Malacoplakia of the prostate and seminal vesicle. Ultrastructural study and review of the literature

OBJECTIVES: The present study describes a case of malacoplakia of the genitourinary tract arising in the seminal vesicle and prostate and reviews similar cases previously reported in the literature. METHOD: A 67-year-old male consulted for hemospermia and voiding symptoms. Prostatic neoplasm was suspected on the basis of the clinical and radiological findings. RESULTS: The diagnosis was made only after biopsy and histological analysis. Electron microscopy is a very useful tool. Long-term antibiotic therapy may achieve optimal results. Treatment with fluoroquinolones was successful. CONCLUSION: To avoid unwarranted radical approaches, we underscore the possibility that prostatic pseudotumors may be misinterpreted as neoplasia. Malacoplakia is diagnosed only by histology and requires medical treatment.     

Equilibrium distribution of water in the two-phase system supercritical carbon dioxide–textile

When natural fibres are dyed in supercritical carbon dioxide, the addition of a small amount of water increases coloration. For a process design it is important to know how much water has to be added to obtain a desired humidity of both textile and carbon dioxide. In this work a thermodynamic model is proposed to calculate the distribution of water over the textile phase and the supercritical phase as a function of pressure and temperature. The phase equilibrium is described with Raoult's law for non-ideal fluids. The absorbed water in the textile is a condensed phase and is modelled here as a non-ideal liquid, using the NRTL-equation. The non-ideality of the supercritical phase is described by a solubility enhancement factor, a new equation derived from statistical thermodynamics. Although the model is applied to cotton, viscose, silk and wool, it can be used for all water absorbing textiles.     

Adaptive covariate acquisition for minimizing total cost of classification

Machine Learning - In some applications, acquiring covariates comes at a cost which is not negligible. For example in the medical domain, in order to classify whether a patient has diabetes or not,...     

Influence of the composition of the binder and the carbonation on the zeta potential values of hardened cementitious materials

Electroosmotic experiments have been carried out on eight different mixes of hardened cementitious matrixes including concrete, mortar and pastes, different types of binders, carbonated and non-carbonated specimens and different test conditions. From these trials, the zeta potential values have been determined and the optimum experimental parameters and devices have been established. In addition, the influence of the composition of the binder on the zeta potential has been quantified indicating that higher amounts of Al₂O₃ in the binder lead to higher positive values of zeta potential, while the SiO₂ acts just on the opposite side. This has been explained in terms of the different i.e.p. (isoelectric point) for both oxides. Concerning the influence of carbonation, it increases the absolute value of the zeta potential toward more negative values; this behaviour has been attributed to the influence of the specifically adsorbed Ca²⁺ in the negative sites of the surface in the non-carbonated samples.     

Characterization of Maximum Likelihood Solutions to Image Reconstruction in Photon Emission Tomography

For photon emission tomography, the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for image reconstruction is generally solution to a nonlinear equation involving the vector of measured data. No explicit closed-form solution is known in general for such a nonlinear ML equation, and numerical resolution is usually implemented, with a very popular iterative method formed by the expectation-maximization algorithm. The numerical character of such resolutions usually makes it difficult to obtain a general characterization of the performance of the ML solution. We show that the nonlinear ML equation can be replaced by an equivalent system of two dual linear equations nonlinearly coupled. This formulation allows us to exhibit explicit (to some extent) forms for the solutions to the ML equation, in general conditions corresponding to the various possible configurations of the imaging system, and to characterize their performance with expressions for the mean-squared error, bias and Cramér-Rao bound. The approach especially applies to characterize the ML solutions obtained numerically, and offers a theoretical framework to contribute to better appreciation of the capabilities of ML reconstruction in photon emission tomography.     

