The small quinolone derived compound HT61 enhances the effect of tobramycin against Pseudomonas aeruginosa in vitro and in vivo.

HT61 is a small quinolone-derived compound previously demonstrated to exhibit bactericidal activity against gram-positive bacteria including methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). When combined with the classical antibiotics and antiseptics neomycin, gentamicin, mupirocin and chlorhexidine, HT61 demonstrated synergistic bactericidal activity against both MSSA and MRSA infections in vitro. In this study, we investigated the individual antimicrobial activity of HT61 alongside its capability to increase the efficacy of tobramycin against both a tobramycin sensitive laboratory reference strain (PAO1) and tobramycin resistant clinical isolates (RP73, NN2) of the gram-negative bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa). Using broth microdilution methods, the MICs of HT61 against all strains were assessed, as well as the effect of HT61 in combination with tobramycin using both the chequerboard method and bacterial time-kill assays. A murine model of pulmonary infection was also used to evaluate the combination therapy of tobramycin and HT61 in vivo. In these studies, we demonstrated significant synergism between HT61 and Tobramycin against the tobramycin resistant P. aeruginosa strains RP73 and NN2, whilst an additive/intermediate effect was observed for P. aeruginosa strain PA01 which was further confirmed using bacterial time kill analysis. In addition, the enhancement of tobramycin by HT61 was also evident in in vitro assays of biofilm eradication. Finally, in vivo studies revealed analogous effects to those observed in vitro with HT61 when administered in combination with tobramycin against each of the three P. aeruginosa strains at the highest tested dose (10 mg/kg)

Time-frequency analysis of somatosensory evoked potentials for intraoperative spinal cord monitoring

PURPOSE: To evaluate the potential use of time-frequency analysis and its reliability in intraoperative somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) monitoring. METHODS: One hundred ninety-one patients undergoing thoracic and/or lumbar spinal surgery were studied retrospectively. The SEP signals were recorded during different stages of surgery. Averaged SEP was analyzed by short-time Fourier transform. The main peak in the time-frequency interpretation of SEP was measured in peak power, peak time, and peak frequency. The variability of these parameters was compared with that of amplitude and latency during different stages of surgery. The reliability of these parameters was also compared in true-positive and false-positive cases. RESULTS: During different surgical stages for the posterior tibial nerve SEP, the intrasubject variability of peak power was found to be more stable than that of amplitude, while the intrasubject variability of peak time did not show any difference compared with that of latency. The peak frequency presented stable during surgery. Moreover, the true-positive SEP case showed that peak power may detect the potential injury earlier than amplitude does. The false-positive outcomes could be reduced by the proposed method. CONCLUSIONS: The SEP peak component was found stable and reliable during the different stages of surgery. For clinical application purpose, time-frequency analysis was suggested to be an additional monitoring method besides the conventional amplitude/latency measurement since it provided a more reproducible and prompt response to the potential injury in intraoperative SEP monitoring. Copyright © 2011 by the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society.postprin

Compact Bandpass Filter Using Two Ring Resonators and Two Open Stubs

© 2018 IEEE. A compact bandpass filter (BPF) using two ring resonators and two open stubs is proposed, where fifth-order passband with twelve transmission zeros at the stopband is realized. For demonstration, a filter example with center frequency of 2.04 GHz and 3 dB fractional bandwidth of 18.6% is designed. Good performance including high selectivity in the passband and sharp stopband rejection for the filter has been realized

Boundaries of VP and VNP

One fundamental question in the context of the geometric complexity theory approach to the VP vs. VNP conjecture is whether VP = VP, where VP is the class of families of polynomials that can be computed by arithmetic circuits of polynomial degree and size, and VP is the class of families of polynomials that can be approximated infinitesimally closely by arithmetic circuits of polynomial degree and size. The goal of this article is to study the conjecture in (Mulmuley, FOCS 2012) that VP is not contained in VP. Towards that end, we introduce three degenerations of VP (i.e., sets of points in VP), namely the stable degeneration Stable-VP, the Newton degeneration Newton-VP, and the p-definable one-parameter degeneration VP∗. We also introduce analogous degenerations of VNP. We show that Stable-VP ⊆ Newton-VP ⊆ VP∗ ⊆ VNP, and Stable-VNP = Newton-VNP = VNP∗ = VNP. The three notions of degenerations and the proof of this result shed light on the problem of separating VP from VP. Although we do not yet construct explicit candidates for the polynomial families in VP \VP, we prove results which tell us where not to look for such families. Specifically, we demonstrate that the families in Newton-VP \VP based on semi-invariants of quivers would have to be nongeneric by showing that, for many finite quivers (including some wild ones), Newton degeneration of any generic semi-invariant can be computed by a circuit of polynomial size. We also show that the Newton degenerations of perfect matching Pfaffians, monotone arithmetic circuits over the reals, and Schur polynomials have polynomial-size circuits

