Analysis of Bence Jones proteinuria by high resolution two-dimensional electrophoresis

Analysis of Bence Jones proteinuria by high resolution two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) and immunoblotting reveals a complex pattern of light chain (LC) isoforms corresponding to the free monoclonal Bence Jones protein and its fragments. Replica blotting gives duplicate blots for LC typing (lambda, chi) and, under the conditions employed, leaves sufficient protein for Coomassie Blue staining of the urinary protein profile and pIIMr determination of the LC isoforms. Carrier ampholytes (CAs, in our "simplified" 2-DE system) and immobilised pH gradients (IPGs, in the Multiphor 2-DE system) give similar LC isoform patterns. Artifacts, including cone-like distortions and trailing "piggyback" spots, are visualised with both 2-DE systems. IPGs are advantageous as they allow reproducible detection of strongly basic LC isoforms by isoelectric focusing (under equilibrium conditions) without recourse to CA nonequilibrium pH gradient electrophoresis.     

Eucapnic voluntary hyperventilation as a bronchoprovocation technique: development of a standarized dosing schedule in asthmatics

A variety of dosing schedules have been reported for the hyperventilation method of broncho-provocation testing. To evaluate the effect of challenge technique on the bronchoconstrictive response, we had 16 subjects perform eucapnic voluntary hyperventilation (EVH) with dry, room temperature gas using four different dosing schedules. The hyperventilation challenge dosages included the following: (1) a target minute ventilation (VE) of 20 x FEV1 for 6 min; (2) a target VE of 15 x FEV1 for 12 min; (3) an interrupted challenge with a target VE of 30 x FEV1 for 2 min repeated 3 times; and (4) a target VE of 30 x FEV1 for 6 min. Challenges 2, 3, and 4 gave identical absolute ventilatory challenges (identical factor FEV1 x minutes) but at different VE dosages or time. Challenges 1 and 4 were of identical length, but different target VE. The mean postchallenge fall in FEV1 was 16.6 +/- 10.9%, 11.0 +/- 8.1%, 19.6 +/- 9.9%, and 26.7 +/- 11.3% for challenges 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The response to an identical EVH challenge (FEV1 x 30 for 6 min) was reproducible when performed on separate days. We conclude that the challenge technique used for hyperventilation testing will have a significant impact on the bronchoconstrictive response and must be taken into account when interpreting study results. Tests may be quantitatively comparable over a narrow range of challenge time and VE. We recommend that a 6-min uninterrupted EVH challenge using dry, room temperature gas at a target VE of 30 x FEV1 be adopted as the "standard" challenge.     

Preoperative anxiety and fear: a comparison of assessments by patients and anesthesia and surgery residents

We sought to compare self-assessment of preoperative anxiety levels and selection of worst fears by surgical patients with the assessments made by the anesthesia and surgery residents providing intraoperative care for those patients. One hundred inpatients at a Veterans Affairs hospital (Group 1) and 45 patients at a University hospital (Group 2) were asked to complete a brief questionnaire; the residents were asked to complete the same questionnaire. Group 1 results showed that median patient visual analog scale (VAS) scores were lower for anxiety about anesthesia compared to surgery (16 vs 22, P < or = 0.05). Anesthesia resident VAS scores were higher than patient or surgery resident scores. Neither type of resident was able to predict their individual patient's VAS score (Kendall's tau). The fear chosen with the greatest incidence by Group 1 patients and residents was "whether surgery would work". A significant number of residents (34%, anesthesia or surgery, P < or = 0.05) matched their patient's fear choice. Residents commonly chose fears related to their specialty (e.g., anesthesia residents chose anesthesia-related fears more often than surgery residents, 50% vs 28%, P < or = 0.001). In Group 2, residents demonstrated an improved ability to predict patient scores. For instance, both surgery and anesthesia residents were able to predict individual University patient VAS scores (P < or = 0.01). The fear chosen with the greatest frequency by Group 2 patients was "pain after the operation". Sixty percent of anesthesia residents matched their patients' fear choice (P < or = 0.001). This study indicates a variable ability of anesthesia and surgery residents to predict patient anxiety and fear which may be due, in part, to difficulty in understanding a Veterans Affairs hospital patient population.     

How to construct identity-based signatures without the key escrow problem

The inherent key escrow problem is one of the main reasons for the slow adoption of identity-based cryptography. The existing solution for mitigating the key escrow problem is by adopting multiple Private Key Generators (PKGs). Recently, there was a proposal that attempted to reduce the trust of the PKG by allowing a malicious PKG to be caught if he reveals the user’s identity-based private key illegally. Nonetheless, the proposal does not consider that the PKG can simply decrypt the ciphertext instead of revealing the private key itself (in the case of identity-based encryption schemes). The aim of this paper is to present an escrow-free identity-based signature (IBS) scheme, in which the malicious PKG will be caught if it releases a signature on behalf of the user but signed by itself. We present a formal model to capture such a scheme and provide a concrete construction.     

