An efficient NC tool path planning approach

One major problem encountered in NC machining is that cutting load fluctuates in twisty tool paths and increases momentarily when milling concave corners where stock material concentrates. Much research has been conducted on controlling milling forces but the problem remains unsolved. This paper presents a solution to reduce and stabilise cutting load in NC milling operation by applying computational techniques to isolate the concave corners of a machining region, thereby forming a major region and a number of disjoint sub-regions. Due to the suppression of concave corners, the boundary profile of the major region will become smoother. Contour-parallel offset tool paths can then be used to remove the material in the major region. For the isolated sub-regions, special corner removing tool paths with the use of different cutter sizes will be employed. By using this approach, the adverse effects caused by excessive undulation of milling tool path can be reduced.published_or_final_versio

Automatic systole-diastole classification of mitral valve complex from RT-3D echocardiography based on multiresolution processing

Poster Session: UltrasoundMitral valve repair is one of the most prevalent operations for various mitral valve conditions. Echocardiography, being famous for its low-cost, non-invasiveness and speediness, is the dominant imaging modality used for carrying out mitral valve condition analysis in both pre-operative and intra-operative examinations. In order to perform analysis on different phases of a cardiac cycle, it is necessary to first classify the echocardiograhic data into volumes corresponding to the systole and diastole phases. This often requires tedious manual work. This paper presents a fully-automatic method for systole-diastole classification of real-time three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (RT-3D-TEE) data. The proposed method first resamples the data with radial cutting planes, segments the mitral valve by thresholding, and removes noise by median filtering. Classification is then carried out based on the number of identified mitral valve regions. A multiresolution processing scheme is proposed to further improve the classification accuracy by aggregating classification results obtained from different image resolution scales. The proposed method was evaluated against the classification results produced by a cardiologist. Experimental results show that the proposed method, without the use of computationally intensive algorithms or the use of any training database, can achieve a classification accuracy of 91.04%.published_or_final_versio

Error analysis and complexity optimization for the multiplier-less FFT-like transformation (ML-FFT)

This paper studies the effect of the signal round-off errors on the accuracies of the multiplier-less Fast Fourier Transform-like transformation (ML-FFT). The idea of the ML-FFT is to parameterize the twiddle factors in the conventional FFT algorithm as certain rotation-like matrices and approximate the associated parameters inside these matrices by the sum-of-power-of-two (SOPOT) or canonical signed digits (CSD) representations. The error due to the SOPOT approximation is called the coefficient round-off error. Apart from this error, signal round-off error also occurs because of insufficient wordlengths. Using a recursive noise model of these errors, the minimum hardware to realize the ML-FFT subject to the prescribed output bit accuracy can be obtained using a random search algorithm. A design example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.published_or_final_versio

Design of complex-valued variable digital filters and its application to the realization of arbitrary sampling rate conversion for complex signals

The 47th Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, 25-28 July 2004This paper studies the design of complex-valued variable digital filters (CVDFs) and their applications to the efficient arbitrary sample rate conversion for complex signals in software radio receivers. The design of CVDFs using either the minimax or least squares criteria is formulated as a convex optimization problem and solved using the second order cone programming (SOCP) or semidefmite programming (SDP). In addition, linear and convex quadratic inequality constraints can be readily incorporated. Design examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.published_or_final_versio

On the minimax design of passband linear-phase variable digital filters using semidefinite programming

Variable digital filters (VDFs) are useful to the implementation of digital receivers because its frequency characteristics such as fractional delays and cutoff frequencies can be varied online. In this letter, it is shown that the optimal minimax design of VDFs with passband linear-phase can be formulated and solved as a semi-definite programming (SDP) problem, which is a powerful convex optimization method. In addition, other objective functions, such as least squares, and linear and convex quadratic inequality constraints can readily be incorporated. Design examples using a variable fractional delay (VFD) and a variable cutoff frequency (VCF) FIR filters are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2004 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Dishevelled-3 phosphorylation is governed by HIPK2/PP1Cα/ITCH axis and the non-phosphorylated form promotes cancer stemness via LGR5 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Dishevelled-3 (Dvl3) is regarded as a binding hub with many different interacting partners. However, its regulation and mechanism on cancer stemness remain to be explored. In this study, we showed that Dvl3 was significantly overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) and promoted cancer stemness both in vitro and in vivo. We found that the non-phosphorylated (NP)-Dvl3 was more stable than the phosphorylated form, more active in activating β-catenin transcriptional activity, and more potent in enhancing self-renewal ability in HCC cells. Mechanistically, we confirmed that the homeodomain-interacting protein kinase-2 (HIPK2) and E3 ubiquitin ligase ITCH were able to physically bind to Dvl3 protein. Knockdown of HIPK2 and the protein phosphatase regulatory unit C-alpha (PP1Cα) resulted in sustained Dvl3 phosphorylation and hence decrease in the NP form of Dvl3. On the other hand, knockdown of E3 ubiquitin ligase ITCH reduced the phosphorylation-induced degradation and stabilized the phosphorylated Dvl3 protein. Furthermore, the NP-Dvl3 enhanced the LGR5 promoter activity to upregulate LGR5 expression, which was associated with increased cancer stemness in HCC. Our findings established that HIPK2/PP1Cα/ITCH axis sustains the de-phosphorylation of Dvl3. This post-translational modification of Dvl3 in turn maintains LGR5 expression and enhances the cancer stemness properties in HCC.published_or_final_versio

Development of human single-chain antibodies against SARS-associated coronavirus.

