Soluble ST2 as a Potential Biomarker for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms—A Single-Center Retrospective Cohort Study

The maximal aortic diameter is the only clinically applied predictor of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) progression and indicator for surgical repair. Circulating biomarkers resulting from AAA pathogenesis are attractive candidates for the diagnosis and prognosis of aneurysmal disease. Due to the reported role of interleukin 33 in AAA development, we investigated the corresponding circulating receptor molecules of soluble suppression of tumorigenesis 2 (sST2) in AAA patients regarding their marker potential in diagnosis and prognosis. We conducted a single-center retrospective cohort study in a diagnostic setting, measuring the circulating serum sST2 protein levels of 47 AAA patients under surveillance, matched with 25 peripheral artery disease (PAD) patients and 25 healthy controls. In a prognostic setting, we analyzed the longitudinal monitoring data of 50 monitored AAA patients. Slow versus fast AAA progression was defined as a <2 or ≥2 mm increase in AAA diameter over 6 months and a <4 or ≥4 mm increase over 12 months. Additionally, the association of circulating serum sST2 and AAA growth was investigated using a specifically tailored log-linear mixed model. Serum sST2 concentrations were significantly increased in AAA patients compared with healthy individuals: the median of AAA patient cohort was 112.72 ng/mL (p = 0.025) and that of AAA patient cohort 2 was 14.32 ng/mL (p = 0.039) versus healthy controls (8.82 ng/mL). Likewise, PAD patients showed significantly elevated sST2 protein levels compared with healthy controls (the median was 12.10 ng/mL; p = 0.048) but similar concentrations to AAA patients. Additionally, sST2 protein levels were found to be unsuited to identifying fast AAA progression over short-term periods of 6 or 12 months, which was confirmed by a log-linear mixed model. In conclusion, the significantly elevated protein levels of sST2 detected in patients with vascular disease may be useful in the early diagnosis of AAA but cannot distinguish between AAA and PAD or predict AAA progression.     

Protein Abundance of Drug Transporters in Human Hepatitis C Livers

Transmembrane drug transport in hepatocytes is one of the major determinants of drug pharmacokinetics. In the present study, ABC transporters (P-gp, MRP1, MRP2, MRP3, MRP4, BCRP, and BSEP) and SLC transporters (MCT1, NTCP, OAT2, OATP1B1, OATP1B3, OATP2B1, OCT1, and OCT3) were quantified for protein abundance (LC-MS/MS) and mRNA levels (qRT-PCR) in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected liver samples from the Child–Pugh class A (n = 30), B (n = 21), and C (n = 7) patients. Protein levels of BSEP, MRP3, MCT1, OAT2, OATP1B3, and OCT3 were not significantly affected by HCV infection. P-gp, MRP1, BCRP, and OATP1B3 protein abundances were upregulated, whereas those of MRP2, MRP4, NTCP, OATP2B1, and OCT1 were downregulated in all HCV samples. The observed changes started to be seen in the Child–Pugh class A livers, i.e., upregulation of P-gp and MRP1 and downregulation of MRP2, MRP4, BCRP, and OATP1B3. In the case of NTCP, OATP2B1, and OCT1, a decrease in the protein levels was observed in the class B livers. In the class C livers, no other changes were noted than those in the class A and B patients. The results of the study demonstrate that drug transporter protein abundances are affected by the functional state of the liver in hepatitis C patients.     

In-Sensor Passive Speech Classification with Phononic Metamaterials

Mitigating the energy requirements of artificial intelligence requires novel physical substrates for computation. Phononic metamaterials have vanishingly low power dissipation and hence are a prime candidate for green, always-on computers. However, their use in machine learning applications has not been explored due to the complexity of their design process. Current phononic metamaterials are restricted to simple geometries (e.g., periodic and tapered) and hence do not possess sufficient expressivity to encode machine learning tasks. A non-periodic phononic metamaterial, directly from data samples, that can distinguish between pairs of spoken words in the presence of a simple readout nonlinearity is designed and fabricated, hence demonstrating that phononic metamaterials are a viable avenue towards zero-power smart devices.     

Are there really high-tech clusters? The geographic concentration of German manufacturing industries and its determinants

The agglomeration of industries has recently received much interest both in empirical and theoretical works time. Especially in Germany politicians became inspired by the notion of high-technology industry clusters, and regional policy has seen a wave of initiatives aiming at the formation of such clusters. This paper explores in a systematic way the geographic concentration of German manufacturing industries and relates it to industry characteristics and agglomeration forces proposed by theory. The main finding is that there is no general relationship between agglomeration and high-technology related business which suggests that hope put in the fast and effective development of “high-tech” clusters might see some disappointments in the future.

