Interactions of lactone, carboxylate and self-aggregated forms of camptothecin with human and bovine serum albumins

Highly degenerate primers to conserved regions of the eukaryotic phosphoinositol-specific phospholipase C (PLC) were used to amplify fragments of plant PLCs from Arabidopsis thaliana genomic DNA. Eight completely different fragment sequences that showed high homology to PLCs of both animals and plants were isolated. The variation between these putative PLCs was high and suggests that, like animals, plants have multiple isoforms of PLC. Using one of the PCR clones, we isolated a corresponding full-length Arabidopsis PLC gene (ATHATPLC1G), and sequence analysis indicated that it was most like a delta-type PLC. This gene is 2.5 kb and contains seven introns, all but one of which has intron/exon border sequences that conform to the Arabidopsis consensus. The structural complexity of the gene is relatively simple compared to mammalian beta-type PLCs that can be 15 kb long with up to 30 introns. The plant gene is a single copy and was mapped to four Arabidopsis YACs, one located on chromosome 2. The promoter region contained two TATA-like elements at -43 and -185 and other putative regulatory elements that suggest that this PLC is hormonally regulated. This is the first plant PLC gene and the first delta type-PLC gene from a higher organism to be sequenced.     

Low temperature delamination of plastic encapsulated microcircuits

Plastic encapsulated microcircuits (PEMs) are increasingly being used in applications requiring operation at temperatures lower than the manufacturer’s recommended minimum temperature, which is 0°C for commercial grade components and −40°C for industrial and automotive grade components. To characterize the susceptibility of PEMs to delamination at these extreme low temperatures, packages with different geometries, encapsulated in both biphenyl and novolac molding compounds, were subjected to up to 500 thermal cycles with minimum temperatures in the range −40 to −65°C in both the moisture saturated and baked conditions. Scanning acoustic microscopy revealed there was a negligible increase in delamination at the die-to-encapsulant interface after thermal cycling for the 84 lead PQFPs encapsulated in novolac and for both 84 lead PQFPs and 14 lead PDIPs encapsulated in biphenyl molding compound. Only the 14 lead novolac PDIPs exhibited increased delamination. Moisture exposure had a significant effect on the creation of additional delamination.     

Analysis of low bit rate image transform coding

Calculations based on high-resolution quantizations prove that the distortion rate D(R¯) of an image transform coding is proportional to 2^-2R when R¯ is large enough. In wavelet and block cosine bases, we show that if R¯<1 bit/pixel, then D(R¯) varies like R¯^1-2γ, where γ remains of the order of 1 for most natural images. The improved performance of embedded codings in wavelet bases is analyzed. At low bit rates, we show that the compression performance of an orthonormal basis depends mostly on its ability to approximate images with a few nonzero vectors     

Parallel architecture for fast transforms with trigonometric kernel

We present an unified parallel architecture for four of the most important fast orthogonal transforms with trigonometric kernel: Complex Valued Fourier (CFFT), Real Valued Fourier (RFFT), Hartley (FHT), and Cosine (FCT). Out of these, only the CFFT has a data flow coinciding with the one generated by the successive doubling method, which can be transformed on a constant geometry flow using perfect unshuffle or shuffle permutations. The other three require some type of hardware modification to guarantee the constant geometry of the successive doubling method. We have defined a generalized processing section (PS), based on a circular CORDIC rotator, for the four transforms. This PS section permits the evaluation of the CFFT and FCT transforms in n data recirculations and the RFFT and FHT transforms in n-1 data recirculations, with n being the number of stages of a transform of length N=rⁿ. Also, the efficiency of the partitioned parallel architecture is optimum because there is no cycle loss in the systolic computation of all the butterflies for each of the four transforms     

A delta transform approach to loop gain-phase shaping design of robust digital control systems

This paper addresses the existence of loop gain-phase shaping (LGPS) solutions for the design of robust digital control systems for SISO, minimum-phase, continuous-time processes with parametric uncertainty. We develop the frequency response properties of LGPS for discrete-time systems using the Δ-transform, a transform method that applies to both continuous-time and discrete-time systems. A theorem is presented which demonstrates that for reasonable specifications there always exists a sampling period such that the robust digital control problem has a solution. Finally, we offer a procedure for estimating the maximum feasible sampling period for LGPS solutions to robust digital control problems.     

A generalized fuzzy Petri net model

The paper proposes a new model of Petri nets based on the use of logic based neurons. In contrast to the existing generalizations, this approach is aimed at neural-type modeling of the entire concept with a full exploitation of the learning capabilities of the processing units being used there. The places and transitions of the net are represented by OR and AND-type and DOMINANCE neurons, respectively. A correspondence between this model and the previous two-valued counterpart is also revealed. The learning aspects associated with the nets are investigated     

Robotica: a Mathematica package for robot analysis

Robotica is a computer aided design package for robotic manipulators developed in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It encapsulates over 30 functions into a Mathematica package allowing efficient symbolic and numeric calculation of kinematic and dynamic equations for multi-degree-of-freedom manipulators. An X-Windows front end that utilizes the interprocess communication features of Mathematica 2.1 has also been created for ease of use. This paper describes the most important features of the package and how they are used