Liquid-Crystal-Based Phase Gratings and Beam Steerers for Terahertz Waves

We review our theoretical and experimental studies on a class of liquid crystal (LC) photonic devices, i.e., terahertz (THz) phase gratings and beam steerers by using LCs. Such gratings can function as a THz polarizer and tunable THz beam splitters. The beam splitting ratio of the zeroth-order diffraction to the first-order diffraction by the grating can be tuned from 10:1 to 3:5. Gratings with two different base dimensions were prepared. The insertion loss is lower by approximately 2.5 dB for the one with the smaller base. The response times of the gratings were also studied and were long (tens of seconds) as expected because of the thick LC layer used. Accordingly, the devices are not suitable for applications that require fast modulation. However, they are suitable for instrumentation or apparatuses that require precise control, e.g., an apparatus requiring a fixed beam splitting ratio with occasional fine tuning. Schemes for speeding up the device responses were proposed. Based on the grating structure, we also achieved an electrically tunable THz beam steerer. Broadband THz radiation can be steered by 8.5° with respect to the incident beam by varying the driving voltages to yield the designed phase gradient

Wound healing monitoring using near infrared fluorescent fibrinogen

We demonstrate a method for imaging the wound healing process with near infrared fluorescent fibrinogen. Wound healing studies were performed on a rat punch biopsy model. Fibrinogen was conjugated with a near infrared fluorescent dye and injected into the tail vein. Fibrinogen is a useful protein for tracking wound healing because it is involved in fibrin clot formation and formation of new provisional matrix through transglutaminase’s crosslinking activity. Strong fluorescence specific to the wound was observed and persisted for several days, indicating that the fibrinogen is converted to crosslinked fibrin. Administration of contrast agent simultaneously with wound creation led to primary labeling of the fibrin clot, indicating that the wound was in its early phase of healing. Administration on the following day showed labeling on the wound periphery, indicating location of formation of a new provisional matrix. This method may prove to be useful as a diagnostic for basic studies of the wound healing process, in drug development, or in clinical assessment of chronic wounds

Potassium {4-[(3S,6S,9S)-3,6-dibenzyl-9-isopropyl-4,7,10-trioxo-11–oxa-2,5,8-triazadodecyl]phenyl}trifluoroborate

[[abstract]]The reported compound 4 was synthesized and fully characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 11B NMR, 19F NMR, and high resolution mass spectrometry.[[booktype]]電子版[[countrycodes]]CH

Neural EGFL Like 1 as a Potential Pro-Chondrogenic, Anti-Inflammatory Dual-Functional Disease-Modifying Osteoarthritis Drug

Arthritis, an inflammatory condition that causes pain and cartilage destruction in joints, affects over 54.4 million people in the US alone. Here, for the first time, we demonstrated the emerging role of neural EGFL like 1 (NELL-1) in arthritis pathogenesis by showing that Nell-1-haploinsufficient (Nell-1+/6R) mice had accelerated and aggravated osteoarthritis (OA) progression with elevated inflammatory markers in both spontaneous primary OA and chemical-induced secondary OA models. In the chemical-induced OA model, intra-articular injection of interleukin (IL)1β induced more severe inflammation and cartilage degradation in the knee joints of Nell-1+/6R mice than in wildtype animals. Mechanistically, in addition to its pro-chondrogenic potency, NELL-1 also effectively suppressed the expression of inflammatory cytokines and their downstream cartilage catabolic enzymes by upregulating runt-related transcription factor (RUNX)1 in mouse and human articular cartilage chondrocytes. Notably, NELL-1 significantly reduced IL1β-stimulated inflammation and damage to articular cartilage in vivo. In particular, NELL-1 administration markedly reduced the symptoms of antalgic gait observed in IL1β-challenged Nell-1+/6R mice. Therefore, NELL-1 is a promising pro-chondrogenic, anti-inflammatory dual-functional disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug (DMOAD) candidate for preventing and suppressing arthritis-related cartilage damage. © 2019 Elsevier Lt

Cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes mortality burden of cardiometabolic risk factors from 1980 to 2010: A comparative risk assessment

Background: High blood pressure, blood glucose, serum cholesterol, and BMI are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and some of these factors also increase the risk of chronic kidney disease and diabetes. We estimated mortality from cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes that was attributable to these four cardiometabolic risk factors for all countries and regions from 1980 to 2010. Methods: We used data for exposure to risk factors by country, age group, and sex from pooled analyses of population-based health surveys. We obtained relative risks for the effects of risk factors on cause-specific mortality from meta-analyses of large prospective studies. We calculated the population attributable fractions for each risk factor alone, and for the combination of all risk factors, accounting for multicausality and for mediation of the effects of BMI by the other three risks. We calculated attributable deaths by multiplying the cause-specific population attributable fractions by the number of disease-specific deaths. We obtained cause-specific mortality from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study. We propagated the uncertainties of all the inputs to the final estimates. Findings: In 2010, high blood pressure was the leading risk factor for deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes in every region, causing more than 40% of worldwide deaths from these diseases; high BMI and glucose were each responsible for about 15% of deaths, and high cholesterol for more than 10%. After accounting for multicausality, 63% (10·8 million deaths, 95% CI 10·1-11·5) of deaths from these diseases in 2010 were attributable to the combined effect of these four metabolic risk factors, compared with 67% (7·1 million deaths, 6·6-7·6) in 1980. The mortality burden of high BMI and glucose nearly doubled from 1980 to 2010. At the country level, age-standardised death rates from these diseases attributable to the combined effects of these four risk factors surpassed 925 deaths per 100 000 for men in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, but were less than 130 deaths per 100 000 for women and less than 200 for men in some high-income countries including Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain. Interpretation: The salient features of the cardiometabolic disease and risk factor epidemic at the beginning of the 21st century are high blood pressure and an increasing effect of obesity and diabetes. The mortality burden of cardiometabolic risk factors has shifted from high-income to low-income and middle-income countries. Lowering cardiometabolic risks through dietary, behavioural, and pharmacological interventions should be a part of the global response to non-communicable diseases. Funding: UK Medical Research Council, US National Institutes of Health. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Ramucirumab plus docetaxel versus placebo plus docetaxel in patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma after platinum-based therapy (RANGE): a randomised, double-blind, phase 3 trial

Few treatments with a distinct mechanism of action are available for patients with platinum-refractory advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. We assessed the efficacy and safety of treatment with docetaxel plus either ramucirumab-a human IgG1 VEGFR-2 antagonist-or placebo in this patient population

Contour-Based Binary Motion Estimation Algorithm and VLSI Design for MPEG-4 Shape Coding

Non

Towards Scalable Compositional Analysis by Refactoring Design Models

Automated finite-state verification techniques have matured considerably in the past several years, but state-space explosion remains an obstacle to their use. Theoretical lower bounds on complexity imply that all of the techniques that have been developed to avoid or mitigate state-space explosion depend on models that are "well-formed" in some way, and will usually fail for other models. This further implies that, when analysis is applied to models derived from designs or implementations of actual software systems, a model of the system "as built" is unlikely to be suitable for automated analysis. In particular, compositional, hierarchical analysis (where state-space explosion is avoided by simplifying models of subsystems at several levels of abstraction) depend on the modular structure of the model to be analyzed. We describe how as-built finite-state models can be refactored for compositional state-space analysis, applying a series of transformations to produce an equivalent model whose structure exhibits suitable modularity. The process is supported by a parser which can parse a subset of Promela syntax and transform Promela code into refactored state graphs