Postpartum thyroiditis and Basedow disease

BACKGROUND: The postpartum period is characterized by a rebound in autoimmunity secondary to immune tolerance induced by pregnancy, creating favorable conditions for flare up of Graves' disease or autoimmune thyroiditis. Postpartum thyroiditis is a recognized clinical entity. CASE REPORT: Six years after onset of Graves' disease treated with antithyroid drugs, a 25-year-old woman had a high serum level of antithyroperoxidase antibodies a few months before she became pregnant. Six weeks after delivery, she developed signs of hyperthyroidism and goiter. The diagnosis of postpartum thyroiditis was retained. Her condition regressed spontaneously to euthyroidism then hypothyroidism. DISCUSSION: The therapeutic options involved underline the importance of distinguishing between Graves' disease and postpartum thyroiditis. The diagnosis of postpartum thyroiditis is based on history taking, clinical findings, and laboratory tests, especially isotope uptake.     

The use of fuzzy logic in product family development: literature review and opportunities

Over the past few years, a number of key issues related to the product family design have been addressed, and a great deal of work has been done to improve it. Many different tools have been employed in this effort, such as mass customization, modularity, delayed differentiation, commonality, platforms, product families, and so on. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how fuzzy logic has been applied and how it can help to improve the entire process of product family development. Given its powerful capability to represent aspects that binary variables cannot, we show how fuzzy logic has been used to take advantage by considering the vague parameters related to the human character in different processes. Our aim is to contribute to the understanding and improvement of product family development process by identifying essential applications of fuzzy logic. An extended overview of the product family development process is provided, and also this work highlights the role of fuzzy logic in it. Fourteen fuzzy logic tools and thirteen topics into the product family development process are identified and summarized as a framework to analyze the role of fuzzy logic and at the same time to identify further application opportunities.     

Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in nanomedicine: a patent co-citation network perspective

Discovering and assessing fields of expertise in emerging technologies from patent data is not straightforward. First, patent classification in an emerging technology being far from complete, the definitions of the various applications of its inventions are embedded within communities of practice. Because patents must contain full record of prior art, co-citation networks can, in theory, be used to identify and delineate the inventive effort of these communities of practice. However, the use patent citations for the purpose of measuring technological relatedness is not obvious because they can be added by examiners. Second, the assessment of the development stage of emerging industries has been mostly done through simple patent counts. Because patents are not all valuable, a better way of evaluating an industry’s stage of development would be to use multiple patent quality metrics as well as economic activity agglomeration indicators. The purpose of this article is to validate the use of (1) patent citations as indicators of technological relatedness, and (2) multiple indicators for assessing an industry’s development stage. Greedy modularity optimization of the ‘Canadian-made’ nanotechnology patent co-citation network shows that patent citations can effectively be used as indicators of technological relatedness. Furthermore, the use of multiple patent quality and economic agglomeration indicators offers better assessment and forecasting potential than simple patent counts.     

Specific interactions of chromatin with the nuclear envelope: positional determination within the nucleus in Drosophila melanogaster

Specific interactions of chromatin with the nuclear envelope (NE) in early embryos of Drosophila melanogaster have been mapped and analyzed. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization, the three-dimensional positions of 42 DNA probes, primarily to chromosome 2L, have been mapped in nuclei of intact Drosophila embryos, revealing five euchromatic and two heterochromatic regions associated with the NE. These results predict that there are approximately 15 NE contacts per chromosome arm, which delimit large chromatin loops of approximately 1-2 Mb. These NE association sites do not strictly correlate with scaffold-attachment regions, heterochromatin, or binding sites of known chromatin proteins. Pairs of neighboring probes surrounding one NE association site were used to delimit the NE association site more precisely, suggesting that peripheral localization of a large stretch of chromatin is likely to result from NE association at a single discrete site. These NE interactions are not established until after telophase, by which time the nuclear envelope has reassembled around the chromosomes, and they are thus unlikely to be involved in binding of NE vesicles to chromosomes following mitosis. Analysis of positions of these probes also reveals that the interphase nucleus is strongly polarized in a Rabl configuration which, together with specific targeting to the NE or to the nuclear interior, results in each locus occupying a highly determined position within the nucleus.     

