Successful weaning from mechanical ventilation in an aged subject with severe apneas due to brain damage

A 73-year-old male was admitted to Tokyo University Hospital due to cardiac arrest secondary to ventricular arrhythmias. Although the patient survived after cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he needed mechanical ventilation. When we tried to wean the patient from mechanical ventilation, we found that he suffered from frequent sleep apneas of over 40 times/hour. To evaluate the severity and frequency of the apneas, we performed polysomnographic study on the patient under assist ventilation. The polysomnographic study revealed that frequency of apneas was very high but the magnitude of desaturation was not so severe during the night. Since we confirmed the lowest SaO2 in this patients was over 90% during day and night, we tried to wean from the patient from the ventilator again and succeeded. The clinical application and usefulness of nocturnal ventilatory monitoring for patients with mechanical ventilation was discussed.     

A New Two-Branch Amplification Architecture and its Application with Various Modulated Signals

This paper proposes a new two-branch amplification architecture that combines baseband signal decomposition with RF front-end optimization. In the proposed architecture, the filtered modulated signals are separated into two components that are then amplified independently and combined to regenerate an amplified version of the original signal. A branch with an efficient amplifier transmits a low-varying envelope signal that contains the main part of the information. Another branch amplifies the residual portion of the signal. The baseband decomposition and parameters of the RF part are optimized to find the configuration that gives the best power efficiency and linearity. For M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation （M-QAM） signals, this technique is limited in terms of power efficiency. However, for filtered continuous phase modulation （CPM） signals, especially for minimum shift keying （MSK） and Gaussian MSK （GMSK） signals, high power efficiency can be achieved with no significant impact on the overall linearity. The results show that this technique gives better performance than the single-ended ctass-B amplifier.     

Proposal of a recommender system simulator based on a small-world model

This article proposes the development of a software simulator that allows the user to evaluate algorithms for recommender systems. This simulator consists of agents, items, a recommender, a controller, and a recorder, and it locates the agents and allocates the items based on a small-world network. An agent plays the role of a user in the recommender system, and the recommender also plays a role in the system. The controller handles the simulation flow where (1) the recommender recommends items to agents based on the recommendation algorithm, (2) each agent evaluates the items based on the agents’ rating algorithm and using the attributes of each item and agent, and (3) the recorder obtains the results of the rating and evaluation measurements for the recommendation pertaining to such information as precision and recall. This article considers the background of the proposal and the architecture of the simulator.     

Virus-Mediated Targeted DNA Methylation Illuminates the Dynamics of Methylation in an Endogenous Plant Gene

DNA methylation maintains genome stability and regulates gene expression in plants. RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) is critical for appropriate methylation. However, no efficient tools are available for the investigation of the functions of specific DNA methylation. In this study, the cucumber mosaic virus vector was used for targeted DNA methylation. Methylation was rapidly induced but gradually decreased from the 3′ end of the target endogenous sequence in Nicotiana benthamiana, suggesting a mechanism to protect against the ectopic introduction of DNA methylation. Increasing 24-nt siRNAs blocked this reduction in methylation by down-regulating DCL2 and DCL4. RdDM relies on the sequence identity between RNA and genomic DNA; however, this identity does not appear to be the sole determinant for efficient DNA methylation. The current findings provide new insight into the regulation of DNA methylation and promote additional effort to develop efficient targeted DNA methylation in plants.     

Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in Fluorescence Microscopy Images Based on ANN Classifier

Mobile Networks and Applications - Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is a clinical biomarker for cancer metastasis. CTCs are cells circulating in the body of patients by being separated from primary...     

Synthesis of Substituted 2,2′‐Bipyridines and 2,2′:6′,2′′‐Terpyridines by Cobalt‐Catalyzed Cycloaddition Reactions of Nitriles and α,ω‐Diynes with Exclusive Regioselectivity

A variety of substituted 2,2′‐bipyridines were synthesized by a 1,2‐bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane (dppe)/cobalt chloride hexahydrate (CoCl₂⋅6 H₂O)/zinc‐catalyzed [2+2+2] cycloaddition reaction of diynes and nitriles, with all reactions exhibiting exclusive regioselectivity. Thus, symmetrical and unsymmetrical 1,6‐diynes and 2‐cyanopyridine reacted in the presence of 5 mol % of dppe, 5 mol % of CoCl₂⋅6 H₂O and 10 mol % of zinc powder to provide the corresponding 2,2′‐bipyridines. Under identical reaction conditions, 1‐(2‐pyridyl)‐1,6‐diynes and nitriles reacted smoothly with exclusive regioselectivity to produce 2,2′‐bipyridines in good yield. 2,2′‐Bipyridines were also obtained by the double [2+2+2] cycloaddition reaction of 1,6,8,13‐tetraynes with nitriles. Similarly, 2,2′:6′,2′′‐terpyridines were synthesized from 1‐(2‐pyridyl)‐1,6‐diyne and 2‐cyanopyridine. The regiochemistry observed can be explained by considering the electronic nature of cobaltacyclopentadiene intermediates and nitriles. A survey of the exclusive regiochemical trend gives reasonable credence to the synthetic potential of the present method.     

An accurate on-wafer deembedding technique with application to HBTdevices characterization

An accurate deembedding technique for on-wafer measurements of an active device's S-parameter is presented in this paper. This deembedding technique accounts in a systematic way for effect of all parasitic elements surrounding the device. These parasitic elements are modeled as a four-port network. Closed-form equations are derived for deembedding purposes of this four-port network. The proposed deembedding technique was used to extract small-signal model parameters of a 2×25 μm emitter GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor device, and excellent agreement between measured and model-simulated S-parameter was obtained up to 30 GHz     

Position-sensorless starting method and driving characteristics of closed-slot small permanent-magnet motor

This paper describes a method of estimating the rotor position of a surface permanent-magnet motor with a closed-slot stator for sensorless starting by using the effect of partial magnetic saturation. It also describes a starting scheme for the motor. Since the closed-slot stator is partially saturated at 12% of the rated stator current, this method reduces noise and vibration. Experimental results on the driving characteristics of the motor are also presented.