Imaging of follicular dendritic cell tumours of the liver

Follicular dendritic cell tumour of the liver is a recently recognized entity. To date, only two cases have been described, both in the pathology literature. Histologically, it resembles an inflammatory pseudotumour and immunohistochemical and ultrastructural studies are required for its diagnosis. The ultrasound, computed tomography and angiographic features of two cases of follicular dendritic cell tumour of the liver are described in detail. One of the patients had multiple recurrences of this tumour. The imaging features are very similar to those of hepatocellular carcinoma. As follicular dendritic cell tumour is considered to be of low-grade malignant potential, in contrast to the dismal prognosis for hepatocellular carcinoma, it is important to be able to accurately distinguish between the two types of tumour prior to initiating definitive therapy.     

Action of prostanoids on the emetic reflex of Suncus murinus (the house musk shrew)

Several prostanoids were investigated for a potential to induce emesis in Suncus murinus. The TP receptor agonist 11alpha,9alpha-epoxymethano-15S-hydroxyprosta-5Z,13E-dienoic acid (U46619) induced emesis at doses as low as 3 microg/kg, i.p. but the DP receptor agonist 5-(6-Carboxyhexyl)-1-(3-cyclohexyl-3-hydroxypropyl) hydantoin (BW245C) was approximately 1000 times less potent. The emetic action of U46619 (300 microg/kg, i.p.) was antagonized significantly by the TP receptor antagonist, vapiprost (P<0.05). EP (prostaglandin E(2), 17-phenyl-omega-trinor prostaglandin E(2), misoprostol and sulprostone), FP (prostaglandin F(2alpha) and fluprostenol) and IP (iloprost and cicaprost) receptor agonists failed to induce consistent emesis at doses up to 300-1000 microg/kg, i.p. Fluprostenol reduced nicotine (5 mg/kg, s.c.)-but not copper sulphate (120 mg/kg, intragastric)-induced emesis; the other inconsistently emetic prostanoids were inactive to modify drug-induced emesis. The results indicate an involvement of TP and possibly DP and FP receptors in the emetic reflex of S. murinus.     

Application of supercritical fluid chromatography in the quantitative analysis of minor components (carotenes,vitamin E,sterols, and squalene) from palm oil

The application of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) coupled with a UV variable-wavelength detector to isolate the minor components (carotenes, vitamin E, sterols, and squalene) in crude palm oil (CPO) and the residual oil from palm-pressed fiber is reported. SFC is a good technique for the isolation and analysis of these compounds from the sources mentioned. The carotenes, vitamin E, sterols, and squalene were isolated in less than 20 min. The individual vitamin E isomers present in palm oil were also isolated into their respective components, α-tocopherol, α-tocotrienol, γ-tocopherol, γ-tocotrienol, and δ-tocotrienol. Calibration of all the minor components of palm as well as the individual components of palm vitamin E was carried out and was found to be comparable to those analyzed by other established analytical methods.     

Separation of crude palm oil components by semipreparative supercritical fluid chromatography

Successful separation of triglycerides, diglycerides, free fatty acids, carotenes, tocopherol, and tocotrienols from crude palm oil has been achieved by supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) with a combination of a C18 and a silica gel column. The separation was carried out by the programmed extraction elution method. Free fatty acids were separated into five components by gas-liquid chromatography; tocopherol and tocotrienols were also separated into four components by SFC analysis, and the pure fractionated carotenes were obtained by preparative SFC. Thus, by using supercritical fluid chromatography, crude palm oil components can be separated and fractionated, based on differences in their functional groups.     

FaceSeg: Automatic Face Segmentation for Real-Time Video

Segmenting human faces automatically is very important for face recognition and verification, security system, and computer vision. In this paper, we present an accurate segmentation system for cutting human faces out from video sequences in real-time. First, a learning based face detector is developed to rapidly find human faces. To speed up the detection process, a face rejection cascade is constructed to remove most of negative samples while retaining all the face samples. Then, we develop a coarse-to-fine segmentation approach to extract the faces based on a min-cut optimization. Finally, a new matting algorithm is proposed to estimate the alpha-matte based on an adaptive trimap generation method. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed method that can compete with the well-known interactive methods in real-time.     

