Microscopic Contour Changes of Tribological Surfaces by Chemical and Mechanical Action

An electronic optical laser interferometer capable of resolving depth differences of as low as 30 Å and planar displacements of 6000 Å was constructed for the examination of surface profiles of bearing surfaces without physical contact. This instrument was used to determine topological chemical reactivity by applying a drop of dilute alcoholic hydrochloric acid and measuring the profile of the solid surface before and after application of this probe. It was found that scuffed bearing surfaces exposed to lubricants containing an organic chloride reacted much more slowly. In a separate series of experiments, a number of stainless steel plates were heated in a nitrogen atmosphere to different temperatures and their reactivity examined later at ambient temperature. The change of surface contour as a result of the probe reaction was found to follow an Arrhenius-type relation with respect to heat treatment temperature. This result could have implications on the scuffing mechanism.     

Evaluation of the effects of thermal treatments on color, polyphenol stability, enzyme activities and antioxidant capacities of innovative pasty celeriac (Apium graveolens L. var. rapaceum (Mill.) DC.) products

Initial heating was applied as the first processing step in the production of innovative pasty celeriac products. For this purpose, celeriac was converted into a paste and subsequently heated at 90 and 100 °C for 5–10 min. Alternatively, the fresh plant material was blanched prior to mincing. For the first time, phenolic compounds in celeriac were characterized by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC–MSⁿ). Among the 14 phenolics detected, several caffeic, ferulic and quinic acid derivatives as well as malonylated and acetylated flavonoid derivatives were newly identified. Upon thermal treatment, the antioxidant capacities (TEAC assay) and the total phenolic contents remained virtually unchanged. The antioxidant capacities of heated samples determined by the FRAP assay were even higher than those of the unheated control. The contents of the main phenolic compound apiin decreased upon heat treatment, whereas the levels of the minor compounds malonylapiin A and B increased. Only by extended steam- and water-blanching at 100 °C, respectively, complete inactivation of peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase was achieved. The obtained celeriac products were characterized by their bright white color. Consequently, blanching is recommended as the initial operation in the processing of celeriac into novel pasty products.     

Multiscale modeling in rodent ventricular myocytes

This paper indicates that in ventricular myocytes when the SR (sarcoplasmic reticulum) is pharmacologically inhibited, the intracellular Ca²⁺concentration rapidly increases during Ca²⁺ entrance (0-70 ms), whereas the decay of Ca²⁺ is slow; in the absence of fluorescent dye, large Ca²⁺ concentration gradients might develop near the cell membrane; intracellular Ca²⁺ distribution is tightly regulated by the localization of Ca²⁺transporter proteins along the sarcolemma and strongly relays on the presence of mobile and stationary Ca²⁺ buffers. These studies also imply that in ventricular cells with intact and functional SR, the Ca²⁺ signal most likely would spread faster along the t-tubular system, surface membrane than to the cell interior and that in the absence of Ca²⁺ dye high Ca²⁺ gradients under the surface membrane and more uniform Ca²⁺ distribution in the cell interior might be expected.     

A Fully Automated Process Using a Magnetic Particle Based Kit for Removal of Dye Terminators from Sequencing Reactions

Prolinx,® Inc. of Bothell, WA has developed the RapXtract™ 384 Dye Terminator Removal Kit for full automation of DNA sequencing reaction purification. The RapXtract product line is based upon proprietary superparamagnetic particle technology that eliminates the need for centrifugation, vacuum filtration, or modified primers to achieve purification of sequencing reactions. The kit described here is pre-dispensed in a 384-well microtiter plate and run on the TECAN GENESIS Workstation 150 (Tecan U.S. Inc., Research Triangle Park, NC). This system enables rapid purification of up to 384 sequencing reactions in a single run.As the completion of the Human Genome Project nears, it is imperative for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to increase throughput of DNA sequencing in order to be competitive in the drug discovery and validation process. The “race to market” requires a shift from standard DNA sequencing processes-including DNA sequencing reaction purification-towards complete walk-away automation for all steps.Existing sequencing reaction purification methods (Table 1) require considerable resources including: plastic and other laboratory consumables; specialized equipment, such as high-speed centrifuges or vacuum filtration apparatus; and labor-intensive protocols requiring large amounts of technician time. As a result, walk-away automation of standard purification methods is difficult and expensive.     

