2,258 research outputs found
Overview of the clinical features of cefixime
Third-generation cephalosporins in oral formulations have become an increasingly important first-line choice against common bacterial infections. Cefixime is one such agent, which possesses excellent efficacy against a broad spectrum of pathogens, including Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Moraxella catarrhalis. Clinical success rates are similar to cefaclor, clarithromycin, and other cephalosporins. Importantly, cefixime also possesses excellent activity against beta-lactamase-producing strains. The pharmacodynamic features of the drug include a half-life of 3-4 h and a C-max of 4.4 mu g/ml, well above the MIC90 for susceptible pathogens, permitting once-daily dosing. In this brief overview, the bacteriological and clinical efficacy of cefixime is discussed, as well as its indications
Systematic Test & Evaluation of Metal Detectors: Interim Report Field Trials Mozambique
The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission published at the end of 2005 another interim report for the STEMD project. This article gives background on the project and report and some results and recommendations of the trial. The authors hope this article will pique interest in the full report
Metal-Detector Handbook for Humanitarian Demining
Abstract not availableJRC.G-Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen (Ispra
Comment on superluminality in general relativity
General relativity provides an appropriate framework for addressing the issue
of sub- or superluminality as an apparent effect. Even though a massless
particle travels on the light cone, its average velocity over a finite path
measured by different observers is not necessarily equal to the velocity of
light, as a consequence of the time dilation or contraction in gravitational
fields. This phenomenon occurs in either direction (increase or depletion)
irrespectively of the details and strength of the gravitational interaction.
Hence, it does not intrinsically guarantee superluminality, even when the
gravitational field is reinforced.Comment: 6 page
Homoharringtonine, a clinically approved anti-leukemia drug, sensitizes tumor cells for TRAIL-induced necroptosis
Differential protection by wildtype vs. organelle-specific Bcl-2 suggests a combined requirement of both the ER and mitochondria in ceramide-mediated caspase-independent programmed cell death
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Programmed cell death (PCD) is essential for development and homeostasis of multicellular organisms and can occur by caspase-dependent apoptosis or alternatively, by caspase-independent PCD (ciPCD). Bcl-2, a central regulator of apoptosis, localizes to both mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Whereas a function of mitochondrial and ER-specific Bcl-2 in apoptosis has been established in multiple studies, corresponding data for ciPCD do not exist.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We utilized Bcl-2 constructs specifically localizing to mitochondria (Bcl-2 ActA), the ER (Bcl-2 cb5), both (Bcl-2 WT) or the cytosol/nucleus (Bcl-2 ΔTM) and determined their protective effect on ceramide-mediated ciPCD in transiently and stably transfected Jurkat cells. Expression of the constructs was verified by immunoblots. Ceramide-mediated ciPCD was induced by treatment with human recombinant tumor necrosis factor and determined by flow cytometric measurement of propidium iodide uptake as well as by optical analysis of cell morphology.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Only wildtype Bcl-2 had the ability to efficiently protect from ceramide-mediated ciPCD, whereas expression of Bcl-2 solely at mitochondria, the ER, or the cytosol/nucleus did not prevent ceramide-mediated ciPCD.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data suggest a combined requirement for both mitochondria and the ER in the induction and the signaling pathways of ciPCD mediated by ceramide.</p
CabiNet: Scaling Neural Collision Detection for Object Rearrangement with Procedural Scene Generation
We address the important problem of generalizing robotic rearrangement to
clutter without any explicit object models. We first generate over 650K
cluttered scenes - orders of magnitude more than prior work - in diverse
everyday environments, such as cabinets and shelves. We render synthetic
partial point clouds from this data and use it to train our CabiNet model
architecture. CabiNet is a collision model that accepts object and scene point
clouds, captured from a single-view depth observation, and predicts collisions
for SE(3) object poses in the scene. Our representation has a fast inference
speed of 7 microseconds per query with nearly 20% higher performance than
baseline approaches in challenging environments. We use this collision model in
conjunction with a Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) planner to generate
collision-free trajectories for picking and placing in clutter. CabiNet also
predicts waypoints, computed from the scene's signed distance field (SDF), that
allows the robot to navigate tight spaces during rearrangement. This improves
rearrangement performance by nearly 35% compared to baselines. We
systematically evaluate our approach, procedurally generate simulated
experiments, and demonstrate that our approach directly transfers to the real
world, despite training exclusively in simulation. Robot experiment demos in
completely unknown scenes and objects can be found at this http
https://cabinet-object-rearrangement.github.i
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