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Trajectories of stressful life events and depressive symptoms during adolescence.

This 4-yr longitudinal study of 191 girls and 185 boys living in intact families in the rural Midwest examines the trajectories of life events and depressive symptoms in adolescence. The trajectories of depressive symptoms differ between boys and girls. Compared with boys, girls experienced a greater number of depressive symptoms after age 13. Changes in uncontrollable events are associated with the increases in girls' but not boys' depressive symptoms. Latent growth curve analyses show that, over 4 yrs, (1) depressive symptoms for girls changed according to a curvilinear pattern that is associated with changes in stressful events; (2) the level of depressive symptoms is related to the level of life events for both boys and girls; and (3) change in depressive symptoms is significantly related to change in stressful events only for girls. Girls living with less supportive mothers are more vulnerable to negative life changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A variational approach to vesicle membrane reconstruction from fluorescence imaging

Biological applications like vesicle membrane analysis involve the precise segmentation of 3D structures in noisy volumetric data, obtained by techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or laser scanning microscopy (LSM). Dealing with such data is a challenging task and requires robust and accurate segmentation methods. In this article, we propose a novel energy model for 3D segmentation fusing various cues like regional intensity subdivision, edge alignment and orientation information. The uniqueness of the approach consists in the definition of a new anisotropic regularizer, which accounts for the unbalanced slicing of the measured volume data, and the generalization of an efficient numerical scheme for solving the arising minimization problem, based on linearization and fixed-point iteration. We show how the proposed energy model can be optimized globally by making use of recent continuous convex relaxation techniques. The accuracy and robustness of the presented approach are demonstrated by evaluating it on multiple real data sets and comparing it to alternative segmentation methods based on level sets. Although the proposed model is designed with focus on the particular application at hand, it is general enough to be applied to a variety of different segmentation tasks.     

肾上腺髓质素逆转去甲肾上腺素和内皮素的缩血管作用

目的 肾上腺髓质素(ADM) 为新型的血管扩张物质,有关 ADM与其它血管收缩物质的相互作用尚无报道。方法 本文以 14 例正常志愿者为对象,分两组经肱动脉分别注射 ADM或/和去甲肾上腺素(NE) (n =7),及 ADM或/和内皮素(n =7),观察前臂血流量的变化,并将单独用药和联合用药进行比较 。结果 经肱动脉注射 ADM,可使前臂血流量较用药前增加 3倍,血管扩张作用在停药后 40 min 逐渐消失。经肱动脉注射 NE 或内皮素,分别使前臂血流量下降 61%和73%。低浓度的 ADM与 NE 或内皮素联合输注,即可完全逆转后两者的血管收缩作用。结论 ADM为强烈的血管扩张剂,单次注射作用持续约 40 min 。在前臂阻力血管低浓度的 ADM可以逆转高浓度的 NE 或内皮素的血管收缩作用 。     

Dynamics and flatness-based control of a kinematically undetermined cable suspension manipulator

A kinematically undetermined cable suspension manipulator moves a payload platform in space by several cables with computer-controlled winches, whereby the position of the payload platform is not determined by the lengths of the cables. Trajectory tracking control of the payload platform is achieved by means of the concept of flat systems. A flat system has the property that the state variables and the control inputs can be algebraically expressed in terms of the so-called flat output and a finite number of time derivatives of the flat output. Its application to kinematically undetermined manipulators represents a generalization of computed-torque control. The control forces are algebraically calculated from the desired trajectories of the payload platform and their time derivatives up to the fourth order leading to a feedforward control strategy. Asymptotically stable tracking behavior is achieved by exact linearization of the nonlinear dynamics by means of a so-called quasi-static state feedback. The procedure is described for the trajectory tracking control of the prototype three-cable suspension manipulator CABLEV.     

Automated 3-D PDM construction from segmented images using deformable models

In recent years, several methods have been proposed for constructing statistical shape models to aid image analysis tasks by providing a priori knowledge. Examples include principal component analysis of manually or semiautomatically placed corresponding landmarks on the learning shapes [point distribution models (PDMs)], which is time consuming and subjective. However, automatically establishing surface correspondences continues to be a difficult problem. This paper presents a novel method for the automated construction of three-dimensional PDM from segmented images. Corresponding surface landmarks are established by adapting a triangulated learning shape to segmented volumetric images of the remaining shapes. The adaptation is based on a novel deformable model technique. We illustrate our approach using computed tomography data of the vertebra and the femur. We demonstrate that our method accurately represents and predicts shapes.