Design of Triplexer Using E-Stub-Loaded Composite Right-/Left-Handed Resonators and Quasi-Lumped Impedance Matching Network

© 2013 IEEE. A compact triplexer based on E-stub-loaded composite right-/left-handed (ESL-CRLH) resonators with quasi-lumped impedance matching network is presented in this paper. The equivalent circuit model of the ESL-CRLH resonator is presented first and its left-/right-handed capacitance/inductance elements are fully derived. Then, a quasi-lumped impedance matching circuit is designed to connect the three ESL-CRLH resonator based filter channels for the triplexer construction. Finally, the designed triplexer obtains high isolations among the ports and low in-band insertion losses of the three filter channels centered at 1.86, 2.41, and 3.25 GHz, of which a miniaturized layout has been realized. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results can be observed to validate the design idea

Thyroid carcinoma with discharging sinus – a rarity: a case report

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Novel Surface Plasmon Polariton Waveguides with Enhanced Field Confinement for Microwave-Frequency Ultra-Wideband Bandpass Filters

© 2013 IEEE. In this paper, a novel planar waveguide based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) using fish-bone corrugated slot structure is first proposed in the microwave region. Low-dispersion band can be realized by such structure with tight field confinement of SSPPs, resulting in size miniaturization of the proposed waveguide. The high frequency stopband of the proposed ultra-wideband bandpass filter (BPF) is created by using this proposed waveguide, while the low frequency stopband is properly designed through introducing the microstrip-to-slotline transition. The 2-D E-fields distribution, surface current flow, and energy flow patterns are all calculated and illustrated to demonstrate the electromagnetic (EM) characteristics of the proposed ultra-wideband BPF. The BPF tuning characteristics is explored to provide a guideline for facilitating the design process. To validate the predicted performance, the proposed filter is finally designed, fabricated, and measured. Measured results illustrate high performance of the filter, in which the reflection coefficient is better than -10 dB from 2.1 to 8 GHz with the smallest insertion loss of 0.37 dB at 4.9 GHz, showing good agreement with numerical simulations. The proposed surface plasmon polariton waveguides are believed to be significantly promising for further developing plasmonic functional devices and integrated 2-D circuits with enhanced confinement of SSPPs in microwave and even terahertz bands

High-selectivity single-ended and balanced bandpass filters using ring resonators and coupled lines loaded with multiple stubs

© 2018 Elsevier GmbH High-selectivity single-ended and balanced bandpass filters (BPFs) using dual-mode ring resonators and coupled lines loaded with multiple stubs are proposed in this paper. With the help of the loaded short-circuited and open-circuited stubs, six deep transmission zeros (TZs) from 0 to 2f0 (f0: center frequency of the passband) can be realized in both of single-ended and balanced BPFs to improve the stopband suppressions. The functions of the loaded short/open stubs and calculated analysis of TZs’ positions have been presented. For further demonstration, two examples of single-ended BPF and balanced BPF with high common-mode suppression are designed and fabricated, whose center frequencies are both at 2.1 GHz. Their measured 3-dB fractional bandwidths are 23.7% and 24.7% (differential-mode), respectively. The simulated results and measurements of these two filters are in good agreement

Printed Quasi-Yagi Antennas Using Double Dipoles and Stub-Loaded Technique for Multi-Band and Broadband Applications

© 2013 IEEE. Double dipoles on a single-layer substrate are utilized to construct a triple-mode printed quasi-Yagi antenna for the multi-band and broadband antenna applications. A stub-loaded dipole generating two resonant modes (i.e., lower dual-mode dipole) is allocated on the underside of a simple dipole (i.e., upper single-mode dipole) introducing the third resonant mode. Using these three resonant modes, three compact printed quasi-Yagi antennas, i.e., tri-band, dual-band, and broadband printed quasi-Yagi antennas, are designed with the same antenna prototype but different parameter values. Seen from the measured results, all of these three antennas have good unidirectional radiations, high radiation efficiencies, and low cross-polarization levels at the operating frequencies within the impedance bandwidths

Synthesizing Unequally Spaced Pattern-Reconfigurable Linear Arrays with Minimum Interspacing Control

© 2013 IEEE. Previously, the alternating convex optimization (ACO) was used to reduce the number of elements in the single-pattern linear array. This work extends the ACO method to synthesize the unequally spaced sparse linear arrays with reconfigurable multiple patterns. In this extended ACO, the minimum interspacing constraint can be easily incorporated in the sparse array synthesis by performing a set of constrained alternating convex optimizations. Three examples for synthesizing sparse linear array with different multiple-pattern requirements are conducted to validate the effectiveness, robustness, and advantages of the proposed method. The synthesis results show that the proposed method can effectively reduce the number of elements in the reconfigurable multiple-pattern linear arrays with good control of the sidelobe levels and minimum interspacing. The comparisons with other methods are also given in the examples