Quart-parametric interpolations for intersecting paths

The intersecting path is an important tool path generation method. This paper proposes an approach for the quart-parametric interpolation of intersecting paths. The objective of our approach is that the intersecting paths for surface machining can be directly interpolated within the computer numerical control (CNC) system. This enables the CNC interpolator to process the intersecting paths without geometric approximation as in existing approaches and take into consideration any specific feedrate profiles and further machining dynamical issues along the path.The interpolation of the intersection of two general parametric surfaces is transferred into interpolation of its projection curves and the time trajectories of four parameters along the intersecting curves are obtained. Our strategy is to carry out the quart-parametric interpolation based on the projection interpolation. The feedrate control method is developed, and then the interpolation algorithms for two projection curves are proposed. An error reduction scheme is presented to alleviate point deviation from the drive parametric surface. Simulations of quart-parametric interpolation have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Incremental linear discriminant analysis for face recognition.

Dimensionality reduction methods have been successfully employed for face recognition. Among the various dimensionality reduction algorithms, linear (Fisher) discriminant analysis (LDA) is one of the popular supervised dimensionality reduction methods, and many LDA-based face recognition algorithms/systems have been reported in the last decade. However, the LDA-based face recognition systems suffer from the scalability problem. To overcome this limitation, an incremental approach is a natural solution. The main difficulty in developing the incremental LDA (ILDA) is to handle the inverse of the within-class scatter matrix. In this paper, based on the generalized singular value decomposition LDA (LDA/GSVD), we develop a new ILDA algorithm called GSVD-ILDA. Different from the existing techniques in which the new projection matrix is found in a restricted subspace, the proposed GSVD-ILDA determines the projection matrix in full space. Extensive experiments are performed to compare the proposed GSVD-ILDA with the LDA/GSVD as well as the existing ILDA methods using the face recognition technology face database and the Carneggie Mellon University Pose, Illumination, and Expression face database. Experimental results show that the proposed GSVD-ILDA algorithm gives the same performance as the LDA/GSVD with much smaller computational complexity. The experimental results also show that the proposed GSVD-ILDA gives better classification performance than the other recently proposed ILDA algorithms.     

Real time video frames allocation in mobile networks using cooperative pre-fetching

In this paper, we study the bandwidth allocation problem for serving video requests in a mobile real-time video player system. One of the main issues to maintain the quality of services (QoS) in mobile video playback is to ensure sufficient number of video frames available at the client side while a video is being played. However, due to the limited bandwidth of a mobile network and variable workload streaming video, this is not easy to achieve in practice. In addition, the communication link between mobile clients and a video server is subject to frequent errors and temporary disconnection. In this paper, we propose to use the notion of buffered bandwidth in addition to the network bandwidth to support real-time playback of videos at mobile clients. Based on this, we designed a bandwidth allocation scheme called Cooperative Pre-Fetching (CP) in which the amount of bandwidth to be allocated to serve a video request depends on the current buffer level of the video at the client relative to the target buffer level of the client. In determining the target buffer level, we consider the errors in communication to the client as well as the other clients who are concurrently served by the system. The buffered video frames at the clients are then used to minimize the impact of error in communications on the overall QoS of video playbacks in the whole system.

Fault-based test suite prioritization for specification-based testing

Context

Existing test suite prioritization techniques usually rely on code coverage information or historical execution data that serve as indicators for estimating the fault-detecting ability of test cases. Such indicators are primarily empirical in nature and not theoretically driven; hence, they do not necessarily provide sound estimates. Also, these techniques are not applicable when the source code is not available or when the software is tested for the first time.

Objective

We propose and develop the novel notion of fault-based prioritization of test cases which directly utilizes the theoretical knowledge of their fault-detecting ability and the relationships among the test cases and the faults in the prescribed fault model, based on which the test cases are generated.

Method

We demonstrate our approach of fault-based prioritization by applying it to the testing of the implementation of logical expressions against their specifications. We then validate our proposal by an empirical study that evaluates the effectiveness of prioritization techniques using two different metrics.

Results

A theoretically guided fault-based prioritization technique generally outperforms other techniques under study, as assessed by two different metrics. Our empirical results also show that the technique helps to reveal all target faults by executing only about 72% of the prioritized test suite, thereby reducing the effort required in testing.

Conclusions

The fault-based prioritization approach is not only applicable to the instance empirically validated in this paper, but should also be adaptable to other fault-based testing strategies. We also envisage new research directions to be opened up by our work.     

Solid-State Control-Low Voltage Heating of Motors

In recent years, industrial plants have been utilizing more electric motors as drivers because of their high efficiency and reliability and lower maintenance costs. Electrified continuous process plants are using electric motors for both primary and standby drives. When these standby motors are not operating during normal plant runs, their windings collect moisture. Moisture attacks insulation and causes insulation failure. A breakdown of motor insulation may occur when a standby motor is suddenly energized to take the place of the primary motor. When it is not in operation, directly heating the motor winding with a low voltage system, coupled with automatic control, will guard the motor from moisture attack and extend its service life. The experience with low voltage heating of motor windings as described by M. H. Yuen in his article [1] has proved its effectiveness. However, conventional relays, timers, contactors, etc., were utilized in the circuits.