Aspects of moisture kinetics of coal bottom ash in concrete

The moisture kinetics aspects of composite granular material samples composed of natural sand and bottom ash (BA) from thermoelectric power stations and the use of this material in the production of durable concretes, in relation to water transport, are here discussed. The evaluations of the phenomenon of water absorption by capillarity and the loss of water through air drying until hygroscopic equilibrium, were carried out in accordance with classic procedures found in the literature and also newly developed procedures. The results showed that due to the high porosity of BA, the water absorption by capillarity along with the absorption velocity were higher in the compositions with greater BA content. The values for moisture equilibrium from air drying, absorption from capillarity and sorptivity obtained in the hygroscopic equilibrium tests, carried out on the same samples after absorption, were also higher in the samples with BA. These samples also requited a longer drying time.     

An architectural counterpoint in Universal Everything: Fluid Bodies exhibition

ABSTRACT

This exhibition review focuses on the quest for weaving boundaries between body-form-space-and material relationship using immersive technologies. Emerging as an architectural counterpoint, Universal Everything: Fluid Bodies exhibition held in Borusan Contemporary focuses on how we perceive the motion and form in relation to it, as well as fusing senses of kinaesthetic and synaesthetic through a data driven and motion-based visual representation. Through these algorithms, the exhibition displays how neuroarchitecture reminds us of the senses of perception. The architectural counterpoint, intention as an interaction and encounter of the body with ‘the machine’ as the ‘voyeur body’ and how this observational dialogue becomes a research methodology in understanding the nature of movement in space through digital tools.     

Digitally-controlled array of solid-state microcoolers for use in surgery

This paper presents an approach for generating a well-defined cooling pattern over an area of tissue. An array of solid-state microcoolers is used, which could be included in a probe that provides local cooling. This medical instrument can be used for removal of scar tissue in the eye or for the rapid stopping of bleeding due to micro-cuts, which makes it a useful tool to medical doctors and could make surgery more secure to the patient. The array of microcoolers is composed of 64 independent thermo-electric elements, each controlled using an integrated circuit designed in CMOS. The independent control allows the flexible programming of the surface temperature profile. This type of control is very suitable in case abrupt temperature steps should be avoided. Cooling by lateral heat flow was selected in order to minimize the influence of heat by dissipation from the electronic circuits. Moreover, a thermo-electric component with lateral heat allows fabrication of the cooling elements using planar thin-film technology, lithography and wet etching on top of the silicon wafer. This approach is potentially CMOS compatible, which would allow for the fabrication of the thermo-electric elements on top of a pre-fabricated CMOS wafer as a post-process step. Each pixel is composed of thin-films of n-type bismuth telluride, Bi₂Te₃ and p-type antimony telluride, Sb₂Te₃, which are electrically interconnected as thermocouple. These materials have excellent thermoelectric characteristics, such as thermoelectric figures-of-merit, ZT, at room temperatures of 0.84 and 0.5, respectively, which is equivalent to power-factors, PF, of 3.62 × 10⁻³ W K⁻¹ m⁻² and 2.81 × 10⁻³ W K⁻¹ m⁻², respectively. The theoretical study presented here demonstrates a cooling capability of 15°C at room temperature (300 K ≈ 27°C). This cooling performance is sufficient to maintain a local tissue temperature at 25°C, which makes it suitable for the intended application. A first prototype was successfully fabricated to demonstrate the concept.     

Multi-contact vertical ladder climbing with an HRP-2 humanoid

We describe the research and the integration methods we developed to make the HRP-2 humanoid robot climb vertical industrial-norm ladders. We use our multi-contact planner and multi-objective closed-loop control formulated as a QP (quadratic program). First, a set of contacts to climb the ladder is planned off-line (automatically or by the user). These contacts are provided as an input for a finite state machine. The latter builds supplementary tasks that account for geometric uncertainties and specific grasps procedures to be added to the QP controller. The latter provides instant desired states in terms of joint accelerations and contact forces to be tracked by the embedded low-level motor controllers. Our trials revealed that hardware changes are necessary, and parts of software must be made more robust. Yet, we confirmed that HRP-2 has the kinematic and power capabilities to climb real industrial ladders, such as those found in nuclear power plants and large scale manufacturing factories (e.g. aircraft, shipyard) and construction sites.