Is dehydroepiandrosterone an antiobesity agent?

The steroid hormone intermediate, DHEA, has been proposed as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of obesity. Its effects on lipogenesis, substrate cycling, peroxisome proliferation, mitochondrial respiration, protein synthesis, and thyroid hormone function have been reported. The results of these studies suggest that the antiobesity function of DHEA is not simply one of inhibiting fat synthesis and deposition but is one of affecting a number of pathways that contribute to the maintenance of the isoenergetic state rather than the promotion of positive energy balance.     

Frequency dispersion in the ionosphere

An overview is given of the various mechanisms which cause frequency dispersion of radio waves during transmission or reflection from the ionosphere. Previous studies where the effects of the various mechanisms have either been measured and/or modeled are discussed.     

Analyzing Cross-domain Transportation Big Data of New York City with Semi-supervised and Active Learning

The majority of big data analytics applied to transportation datasets suffer from being too domain-specific, that is, they draw conclusions for a dataset based on analytics on the same dataset. This makes models trained from one domain (e.g. taxi data) applies badly to a different domain (e.g. Uber data). To achieve accurate analyses on a new domain, substantial amounts of data must be available, which limits practical applications. To remedy this, we propose to use semi-supervised and active learning of big data to accomplish the domain adaptation task: Selectively choosing a small amount of datapoints from a new domain while achieving comparable performances to using all the datapoints. We choose the New York City (NYC) transportation data of taxi and Uber as our dataset, simulating different domains with 90% as the source data domain for training and the remaining 10% as the target data domain for evaluation. We propose semi-supervised and active learning strategies and apply it to the source domain for selecting datapoints. Experimental results show that our adaptation achieves a comparable performance of using all datapoints while using only a fraction of them, substantially reducing the amount of data required. Our approach has two major advantages: It can make accurate analytics and predictions when big datasets are not available, and even if big datasets are available, our approach chooses the most informative datapoints out of the dataset, making the process much more efficient without having to process huge amounts of data.     

Identifying Materials of Photographic Images and Photorealistic Computer Generated Graphics Based on Deep CNNs

Currently, some photorealistic computer graphics are very similar to photographic images. Photorealistic computer generated graphics can be forged as photographic images, causing serious security problems. The aim of this work is to use a deep neural network to detect photographic images (PI) versus computer generated graphics (CG). In existing approaches, image feature classification is computationally intensive and fails to achieve real-time analysis. This paper presents an effective approach to automatically identify PI and CG based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). Compared with some existing methods, the proposed method achieves real-time forensic tasks by deepening the network structure. Experimental results show that this approach can effectively identify PI and CG with average detection accuracy of 98%.     

Aortic valve replacement in the elderly. Encouraging postoperative clinical and hemodynamic results

Seventy-three patients aged 60 and over and 277 patients under 60 years of age underwent isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR) for aortic stenosis, regurgitation, and mixed disease from 1966 through 1975. Cardiac catheterization was performed five to nine months following operation in 77% of these patients. Follow-up averaged 55 months per patient. The hospital mortality in the elderly group was 2.7%, compared to 5.8% in the younger group. The late cardiac mortality was 21% and 19%, respectively. There was significant improvement (P less than .001) in the left ventricular end-diastolic pressure, cardiac index, and functional class in each of the three disease groups in the younger as well as the elderly patients. More important, the magnitude of improvement in each of these variables in patients over and under 60 years of age was not significantly different. Increasing longevity will make cardiac operations more common in the older population. These findings indicate that AVR carries the same low risk and brings about a similar improvement in left ventricular pump function in patients older and younger than 60.     

Amylase thermolability in body fluids

The thermolability of amylase was measured in saliva, pancreatic juice, urine, adult and neonatal sera. The mean percentage thermolability from these fluids was 100%, 99%, 87%, 44% and 23% respectively. In patients with acute pancreatitis and mumps the amylase was 84% and 83% thermolabile during the acute phase. On resolution of the pancreatitis this dropped towards normal. Patients with a pancreatic pseudocyst showed a high mean percentage thermolability (82%). These results could suggest that a component of amylase in human serum is not of pancreatic or salivary origin. In addition, this simple technique may be helpful in the diagnosis of pancreatic pseudocyst.     

A review of the factors which influence the use and usefulness of information systems

The potential usefulness of different kinds of Information System (IS) for environmental management is well recognised. However, concerns have been raised about the translation of this potential into actual use and benefit to policy and planning organisations and outcomes. The aims of this paper are to identify those factors which have been found to influence the use and usefulness of IS and in doing so to provide advice for managing development and implementation processes. There is no body of empirical work on the topic for environmental application. However a substantial literature on non-environmental IS has been developed and is used as source material. A classification of IS life cycle processes is developed and the best, worst and possible predicting factors for each process identified. The best predicting factors for IS usefulness across the life cycle were found to be user participation, user perceptions and intentions, user computer experience, top management support, support and training, external pressure, IS unit professionalism and the availability of external information sources. The state of knowledge about the determinants of IS usefulness is discussed and priorities for future research are identified. The factors identified are then discussed in terms of what they mean for managing IS development and for overcoming concerns about environmental IS development and use.     

An x-ray study of the condensed and separated states of sciatic nerve myelin

Low-angle X-ray diffraction patterns of peripheral nerve myelin after modification by either rehydration in various solutions or by chemical treatment have been recorded. These X-ray patterns and the previously reported modified nerve myelin patterns demonstrate that nerve myelin has at least five different states: the normal state, condensed state I and II and separated state I and II. There are two membranes per unit cell in the normal state and in states II whereas there is one membrane per unit cell in states I. Under certain conditions normal nerve can go reversibly into either of states II. With continued treatment the nerve myelin structure moves irreversibly from state II to state I and, once in state I, the nerve myelin layers cannot return to the normal state. Our results demonstrate that there is a reversible transformation between condensed state I and separated state I. Fourier profiles of nerve myelin in the normal state, condensed state I and separated state I are presented.     

Sensitivity characterization of a time-domain fluorescence imager: eXplore Optix

A key issue in the practical application of fluorescence imaging is the presence of a background signal detected during data acquisition when no target fluorescent material is present. Regardless of the technology employed, background signals cannot be completely eliminated, which limits the detection sensitivity of fluorescence imaging systems, especially for in vivo applications. We present a methodology to characterize the sensitivity of fluorescence imaging devices by taking the background effect into account through the fluorescent signal-to-background ratio (SBR). In an initial application of the methodology, tissuelike liquid phantoms with Cy5.5 fluorescent inclusions were investigated experimentally over a wide range of varying parameters, such as tissue absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, fluorophore concentration, and inclusion location. By defining detectable and quantifiable SBR thresholds, empirical relations are established, and the sensitivity performance of Advanced Research Technologies's eXplore Optix using Cy5.5 is characterized.