Macroporous calcium phosphate ceramic implants for sustained drug delivery

Limited blood circulation to the skeletal tissue is a major cause of reduced therapeutic effects seen with drugs administered by conventional systemic ways. To resolve this issue and obtain a sufficiently high local concentration to induce therapeutic effects, several implanted drug delivery systems have been developed for hard tissues using biomaterials.We have designed a drug delivery device based on hydroxylapatite (HA) and tested it in vitro using metronidazol and chloramphenicol as model compounds. Porous HA ceramics were prepared with two different shapes (cylindrical and spherical). Known amounts of drugs were introduced inside a drilled hole and sealed with wax. The ceramics were then suspended in stirred distilled water in closed polypropylene vials. Drug release was observed during several weeks.A mathematical model used to describe drug release from HA was elaborated based on the expressions of Fick's laws. The experimental kinetic results could be related to ceramic constitution and to drug localization.     

Studies on human plasma antithrombin isolated on heparin gel

1. A study has been made of peptide excretion in twenty cases of Wilson's disease, ligand-exchange column chromatography being used to separate peptides from free amino acids. Previous reports of excess of peptide output in the disease were confirmed and the excess was shown to be highly significant statistically. 2. A considerable fraction of the excess of peptide output was shown to consist of hydroxyproline-containing peptides derived from collagen degradation. 3. The method of rank correlation showed that the difference both in free amino acid and peptide-bound amino acid output in cases of Wilson's disease and in control subjects was mainly quantitative; the pattern of amino acid excretion was qualitatively similar in both groups. 4. Evidence is presented that the increase copper output in the urine in the disease is not secondary to peptiduria.     

Specific growth rate of sulfate reducing bacteria in the presence of manganese and cadmium

The development of technologies based on the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) to treat sulfate contaminated wastewaters has produced a cost-effective route to precipitate metals. In this work the effects of cadmium and manganese in the SRB growth rates were assessed. It was observed that duplication time is 50h in the presence of cadmium and 6h in the presence of manganese, thus showing that the SRB growth rate was more affected by the presence of cadmium. A low sulfate reduction (maximum 25%) occurred which was sufficient for metal precipitation. The results are discussed considering their implications for metal precipitation in acid mining drainage.     

Microscopic image segmentation based on pixel classification and dimensionality reduction

Pathological image analysis plays a significant role in effective disease diagnostics. In this article, a tool for diagnosis assistance by automatic segmentation of bone marrow images is introduced. The aim of our segmentation is to demarcate cell's component: nucleus, cytoplasm, red cells, and background. Different color spaces were used to extract color's features to profit of their complementarity. We introduce several dimensionality reduction techniques. These techniques are exemplified on a support vector machine pixel‐based bone marrow image segmentation problem in which it is shown that it may give significant improvement in segmentation accuracy and time consuming. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 22–28, 2013     

Adaptive support vector machine-based surface quality evaluation and temperature monitoring. Application to billet continuous casting process

A method for surface quality evaluation and temperature monitoring of the billet in continuous casting is considered in this paper. This method uses the difference between the measured and the filtered temperature computed using an adaptive support vector machine method. The temperature field, measured by an infrared camera, is affected by an important noise called calamine (a metal oxide generated during the cooling process). The quality of the billet’s surface temperature is connected to the secondary cooling behavior, and therefore an evaluation of the calamine effect is needed. Methods such as soft sensing and adaptive support vector machine are used for a global evaluation of calamine intensity on the monitored area of the billet in continuous casting. This kind of approaches is applied in continuous casting process for constructing a complementary condition monitoring system, which allows an online calamine evaluation. Simulation results, based on the measured surface temperature and the adaptive support vector machine analysis, showed that this new combined approach is easily implementable and gives good results when applied online.     

Erfolgsfaktoren der Applikationsintegration

In this paper success factors for application integration are identified. Furthermore, the factors are confirmed using structural equation modeling. Success is measured using five goal indicators: quality of process support, business satisfaction, application integration costs, architectural flexibility and time-to-market. All factors discussed — architecture management, business-IT alignment, organization of integration, integration methodology, service oriented architecture, consolidation of applications, standardization and technical quality of integration infrastructures — show positive impact on application integration success. Since no dominant factor could be identified, a balanced implementation of all success factors is recommended.     

S-band low noise amplifier using 1μm InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMT

正This paper discusses the design of a wideband low noise amplifier(LNA) in which specific architecture decisions were made in consideration of system-on-chip implementation for radio-astronomy applications.The LNA design is based on a novel ultra-low noise InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMT.Linear and non-linear modelling of this pHEMT has been used to design an LNA operating from 2 to 4 GHz.A common-drain in cascade with a common source inductive degeneration,broadband LNA topology is proposed for wideband applications.The proposed configuration achieved a maximum gain of 27 dB and a noise figure of 0.3 dB with a good input and output return loss(S_(11)—10 dB,S_(22)—11 dB).This LNA exhibits an input 1-dB compression point of-18 dBm,a third order input intercept point of 0 dBm and consumes 85 mW of power from a 1.8 V supply.