Control in the technical societies: a brief history

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This article, a revised version of a paper presented at the IEEE 2009 Conference on the History of Technical Societies, describes how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies in a number of countries

Mounier-Kuhn syndrome : A systematic analysis of 128 cases published within last 25 years

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Background and Aims: Mounier-Kuhn syndrome is a rare disease with abnormal enlargement of major airways, but epidemiological studies are lacking, and currently the most available data about it come from case reports, making it difficult to collate changes in a particular patient to those in previously published cases. The aim of this work is to systematically review cases published in the last 25 years and to use descriptive statistics to summarize the patient demographic and clinical information therein in order to acquire details about patient clinical characteristics. Methods: Cases published in world literature between 1987 and 2013 were sought and reviewed according to PRISMA guidelines. Cases were included only if patient's age was at least 18 years, and a computed tomography scan with tracheal measurements was available. Results: An 8:1 male predominance was found in 89 identified reports (128 cases). Mean age was 53.9 years, and average tracheal diameter was 36.1mm. No correlation between increasing age and increasing tracheal diameter was found. Bronchiectasis, tracheal diverticulosis and tracheobronchial dyskinesia were common (49.2%, 33.6% and 28.9%, respectively). Cough, dyspnea and recurrent respiratory infections (71.1%, 51.6% and 50.8%, respectively) were the most common complaints. Conclusions: The data confirm that syndrome mostly manifests with nonspecific respiratory symptoms and is significantly more common in males. Importantly, there was no connection between age and airway diameter, a fact that could mean that the enlargement does not progress over time, and its severity depends on some other yet undetermined factors.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Anesthetic experience of a patient with tracheomegaly -A case report-

Tracheomegaly or tracheobronchomegaly is a rare syndrome that consists of marked dilatation of the trachea and the major bronchi, and this is usually due to a congenital defect of the elastic and muscle fibers of the tracheobroncheal tree. Physicians have had only limited experience with performing anesthesia in patients with this type of syndrome. This syndorme is diagnosed by roentenological investigation and this condition is frequently associated with chronic respiratory infection and partial airway obstruction. In this report, we present a case of performing tracheostomy for a patient with tracheomegaly, and this was probably secondary to mechanical ventilator therapy. The regular tracheostomy tube did not provided sufficient length to allow the cuff to lie properly in the trachea in this patient. Because of the peri-cuff air leakgae and hypercapnea after tracheostomy, we needed a longer tracheostomy tube. But we didn't have such a tube and we didn't know any other method, so we couldn't perform tracheostomy. Therefore, we introduced a method of reducing the length of the endotracheal tube to a suitable size until a longer tracheostomy tube can be obtained for those patients having tracheomegaly

Proteolytic Pathways of Activation and Degradation of a Bacterial Phospholipase C during Intracellular Infection by Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen that spreads cell to cell without exposure to the extracellular environment. Bacterial cell-to-cell spread is mediated in part by two secreted bacterial phospholipases C (PLC), a broad spectrum PLC (PC-PLC) and a phosphatidylinositolspecific PLC (PI-PLC). PI-PLC is secreted in an active state, whereas PC-PLC is secreted as an inactive proenzyme (proPC-PLC) whose activation is mediated in vitro by an L. monocytogenes metalloprotease (Mpl). Analysis of PI-PLC, PC-PLC, and Mpl single and double mutants revealed that Mpl also plays a role in the spread of an infection, but suggested that proPC-PLC has an Mpl-independent activation pathway. Using biochemical and microscopic approaches, we describe three intracellular proteolytic pathways regulating PCPLC activity. Initially, proPC-PLC secreted in the cytosol of infected cells was rapidly degraded in a proteasome-dependent manner. Later during infection, PCPLC colocalized with bacteria in lysosome-associated membrane protein 1–positive vacuoles. Activation of proPC-PLC in vacuoles was mediated by Mpl and an Mpl-independent pathway, the latter being sensitive to inhibitors of cysteine proteases. Lastly, proPC-PLC activation by either pathway was sensitive to bafilomycin A1, a specific inhibitor of vacuolar ATPase, suggesting that activation was dependent on acidification of the vacuolar compartment. These results are consistent with a model in which proPC-PLC activation is compartment specific and controlled by a combination of bacterial and host factors