Towards wide-bandwidth ultra-flat FOPAs

Fibre optical parametric amplifiers (FOPAs) offer the potential for high gain and >100 nm bandwidth at arbitrary wavelengths for increased transmission capacity. We will cover the main principles of the FOPA and discuss our approach to obtaining broad flat gain and performance improvement via simultaneous Raman amplification

The burden of managing pleural effusions in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia post-imatinib failure: A literature-based economic analysis

Jennifer Stephens, Kimbach Tran Carpiuc, Marc BottemanPharmerit North America LLC, Bethesda, MD, USAObjectives: To develop an economic analysis of the management of pleural effusions in patients with imatinib-resistant/intolerant chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).Methods: A cost of treatment analysis was conducted from the US payer perspective, based on resource utilization data for 48 patients with dasatinib-related pleural effusions at a large US cancer center. Probabilities of various procedures and treatment events were derived from published resource use data, supplemented with expert opinion. Cost data was derived from median reimbursements for relevant CPT codes for outpatient services and medical literature for inpatient services. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for types of procedures used. All costs were adjusted to US dollars (2007 rates).Results: Sixty percent of pleural effusions were managed medically costing 750 per episode. Forty percent of pleural effusions were more significant (>25% of one lung volume), with half of those requiring invasive procedures. Cost of inpatient procedures was 10,616 for chest tube and $15,170 with pleural catheter. Cost of outpatient procedures was$713 for ultrasound thoracentesis and $4,598 for pleural catheter. The average cost of treating a pleural effusion was$2,062 to >$2,700 for all severity levels and ~$6,400 to >$9,000 for invasive procedures. Key cost drivers were invasive procedures and recurrence.Conclusion: This economic analysis using actually observed treatment patterns suggests that the management of pleural effusion adverse events in CML patients is costly, requires intensive resource utilization, and may be an important factor in treatment selection.Keywords: dasatinib, nilotinib, imatinib, adverse events, safety, cost, and cost analysi

Raman-Generated Pump and Its Use for Parametric Amplification and Phase Conjugation

We demonstrate the use of high gain Raman amplification for generating a high power pump for use within a fibre optical parametric amplifier and an optical phase conjugator showing potential for application across the entire low loss fibre transmission window

1THz-bandwidth polarization-diverse optical phase conjugation of 10x114Gb/s DP-QPSK WDM signals

Polarization diverse optical phase conjugation of a 1THz spectral-band 1.14Tb/s DP-QPSK WDM multiplex is demonstrated for the first time, showing a worst case Q2 penalty of 0.9dB over all conjugate wavelengths, polarizations and OSNR

On the possibility of using polycrystalline material in the development of structure-based generic assays

The correlation coefficients calculated between raw powder diffraction profiles can be used to identify ligand-bound/unbound states of lysozyme

Reduction of Nonlinear Intersubcarrier Intermixing in Coherent Optical OFDM by a Fast Newton-Based Support Vector Machine Nonlinear Equalizer

A fast Newton-based support vector machine (N-SVM) nonlinear equalizer (NLE) is experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, in 40 Gb/s 16-quadrature amplitude modulated coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing at 2000 km of transmission. It is shown that N-SVM-NLE extends the optimum launched optical power by 2 dB compared to the benchmark Volterra-based NLE. The performance improvement by N-SVM is due to its ability of tackling both deterministic fiber-induced nonlinear effects and the interaction between nonlinearities and stochastic noises (e.g., polarization-mode dispersion). An N-SVM is more tolerant to intersubcarrier nonlinear crosstalk effects than Volterra-based NLE, especially when applied across all subcarriers simultaneously. In contrast to the conventional SVM, the proposed algorithm is of reduced classifier complexity offering lower computational load and execution time. For a low C-parameter of 4 (a penalty parameter related to complexity), an execution time of 1.6 s is required for N-SVM to effectively mitigate nonlinearities. Compared to conventional SVM, the computational load of N-SVM is ∼6 times lower

Fetal Tracheal Occlusion Increases Lung Basal Cells via Increased Yap Signaling

Basal cell; Fetal tracheal occlusion; MechanotransductionCélula basal; Oclusión traqueal fetal; MecanotransducciónCèl·lula basal; Oclusió traqueal fetal; MecanotransduccióFetal endoscopic tracheal occlusion (FETO) is an emerging surgical therapy for congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH). Ovine and rabbit data suggested altered lung epithelial cell populations after tracheal occlusion (TO) with transcriptomic signatures implicating basal cells. To test this hypothesis, we deconvolved mRNA sequencing (mRNA-seq) data and used quantitative image analysis in fetal rabbit lung TO, which had increased basal cells and reduced ciliated cells after TO. In a fetal mouse TO model, flow cytometry showed increased basal cells, and immunohistochemistry demonstrated basal cell extension to subpleural airways. Nuclear Yap, a known regulator of basal cell fate, was increased in TO lung, and Yap ablation on the lung epithelium abrogated TO-mediated basal cell expansion. mRNA-seq of TO lung showed increased activity of downstream Yap genes. Human lung specimens with congenital and fetal tracheal occlusion had clusters of subpleural basal cells that were not present in the control. TO increases lung epithelial cell nuclear Yap, leading to basal cell expansion.Funding was obtained from NIH/NHLBI R01HL141229 (to BV)

Experimental demonstration of data-dependent pilot-aided phase noise estimation for CO-OFDM

We demonstrate a novel phase noise estimation scheme for CO-OFDM, in which pilot subcarriers are deliberately correlated to the data subcarriers. This technique reduces the overhead by a factor of 2