Adaptive filtering of evoked potentials with radial-basis-function neural network prefilter

Evoked potentials (EPs) are time-varying signals typically buried in relatively large background noise. To extract the EP more effectively from noise, we had previously developed an approach using an adaptive signal enhancer (ASE) (Chen et al., 1995). ASE requires a proper reference input signal for its optimal performance. Ensemble- and moving window-averages were formerly used with good results. In this paper, we present a new method to provide even more effective reference inputs for the ASE. Specifically, a Gaussian radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) was used to preprocess raw EP signals before serving as the reference input. Since the RBFNN has built-in nonlinear activation functions that enable it to closely fit any function mapping, the output of RBFNN can effectively track the signal variations of EP. Results confirmed the superior performance of ASE with RBFNN over the previous method.     

Improvement of borrowing channel assignment for patterned traffic load by online cellular probabilistic self-organizing map

This paper describes an improvement of borrowing channel assignment (BCA) for patterned traffic load by using the short-term traffic prediction ability of cellular probabilistic self-organizing map (CPSOM). The fast growing cellular mobile systems demand more efficient and faster channel allocation techniques today. In case of patterned traffic load, the traditional BCA methods are not efficient to further enhance the performance because heavy-traffic cells cannot borrow channels from their neighboring cells with light or medium traffic that may have unused nominal channels. The performance can be increased if the short-term traffic load can be predicted. The predicted results can then be used for channel re-assignment. Therefore, the unused nominal channels of the light-or-medium-traffic cells can be transferred to the heavy-traffic cells that need more nominal channels. In this paper, CPSOM is used online for traffic prediction. In this sense, the proposed CPSOM-based BCA method is able to enhance the performance for patterned traffic load compared with the traditional BCA methods. Simulation results corroborate that the proposed method enables the system to work with better performance for patterned traffic load than the traditional BCA methods.     

Text classification without negative examples revisit

Traditionally, building a classifier requires two sets of examples: positive examples and negative examples. This paper studies the problem of building a text classifier using positive examples (P) and unlabeled examples (U). The unlabeled examples are mixed with both positive and negative examples. Since no negative example is given explicitly, the task of building a reliable text classifier becomes far more challenging. Simply treating all of the unlabeled examples as negative examples and building a classifier thereafter is undoubtedly a poor approach to tackling this problem. Generally speaking, most of the studies solved this problem by a two-step heuristic: first, extract negative examples (N) from U. Second, build a classifier based on P and N. Surprisingly, most studies did not try to extract positive examples from U. Intuitively, enlarging P by P' (positive examples extracted from U) and building a classifier thereafter should enhance the effectiveness of the classifier. Throughout our study, we find that extracting P' is very difficult. A document in U that possesses the features exhibited in P does not necessarily mean that it is a positive example, and vice versa. The very large size of and very high diversity in U also contribute to the difficulties of extracting P'. In this paper, we propose a labeling heuristic called PNLH to tackle this problem. PNLH aims at extracting high quality positive examples and negative examples from U and can be used on top of any existing classifiers. Extensive experiments based on several benchmarks are conducted. The results indicated that PNLH is highly feasible, especially in the situation where |P| is extremely small.     

Dynamic and contact analysis of a bimodal ultrasonic motor

A bimodal ultrasonic motor, which operates with only one power amplifier, uses two simultaneously excited modes to drive the rotor; a longitudinal mode and a flexural mode. The equations of motion describing the vibrations and contact behavior are derived by Hamilton's principle and the geometry constraint. The Lagrange multiplier method is used to treat the frictional contact problem. The finite element method and numerical integration scheme are used to simulate the dynamic responses of this system with and without contact. Some important factors are studied for the bimodal ultrasonic motor design. The factors include structure design, amplitude of input voltage, phase displacement, exciting frequency, and contact behavior.     

Interkeratinocyte adherens junctions: immunocytochemical visualization of cell-cell junctional structures, distinct from desmosomes, in human epidermis

The intramedullary localization of schwannomas is rare, corresponding to 0.3% of all intraspinal tumors. The authors report the case of a 52-year-old white female patient that presented with symptoms of spinal compression by the presence of an intramedullary schwannoma at the level C4-C6. There were no symptoms of neurofibromatosis, entity frequently related to the lesion. The magnetic resonance imaging examination and the per-operatory biopsy were decisive factors in planning and executing the treatment, by establishing the characteristics, location and diagnosis of the lesion. Its delimitation and posterior location have facilitated total surgical exeresis. The transoperatively histopathologic examination allowed adequate surgical procedure. The Schwann cell is not found normally in the central nervous system and its presence in this site has been subject of many theories exposed in this paper, which proposes comprehensive review of the clinical aspects, imaging diagnosis, pathology, differential diagnosis and treatment of schwannomas. It is probable that, with the advances verified in the available diagnostic methods, a greater number of these lesions may be diagnosed in the future.