Cryptic signals and the fidelity of V(D)J joining

V(D)J recombination is responsible for the de novo creation of antigen receptor genes in T- and B-cell precursors. To the extent that lymphopoiesis takes place throughout an animal's lifetime, recombination errors present an ongoing problem. One type of aberrant rearrangement ensues when DNA sequences resembling a V(D)J joining signal are targeted by mistake. This study investigates the type of sequence likely to be subject to mistargeting, the level of joining-signal function associated with these sequences, and the number of such cryptic joining signals in the genome.     

Design for Cost: Module-Based Mass Customization

The assemble-to-order (ATO) production strategy considers a tradeoff between the size of a product portfolio and the assembly lead time. The concept of modular design is often used in support of the ATO strategy. Modular design impacts the assembly of products and the supply chain, in particular, the storage, transport, and production are affected by the selected modular structure. The demand for products in a product family impacts the cost of the supply chain. Based on the demand patterns, a mix of modules and their stock are determined by solving an integer programming model. This model cannot be optimally solved due to its high computational complexity and, therefore, two heuristic algorithms are proposed. A simulated annealing algorithm improves on the previously generated solutions. The computational results reported in this paper show that significant savings could be realized by optimizing the composition of modules. The best performance is obtained by a simulated annealing combined with a heuristic approach.     

Microbial quality of water supply to an urban community in Trinidad

A microbiological study was conducted to determine the quality of the water supply to an urban community in San Fernando proper in south Trinidad using total coliforms and thermotolerant coliforms as indicators of water pollution. The membrane filter technique was used to detect total coliforms and thermotolerant coliforms on endo agar and MFc agar, respectively. The residual chlorine levels in water from the reservoir, from standpipes along the distribution line, and from households were determined with a commercial test kit. Of a total of 104 drinking water samples obtained from households, 84 (80.8%), 56 (53.8%), and 70 (67.3%) tested positive for total coliforms, thermotolerant coliforms, and Escherichia coli, respectively. The difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05, chi2). Of the 81 water samples collected from the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) main supply to households, 38 (46.9%), 13 (16.0%), and 27 (33.3%) were contaminated by total coliforms, thermotolerant coliforms, and E. coli, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05, chi2). Eight (20.5%) of 39 water samples from standpipes along the distribution line tested positive for total coliforms, compared with 4 (10.3%) samples testing positive for thermotolerant coliforms. All five samples of treated water obtained from the reservoir tested negative for coliforms. There was a significant difference (P = 0.004) in the mean residual chlorine levels in water from the reservoir, water from standpipes, and water from households. Similarly, as the level of residual chlorine decreased, there was a statistically significant (P = 0.004) increase in the prevalence of total coliforms in water from 0.0% (treated reservoir water) to 15.2% (standpipe) to 53.5% (household mains) to 80.0% (household drinking water). There was also a statistically significant difference (P < 0.001, chi2) in the prevalence of total coliforms in drinking water and in water from the WASA main supply to households. Of the 105 E. coli strains tested, 7 (6.7%), 16 (15.2%), and 22 (21.0%) were mucoid, hemolytic, and non-sorbitol fermenters, respectively. It was concluded that the high degree of contamination of drinking water in households poses a health hazard to consumers.     

Use of surface affinity enrichment and cryo-embedding to prepare in vitro reconstituted mitotic chromosomes for EM tomography

We present a novel preparation method for studies of in vitro reconstituted mitotic chromosomes from Xenopus laevis egg extracts. This method involves a gentle adsorption of chromosomes from the extracts using surface affinity enrichment, followed by plunge freezing, freeze-substitution and cryo-embedding before examination by EM tomography. For comparison, chromosomes were also prepared by a conventional method, which included immobilization of chromosomes in agarose and a room-temperature dehydration/embedding protocol. Three-dimensional reconstructions showed that samples prepared with the new method have a greater interconnectivity of sub-structural features and a higher compaction ratio together with an apparently less perturbed chromatin structure than those prepared using the conventional approach. The implications of the new method for the preparation of other difficult samples and additional application possibilities are discussed.     

Improvement of earliness and lateness by postponement on an automotive production line

This article takes an interest in improving the performance of a subproblem of car sequencing: the resequencing problem. It extends a model of assembly line with the simulation of buffer stocks with drawers. Presequencing and resequencing are modeled with different types of stock management policy. Furthermore, postponement is introduced by two points of differentiation within the line. After choosing relevant variables and performance indicators a large-scale design of experiments finally enables to estimate average improvement brought by postponement to more than 39.7%, compared to the situation without postponement.