Regional chemotherapy of liver tumors

In the absence of adequate autogenous vein for tibial artery bypass in limb salvage surgery, the use of prosthetic grafts with a distal anastomotic vein cuff or patch has shown promising results. Here, we describe how the Florester Internal Vessel Occluder (Meadox UK, Bedfordshire, UK) can facilitate the construction of a distal anastomotic vein cuff.     

Highly Efficient,Bright, and Stable Colloidal Quantum Dot Short‐Wave Infrared Light‐Emitting Diodes

Unbalanced charge injection is deleterious for the performance of colloidal quantum dot (CQD) light‐emitting diodes (LEDs) as it deteriorates the quantum efficiency, brightness, and operational lifetime. CQD LEDs emitting in the infrared have previously achieved high quantum efficiencies but only when driven to emit in the low‐radiance regime. At higher radiance levels, required for practical applications, the efficiency decreased dramatically in view of the notorious efficiency droop. Here, a novel methodology is reported to regulate charge supply in multinary bandgap CQD composites that facilitates improved charge balance. The current approach is based on engineering the energetic potential landscape at the supra‐nanocrystalline level that has allowed to report short‐wave infrared PbS CQD LEDs with record‐high external quantum efficiency in excess of 8%, most importantly, at a radiance level of ≈5 W sr^?1 m², an order of magnitude higher than prior reports. Furthermore, the balanced charge injection and Auger recombination reduction has led to unprecedentedly high operational stability with radiance half‐life of 26 068 h at a radiance of 1 W sr^?1 m^?2.     

DCT-based motion estimation

We propose novel discrete cosine transform (DCT) pseudophase techniques to estimate shift/delay between two one-dimensional(1-D) signals directly from their DCT coefficients by computing the pseudophase shift hidden in DCT and then employing the sinusoidal orthogonal principles, applicable to signal delay estimation remote sensing. Under the two-dimensional (2-D) translational motion model, we further extend the pseudophase techniques to the DCT-based motion estimation (DXT-ME) algorithm for 2-D signals/images. The DXT-ME algorithm has certain advantages over the commonly used full search block-matching approach (BKM-ME) for application to video coding despite certain limitations. In addition to its robustness in a noisy environment and low computational complexity, O(M(2)) for an MxM search range in comparison to the O(N(2).M(2)) complexity of BKM-ME for an NxN block, its ability to estimate motion completely in DCT domain makes possible the fully DCT-based motion-compensated video coder structure, which has only one major component in the feedback loop instead of three as in the conventional hybrid video coder design, and thus results in a higher system throughput. Furthermore, combination of the DCT and motion estimation units can provide space for further optimization of the overall coder. In addition, the DXT-ME algorithm has solely highly parallel local operations and this property makes feasible parallel implementation suitable for very large scale integration (VLSI) design. Simulation on a number of video sequences is presented with comparison to BKM-ME and other fast block search algorithms for video coding applications even though DXT-ME is completely different from any block search algorithms.     

Lifting-based wavelet domain adaptive Wiener filter for image enhancement

A method of applying lifting-based wavelet domain Wiener filter (LBWDMF) in image enhancement is proposed. Lifting schemes have emerged as a powerful method for implementing biorthogonal wavelet filters. They exploit the similarity of the filter coefficients between the low-pass and high-pass filters to provide a higher speed of execution, compared to classical wavelet transforms. LBWDMF not only helps in reducing the number of computations but also achieves lossy to lossless performance with finite precision. The proposed method utilises the multi-scale characteristics of the wavelet transform and the local statistics of each subband. The proposed method transforms an image into the wavelet domain using lifting-based wavelet filters and then applies a Wiener filter in the wavelet domain and finally transforms the result into the spatial domain. When the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is low, transforming an image to the lifting-based wavelet domain and applying the Wiener filter in the wavelet domain produces better results than directly applying Wiener filter in spatial domain. In other words each subband is processed independently in the wavelet domain by a Wiener filter. Moreover, in order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method the result obtained using the proposed method is compared to those using the spatial domain Wiener filter (SDWF) and classical wavelet domain Wiener filter (CWDWF). Experimental results show that the proposed method has better performance over SDWF and CWDWF both visually and in terms of PSNR.     

Evaluation of the shifting of the line of sight and higher order aberrations of eyes with keratoconus after corneal cross-linking

Aim

To evaluate changes in the coordinates of the line of sight (LoS) and higher order aberrations (HOAs) of eyes with keratoconus, following corneal cross-linking (CXL).

Microbial profile and bacterial characterisation of naturally debittered Hurma olives compared to non‐debittered Erkence variety during ripening period

Naturally debittered Hurma olive is grown in a specific area in Karaburun peninsula in Turkey. It is characterised by its sweet taste and it differs from other varieties by losing its bitterness caused by phenolic compounds during its maturation period on the tree. Therefore, Hurma olive does not require any further debittering process to be served as table olive. This study was particularly interested in the comparison of the microbial profile of Hurma olive during its 8 weeks of maturation period in two subsequent harvest years and Erkence (not naturally debittered) olive. In addition, main bacterial profile of both Hurma and Erkence olives were isolated and identified. Aerobic mesophilic microorganism (AMM), lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonadaceae, Staphylococci, Micrococcaceae, yeasts and moulds (Y&Ms) were detected (counted and isolated) in the olive drupes during the maturation period. Isolated bacteria were identified as different spp. of Bacillaceae, Enterobacteriaceae, Micrococcoceae and Pseudomonadaceae.     

Conditions for high pressure inactivation of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in oysters

The objective of this study was to identify the high pressure processing conditions (pressure level, time, and temperature) needed to achieve a 5-log reduction of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in live oysters (Crassostrea virginica). Ten strains of V. parahaemolyticus were separately tested for their resistances to high pressure. The two most pressure-resistant strains were then used as a cocktail to represent baro-tolerant environmental strains. To evaluate the effect of temperature on pressure inactivation of V. parahaemolyticus, Vibrio-free oyster meats were inoculated with the cocktail of V. parahaemolyticus and incubated at room temperature (approximately 21 degrees C) for 24 h. Oyster meats were then blended and treated at 250 MPa for 5 min, 300 MPa for 2 min, and 350 MPa for 1 min. Pressure treatments were carried out at -2, 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 45 degrees C. Temperatures >/=30 degrees C enhanced pressure inactivation of V. parahaemolyticus. To achieve a 5-log reduction of V. parahaemolyticus in live oysters, pressure treatment needed to be >/=350 MPa for 2 min at temperatures between 1 and 35 degrees C and >/=300 MPa for 2 min at 40 degrees C.