Is Melanoma Progression Affected by Thyroid Diseases?

Clinical and epidemiological evidence indicate a relationship between thyroid diseases and melanoma. In particular, the hypothyroidism condition appears to promote melanoma spread, which suggests a protective role of thyroid hormones against disease progression. In addition, experimental data suggest that, in addition to thyroid hormones, other hormonal players of the hypothalamic–pituitary–thyroid (HPT) axis, namely the thyrotropin releasing hormone and the thyrotropin, are likely to affect melanoma cells behavior. This information warrants further clinical and experimental studies in order to build a precise pattern of action of the HPT hormones on melanoma cells. An improved knowledge of the involved molecular mechanism(s) could lead to a better and possibly personalized clinical management of these patients.     

Optimization of the enzymatic esterification of diglycerol and lauric acid

In recent years, a number of industrial applications for lipases in biotransformation of fatty acids and lipids have been developed. One of the main reasons for this growing interest is the reduced overall catalyst cost owing to the development of commercially available immobilized enzymes, using polymeric carriers that facilitate recovery and reuse of the catalyst. Additional benefits for industrial applications include the specificity of the enzyme and the mild processing conditions. Diglycerol resulting from the dimerization of glycerol may replace molecules such as propylene glycol as the hydrophilic moiety of surfactants. Also, diglycerol fatty acid esters are useful as biodegradable nonionic surfactants for food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. In this study, the enzymatic esterification of diglycerol and lauric acid has been optimized in a solvent-free system. The reaction was carried out in a stirred batch reactor with a vacuum pump in order to shift the equilibrium toward the products. The commercial lipase Novozym-435 was chosen as the most suitable catalyst, and the initial acid/alcohol ratio was always 1∶1. The reaction of lauric acid and diglycerol leveled off at equilibrium conversion after approximately 1 h of reaction. Previous work indicated that only temperature and catalyst concentration had significant effects on the conversion, and a full two-factorial design has proved effective in the study of the influence of these two variables on the process. The temperature range studied was 63–77°C, and the range of the catalyst concentration was 0.2–5.8 wt%. Both catalyst concentration and temperature were found to be significant factors in the esterification process, and their influences are positive. The effect of the interaction between temperature and catalyst concentration was small. A first-order approach could not fit the data adequately, and a model that included quadratic effects was required. A second-order model was developed to predict the yield of ester as a function of the variables. Analysis of residuals showed that the model predicted accurately the acid conversion over the experimental range considered. This model is useful to determine the optimal operating conditions for the industrial process. Presented in part at the 91st Annual Meeting of the AOCS in San Diego, April 2000.     

Observations of wind and ocean wave fields using ERS Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery

The aim of the research reported here is to evaluate Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capability to estimate the wind vector and associated directional wave spectrum. Two ERS–2 SAR images of the Mediterranean Sea, one over the Sicily Channel and one over the Ligurian Sea, were selected as case studies. Wind speed was estimated using SAR calibrated backscatter response, in conjunction with empirically derived ERS scatterometer models such as CMOD4 and CMOD–IFREMER. The predictions of these models were then compared with the actual sea surface wave spectra either provided by in situ measurements or resulting from the inversion of the SAR image spectrum. SAR-detected effects of both wind and wave features, induced either by atmospheric boundary layer instability or by land shadowing, were also used as reliable indicators of wind direction.     

Rumor spreading in social networks

Social networks are an interesting class of graphs likely to become of increasing importance in the future, not only theoretically, but also for its probable applications to ad hoc and mobile networking. Rumor spreading is one of the basic mechanisms for information dissemination in networks; its relevance stemming from its simplicity of implementation and effectiveness. In this paper, we study the performance of rumor spreading in the classic preferential attachment model of Bollobás et al. which is considered to be a valuable model for social networks. We prove that, in these networks: (a) The standard PUSH-PULL strategy delivers the message to all nodes within O(log²n) rounds with high probability; (b) by themselves, PUSH and PULL require polynomially many rounds. (These results are under the assumption that m, the number of new links added with each new node is at least 2. If m=1 the graph is disconnected with high probability, so no rumor spreading strategy can work.) Our analysis is based on a careful study of some new properties of preferential attachment graphs which could be of independent interest.     

Binary integer programming formulations for scheduling in market-driven foundries

This paper describes the development and solution of binary integer formulations for production scheduling problems in market-driven foundries. This industrial sector is comprised of small and mid-sized companies with little or no automation, working with diversified production, involving several different metal alloy specifications in small tailor-made product lots. The characteristics and constraints involved in a typical production environment at these industries challenge the formulation of mathematical programming models that can be computationally solved when considering real applications. However, despite the interest on the part of these industries in counting on effective methods for production scheduling, there are few studies available on the subject. The computational tests prove the robustness and feasibility of proposed models in situations analogous to those found in production scheduling at the analyzed industrial sector.     

SECT: An effective coding technique for polygonal geographic data

Memory occupation of geographic data and efficiency of the selection and elaboration algorithms are challenging problems in designing a system for polygonal data processing. They arise basically from the large number of polygon vertices necessary to properly approximate territory maps. Since the number of vertices is determined by the expected resolution, data compression can only be achieved by reducing the memory occupation of each point. On the other hand, more efficient algorithms are obtained if unnecessary operations are carefully avoided: in geographic data processing this is done by precisely delimiting the territory areas to be processed. In this paper, the SECT coding technique is presented, which meets both the above requirements. Its data compression capability is proved with reference to points, lines and regions coding, having considered geographic data of different density. Furthermore, the benefits it ensures in terms of both CPU time and I/O operation savings are discussed.     

A low-power transmission-gate-based 16-bit multiplier for digital hearing aids

The most widespread 16-bit multiplier architectures are compared in terms of area occupation, dissipated energy, and EDP (Energy-Delay Product) in view of low-power low-voltage signal processing for digital hearing aids and similar applications. Transistor-level simulations including back-annotated wire parasitics confirm that the propagation of glitches along uneven and re-convergent paths results in large unproductive node activity. Because of their shorter full-adder chains, Wallace-tree multipliers indeed dissipate less energy than the carry-save (CSM) and other traditional array multipliers (6.0 µW/MHz versus 10.9 µW/MHz and more for 0.25 µm CMOS technology at 0.75 V). By combining the Wallace-tree architecture with transmission gates (TGs), a new approach is proposed to improve the energy efficiency further (3.1 µW/MHz), beyond recently published low-power architectures. Besides the reduction of the overall capacitance, minimum-sized transmission gate full-adders act as RC-low-pass filters that attenuate undesired switching. Finally, minimum size TGs increase the V _dd to ground resistance, hence decreasing leakage dissipation (0.55 nW versus 0.84 nW in CSM and 0.94 nW in Wallace).