Beam Switching Cylindrical Array Antenna System for Communication

The beam switching cylindrical array, which is a unique system, has been designed and developed to cover 360° in azimuth plane by generating 16 beams with specified elevation coverage.In this design, the concept of fast aperture selection (4 x 4) in microseconds from the total cylindrical array has been realised successfully to meet the requirement of point-to-multipoint communication. The components of the array, viz., radiating elements, powder dividers, switches, etc., are designed in printed circuit type, and hence, objectives of lightweight and ease of reproducibility are achieved. The lightweight of the array makes it accessible for easy mounting at a specified height for achieving longer communication range. Finally, a low-loss radome is incorporated to protect the array from environmental conditions. The various parameters, viz., return loss, gain, and switched-beam radiation patterns were measured over a bandwidth of 300 MHz in L- band and typical measured results are presented in this paper

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Detection of Circulating and Disseminated Neuroblastoma Cells Using the ImageStream Flow Cytometer for Use as Predictive and Pharmacodynamic Biomarkers

PURPOSE: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) serve as noninvasive tumor biomarkers in many types of cancer. Our aim was to detect CTCs from patients with neuroblastoma for use as predictive and pharmacodynamic biomarkers. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We collected matched blood and bone marrow samples from 40 patients with neuroblastoma to detect GD2 +/CD45- neuroblastoma CTCs from blood and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) from bone marrow using the Imagestream Imaging flow cytometer (ISx). In six cases, circulating free DNA (cfDNA) extracted from plasma isolated from the CTC sample was analyzed by high-density single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays. RESULTS: CTCs were detected in 26 of 42 blood samples (1-264/mL) and DTCs in 25 of 35 bone marrow samples (57-291,544/mL). Higher numbers of CTCs in patients with newly diagnosed, high-risk neuroblastoma correlated with failure to obtain a complete bone marrow (BM) metastatic response after induction chemotherapy (P < 0.01). Ex vivo Nutlin-3 (MDM2 inhibitor) treatment of blood and BM increased p53 and p21 expression in CTCs and DTCs compared with DMSO controls. In five of six cases, cfDNA analyzed by SNP arrays revealed copy number abnormalities associated with neuroblastoma. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to show that CTCs and DTCs are detectable in neuroblastoma using the ISx, with concurrently extracted cfDNA used for copy number profiling, and may be useful as pharmacodynamic biomarkers in early-phase clinical trials. Further investigation is required to determine whether CTC numbers are predictive biomarkers of BM response to first-line induction chemotherapy

A dry film technology for the manufacturing of 3-D multi-layered microstructures and buried channels for lab-on-chip

The development of innovative and reliable techniques for devices miniaturization are enabling the massive growth of lab on chip (LOC) applications. In this article, we briefly review the technological options for LOC microfabrication, then we present the optimization of a process for the realization of tridimensional multi-layered structures and buried channels in a microfluidic network using a photo-patternable dry film, with a potential for LOC manufacturing. The tuning of all the fabrication parameters is widely discussed and micrographs and optical profiler images are reported to show fabrication results. The fabrication process is used for a Split-flow-thin (SPLITT) fractionation cell configuration. SPLITT is a particle fractionation technique based on the combined effect of two laminar streams (the sample containing the particles and a carrier) flowing inside a thin microchannel and the action of a vertical driving force for particle displacement. Since the SPLITT implemented in this work is electrically driven, patterned electrodes (thickness: 100 nm) are also integrated in the flow cell walls. The functionality of the cell was tested first verifying the presence of proper flow conditions for microfluidic SPLITT (absence of mixing between the streams) and then proving electrical fractionation with two different proteins (BSA and b-lactoglobulin) at different levels of ionic strength. The flow of the streams within the microfluidic channel was also simulated by a numerical 2-D model exactly reproducing the cell geometry, with a good accordance with experimental results