On-line identification investigation

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A 0.4 nJ Excitation Energy Bridge-to-Digital Converter for Implantable Pulmonary Artery Pressure Monitoring

This paper presents an energy-efficient, duty-cycled, and spinning excitation bridge-to-digital converter (BDC) suitable for measuring the pulmonary artery pressure of heart failure patients with an implantable system. The duty-cycled bridge uses resistances of 6.2 kΩ and, with a supply of 1.2 V, consumes 0.4 nJ excitation energy. A novel spinning method is applied to the bridge and the capacitive DAC simultaneously in such a way to achieve an offset-independent digital output and to eliminate the need for complex instrumentation amplifiers with offset-reduction techniques or calibration. The SAR ADC fabricated in 0.18-μm CMOS consumes 19 nW at 1.2 V. With a sampling rate of 1 kS/s, the converter achieves the ENOB of 9.2 bits

Spectroscopic characterization of Al2O3-Ni selective absorbers for solar collectors

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Optical spectroscopy of electrochemically prepared Ni-pigmented aluminum oxide selective absorbers have been determined in the 200—20000 nm range. It was found that samples anodized under the same conditions and pigmented using nickel acetate resulted in better thermal emittance values when compared with nickel sulfate although both have comparable solar absorbance values. Electron spectroscopic investigation revealed that only a small fraction of Ni is present on the surface with an oxidation state of *#2. The O/Al ratio determined by XPS is larger than 1.5. This information together with the measured Al 2p Auger parameter indicated that the surfaces contain additional OH groups which was also confirmed by the presence of a broad hyrogen-bonded band in the region 3000—3400 cm~1 observed in the reflection—absorption IR spectra of these samples. ( 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

16S-23S rRNA Internal Transcribed Spacer Region (ITS) Sequencing: A Potential Molecular Diagnostic Tool for Differentiating Lactococcus garvieae and Lactococcus petauri

Lactococcus garvieae is the etiological agent of lactococcosis, a clinically and economically significant infectious disease affecting farmed rainbow trout. L. garvieae had been considered the only cause of lactococcosis for a long time; however, L. petauri, another species of the genus Lactococcus, has lately been linked to the same disease. The genomes and biochemical profiles of L. petauri and L. garvieae have a high degree of similarity. Traditional diagnostic tests currently available cannot distinguish between these two species. The aim of this study was to use the transcribed spacer (ITS) region between 16S rRNA and 23S rRNA as a potential useful molecular target to differentiate L. garvieae from L. petauri, saving time and money compared to genomics methods currently used as diagnostic tools for accurate discrimination between these two species. The ITS region of 82 strains was amplified and sequenced. The amplified fragments varied in size from 500 to 550 bp. Based on the sequence, seven SNPs were identified that separate L. garvieae from L. petauri. The 16S-23S rRNA ITS region has enough resolution to distinguish between closely related L. garvieae and L. petauri and it can be used as a diagnostic marker to quickly identify the pathogens in a lactococcosis outbreak

Hybrid of swarm intelligent algorithms in medical applications

In this paper, we designed a hybrid of swarm intelligence algorithms to diagnose hepatitis, breast tissue, and dermatology conditions in patients with such infection. The effectiveness of hybrid swarm intelligent algorithms was studied since no single algorithm is effective in solving all types of problems. In this study, feed forward and Elman recurrent neural network (ERN) with swarm intelligent algorithms is used for the classification of the mentioned diseases. The capabilities of six (6) global optimization learning algorithms were studied and their performances in training as well as testing were compared. These algorithms include: hybrid of Cuckoo Search algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) (CSLM), Cuckoo Search algorithm (CS) and backpropagation (BP) (CSBP), CS and ERN (CSERN), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) and LM (ABCLM), ABC and BP (ABCBP), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and BP (GANN). Simulation comparative results indicated that the classification accuracy and run time of the CSLM outperform the CSERN, GANN, ABCBP, ABCLM, and CSBP in the breast tissue dataset. On the other hand, the CSERN performs better than the CSLM, GANN, ABCBP, ABCLM, and CSBP in both th

Lung Megakaryocytes are Immune Modulatory Cells that Present Antigen to CD4+ T cells.

