Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome due to arteriovenous fistula

A patient with end-stage renal disease presented with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS) on her left hand 1 month after arteriovenous fistula (AVF) surgery. Magnetic resonance angiography revealed steal syndrome at the AVF level. Bone scintigraphy revealed early-stage RSDS. We considered that arterial insufficiency because of steal phenomenon following AVF surgery and underlying occlusive arterial disease triggered RSDS development.     

A Practical Space-Code Correlator Receiver for DSP Based Software Radio Implementation in CDMA2000

Development of practical algorithms for beamforming in 3G CDMA systems and their software radio implementations are still a challenging task, which will facilitate upgrading of traditional base stations into smart antenna capable 3G base stations. In this paper, we propose a practical space-code correlator (SCC) receiver structure for its software radio implementation a DSP. SCC’s advantage comes from the fact that it doesn’t require any training sequence or learning parameter as in other algorithms (LMS or CM). DSP implementations of the SCC are performed using Texas Instruments C67xx family platforms. In the simulations, reverse link base band signal format of CDMA2000 is used and the effects of different array topologies (uniform linear array-ULA or uniform circular array-UCA) are considered. The implementation results regarding beamforming accuracy, weight vector computation time (execution time), search resolution effect on DOA estimation accuracy, DSP resource utilization, and received SINR are presented. The results show that DSP based SCC beamformer can estimate weight vectors within less than 10 ms with DOA search resolution of 2° especially when C6713 DSP is used. With faster DSPs and larger search resolutions, execution time could be significantly reduced as well. It provides comparable SINR performance with LMS and CM algorithms.

A Monolithic Phased Array Using 3-bit Distributed RF MEMS Phase Shifters

This paper presents a novel electronically scanning phased-array antenna with 128 switches monolithically implemented using RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. The structure, which is designed at 15 GHz, consists of four linearly placed microstrip patch antennas, 3-bit distributed RF MEMS low-loss phase shifters, and a corporate feed network. MEMS switches and high-Q metal-air-metal capacitors are employed as loading elements in the phase shifter. The system is fabricated monolithically using an in-house surface micromachining process on a glass substrate and occupies an area of 6 cm times 5 cm. The measurement results show that the phase shifter can provide nearly 20deg/50deg/95deg phase shifts and their combinations at the expense of 1.5-dB average insertion loss at 15 GHz for eight combinations. It is also shown by measurements that the main beam can be steered to required directions by suitable settings of the RF MEMS phase shifters.     

The effects of ozone,ultrasound and coating with shellac and lysozyme–chitosan on fresh egg during storage at ambient temperature – part 1: interior quality changes

The objective of this research was to investigate and compare the effect of different treatments including gaseous ozone (6-ppm/4-min), ultrasound (450 W/4 min) and coating of shellac, lysozyme–chitosan (L-C) on fresh eggs internal quality during storage for six weeks at ambient temperature. The internal quality attributes such as weight loss (WL), albumen viscosity, Haugh unit (HU), yolk index, total soluble solids, albumen and yolk's pH were monitored. Control groups had the worst HU (50.04), WL (8.35%), albumen pH (9.27) and viscosity (7.72 mPa·s) values after storage. The best interior qualities were obtained by shellac coating [HU (72.37), WL (1.37) and viscosity (30.10 mPa·s)] and sonication (albumen pH: 8.22). Thus, the shellac-coated eggs maintained all the internal quality parameters at the highest values, while the ozone and ultrasound only helped to keep the internal quality and enhance the shelf life of eggs.     

Effectiveness of phase I applications for identifying randomly scattered out‐of‐control observations and estimating control chart parameters

Estimation of unknown process parameters with fixed‐size samples are studied in the following. The standard textbook approach for phase I control chart implementation with a Shewhart control chart is evaluated for the case of normally distributed independent observations with random sampling. The charts are simultaneously implemented by generating observations that have a given percentage of randomly scattered out‐of‐control observations. Simulating the phase I steps, where out‐of‐control samples are detected iteratively by determining trial control limits, identifying samples exceeding these limits, and revising the control limits, the standard practice is evaluated in terms of both detection performance and quality of parameter estimates. It is shown that standard phase I control chart implementations with 3‐σ‐limits may perform very poorly in identifying true out‐of‐control observations and providing a reference set of in‐control observations for estimation in some practical settings. A chart design with 2‐σ‐limits is recommended for a successful phase I analysis.     

A comparative study of linear and non-linear regression analysis for ammonium exchange by clinoptilolite zeolite

Ammonium ion exchange from aqueous solution using clinoptilolite zeolite was investigated at laboratory scale. Batch experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the effect of various parameters such as pH, zeolite dosage, contact time, initial ammonium concentration and temperature. Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models and pseudo-second-order model were fitted to experimental data. Linear and non-linear regression methods were compared to determine the best fitting of isotherm and kinetic model to experimental data. The rate limiting mechanism of ammonium uptake by zeolite was determined as chemical exchange. Non-linear regression has better performance for analyzing experimental data and Freundlich model was better than Langmuir to represent equilibrium data.     

Synthesis of aromatic poly(ether ketone)s containing C36 aliphatic unsaturated groups in the main chain

Aromatic poly(ether ketone)s (PEKs) were modified with various amount of C36 dimer acid Pripol 1017 obtained from polymerization of unsaturated C18 fatty acids. To obtain modified PEKs, polycondensation was carried out using various dicarboxylic acids with diphenylether at 75°C in phosphorus pentoxide/methanesulfonic acid as condensing agent and solvent. The reduced viscosities of polymers are relatively low, up to 0.13 dL/g. PEK with a structure (molar ratio of aliphatic to aromatic segment: 0.33) is soluble in organic polar solvents and can be cast from a tetrahydrofuran solution with cobalt naphthenate air dryer in order to obtain crosslinked film at room temperature. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 63: 1275–1278, 1997     

Interference analysis and capacity for forward link 3G CDMA network with adaptive antennas

In code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, the capacity of forward link (FL) communication to mobile receivers is limited primarily by co‐channel interference (CCI). Adaptive antenna arrays (AAAs) that use antenna arrays along with advanced signal processing at the base station (BS) have been proposed to mitigate this limitation. For a 3G CDMA cellular network, where each BS equipped with an AAA serves mixture of voice and data users within its coverage, we study FL capacity and investigate the effects of different factors (array topology, multipath angle spread, data rate, and beamforming algorithm) on this capacity under Rayleigh fading channel. By modeling the instantaneous signal‐to‐interference power ratio received at the mobile, we derive the system outage equation that considers blocking of either desired voice or data user. Simulation results show that for the same element spacing and number of antenna elements per cell, the uniform circular array (UCA) topology results in larger capacity than the sectorized uniform linear array (ULA) topology does, and that a larger angle spread or data user rate reduces FL capacity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.