discovery process, specifically, during the network-wide flooding of route request messages, in order to avoid collisions.