Although platelets are the cellular mediators of thrombosis, they are also immune cells. Platelets interact both directly and indirectly with immune cells, impacting their activation and differentiation, as well as all phases of the immune response. Megakaryocytes (Mks) are the cell source of circulating platelets, and until recently Mks were typically only considered bone marrow–resident (BM-resident) cells. However, platelet-producing Mks also reside in the lung, and lung Mks express greater levels of immune molecules compared with BM Mks. We therefore sought to define the immune functions of lung Mks. Using single-cell RNA sequencing of BM and lung myeloid-enriched cells, we found that lung Mks, which we term MkL, had gene expression patterns that are similar to antigen-presenting cells. This was confirmed using imaging and conventional flow cytometry. The immune phenotype of Mks was plastic and driven by the tissue immune environment, as evidenced by BM Mks having an MkL-like phenotype under the influence of pathogen receptor challenge and lung-associated immune molecules, such as IL-33. Our in vitro and in vivo assays demonstrated that MkL internalized and processed both antigenic proteins and bacterial pathogens. Furthermore, MkL induced CD4+ T cell activation in an MHC II–dependent manner both in vitro and in vivo. These data indicated that MkL had key immune regulatory roles dictated in part by the tissue environment.pre-print236 K

Clash of pans: pan-Africanism and pan-Anglo-Saxonism and the global colour line, 1919–1945

The article demonstrates both conceptually and empirically that pan-Anglo-Saxonist knowledge networks reconstructed and reimagined an apparently de-racialised, scientific, sober and liberal world order that outwardly abandoned, but did not eradicate the twin phenomena of racism and imperialism. Rather the new liberal (imperial) internationalists, organised in newly formed “think tanks” such as Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations, and through their increasingly global elite networks, mounted a top-down battle for minds at home and in the wider world. Operating in state-private elite networks, they drove the movement to manage change and develop a new liberal world order particularly to contain pan-Africanists who combatted the domination and exploitation of Africans worldwide. More broadly, we indicate that the pragmatic response to the extremes of Nazi ideology and a countering movement from the cadres of Asian, African and African American intellectuals, anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles within the national and global context, forced the Anglo-centric elites to promote change, albeit limited

Abuse in Women and Men with and without Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders

We aimed to investigate the history of abuse in childhood and adulthood and health-related quality of life (HRQL) in women and men with FGID in the general adult population. A cross-sectional study in a random population sample (n = 1,537, 20–87 years) living in Östhammar municipality, Sweden, in 1995 was performed. Persons with FGID (n = 141) and a group of abdominal symptom-free controls (SSF, n = 97) were selected by means of a validated questionnaire assessing gastrointestinal symptoms (the ASQ). Abuse, anxiety and depression (the HADS) and HRQL (the PGWB) were measured. Women with FGID had a higher risk of having a history of some kind of abuse, as compared with the SSF controls (45% vs.16%, OR = 2.0, 95% CI: 1.01–3.9; SSF = 1), in contrast to men (29% vs. 24% n.s.). Women with a history of abuse and FGID had reduced HRQL 91 (95% CI 85–97) as compared with women without abuse history 100 (95% CI 96–104, P = 0.01, “healthy” = 102–105 on PGWB). Childhood emotional abuse was a predictor for consulting with OR = 4.20 (95% CI: 1.12–15.7.7). Thus, previous abuse is common in women with FGID and must be considered by the physician for diagnosis and treatment of the disorder

Hemispheric Asymmetry in White Matter Connectivity of the Temporoparietal Junction with the Insula and Prefrontal Cortex

The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is a key node in the brain's ventral attention network (VAN) that is involved in spatial awareness and detection of salient sensory stimuli, including pain. The anatomical basis of this network's right-lateralized organization is poorly understood. Here we used diffusion-weighted MRI and probabilistic tractography to compare the strength of white matter connections emanating from the right versus left TPJ to target regions in both hemispheres. Symmetry of structural connectivity was evaluated for connections between TPJ and target regions that are key cortical nodes in the right VAN (insula and inferior frontal gyrus) as well as target regions that are involved in salience and/or pain (putamen, cingulate cortex, thalamus). We found a rightward asymmetry in connectivity strength between the TPJ and insula in healthy human subjects who were scanned with two different sets of diffusion-weighted MRI acquisition parameters. This rightward asymmetry in TPJ-insula connectivity was stronger in females than in males. There was also a leftward asymmetry in connectivity strength between the TPJ and inferior frontal gyrus, consistent with previously described lateralization of language pathways. The rightward lateralization of the pathway between the TPJ and insula supports previous findings on the roles of these regions in stimulus-driven attention, sensory awareness, interoception and pain. The findings also have implications for our understanding of acute and chronic pains and stroke-induced spatial hemineglect