Picture-Neutrosophic Trusted Safe Semi-Supervised Fuzzy Clustering for Noisy Data

Clustering is a crucial method for deciphering data structure and producing new information. Due to its significance in revealing fundamental connections between the human brain and events, it is essential to utilize clustering for cognitive research. Dealing with noisy data caused by inaccurate synthesis from several sources or misleading data production processes is one of the most intriguing clustering difficulties. Noisy data can lead to incorrect object recognition and inference. This research aims to innovate a novel clustering approach, named Picture-Neutrosophic Trusted Safe Semi-Supervised Fuzzy Clustering (PNTS3FCM), to solve the clustering problem with noisy data using neutral and refusal degrees in the definition of Picture Fuzzy Set (PFS) and Neutrosophic Set (NS). Our contribution is to propose a new optimization model with four essential components: clustering, outlier removal, safe semi-supervised fuzzy clustering and partitioning with labeled and unlabeled data. The effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed technique are estimated and compared with the state-of-art methods, standard Picture fuzzy clustering (FC-PFS) and Confidence-weighted safe semi-supervised clustering (CS3FCM) on benchmark UCI datasets. The experimental results show that our method is better at least 10/15 datasets than the compared methods in terms of clustering quality and computational time.     

A high quality and small shadow size visual secret sharing scheme based on hybrid strategy for grayscale images

Many secret sharing schemes for digital images have been developed in recent decades. Traditional schemes typically must deal with the problem of computational complexity, and other visual secret sharing schemes come with a higher transmission cost and storage cost; that is, each shadow size is m times as big as the original secret image. The new (2,n) secret sharing scheme for grayscale images proposed in this paper is based a combination of acceptable image quality using block truncation coding (BTC), high compression ratio discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and good subjective performance of the vector quantization (VQ) technique. Experimental results confirm that our proposed scheme not only generates a high quality reconstructed original image but also generates small, random-like grayscale shadows.     

Hybrid wet paper coding mechanism for steganography employing n-indicator and fuzzy edge detector

Data hiding technique can facilitate security and the safe transmission of important information in the digital domain, which generally requires a high embedding payload and good stego image quality. Recently, a steganographic framework known as wet paper coding has been utilized as an effective strategy in image hiding to achieve the requirements of high embedding payload, good quality and robust security. In this paper, besides employing this mechanism as a fundamental stage, we take advantage of two novel techniques, namely, an efficient n-indicator and a fuzzy edge detector. The first is to increase the robustness of the proposed system to guard against being detected or traced by the statistics methods while allowing the receiver without knowledge of secret data positions to retrieve the embedded information. The second is to improve the payload and enhance the quality of stego image. The experimental results show that our proposed scheme outperforms its ability to reduce the conflict among three steganography requirements.     

Comments on “Performances of a Fully Integrated All-Optical Pulse Reshaper Based on Cascaded Coupled Nonlinear Microring Resonators” [Sep 07 2417-2426]

In the above paper we did not accurately evaluate the Q-factors given in Table I. We give in the present table the corrected values. Captions of figures 11, 12, 13 and 15 must be changed using these new values: in the caption of Fig. 11 Q_in ^t 4.81, Q_out = 11.61 and Q_out ^t = 3.18; in the caption of Fig. 12 Q_out = 9.71 and Q_out ^t = 1.85; in the caption of Fig. 13 Q_out = 6.01 and Q_out ^t 4.64; in the caption of Fig. 15 Q_out = 5.86 and Q_out ^t = 2.11. In the text, the best Q-factor increase in the lossly case of 4.72 dB obtained at 10 Gbit/s.     

A New Sidelobe Correction Algorithm for Microwave Radiometers: Application to the Envisat Instrument

The antenna temperature measured by a microwave radiometer is converted in brightness temperature (TB) by removing the different contributions that do not come from the main lobe of the antenna. Among them, the Earth contribution in the sidelobes may be significant as for the Environmental Satellite mission due to the antenna position on the platform. In such a case, simple corrections commonly applied on previous altimetry missions are inadequate, and a more accurate correction should be determined. We propose in this paper a new method based on global seasonal tables of contamination. This allows application of an accurate sidelobe correction in space and time in the retrieved TB computation