Advance directives and withdrawal of dialysis in the United States, Germany, and Japan

OBJECTIVE: To determine the role of advance directives in decisions to withdraw chronic dialysis in the United States, Germany, and Japan. DESIGN: Survey by questionnaire. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy-two American, 87 German, and 73 Japanese nephrologists. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Each nephrologist's total number of (1) dialysis patients, (2) cases of withdrawal of dialysis, (3) patients with advance directives, and (4) uses of such directives. Nephrologists also stated whether they would continue or stop dialysis in 8 hypothetical cases. RESULTS: American, German, and Japanese nephrologists reported withdrawing dialysis for 5.1%, 1.6%, and 0.7% of their patients in the last year, respectively. Thirty percent of American patients had advance directives, and such directives were used in decision making for 3.2% of all patients. Only 0.3% of German and Japanese patients had advance directives, and such directives were used in decision making for 0.09% of patients. When asked about a hypothetical mentally incompetent patient whose family requests withdrawal of dialysis, American nephrologists were much more likely to stop dialysis in the absence of an advance directive than German or Japanese nephrologists. However, almost all nephrologists from the 3 countries would stop dialysis when a family request to withdraw was supported by a patient advance directive. CONCLUSIONS: There is a high prevalence of advance directives among American dialysis patients, and such directives frequently play a role in decision making. German and Japanese nephrologists appear willing to follow advance directives, but the low prevalence of such directives limits the frequency of their use.     

Recombinant Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus harboring green fluorescent protein

The gene encoding the green fluorescent protein (gfp) under the control of the highly expressed Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV)-polyhedrin promoter has been introduced into the polyhedrin (polh) locus of Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) by homologous recombination. The insect host larvae and the cultured cells infected with this recombinant virus (vBmGFP) showed high levels of expression of gfp. The larval tissues permissive to virus multiplication could be readily visualized using the tagged recombinant virus, thus providing a direct approach to study the progress of virus infection or its control in the animal host. The highly expressed recombinant protein, GFP, could be easily solubilized from fat bodies. Thus, the caterpillar-based expression could serve as an economic alternative method for the large-scale production of recombinant proteins, even when they are nonsecretory in nature. Further, if the recombinant vBmGFP is used as a parent in generating other recombinants, conversion of the fluorescent plaques to colorless plaques serves as an easy means for screening recombinants. Such a method is especially helpful for BmNPV-recombinant selections in the absence of the other simplified techniques as are available for the prototype baculovirus AcMNPV system.     

Power conscious CAD tools and methodologies: a perspective

Power consumption is rapidly becoming an area of growing concern in IC and system design houses. Issues such as battery life, thermal limits, packaging constraints and cooling options are becoming key factors in the success of a product. As a consequence, IC and system designers are beginning to see the impact of power on design area, design speed, design complexity and manufacturing cost. While process and voltage scaling can achieve significant power reductions, these are expensive strategies that require industry momentum, that only pay off in the long run. Technology independent gains for power come from the area of design for low power which has a much higher return on investment (ROI). But low power design is not only a new area but is also a complex endeavour requiring a broad range of synergistic capabilities from architecture/microarchitecture design to package design. It changes traditional IC design from a two-dimensional problem (Area/performance) to a three-dimensional one (Area/Performance/Power). This paper describes the CAD tools and methodologies required to effect efficient design for low power. It is targeted to a wide audience and tries to convey an understanding of the breadth of the problem. It explains the state of the art in CAD tools and methodologies. The paper is written in the form of a tutorial, making it easy to read by keeping the technical depth to a minimum while supplying a wealth of technical references. Simultaneously the paper identifies unresolved problems in an attempt to incite research in these areas. Finally an attempt is made to provide commercial CAD tool vendors with an understanding of the needs and time frames for new CAD tools supporting low power design     

State observer controller design for packets flow control in networks-on-chip

Packet-switched networks-on-chips (NoCs) are efficient communication architectures for future multiprocessors system-on-chip (MP-SoC) platforms. However the run-time management of their communication, especially flow control from individual intellectual property (IP) in an NoC which contains large number of IPs, is a challenging task. This paper proposes a state space model for NoC with state observer controller in its feedback path. It is seen that controlling the input and output flow rates alone is not sufficient to stabilize the network, but it is also important to monitor the intermediate flow rates from the on-chip routers. This is possible through a state space model for the NoC. The state observer observes the flow rates from each on-chip router which are then treated as state space variables. These variables can be controlled by the poles placement in the feedback controller. The proposed mathematical model can also observe the required intermediate flow rates which cannot be measured directly (reduced state observer). With these observed states we can attach a state controller. With this controller the network can be stabilized by controlling the flow rates at the intermediate level.     

Heat loss optimisation of a concentric cylindrical solar collector employing a cobalt oxide selective absorber

Experimental and theoretical investigations to optimise the geometrical design parameters of a tubular collector under atmospheric and evacuated (～ 10^?3 torr) conditions are reported. The results indicate that a maximum stagnation temperature, which corresponds to the minimum heat loss, is obtained for a gap width of ～ 12 mm. An absorber tube of 35 mm diameter concentric with a cover glass tube of 59 mm diameter was observed to be the best combination. An improvement in the collector performance was observed by increasing the illuminated area of the absorber tube and by evacuating the annular gap in the collector.     

Modern architecture for photonic networks-on-chip

Development in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) provides a promising solution for on-chip optical computation and communication. PICs provides the best alternative to traditional networks-on-chip (NoC) circuits which face serious challenges such as bandwidth, latency and power consumption. Integrated optics have substantiated the ability to accomplish low-power communication and low-power data processing at ultra-high speeds. In this work, we propose a new architecture for NoC, which might improve overall on-chip network performance by reducing its power consumption, providing large channel capacity for communication, decreasing latency among nodes and reducing hop count. Some of the key features of the proposed architecture are to reduce the waveguide network for communication among nodes, and this architecture can be used as a brick to construct other architectures. In this architecture, we use micro-ring resonator (MRR) and it is used to provide a high bandwidth connection among nodes with a lesser number of waveguide networks. Furthermore, results show that this architecture of PICs provides better performance in terms of low communication latency, low power consumption, high bandwidth. It also provides acceptable FSR value, FWHR value, finesse value and Q-factor of micro-ring resonators used for the design of MRR in this architecture.

     

Effect of Utilization of Discrete Wavelet Components on Flood Forecasting Performance of Wavelet Based ANFIS Models

Wavelet based flood forecasting models are known to perform better than conventional models, yet the effect of the way wavelet components are combined to develop a model on the forecasting performance, is inadequately investigated. To demonstrate this, two types of wavelet- adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (WANFIS), i.e. WANFIS-split data model (WANFIS-SD) and WANFIS-modified time series model (WANFIS-MS) are developed to forecast river water levels with 1-day lead time. To develop these models, first the original level time series (OLTS) is decomposed into discrete wavelet components (DWCs) by discrete wavelet transform (DWT) upto three resolution levels. In WANFIS-SD, all wavelet components are used as inputs while WANFIS-MS ignores the noise wavelet components and utilizes only the effective wavelet components. The effectiveness of the developed models are evaluated through application to two Indian rivers, Kamla and Kosi, which vary significantly in their catchment area and flow patterns. The proposed models are found to forecast river water levels accurately. On comparison, the WANFIS-SD is found to perform better than WANFIS-MS for high flood levels.     

Comparative analysis of memristor models and memories design

The advent of the memristor breaks the scaling limitations of MOS technology and prevails over emerging semiconductor devices.In this paper,various memristor models including behaviour,spice,and experimental are investigated and compared with the memristor's characteristic equations and fingerprints.It has brought to light that most memristor models need a window function to resolve boundary conditions.Various challenges of availed window functions are discussed with matlab's simulated results.Biolek's window is a most acceptable window function for the memristor,since it limits boundaries growth as well as sticking of states at boundaries.Simmons tunnel model of a memristor is the most accepted model of a memristor till now.The memristor is exploited very frequently in memory designing and became a prominent candidate for futuristic memories.Here,several memory structures utilizing the memristor are discussed.It is seen that a memristor-transistor hybrid memory cell has fast read/write and low power operations.Whereas,a 1T1R structure provides very simple,nanoscale,and non-volatile memory that has capabilities to replace conventional Flash memories.Moreover,the memristor is frequently used in SRAM cell structures to make them have non-volatile memory.This paper contributes various aspects and recent developments in memristor based circuits,which can enhance the ongoing requirements of modem designing criterion.     

Plasmonic Charge Transfers in Large-Scale Metallic and Colloidal Photonic Crystal Slabs

The challenges in plasmonic charge transfer on a large-scale and low losses are systematically investigated by optical designs using 1D-plasmonic lattice structures. These plasmonic lattices are used as couplers to guide the energy in an underneath sub-wavelength titanium dioxide layer, resulting in the photonic crystal slabs. So far, photodetection is possible at energy levels close to the semiconductor bandgap; however, with the observed hybrid plasmonic–photonic modes, other wavelengths over the broad solar spectrum can be easily accessed for energy harvesting. The photo-enhanced current is measured locally with simple two-point contact on the centimeter-squared nanostructure by applying a bias voltage. As lattice couplers, interference lithographically fabricated conventional gold grating provides an advantage in fabrication; this optical concept is extended for the first time toward colloidal self-assembled nanoparticle chains to make the charge injection accessible for large-scale at reasonable costs with possibilities of photodetection by electric field vectors both along and perpendicular to the grating lines. To discuss the bottleneck of unavoidable isolating ligand shell of nanoparticles in contrast to the directly contacted nanobars, polarization-dependent ultrafast characterizations are carried out to study the charge injection processes in femtosecond resolution.