WARP: Weight Associative Rule Processor. A dedicated VLSI fuzzy logic megacell

During the last five years Fuzzy Logic has gained enormous popularity in the academic and industrial worlds. The success of this new methodology has led the microelectronics industry to create a new class of machines, called Fuzzy Machines, to overcome the limitations of traditional computing systems when utilized as Fuzzy Systems. This paper gives an overview of the methods by which Fuzzy Logic data structures are represented in the machines (each with its own advantages and inefficiencies). Next, the paper introduces WARP (Weight Associative Rule Processor) which is a dedicated VLSI megacell allowing the realization of a fuzzy controller suitable for a wide range of applications. WARP represents an innovative approach to VLSI Fuzzy controllers by utilizing different types of data structures for characterizing the membership functions during the various stages of the Fuzzy processing. WARP dedicated architecture has been designed in order to achieve high performance by exploiting the computational advantages offered by the different data representations

Evaluating the expression of urokinase and tissue leukocyte being in benign and malignant breast disease

Introduction: Our objectives is to show that the expression of uPA leukocyte could be considered, in the future, as a marker of the expression of uPA in the malignant tissue and therefore a potential indicator of prognosis. Methods: We examined the expression of uPa in leukocytes and tissues of three groups of women: with breast cancer; with benign breast lesion and healthy women (control group). We used RT Real Time PCR assay. The expression of urokinase is significantly higher in malignant breast lumps compared to benign lesions. However, in women with carcinoma of the breast, malignant tissue expresses higher amounts of uPA than the healthy counterpart. There are no statistically significant differences in the expression of uPA, between tissues taken from women with benign lesions. The lymphocytes taken from healthy volunteers show a level of expression of uPA significantly lower than the other tested samples Lymphocytes extracted from cancer patients express higher amounts of uPA compared to lymphocytes belonging to women with benign breast lesions. The expression of uPA was compared with the clinical and biological parameters commonly used in clinical practice for the definition of the prognosis. The only exception found, concerns those tumors characterized by the simultaneous negativity for estrogen receptors, progesterone and HER2 (state of triple negative), in which the expression of uPA is very high. Results and conclusions: Our data show that uPA expressed by leukocytes of each individual patient is the mirror image of the one expressed by malignant nodular uPA.Introduction: Our objectives is to show that the expression of uPA leukocyte could be considered, in the future, as a marker of the expression of uPA in the malignant tissue and therefore a potential indicator of prognosis. Methods: We examined the expression of uPa in leukocytes and tissues of three groups of women: with breast cancer; with benign breast lesion and healthy women (control group). We used RT Real Time PCR assay. The expression of urokinase is significantly higher in malignant breast lumps compared to benign lesions. However, in women with carcinoma of the breast, malignant tissue expresses higher amounts of uPA than the healthy counterpart. There are no statistically significant differences in the expression of uPA, between tissues taken from women with benign lesions. The lymphocytes taken from healthy volunteers show a level of expression of uPA significantly lower than the other tested samples Lymphocytes extracted from cancer patients express higher amounts of uPA compared to lymphocytes belonging to women with benign breast lesions. The expression of uPA was compared with the clinical and biological parameters commonly used in clinical practice for the definition of the prognosis. The only exception found, concerns those tumors characterized by the simultaneous negativity for estrogen receptors, progesterone and HER2 (state of triple negative), in which the expression of uPA is very high. Results and conclusions: Our data show that uPA expressed by leukocytes of each individual patient is the mirror image of the one expressed by malignant nodular uPA

FLAT FLAME BURNER ANALYSES

Velocity and temperature fields in the sintered material surrounding an embedded cooling coil in a Kaskan type flat flame burner are predicted. An approximate two-dimensional velocity field is obtained in closed form using a potential flow analogy. The velocity profile above the burner surface will be flat if the distance from the burner surface to the plane of the coil is sufficiently large that the coil wake is ameliorated. Quantitative results for this minimum distance are presented. Several approximations to the temperature field are discussed. Detailed temperature profiles are given for the simplest - one-dimensional with uniform velocity - and the most complex - two-dimensional with potential flow velocity field. The influence of the burner and cooling geometries, fuel type and stoichiometry, flow rate, ambient and cooling water temperatures and sintered material properties, are all described by a small set of dimensionless parameters. Optimization of burner performance in terms of these parameters is discussed. It is hoped that the results will be useful in the design of burners for flame structure studies

Dual Effect of Methylprednsolone Pulses on Apoptosis of Peripheral Leukocytes in Patients with Renal Diseases

