Machine Vision Inspection of Date Fruits

Agricultural Engineerin

Thromboembolism in inflammatory bowel diseases: a report from Saudi Arabia

Thromboembolism (TE) is a serious but under-recognized complication of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This is specially so in developing countries where the incidence of IBD is low. In Saudi Arabia, IBD is considered to be rare, but the incidence is increasing. Where the clinical manifestations resemble those of developed countries, TE as a complication of IBD is considered to be very rare. This report describes six IBD patients with TE. This importance of the complication of TE is stressed, and physicians caring for these patients should be aware of it in order to obviate potential morbidity and mortality

An Educational Visual C++ Program Aid for Understanding

An educational program was developed to assist graduate and undergraduate students to comprehend the influence of a number of tractor parameters on its performance. The program was written in Visual C++ programming Language. The program provides an intuitive user interface by linking tractor and tire databases, and the potential interaction with traction models and performance parameters. The program offers an educational help and clarification to most of the steps and variable parameters. The program was validated by comparing predicted performance variables with the results of Al-Hamed and Al-Janobi (2001) program for bias-ply and radial tires. The same numerical values were obtained for the performance variables. The developed program was also illustrated by selecting an example Massey Ferguson MF 3090 tractor from the tractor specification database to show the various stages of predicting tractor performance parameters. The program has proven to be very user-friendly and efficient to meet the requirement

Unilateral Heliotrope Rash in Juvenile Dermatomyositis: An Unusual Presentation of an Underlying Serious Disease

Background. Heliotrope rash is one of the characteristic skin manifestations of juvenile dermatomyositis. It is a reddish-purple rash on the upper eyelids that is usually bilateral. Case Presentation. We report a boy who presented with unilateral heliotrope rash, Gottron’s papules, and muscle weakness. Muscle biopsy was consistent with inflammatory myositis. Patient was started on prednisolone and methotrexate with an excellent response in both the skin and muscles. Conclusion. Unilateral heliotrope rash can occur in patients with juvenile dermatomyositis. Being a paraneoplastic condition caution should be taken not to miss any underlying malignancy

An Instrumentation System for Measuring Field Performance of Agricultural Tractors

An instrumentation system is designed to measure the field performance parameters of the most common agricultural tractors and implements. The package is designed such that it can be shifted from one to another easily. Transducers such as load cell, PTa (Power Take Off) torque transducer, magnetic pickups, fuel flow sensor, and PRTs (Platinum Resistance Thermometers) are used to measure drawbar pull, PTa torque and speed, tractor speed and slip, fuel flow, engine speed, and temperatures of fuel and engine. Signals from the transducers are scanned and recorded using a datalogger

Evaluation of the influence of large temperature variations on the grey level content of B-mode images

In this work, the variation of the grey-level content of B-Mode images is assessed, when the medium is subjected to large temperature variations. The goal is to understand how the features obtained from the grey-level pattern can be used to improve the actual state-of-the-art methods for non-invasive temperature estimation (NITE). Herein, B-Mode images were collected from a tissue mimic phantom heated in a water bath. Entropy was extracted from image Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix, and then assessed for non-invasive temperature estimation. During the heating period, the average temperature varies from 27oC to 44oC, and entropy values were capable of identifying variations of 2.0oC. Besides, it was possible to quantify variations in the range from normal human body temperature (37oC) to critical values, as 41oC. Results are promising and encourage us to study the uncertainty associated to the experiment trying to improve the parameter sensibility

Quantitative measurement of sulforaphane, iberin and their mercapturic acid pathway metabolites in human plasma and urine using liquid chromatography-tandem electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry

A quantitative liquid chromatography positive ion electrospray tandem mass spectrometric method for the simultaneous determination of sulforaphane, iberin and their metabolites in human urine and plasma is described. The stability of the metabolites was determined in aqueous solution and in human plasma. Gradient liquid chromatographic separation was performed on a Zorbax SB-Aq 3.5 mu m (100 x 2.1 mm) column, using a mobile phase (flow rate 0.25 mL/min) consisting of ammonium acetate buffer at pH 4 and acetonitrile. Butyl thiocarbamoyl L-cysteine was used as internal standard. The assay was linear (r(2) > 0.99) over the range of 0.03-300 mu M in urine and 0.03-15 mu M in plasma with intra- and inter-day assay precision (< 10% CV) and accuracy (< 20%). The lower limits of quantitation were in the range of 10-150 nmol/L. The method has been used to report, for the first time, individual quantitative measurement of each of the mercapturic acid pathway metabolites of sulforaphane and iberin in both human plasma and urine following a dietary study of broccoli consumption. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved