Dynamic power reduction of FPGA-based reconfigurable computers using precomputation

This paper examines the effectiveness of employing pre-computation techniques to reduce power consumption of field configurable computing systems. Multiplier is modified with pre-computation techniques and are implemented using commercial off-the-shelf FPGAs. Pre-computation techniques reduce dynamic power consumption of a module by eliminating unnecessary signal switching activities in inactive portions of the modules. Experiments have shown that up to 52% of logic and signal power consumption can be reduced in multiplier module. Furthermore, when compared to ASIC implementations, FPGA implementations of pre-computation modules have the advantage of lower area overhead as most of them can be implemented using originally unoccupied related FPGA resources. Finally, it was found that the effectiveness of pre-computation depends heavily on the input data statistics. It is expected that compilers for future reconfigurable computers may take full advantage of such power saving techniques by optimizing the architecture according to data input statistics.postprintThe 1st International Workshop on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies (HEART), Tsukuba, Japan, 1 June 2010. In ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, 2010, v. 38 n. 4, p. 87-9

Talaromyces marneffei genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic studies reveal mechanisms for environmental adaptations and virulence

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Another exact solution for two-dimensional, inviscid sinh Poisson vortex arrays

Arrays of vortices are considered for two-dimensional, inviscid flows when the functional relationship between the stream function and the vorticity is a hyperbolic sine. An exact solution as a doubly periodic array of vortices is expressed in terms of the Jacobi elliptic functions. There is a threshold value of the period parameter such that a transition from globally smooth distributions of vorticity to singular distributions occurs. © 2003 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Comparative mitogenomic and phylogenetic characterization on the complete mitogenomes of <i>Talaromyces</i> (<i>Penicillium</i>) <i>marneffei</i>

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Polyketides, Toxins and Pigments in Penicillium marneffei

Penicillium marneffei (synonym: Talaromyces marneffei) is the most important pathogenic thermally dimorphic fungus in China and Southeastern Asia. The HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in China and other Southeast Asian countries, has led to the emergence of P. marneffei infection as an important AIDS-defining condition. Recently, we published the genome sequence of P. marneffei. In the P. marneffei genome, 23 polyketide synthase genes and two polyketide synthase-non-ribosomal peptide synthase hybrid genes were identified. This number is much higher than those of Coccidioides immitis and Histoplasma capsulatum, important pathogenic thermally dimorphic fungi in the Western world. Phylogenetically, these polyketide synthase genes were distributed evenly with their counterparts found in Aspergillus species and other fungi, suggesting that polyketide synthases in P. marneffei did not diverge from lineage-specific gene duplication through a recent expansion. Gene knockdown experiments and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detector/electrospray ionization-quadruple time of flight-mass spectrometry analysis confirmed that at least four of the polyketide synthase genes were involved in the biosynthesis of various pigments in P. marneffei, including melanin, mitorubrinic acid, mitorubrinol, monascorubrin, rubropunctatin, citrinin and ankaflavin, some of which were mycotoxins and virulence factors of the fungus.published_or_final_versio

Fibrosis-related growth factors in peritoneal dialysate during peritonitis

Session - Basic Research on Biocompatibility, Immunology, Inflammation, and Fibrosispublished_or_final_versio

Detection and characterisation of β-globin gene cluster deletions in Chinese using multiplex ligationdependent probe amplification

Background: Deletions in the β-globin cluster causing thalassaemia and hereditary persistence of fetal haemoglobin (HPFH) are uncommon and difficult to detect. Data in Chinese are very scarce. Aims: To use a recently available technique to investigate the frequencies and nature of β-globin cluster deletions in Chinese. Methods: 106 subjects with phenotypes of thalassaemia or HPFH and suspected to have deletions in the β-globin cluster were studied. A commercially available kit employing multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) was used to screen for deletions. Gap PCR and direct nucleotide sequencing were used to characterise deletions detected. Results: 17 deletions in the β-globin cluster were found in 17 patients: 8 of Chinese (Aγδβ)0 thalassaemia, 7 of Southeast Asian (Vietnamese) deletion and 2 of Thai (Aγδβ) 0 thalassaemia. The only type of deletion detected in δβ-thalassaemia was Chinese (Aγδβ) 0 thalassaemia. The deletional form of HPFH was rarely seen in only 1 case of Thai (Aγδβ)0 thalassaemia. Deletions presenting as β-thalassaemia trait and raised HbF were all of the Southeast Asian (Vietnamese) deletion type. When these deletions were co-inherited with classical β-thalassaemia mutations in compound heterozygous states, the phenotypes could be very variable. Conclusions: In the Chinese population, there are only relatively few types of deletions seen in the β-globin cluster. MLPA is a fast and effective way of screening for these deletions. Characterisation of these deletions allows the development of simpler and more specific PCR-based tests for routine diagnostic use. Accurate prediction of phenotype is not always feasible. The molecular defects in many cases of HPFH still await discovery.published_or_final_versio

Patients' satisfaction and prevalence of complications on surgical extraction of third molar.

OBJECTIVES: To study patients' satisfaction and prevalence of complications in surgical extraction of impacted third molar by senior dentists and recently graduated dentists in a university dental clinic. METHOD: Patients who had impacted third molar extraction in a university dental clinic by two associate dentists who had 15 years of experience were evaluated in this study. Patients' age, sex, history of pericoronitis, tooth extracted, and radiographic assessment of the impacted tooth were recorded. Immediately after suture removal, the patients were invited to indicate their satisfaction on a Likert scale of 1-5. RESULTS: A total of 546 patients received extraction, and 251 patients were operated by associate dentists. Patient satisfaction was higher among those who had noncomplicated surgery (P=0.007), short treatment time (P<0.001), and had no postsurgical emergency appointments (P<0.001). The prevalence of seeking postsurgical emergency appointments was 9.2%. The reasons were severe pain (4.8%), swelling (2.6%), bleeding (2.4%), alveolar osteitis (0.9%), paresthesia (0.9), and trismus (0.5%). The prevalence of postsurgical complication(s) in associate dentists and senior dentists was 11.6% and 7.1%, respectively (P=0.050). The mean satisfaction scores for associate dentists and senior dentists were 4.17 and 3.95, respectively (P=0.002). CONCLUSION: Although a higher rate of postsurgical complications was observed among the patients treated by the recently graduated dentists, their patients' satisfaction scores were higher than that of the senior dentists. Around 9% of patients attended postsurgical emergency appointments, and their common reason was severe pain.published_or_final_versio

Intra-genomic internal transcribed spacer region sequence heterogeneity and molecular diagnosis in clinical microbiology

Internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) sequencing is the most extensively used technology for accurate molecular identification of fungal pathogens in clinical microbiology laboratories. Intra-genomic ITS sequence heterogeneity, which makes fungal identification based on direct sequencing of PCR products difficult, has rarely been reported in pathogenic fungi. During the process of performing ITS sequencing on 71 yeast strains isolated from various clinical specimens, direct sequencing of the PCR products showed ambiguous sequences in six of them. After cloning the PCR products into plasmids for sequencing, interpretable sequencing electropherograms could be obtained. For each of the six isolates, 10–49 clones were selected for sequencing and two to seven intra-genomic ITS copies were detected. The identities of these six isolates were confirmed to be Candida glabrata (n = 2), Pichia (Candida) norvegensis (n = 2), Candida tropicalis (n = 1) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (n = 1). Multiple sequence alignment revealed that one to four intra-genomic ITS polymorphic sites were present in the six isolates, and all these polymorphic sites were located in the ITS1 and/or ITS2 regions. We report and describe the first evidence of intra-genomic ITS sequence heterogeneity in four different pathogenic yeasts, which occurred exclusively in the ITS1 and ITS2 spacer regions for the six isolates in this study.published_or_final_versio

Coronavirus HKU15 in respiratory tract of pigs and first discovery of coronavirus quasispecies in 5′-untranslated region

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