It is well known that change in apoptosis may modulate the natural story of illness, and that many drugs may act through modulation of apoptosis, but the role of steroids in acting through apoptosis in different settings, including renal diseases, has still to be elucidated. We studied the in vivo effects of steroids by oral assumption (10 to 25 mg/deltacortene) or by intravenous pulses (300 to 1000 mg/dose) on apoptosis and cellular subsets of peripheral lymphocytes, by evaluating DNA-fragmentation and lymphocyte subsets in 79 subjects: 22 controls and 57 patients with various renal diseases (25 Lupus-GN, 19 membranous-GN (MGN), 6 rapidly progressive-GN (RPGN), 2 acute interstitial nephritis (AIN), 5 on chronic dialysis. Baseline apoptosis was present in 1/22 (4.5%) of controls, 3/25 (12%) SLE, 2/6 (33.3%) RPGN and 10/19 (52.6%) MGN. A significant decrease in CD3+CD8+ cell count and a significant increase of the CD3+CD4/CD3+CD8+ ratio were found in apoptosis-positive subjects. DNA fragmentation did not change after oral steroids, paralleling a 22 to 32% decrease in total lymphocytes. Following intravenous methylprednisolone pulses, a deeper drop of all lymphocyte subsets was observed, while DNA fragmentation turned from present to absent in 2 MGN, but not in 2 RPGN, and from absent to present in 1 ARF and 1 SLE, independently of the dosage. We demonstrated that the presence of apoptosis in renal diseases is associated with decreased CD3+CD8+ cell count. Furthermore, steroid intravenous pulses, besides inducing a profound decrease in lymphocyte subsets, do exert a dual effect on baseline leukocyte apoptosis, eventually leading to a reversal of baseline patterns, either turning from negative to positive or from positive to negative. Oral steroid therapy did not influence baseline apoptosis

Density-based hierarchical clustering of pyro-sequences on a large scale—the case of fungal ITS1

Motivation: Analysis of millions of pyro-sequences is currently playing a crucial role in the advance of environmental microbiology. Taxonomy-independent, i.e. unsupervised, clustering of these sequences is essential for the definition of Operational Taxonomic Units. For this application, reproducibility and robustness should be the most sought after qualities, but have thus far largely been overlooked. Results: More than 1 million hyper-variable internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) sequences of fungal origin have been analyzed. The ITS1 sequences were first properly extracted from 454 reads using generalized profiles. Then, otupipe, cd-hit-454, ESPRIT-Tree and DBC454, a new algorithm presented here, were used to analyze the sequences. A numerical assay was developed to measure the reproducibility and robustness of these algorithms. DBC454 was the most robust, closely followed by ESPRIT-Tree. DBC454 features density-based hierarchical clustering, which complements the other methods by providing insights into the structure of the data. Availability: An executable is freely available for non-commercial users at ftp://ftp.vital-it.ch/tools/dbc454. It is designed to run under MPI on a cluster of 64-bit Linux machines running Red Hat 4.x, or on a multi-core OSX system. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

Colonoscopic findings in coeliac disease on a gluten-free diet

Background: to date, there are few data on colonoscopic findings in patients with celiac disease, and most of these obtained in patients with iron deficiency anaemia. Aims: we assessed colonoscopic findings in unselected pa tients with coeliac disease, since there are no studies available also considering morphological aspects, and there is literature sugges tion of increased prevalence of colorectal tumours. Material and methods: colonoscopies with multiple biopsies were retrospectively analyzed in 42 coeliac disease patients on gluten-free diet above age 40; 16 had clinical or laboratory fea tures of iron deficiency anaemia. Mucosal biopsies were evaluated for the presence of intraepithelial lymphocytes and of mucosal eosinophils, in addition to conventional histologic assessment, and compared with those obtained in 15 controls. Results: macroscopic abnormalities (polyps, diverticula, in flammatory changes) were found in 26% of patients. Microscopic abnormalities (lymphocytic colitis, melanosis coli, rectal histiocyto sis) were found in 36% of patients. None of these findings was found in controls. Coeliac disease patients had significantly higher eosinophil score than controls in the right colon, whereas this was not significantly different between groups in the left colon. Conclusions: colonoscopic findings in coeliac disease on gluten-free diet may reveal significant findings, even in patients without iron deficiency anaemia. There is the need of further stud ies in larger cohorts of patients to establish whether colonoscopy in these patients may be clinically useful

HPV sensitizes OPSCC cells to cisplatin-induced apoptosis by inhibiting autophagy through E7-mediated degradation of AMBRA1

Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) is an increasing world health problem with a more favorable prognosis for patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive tumors compared to those with HPV-negative OPSCC. How HPV confers a less aggressive phenotype, however, remains undefined. We demonstrated that HPV-positive OPSCC cells display reduced macroautophagy/autophagy activity, mediated by the ability of HPV-E7 to interact with AMBRA1, to compete with its binding to BECN1 and to trigger its calpain-dependent degradation. Moreover, we have shown that AMBRA1 downregulation and pharmacological inhibition of autophagy sensitized HPV-negative OPSCC cells to the cytotoxic effects of cisplatin. Importantly, semi-quantitative immunohistochemical analysis in primary OPSCCs confirmed that AMBRA1 expression is reduced in HPV-positive compared to HPV-negative tumors. Collectively, these data identify AMBRA1 as a key target of HPV to impair autophagy and propose the targeting of autophagy as a viable therapeutic strategy to improve treatment response of HPV-negative OPSCC. Abbreviations: AMBRA1: autophagy and beclin 1 regulator 1; CDDP: cisplatin (CDDP); FFPE: formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE); HNC: head and neck cancers (HNC); HPV: human papillomavirus (HPV); hrHPV: high risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV); OCSCC: oral cavity squamous carcinomas (OCSSC); OPSCC: oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC); OS: overall survival (OS); qPCR: quantitative polymerase chain reaction; RB1: RB transcriptional corepressor 1; ROC: receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC)