Bioenergetic Alterations of Metabolic Redox Coenzymes as NADH,FAD and FMN by Means of Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Techniques

Metabolic FLIM (fluorescence lifetime imaging) is used to image bioenergetic status in cells and tissue. Whereas an attribution of the fluorescence lifetime of coenzymes as an indicator for cell metabolism is mainly accepted, it is debated whether this is valid for the redox state of cells. In this regard, an innovative algorithm using the lifetime characteristics of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (phosphate) (NAD(P)H) and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) to calculate the fluorescence lifetime induced redox ratio (FLIRR) has been reported so far. We extended the FLIRR approach and present new results, which includes FLIM data of the various enzymes, such as NAD(P)H, FAD, as well as flavin mononucleotide (FMN). Our algorithm uses a two-exponential fitting procedure for the NAD(P)H autofluorescence and a three-exponential fit of the flavin signal. By extending the FLIRR approach, we introduced FLIRR1 as protein-bound NAD(P)H related to protein-bound FAD, FLIRR2 as protein-bound NAD(P)H related to free (unbound) FAD and FLIRR3 as protein-bound NAD(P)H related to protein-bound FMN. We compared the significance of extended FLIRR to the metabolic index, defined as the ratio of protein-bound NAD(P)H to free NAD(P)H. The statistically significant difference for tumor and normal cells was found to be highest for FLIRR1.     

Applying “Design Thinking” in the context of media management education

“Design Thinking” – a cross-disciplinary and user centered method – is an approach towards the discovery of solutions and sparks innovative thinking in many ways. It also can be argued, that designers put themselves in the place of the user rather than co-creating with the consumer. Innovation is one of the current keywords across many industries, and many attempt to find new solutions to daily problems. Design Thinking as method allows to understand user needs and understand their principle problems in daily life. The design process uses intensive collaboration in cross-disciplinary settings and is divided into the exploration of the problem space and the solution space to achieve new ways of solving existing problems. Design Thinking has to integrate into the innovation process and into organizational structures right from the beginning. It constitutes a complement to classical analytical processes for problems that require lateral, not linear thinking. This article reviews the practical application of this energetic methodology in the academic context and presents some hands-on examples. The course series has been established by the Entertainment and Media Management Lab. (EMMi Lab.) at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and was held in cooperation with students from the University of Tampere (UTA), and the Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK). One course has been held in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany. This article describes how to train students especially with strong technical background and analytical mind-sets in the development of innovations in the field of media, foster creative thinking, and achieve problem solutions beyond the current state of the art. We present the basic curriculum, course structure, goals & objectives, applied methods, settings, and theoretical aspects of Design Thinking. Our experience and reflections on conducting the courses concludes this article. The article shall be an introductory guide for anyone who intends to organize a similar course in the university context.     

Categorization of ambient media projects on their business models, innovativeness, and characteristics—evaluation of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award Projects of 2010

Ambient Media describe media environments, where the medium is embedded within the natural environment. They follow the anytime, anywhere, and anyhow principle for media access. The Nokia Ubimedia MindTreks Awards have been established a few years ago to explore the potential of ambient media. In this article we analyze the total project portfolio submitted to the 4th Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards in 2010 according to their business value, innovativeness, and use of ambient media. The aim of this article is to gain insights into the general characteristics of ambient media, their properties, and business functions. The article rounds up in providing a substantial framework and guidelines for ambient media developers in their product designs.     

Differential Impact of Hyperglycemia in Critically Ill Patients: Significance in Acute Myocardial Infarction but Not in Sepsis?

Hyperglycemia is a common condition in critically ill patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU). These patients represent an inhomogeneous collective and hyperglycemia might need different evaluation depending on the underlying disorder. To elucidate this, we investigated and compared associations of severe hyperglycemia (>200 mg/dL) and mortality in patients admitted to an ICU for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or sepsis as the two most frequent admission diagnoses. From 2006 to 2009, 2551 patients 69 (58–77) years; 1544 male; 337 patients suffering from type 2 diabetes (T2DM)) who were admitted because of either AMI or sepsis to an ICU in a tertiary care hospital were investigated retrospectively. Follow-up of patients was performed between May 2013 and November 2013. In a Cox regression analysis, maximum glucose concentration at the day of admission was associated with mortality in the overall cohort (HR = 1.006, 95% CI: 1.004–1.009; p < 0.001) and in patients suffering from myocardial infarction (HR = 1.101, 95% CI: 1.075–1.127; p < 0.001) but only in trend in patients admitted to an ICU for sepsis (HR = 1.030, 95% CI: 0.998–1.062; p = 0.07). Severe hyperglycemia was associated with adverse intra-ICU mortality in the overall cohort (23% vs. 13%; p < 0.001) and patients admitted for AMI (15% vs. 5%; p < 0.001) but not for septic patients (39% vs. 40%; p = 0.48). A medical history of type 2 diabetes (n = 337; 13%) was not associated with increased intra-ICU mortality (15% vs. 15%; p = 0.93) but in patients with severe hyperglycemia and/or a known medical history of type 2 diabetes considered in combination, an increased mortality in AMI patients (intra-ICU 5% vs. 13%; p < 0.001) but not in septic patients (intra-ICU 38% vs. 41%; p = 0.53) could be evidenced. The presence of hyperglycemia in critically ill patients has differential impact within the different etiological groups. Hyperglycemia in AMI patients might identify a sicker patient collective suffering from pre-diabetes or undiagnosed diabetes with its’ known adverse consequences, especially in the long-term. Hyperglycemia in sepsis might be considered as adaptive survival mechanism to hypo-perfusion and consecutive lack of glucose in peripheral cells. AMI patients with hyperglycemic derailment during an ICU-stay should be closely followed-up and extensively screened for diabetes to improve patients’ outcome.     

