Revision of dysfunctional Tenckhoff catheters by laparoscopic technique in continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis patients

A laparoscopic technique was used to rescue dysfunctional Tenckhoff catheters in five continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) patients. This method proved to be effective in recovering the function of the catheters, whose malfunction was found to be due to catheter entrapment or endoluminal tamponing by the omentum. The videoscope-assisted laparoscopic technique provides access and allows identification and eradication of the specific etiology leading to catheter drainage failure. It also provides an alternative for treating patients with a dysfunctional Tenckhoff catheter. This method avoids the need to remove the original catheter or to reimplant a new catheter.     

Combination cytotoxic effects of cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II) and 5-fluorouracil with and without leucovorin against human non-small cell lung cancer cell lines

Both cisplatin (CDDP) and leucovorin (LV) have been shown to enhance cytotoxicity of 5-fluorouracil (FUra) against murine and human neoplasms by increasing intracellular reduced folate concentrations. We were interested in their use in a combination to inhibit non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell growth and therefore conducted an in vitro study to investigate the cytotoxic activities of combinations of CDDP plus FUra, with and without LV (20 microM), against seven NSCLC cell lines. A tetrazolium assay with application of the classical isobole method was used to test drug combinations. We found that LV enhanced FUra but not CDDP cytotoxicity and that the degree of enhancement was negatively correlated with the effect of FUra. There was an overall additive combination effect of CDDP plus FUra, although there may be synergy at higher effect levels. There was synergy to a combination of CDDP, FUra, and LV, presumably primarily related to the synergistic effects of adding LV to FUra. In summary, LV and CDDP enhanced FUra cytotoxicity in a complementary fashion and there was clear synergy of a combination of CDDP, FUra, and LV against a panel of NSCLC cell lines. Our in vitro results provide a rationale for controlled clinical studies of this three-drug regimen in patients with NSCLC.     

Experiments in term weighting for novelty mining

Obtaining new information in a short time is becoming crucial in today’s economy. A lot of information both offline or online is easily acquired, exacerbating the problem of information overload. Novelty mining detects documents/sentences that contain novel or new information and presents those results directly to users (Tang, Tsai, & Chen, 2010). Many methods and algorithms for novelty mining have previously been studied, but none have compared and discussed the impact of term weighting on the evaluation measures. This paper performed experiments to recommend the best term weighting function for both document and sentence-level novelty mining.     

Robust fuzzy stabilization of dithered chaotic systems using island-based random optimization algorithm

Applying dither to highly nonlinear systems may suppress chaotic phenomena, but dynamic performance, such as convergence rate and disturbance attenuation, is usually not guaranteed. This paper presents a dithered H_∞ robust fuzzy control scheme to stabilize chaotic systems that ensures disturbance attenuation bounds. In the proposed scheme, Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy linear models are used to describe the relaxed models of the dithered chaotic system, and fuzzy controllers are designed based on an extension to the concept of parallel distributed compensation (PDC). Sufficient condition for the existence of the H_∞ robust fuzzy controllers is presented in terms of a novel linear matrix inequalities (LMI) form which takes full consideration of modeling error and disturbances, but cannot be solved by the standard procedures. In order to solve the LMI problem and to identify the chaotic systems as T-S fuzzy modes, we propose a compound optimization strategy called the island-based random-walk algorithm (IRA). The algorithm is composed of a set of communicating random-walk optimization procedures concatenated with the down-hill simplex method. The design procedure and validity of the proposed scheme is demonstrated via numerical simulation of the dithered fuzzy control of a chaotic system.     

Femtosecond laser-induced silicon surface morphology in water confinement

This article investigates the use of femtosecond laser induced surface morphology on silicon wafer surface in water confinement. Unlike irradiation of silicon surfaces in the air, there are no laser induced periodic structures, but irregular roughness is formed when the silicon wafer is ablated under water. The unique discovery of a smoothly processed silicon surface in water confinement under certain laser parameter combinations may help improve laser direct micromachining surface quality in industrial applications.     

Lead-lag compensator design by the Hough transform

The frequency response of a compensator can be expressed as a curve in the complex plane. The Hough transform is very useful in finding a mathematical model which matches the curve in a plane very well. We combine these concepts to generate a new method of compensator design. Two examples are illustrated to explain the design procedure and results.     

Tool support for learning Büchi automata and linear temporal logic

We introduce a graphical interactive tool, named GOAL, that can assist the user in understanding Büchi automata, linear temporal logic, and their relation. Büchi automata and linear temporal logic are closely related and have long served as fundamental building blocks of linear-time model checking. Understanding their relation is instrumental in discovering algorithmic solutions to model checking problems or simply in using those solutions, e.g., specifying a temporal property directly by an automaton rather than a temporal formula so that the property can be verified by an algorithm that operates on automata. One main function of the GOAL tool is translation of a temporal formula into an equivalent Büchi automaton that can be further manipulated visually. The user may edit the resulting automaton, attempting to optimize it, or simply run the automaton on some inputs to get a basic understanding of how it operates. GOAL includes a large number of translation algorithms, most of which support past temporal operators. With the option of viewing the intermediate steps of a translation, the user can quickly grasp how a translation algorithm works. The tool also provides various standard operations and tests on Büchi automata, in particular the equivalence test which is essential for checking if a hand-drawn automaton is correct in the sense that it is equivalent to some intended temporal formula or reference automaton. Several use cases are elaborated to show how these GOAL functions may be combined to facilitate the learning and teaching of Büchi automata and linear temporal logic. This work was partially supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan (R.O.C.) under grants NSC94-2213-E-002-089, NSC95-2221-E-002-127, NSC95-3114-P-001-001-Y02 (iCAST 2006), NSC96-3114-P-001-002-Y (iCAST 2007), and NSC97-2221-E-002-074-MY3.     

Robust tracking control of a unicycle-type wheeled mobile manipulator using a hybrid sliding mode fuzzy neural network

This article presents a robust tracking controller for an uncertain mobile manipulator system. A rigid robotic arm is mounted on a wheeled mobile platform whose motion is subject to nonholonomic constraints. The sliding mode control (SMC) method is associated with the fuzzy neural network (FNN) to constitute a robust control scheme to cope with three types of system uncertainties; namely, external disturbances, modelling errors, and strong couplings in between the mobile platform and the onboard arm subsystems. All parameter adjustment rules for the proposed controller are derived from the Lyapunov theory such that the tracking error dynamics and the FNN weighting updates are ensured to be stable with uniform ultimate boundedness (UUB).     

口罩认知与SARS防护

本文介绍了口罩的分类、规格、相应的测试方法以及过滤机理。针对SARS病毒的特性及传播途径 ,提出了所用口罩的要求和改善建议     

静电纺纤维的静电性能

本文评估了四种聚合物 (PEO ,PCL ,PC ,PS)的电荷感应和电荷保持性能 ,描述了由其制成的纤维的电学性能 ,并将该类材料与其他过滤介质 (纺粘、熔喷、针刺非织材料 )进行了过滤效率的比较