The Development of Electrocardiogram Recorder as a Portable Internet Appliance

Electrocardiogram (EGG) has long been used as an important medical tool in monitoring patient's heart activities. In some cases, the patient has to go to the medical center very often to record their EGG for the diagnostic of the physician. This thesis describes the design and development of an electrocardiogram (EGG) recorder for single-lead recording that enables the recording of EGG at home and development of software to receive the EGG data from the recorder. The EGG data is saved in a compressed format for easy transmission over the Internet. The EGG recorder is a battery-powered device and its design emphasises on low power consumption. The EGG recorder is used as a peripheral connected to the computer via RS-232 port. The software was developed by using Visual G++ programming language. At the end of the project, an EGG recorder has been constructed and its characteristics have been tested. The software can display the EGG data and clearly show the P, Q, R, S and T waves for diagnosis

The Economic Rationale for Agricultural Regeneration and Rural Infrastructure Investment in South Africa

This paper informs government policy insofar as it relates to the agricultural and rural de- velopment sectors and infrastructure investment within these sectors. The paper first quantfies the role of agriculture in the South African economy. This is done within the context of, inter alia, food security, agriculture's contribution to gross domestic product (GDP), economic link- ages and multipliers with respect to the agricultural sector, as well as agriculture's employment creation and external stabilisation capacity. Investment in the agricultural and rural sectors are then analysed with a view of supporting the argument that agriculture's role in the economy is su¢ ciently important to warrant regenerative strategies, including renewed emphasis on agricul- tural and rural infrastructure investment by South African policy makers. The quantification of the agricultural sector in relation to the total economy and that of agricultural and rural infrastructure investment are investigated against the backdrop of declining government sup- port, increasing production risks due to a variety of exogenous events like climate change, and increasing dynamic trade impacts. In this paper, the authors offer both supporting arguments in terms of current economic policy and recommendations for more decisive policy measures aimed at agricultural regeneration and rural infrastructure investment.

Performance of multichannel CSMA networks

International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing, Singapore, 9-12 September 1997Channel sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) is a very simple and efficient way of allowing many stations to transmit messages to a central server down a shared channel. In wireless networks, however, collision detection is difficult to implement, and in such cases CSMA alone may have to be used. In this paper, it is shown that a multichannel CSMA network can be almost as efficient in utilizing the bandwidth available to the network as an equivalent single-channel CSMA/CD network. Furthermore, multichannel CSMA networks provide better throughput and delay performance than equivalent single channel CSMA systems, even when the message generation probability and the number of stations in the network are varied.published_or_final_versio

A model for evaluating the performance of code phase assignment CDMA LAN

Conference Theme: Wireless: Merging onto the Information SuperhighwayThis paper describes a model for a fully-connected, full duplex, and synchronized CDMA LAN where the receivers use the same maximal length sequence with different chip phase offset for receiving messages. ALOHA medium access is used. The performance of the model is analyzed by considering the succession of states the system is in as a Markov process. The behaviour of a 5-station system is shown.published_or_final_versio

Delay-throughput comparison of single and multi-channel slotted ALOHA networks

In networks where stations are equally likely to transmit to one another, simple slotted ALOHA is not an appropriate form of multiple access protocol as messages meant for different stations can collide in the common channel. In this paper the performance of a single channel slotted ALOHA network is compared to that of a CDMA ALOHA network where each of the station is assigned a different spreading code with which to receive messages, and thus effectively possesses its own private 'virtual channel'.published_or_final_versio

Production and purification of the phosphoprotein of Nipah virus in Escherichia coli for use in diagnostic assays.

ABSTRACT Nipah Virus (NiV) is an emerging zoonotic paramyxovirus that can be fatal in humans and various types of animals. The phospho (P) protein of NiV plays an important role in RNA synthesis, replication, and genome synthesis. In this study, the NiV P gene was cloned into a pTrcHis2-TOPO vector and the recombinant protein containing a His-tag was produced in Escherichia coli. SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis using the anti-His antibody confirmed the protein expression. An optimization study of E. coli fermentation showed that the optimal cultivation temperature was 37°C, while the optimal induction time for P protein expression was at 9 h with 1 mM IPTG. Solubility analysis showed that E. coli cultivated at 37°C produced the highest fraction (70%) of soluble P protein. The recombinant P protein was purified from clarified E. coli lysate using an immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) technique to a purity of 92.67%, with a purification factor of 11.58. The purified P protein strongly reacted with the anti-NiV swine sera collected during a NiV outbreak, suggesting its potential as a diagnostic reagent

Effect of different operating modes and biomass concentrations on the recovery of recombinant hepatitis B core antigen from thermal-treated unclarified Escherichia coli feedstock

Expanded bed adsorption chromatography (EBAC) is a single pass operation that has been used as primary capture step in various protein purifications. The most common problem in EBAC is often associated with successful formation of a stable fluidized bed during the absorption stage, which is critically dependent on parameters such as liquid velocity, bed height, particle (adsorbent) size and density as well as design of column and type of flow distributor. In this study, residence time distribution (RTD) test using acetone as non-binding tracer acetone was performed to evaluate liquid dispersion characteristics of the EBAC system. A high B(o) number was obtained indicating the liquid dispersion in the system employed is very minimal and the liquid flow within the bed was close to plug flow, which mimics a packed bed chromatography system. Evaluation on the effect of flow velocities and bed height on the performance of Streamline DEAE using feedstock containing heat-treated crude Escherichia coli homogenate of different biomass concentrations was carried out in this study. The advantages and disadvantages as well as the problems encountered during recovery of HBcAg with aforementioned parameters are also discussed in this paper

2,2′-[Nonane-1,9-diylbis(nitrilo­methyl­idyne)]diphenol

In the title Schiff base compound, C23H30N2O2, the complete mol­ecule is generated by crystallographic twofold symmetry, with one C atom lying on the rotation axis. The nonane chain adopts a linear conformation and the hydr­oxy group forms an intra­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bond to the imine group

Size-selective purification of hepatitis B virus-like particle in flow-through chromatography: types of ion exchange adsorbent and grafted polymer architecture

Hepatitis B virus-like particles expressed in Escherichia coli were purified using anion exchange adsorbents grafted with polymer poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate) in flow-through chromatography mode. The virus-like particles were selectively excluded, while the relatively smaller sized host cell proteins were absorbed. The exclusion of virus-like particles was governed by the accessibility of binding sites (the size of adsorbents and the charge of grafted dextran chains) as well as the architecture (branch-chain length) of the grafted polymer. The branch-chain length of grafted polymer was altered by changing the type of monomers used. The larger adsorbent (90 μm) had an approximately twofold increase in the flow-through recovery, as compared to the smaller adsorbent (30 μm). Generally, polymer-grafted adsorbents improved the exclusion of the virus-like particles. Overall, the middle branch-chain length polymer grafted on larger adsorbent showed optimal performance at 92% flow-through recovery with a purification factor of 1.53. A comparative study between the adsorbent with dextran grafts and the polymer-grafted adsorbent showed that a better exclusion of virus-like particles was achieved with the absorbent grafted with inert polymer. The grafted polymer was also shown to reduce strong interaction between binding sites and virus-like particles, which preserved the particles' structure