Alterations in Serum Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Eicosanoids in Patients with Mild to Moderate Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Smoking is a major risk factor for several diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). To better understand the systemic effects of cigarette smoke exposure and mild to moderate COPD—and to support future biomarker development—we profiled the serum lipidomes of healthy smokers, smokers with mild to moderate COPD (GOLD stages 1 and 2), former smokers, and never-smokers (n = 40 per group) (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT01780298","term_id":"NCT01780298"}}NCT01780298). Serum lipidome profiling was conducted with untargeted and targeted mass spectrometry-based lipidomics. Guided by weighted lipid co-expression network analysis, we identified three main trends comparing smokers, especially those with COPD, with non-smokers: a general increase in glycero(phospho)lipids, including triglycerols; changes in fatty acid desaturation (decrease in ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and an increase in monounsaturated fatty acids); and an imbalance in eicosanoids (increase in 11,12- and 14,15-DHETs (dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids), and a decrease in 9- and 13-HODEs (hydroxyoctadecadienoic acids)). The lipidome profiles supported classification of study subjects as smokers or non-smokers, but were not sufficient to distinguish between smokers with and without COPD. Overall, our study yielded further insights into the complex interplay between smoke exposure, lung disease, and systemic alterations in serum lipid profiles.     

Endocrine disrupting nonylphenols are ubiquitous in food

4-Nonylphenols (NPs) are common products of biodegradation of a widely used group of nonionic surfactants, the nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). These compounds are known to be persistent, toxic, and estrogen active. There is a worldwide scientific and public discussion on the potential consequences of human long term dietary exposure to such endocrine disrupters. Despite numerous determinations of NPs in environmental samples no systematical reports exist relating to concentrations of NPs in food. We analyzed NPs in 60 different foodstuff commercially available in Germany. The results indicate that NPs are ubiquitous in food. The concentrations of NPs on a fresh weight basis varied between 0.1 and 19.4 microg/kg regardless of the fat content of the foodstuff. Based on data on German food consumption rates and these first analyses of NPs in food, the daily intake for an adult was calculated to be 7.5 microg/day NPs. For infants exclusively fed with breast milk or infant formulas daily intakes of 0.2 microg/day and 1.4 microg/day NPs, respectively, can be estimated.     

Reactions Between Liquid CaO-SiO2 Slags and Graphite Substrates

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B - In this study, the spreading and infiltration behavior of liquid slag in contact with different grades of graphite was investigated. The wetting and...     

Ray contribution masks for structure adaptive sinogram filtering

The patient dose in computed tomography (CT) imaging is linked to measurement noise. Various noise-reduction techniques have been developed that adapt structure preserving filters like anisotropic diffusion or bilateral filters to CT noise properties. We introduce a structure adaptive sinogram (SAS) filter that incorporates the specific properties of the CT measurement process. It uses a point-based forward projector to generate a local structure representation called ray contribution mask (RCM). The similarities between neighboring RCMs are used in an enhanced variant of the bilateral filtering concept, where the photometric similarity is replaced with the structural similarity. We evaluate the performance in four different scenarios: The robustness against reconstruction artifacts is demonstrated by a scan of a high-resolution-phantom. Without changing the modulation transfer function (MTF) nor introducing artifacts, the SAS filter reduces the noise level by 13.6%. The image sharpness and noise reduction capabilities are visually assessed on in vivo patient scans and quantitatively evaluated on a simulated phantom. Unlike a standard bilateral filter, the SAS filter preserves edge information and high-frequency components of organ textures well. It shows a homogeneous noise reduction behavior throughout the whole frequency range. The last scenario uses a simulated edge phantom to estimate the filter MTF for various contrasts: the noise reduction for the simple edge phantom exceeds 80%. For low contrasts at 55 Hounsfield units (HU), the mid-frequency range is slightly attenuated, at higher contrasts of approximately 100 HU and above, the MTF is fully preserved.     

Approaching the accuracy–cost conflict in embedded classification system design

Smart embedded systems often run sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms and are found in many areas like automotive, sports and medicine. The developer of such a system is often confronted with the accuracy–cost conflict as the resulting system should be as accurate as possible while being able to run on resource constraint hardware. This article introduces a method to support the solution of this design conflict with accuracy–cost reports. These reports compare classification systems regarding their classification rate (accuracy) and the mathematical operations and parameters of the working phase (cost). Our method is used to deduce the specific cost of various popular pattern recognition algorithms and to derive the overall cost of a classification system. We also show how our analysis can be used to estimate the computational cost for specific hardware architectures. A software toolbox to create accuracy–cost reports was implemented to facilitate the automatic classification system comparison with the presented methodology. The software is available for download and as supplementary material. We performed different experiments on synthetic and real-world data to underline the value of this analysis. Accurate and computationally cheap classification systems were easily identified. We were even able to find a better implementation candidate in an existing embedded classification problem. This work is the first step towards a comprehensive support tool for the design of embedded classification systems.