Rapid Prototyping and Tooling of Custom-Made Tracheobronchial Stents

Rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT) techniques can be applied to the field of medicine primarily because of their ability to produce customised profiles and geometries in relatively short lead times. In this paper, the process by which these techniques can be applied for the production of customised tracheobronchial stents for the purpose of maintaining patency in an occluded respiratory tract is described. A comparison of RP systems was carried out to establish the preferred RP method to produce the master model. The vacuum casting RT process was then used to produce the stent.     

Bacteroides fragilis enterotoxin cleaves the zonula adherens protein, E-cadherin

Strains of Bacteroides fragilis associated with diarrheal disease (enterotoxigenic B. fragilis) produce a 20-kDa zinc-dependent metalloprotease toxin (B. fragilis enterotoxin; BFT) that reversibly stimulates chloride secretion and alters tight junctional function in polarized intestinal epithelial cells. BFT alters cellular morphology and physiology most potently and rapidly when placed on the basolateral membrane of epithelial cells, suggesting that the cellular substrate for BFT may be present on this membrane. Herein, we demonstrate that BFT specifically cleaves within 1 min the extracellular domain of the zonula adherens protein, E-cadherin. Cleavage of E-cadherin by BFT is ATP-independent and essential to the morphologic and physiologic activity of BFT. However, the morphologic changes occurring in response to BFT are dependent on target-cell ATP. E-cadherin is shown here to be a cellular substrate for a bacterial toxin and represents the identification of a mechanism of action, cell-surface proteolytic activity, for a bacterial toxin.     

Protein fluctuations are sensed by stimulated infrared echoes of the vibrations of carbon monoxide and azide probes

The correlation functions of the fluctuations of vibrational frequencies of azide ions and carbon monoxide in proteins are determined directly from stimulated photon echoes generated with femtosecond infrared pulses. The asymmetric stretching vibration of azide bound to carbonic anhydrase II exhibits a pronounced evolution of its vibrational frequency distribution on the time scale of a few picoseconds, which is attributed to modifications of the ligand structure through interactions with the nearby Thr-199. When azide is bound in hemoglobin, a more complex evolution of the protein structure is required to interchange the different ligand configurations, as evidenced by the much slower relaxation of the frequency distribution in this case. The time evolution of the distribution of frequencies of carbon monoxide bound in hemoglobin occurs on the approximately 10-ps time scale and is very nonexponential. The correlation functions of the frequency fluctuations determine the evolution of the protein structure local to the probe and the extent to which the probe can navigate those parts of the energy landscape where the structural configurations are able to modify the local potential energy function of the probe.     

Sulfur-containing compounds from Scorodocarpus borneensis and their antimicrobial activity

This paper reports two cases of neotropical echinococcosis caused by Echinococcus oligarthrus and E. vogeli, neither of which has been reported from Suriname. Case 1, a six-year-old boy, presented a 15 x 25 mm retro-ocular cystic tumor (observed by ultrasound, computed tomography scan, and magnetic resonance imaging) causing exophthalmia, chemosis, palpebral ptosis, and blindness of the left eye. Of two tentative diagnoses, Echinococcus cyst or dermoid tumor, the former was shown to be correct at surgery when a clear liquid and detached protoscoleces were aspirated. Rostellar hooks of the protoscolex were characteristic of E. oligarthrus. Case 2, a 41-year-old man, had polycystic masses excised from the liver and abdomen. A presurgery diagnosis of E. vogeli infection was made due to calcifications seen in the lesions, positive serology, residence of the patient in the tropical forest, and later by the size and shape of rostellar hooks. The presence of these two parasites in one of the former Guianas is not surprising; both species are endemic in tropical forest in Central and South America wherever people have not exterminated wild canids, especially the bush dog, (Speothos venaticus), and felids (wild cats of several species), along with pacas, agoutis, and other rodents that serve as intermediate host of these two cestodes. Eighty-six cases of polycystic echinococcosis are known in people from 11 countries from Nicaragua to Argentina: 32 due to E. vogeli, three to E. oligarthrus, and 51 for which determination of the species was not possible because the hooks of the protoscolex were not found or described. Research to elucidate aspects of transmission of E. vogeli and E. oligarthrus is of practical importance for defining measures for preventing the severe and frequently fatal illnesses caused by these two cestodes.     

Determination of 5-aminolaevulinic acid dehydratase activity in erythrocytes and porphobilinogen in urine by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography

A micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatographic (MECC) method has been developed and optimised for the separation of 5-aminolaevulinic acid (ALA) and porphobilinogen (PBG). The running buffer consisted of a mixture of 20 mM sodium phosphate and 20 mM sodium borate containing 50 mM sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) adjusted to pH 9.5 with 1 M NaOH. The running voltage and temperature were 20-25 kV and 30 degrees C, respectively. The MECC method for the analysis of PBG is fast and simple and is useful for the screening of PBG in the urine of patients suspected to have acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), and for the confirmation of lead exposure by measuring red-cell ALA-dehydratase (ALA-D) activity with ALA as the enzyme substrate.     

Detection of sudden pedestrian crossings for driving assistance systems

In this paper, we study the problem of detecting sudden pedestrian crossings to assist drivers in avoiding accidents. This application has two major requirements: to detect crossing pedestrians as early as possible just as they enter the view of the car-mounted camera and to maintain a false alarm rate as low as possible for practical purposes. Although many current sliding-window-based approaches using various features and classification algorithms have been proposed for image-/video-based pedestrian detection, their performance in terms of accuracy and processing speed falls far short of practical application requirements. To address this problem, we propose a three-level coarse-to-fine video-based framework that detects partially visible pedestrians just as they enter the camera view, with low false alarm rate and high speed. The framework is tested on a new collection of high-resolution videos captured from a moving vehicle and yields a performance better than that of state-of-the-art pedestrian detection while running at a frame rate of 55 fps.     

Adaptive load balancing algorithm for multiple homing mobile nodes

In places where mobile users can access multiple wireless networks simultaneously, a multipath scheduling algorithm can benefit the performance of wireless networks and improve the experience of mobile users. However, existing literature shows that it may not be the case, especially for TCP flows. According to early investigations, there are mainly two reasons that result in bad performance of TCP flows in wireless networks. One is the occurrence of out-of-order packets due to different delays in multiple paths. The other is the packet loss which is resulted from the limited bandwidth of wireless networks. To better exploit multipath scheduling for TCP flows, this paper presents a new scheduling algorithm named Adaptive Load Balancing Algorithm (ALBAM) to split traffic across multiple wireless links within the ISP infrastructure. Targeting at solving the two adverse impacts on TCP flows, ALBAM develops two techniques. Firstly, ALBAM takes advantage of the bursty nature of TCP flows and performs scheduling at the flowlet granularity where the packet interval is large enough to compensate for the different path delays. Secondly, ALBAM develops a Packet Number Estimation Algorithm (PNEA) to predict the buffer usage in each path. With PNEA, ALBAM can prevent buffer overflow and schedule the TCP flow to a less congested path before it suffers packet loss. Simulations show that ALBAM can provide better performance to TCP connections than its other counterparts.