Gastrointestinal problems in diabetes

Gastrointestinal symptoms are often encountered in patients with diabetes mellitus. Symptoms may arise in any region of the alimentary tract; common symptoms are heartburn, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, fecal incontinence, and abdominal pain. This article reviews practical approaches to the identification of the pathophysiologic mechanisms involved in diabetic enteropathies and their complications and briefly outlines strategies to treat these symptoms. Particular emphasis is placed on applied physiologic tests and the choice of pharmacotherapy (e.g., cisapride, erythromycin, or octeotide). The current role of pancreatic transplantations also is briefly reviewed.     

Two methods of determining the ultimate long-term shear strength of clayey soils

A comparison is made between different alternate schemes for determination of the strength of soils possessing rheological properties on the basis of our own experimental data. An original method is proposed for determination of the ultimate long-term strength from tests on the conditionally instantaneous failure of soil after preliminary deformation in a creep regime, as well as from tests in a controlled-deformation regime. Translated from Osnovaniya, Fundamenty i Mekhanika Gruntov, No. 1, pp. 14–18, January–February, 1996.     

A medium-access control protocol for a cellular packet CDMAcarrying multirate traffic

We propose and evaluate a medium-access control (MAC) protocol for synchronous cellular packet direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS/CDMA). The protocol is designed for handling a variety of multimedia traffic types in an integrated wireless-access network (IWAN). For instance, the protocol is suited for carrying multiple traffic types of different priorities. An analytical model for the equilibrium state has been developed for the proposed protocol. A comparative evaluation of the protocol is done for three different radio frequency bandwidths currently under consideration for personal communication services (PCS), i.e., 1.25 MHz, 5 MHz, and 10 MHz. Our results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is both robust and flexible for the intended IWAN applications. It offers a significant multiplexing gain as the bandwidth increases     

On the Possibility of Observing Third Sound on 3He

This paper focuses on the hydrodynamics of third sound on a superfluid ³ He film. We solve the hydrodynamical equations in the limit of thick films with weak interaction with the substrate. The surface tension at the free interface is shown to have a large effect on the third sound velocity and on the attenuation for frequencies larger than 1Hz. In the case of a diffusely scattering substrate a ripplon-like dispersion relation is found for this frequency range.     

Molecular cloning of human Frizzled-6

The Frizzled genes encode receptors for WNTs, secreted glycoproteins implicated in development as well as in carcinogenesis. In this paper, we report molecular cloning of Hfz6, the human homologue of Mfz6. Nucleotide sequence analysis showed that the Hfz6 gene encodes the 706 amino-acid protein with seven transmembrane domains, a cystein-rich domain in the N-terminal extracellular region, two N-linked glycosylation sites, and two cystein residues in the second and third extracellular loops. Hfz6 mRNA 4.4-kb in size was detected in various normal adult and fetal tissues, and a larger amount of Hfz6 mRNA was detected in both fetal lung and fetal kidney. The Hfz6 gene has been mapped to human chromosome 8q22.3-q23.1. In conclusion, we have cloned Hfz6, which encodes a seven-transmembrane receptor with the cystein-rich domain in the N-terminal extracellular region, but without the Ser/Thr-X-Val motif in the C-terminus.     

Value analysis of intermittent generation sources from the systemoperations perspective

The objective of this study is to determine the economic and operational impact on energy cost of incorporating large photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy conversion systems (WECS) into the electric utility generation mix. In most cases, PV and WECS power outputs are subtracted from the utility load with the expectation that conventional generation would meet the residual load. This approach is valid for small penetration levels and/or for PV and WECS facilities connected near load centers, However, several constraints such as thermal generation characteristics, fuel supply and delivery, spinning reserve requirements, and hydro availability are not adequately represented in this process. To determine the optimal value of large-scale PV and WECS applications, a new methodology that would take into account the aforementioned constraints as well as a more global penetration is developed. Results indicate that while high hydro availability increases PV penetration levels, high ramping rates can also significantly increase penetration levels     

The correlation of texture and magnetic properties in Co-Cr films

This investigation focuses on the correlation between the crystallographic orientation of grains with respect to magnetic properties in Co-Cr films. Based on a distribution measured for the (0002) crystallographic pole densities, modified formulae describing the texture were used to calculate the coercivity Hc, the squareness ratio Rs (Mr⊥/TMs) and the anisotropy field Ha for Co-Cr films. In general, calculated values for the coercive force He agreed well with the measured values. The calculated Rs⊥. values were much larger than the measured ones, however, indicating that the influence of the demagnetizing field and the magnetostriction on the orientation of the magnetization cannot be neglected. On leave from Institute of Computing Technology, Academia Sinica, P.O.Box 2704-6, Beijing, P.R. China.     

A hybrid spreading/despreading function with good SNR performancefor band-limited DS-CDMA

Code-division multiple-access (CDMA) implemented with direct-sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) signaling is a promising multiplexing technique for cellular telecommunications services. The efficiency of a direct-sequence spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system depends heavily on the shape of the spectrum of the spread signal. Maximum efficiency is obtained with an ideal brick-wall bandpass spectrum. There are two approaches toward achieving such a spectrum. One is to use a simple spreader that produces a broad spectrum and then follow it with a precise, high order filter to band limit the spectrum. A second approach, which is the approach taken in this paper, is to use a spreader that produces a spectrum close to the ideal spectrum and then employ a simple filter to control the out-of-band power. The proposed spreader/despreader is based on a simple hybrid function and can be easily implemented. An analysis provides a compact expression for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a RAKE receiver. The expression includes the effects of baseband, intermediate frequency (IF) and RF filtering as well as the effects of the spectral densities of the spreading/despreading functions. The analysis shows that the proposed spreader/despreader yields superior performance over a conventional pseudo noise (PN) spreading/despreading mechanism     

Shear horizontal wave propagation in periodically layeredcomposites

The transverse resonance approach to guided wave analysis is applied to shear horizontal (SH) wave propagation in periodically layered composites. It is found for SH waves that at high values of the guided wavevector β, the wave energy is trapped in the slower of the two media and propagates accordingly at the slower wavespeed. At low values of β, however, the modes demonstrate a clustering behavior, indicative of the underlying Floquet wave structure. The number of modes in a cluster is observed to correlate with the number of unit cells in the layered plate. New physical insights into the behavior of these systems are obtained by analyzing the partial waves of the guided SH modes in terms of Floquet waves. We show that the fast and slow shear waves in the periodically layered composite play an analogous role to the longitudinal and shear partial waves comprising Lamb waves in a homogeneous plate