Anomalies in hepatobiliary excretion of technetium-99m-MAG3 preparations

Technetium-99m-MAG3 is accepted as a renal tubular function agent. However, sporadic liver and gall bladder visualisation during its clinical use is clearly a disadvantage. HPLC-purified 99mTc-MAG3 samples exhibited appreciable hepatobiliary uptake (7%), and an elevated level of such uptake was observed in unpurified kit preparations, which was stated to be associated with the excretory property of the radiolabeled kit impurities. To verify this we attempted to quantitate the hepatobiliary uptake of the kit preparations with that of its radiolabeled components. The contribution of each component toward hepatobiliary uptake of the sample was calculated from their abundance in the chelate mixture and the individual biodistribution of the isolated components. However, the anticipated hepatobiliary uptake of different preparations of 99mTc-MAG3 calculated in this way was always lower than that of the experimental value determined directly. Further work is needed to explain the anomaly.     

Switched predictor adaptation of DPCM-AQB speech coder using an imbedded vector quantisation

An adaptive differential pulse-code-modulation speech coder with a switched predictor adaptation scheme is described. The predictor adaptation is done by switching one of the several predetermined predictors stored both at the encoder and the decoder. The selection of the predictor is controlled by a vector quantiser. The tradeoff between the performance and the extra side information that needs to be transmitted is evaluated for bit rates of 16, 24 and 32 Kbit/s.     

Enhancement of ADPCM speech coding with backward-adaptivealgorithms for postfiltering and noise feedback

It is shown that postfiltering circuits based on higher order LPC (linear predictive coding) models can provide very low distortion in terms of special tilt. Thus, they can provide better speech enhancement than circuits based on the backward-adaptive pole-zero predictor in ADPCM (adaptive digital pulse code modulation). Quantitative criteria for designing postfiltering circuits based on higher-order LPC models are discussed. These postfilters are particularly attractive for systems where high-order LPC analysis is an integral part of the coding algorithm. In a subjective test that used a computer-simulated version of these circuits, enhanced ADPCM obtained a mean opinion score of 3.6 at 16 kb/s     

Investigations on hard turning with minimal cutting fluid application (HTMF) and its comparison with dry and wet turning

Environmental concerns call for the reduced use of cutting fluids in metal cutting practice. New cutting techniques are to be investigated to achieve this objective. Hard turning with Minimal Fluid application (HTMF) is one such technique, which can alleviate the pollution problems associated with cutting fluids. In the present work a specially formulated cutting fluid was applied as a high velocity, thin pulsed jet at the immediate cutting zones at an extremely low rate of 2 ml/min using a fluid application system developed for this purpose during turning of hardened steel. The performance of HTMF is studied in comparison with that of conventional hard turning in wet and dry form.     

An improved distance‐based ant colony optimization routing for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has earned tremendous attraction in the recent period due to its usage in a wireless intelligent transportation system. VANET is a unique form of mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Routing issues such as high mobility of nodes, frequent path breaks, the blind broadcasting of messages, and bandwidth constraints in VANET increase communication cost, frequent path failure, and overhead and decrease efficiency in routing, and shortest path in routing provides solutions to overcome all these problems. Finding the shortest path between source and destination in the VANET road scenario is a challenging task. Long path increases network overhead, communication cost, and frequent path failure and decreases routing efficiency. To increase efficiency in routing a novel, improved distance‐based ant colony optimization routing (IDBACOR) is proposed. The proposed IDBACOR determines intervehicular distance, and it is triggered by modified ant colony optimization (modified ACO). The modified ACO method is a metaheuristic approach, motivated by the natural behavior of ants. The simulation result indicates that the overall performance of our proposed scheme is better than ant colony optimization (ACO), opposition‐based ant colony optimization (OACO), and greedy routing with ant colony optimization (GRACO) in terms of throughput, average communication cost, average propagation delay, average routing overhead, and average packet delivery ratio.     

Unexpected Giant Microwave Conductivity in a Nominally Silent BiFeO3 Domain Wall

Nanoelectronic devices based on ferroelectric domain walls (DWs), such as memories, transistors, and rectifiers, have been demonstrated in recent years. Practical high-speed electronics, on the other hand, usually demand operation frequencies in the gigahertz (GHz) regime, where the effect of dipolar oscillation is important. Herein, an unexpected giant GHz conductivity on the order of 10³ S m⁻¹ is observed in certain BiFeO₃ DWs, which is about 100 000 times greater than the carrier-induced direct current (dc) conductivity of the same walls. Surprisingly, the nominal configuration of the DWs precludes the alternating current (ac) conduction under an excitation electric field perpendicular to the surface. Theoretical analysis shows that the inclined DWs are stressed asymmetrically near the film surface, whereas the vertical walls in a control sample are not. The resultant imbalanced polarization profile can then couple to the out-of-plane microwave fields and induce power dissipation, which is confirmed by the phase-field modeling. Since the contributions from mobile-carrier conduction and bound-charge oscillation to the ac conductivity are equivalent in a microwave circuit, the research on local structural dynamics may open a new avenue to implement DW nano-devices for radio-frequency applications.