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), caused by a distinct coronavirus, in 2003 greatly threatened public health in China, Southeast Asia as well as North America. Over 1,000 patients died of the SARS virus, representing 10% of infected people. Like other coronaviruses, the SARS virus also utilizes a surface glycoprotein, namely the spike protein, to infect host cells. The spike protein of SARS virus consists of 1,255 amino acid residues and can be divided into two sub-domains, S1 and S2. The S1 domain mediates the binding of the virus to its receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, which is abundantly distributed on the surface of human lung cells. The S2 domain mediates membrane fusion between the virus and the host cell. Hence two strategies can be used to block the infection of the SARS virus, either by interfering with the binding of the S1 domain to the receptor or by blocking the fusion of the virus with the cell membrane mediated by the S2 domain. Several antibodies against the S1 domain have been generated and all of them are able to neutralize the virus in vitro and in vivo using animal models. Unfortunately, point mutations have been identified in the S1 domain, so that the virus isolated in the future may not be recognized by these antibodies. As no mutation has been found in the S2 domain indicating that this region is more conserved than the S1 domain, it may be a better target for antibody binding. After predicting the immunogenicity of the epitopes of the S2 domain, we chemically synthesized two peptides and also expressed one of them using a recombinant DNA method. We screened a phage displaying library of human single-chain antibodies (ScFv) against the predicted epitopes and obtained a human ScFv which can recognize the SARS virus in vitro

Directed differentiation of human bone marrow stromal cells to fate-committed Schwann cells

Transplantation of oligodendrocyte precursors represents a potential therapy for myelin disorders but requires a safe and accessible cell source. Here we report the directed differentiation of neural progenitors derived from adult bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) into oligodendrocyte precursors for cell therapy purpose. Neural progenitors among BMSCs could be culture expanded in non-adherent sphere-forming conditions and directed to differentiate along the oligodendrocyte lineage. BMSC-derived oligodendrocyte precursors (BM-OPs) differentiated into myelin basic protein (MBP)-positive oligodendrocyte when co-cultured with purified dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Injection of BM-OPs into the brain of myelin deficient Shiverer mice resulted in the generation of MBP-positive oligodendrocyte and compact myelin. Our results provided pointers to adult BMSCs as a readily accessible source of OPs towards cell therapy for myelin disorders.published_or_final_versio

Plasma Bmil mRNA as a potential prognostic biomarker for distant metastasis in colorectal cancer patients

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Absence of Detectable Influenza RNA Transmitted via Aerosol during Various Human Respiratory Activities – Experiments from Singapore and Hong Kong

Two independent studies by two separate research teams (from Hong Kong and Singapore) failed to detect any influenza RNA landing on, or inhaled by, a life-like, human manikin target, after exposure to naturally influenza-infected volunteers. For the Hong Kong experiments, 9 influenza-infected volunteers were recruited to breathe, talk/count and cough, from 0.1 m and 0.5 m distance, onto a mouth-breathing manikin. Aerosolised droplets exhaled from the volunteers and entering the manikin’s mouth were collected with PTFE filters and an aerosol sampler, in separate experiments. Virus detection was performed using an in-house influenza RNA reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. No influenza RNA was detected from any of the PTFE filters or air samples. For the Singapore experiments, 6 influenza-infected volunteers were asked to breathe (nasal/mouth breathing), talk (counting in English/second language), cough (from 1 m/0.1 m away) and laugh, onto a thermal, breathing manikin. The manikin’s face was swabbed at specific points (around both eyes, the nostrils and the mouth) before and after exposure to each of these respiratory activities, and was cleaned between each activity with medical grade alcohol swabs. Shadowgraph imaging was used to record the generation of these respiratory aerosols from the infected volunteers and their impact onto the target manikin. No influenza RNA was detected from any of these swabs with either team’s in-house diagnostic influenza assays. All the influenza-infected volunteers had diagnostic swabs taken at recruitment that confirmed influenza (A/H1, A/H3 or B) infection with high viral loads, ranging from 105-108 copies/mL (Hong Kong volunteers/assay) and 104–107 copies/mL influenza viral RNA (Singapore volunteers/assay). These findings suggest that influenza RNA may not be readily transmitted from naturally-infected human source to susceptible recipients via these natural respiratory activities, within these exposure time-frames. Various reasons are discussed in an attempt to explain these findings.published_or_final_versio