Experimental and clinical validation of auto- and allodermoplasty using transverse dermal micrografts in deep burns

A new method of autoallodermoplasty is proposed which is as follows: a patient's skin band is cut out 40 times less than the total area of the wound surface. The wound in the donor area is sutured tightly. The skin flap is dissected to thin transverse rectangular pieces with a special microdermatome or with a razor and then they are laid with their lateral side onto the wound and covered with the allo-skin. Experimental and clinical observations have shown that at remote terms both the anatomical and functional restitution of the integument occurred. The method is indicated for huge dermal defects of the "functionally passive" areas in patients with restricted, not big resources of the donor sites, especially in patients with high operative risk.     

Analogues of capsaicin with agonist activity as novel analgesic agents: structure-activity studies. 4. Potent, orally active analgesics

Structural features of three regions of the capsaicin molecule necessary for agonist properties were delineated by a previously reported modular approach. These in vitro agonist effects were shown to correlate with analgesic potency in rodent models. Combination of optimal structural features from each of these regions of the capsaicin molecule have led to highly potent agonists (eg., 1b). Evaluation in vivo established that 1b had analgesic properties but poor oral activity, short duration of action, and excitatory side effects which precluded further development of this compound. Preliminary metabolism studies had shown that the phenol moiety of 1b was rapidly glucuronidated in vivo, providing a possible explanation for the poor pharmacokinetic profile. Subsequent specific modification of the phenol group led to compounds 2a-j, which retained in vitro potency. The in vivo profiles of two representatives of this series, 2a,h, were much improved over the "parent" phenol series, and they are candidates for development as analgesic agents.     

Do cardiovascular risk factors explain the relation between socioeconomic status, risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and acute myocardial infarction?

Much remains to be understood about how low socioeconomic status (SES) increases cardiovascular disease and mortality risk. Data from the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (1984-1993) were used to estimate the associations between acute myocardial infarction and income, all-cause mortality, and cardiovascular mortality in a population-based sample of 2,272 Finnish men, with adjustment for 23 biologic, behavioral, psychologic, and social risk factors. Compared with the highest income quintile, those in the bottom quintile had age-adjusted relative hazards of 3.14 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.77-5.56), 2.66 (95% CI 1.25-5.66), and 4.34 (95% CI 1.95-9.66) for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and AMI, respectively. After adjustment for risk factors, the relative hazards for the same comparisons were 1.32 (95% CI 0.70-2.49), 0.70 (95% CI 0.29-1.69), and 2.83 (95% CI 1.14-7.00). In the lowest income quintile, adjustment for risk factors reduced the excess relative risk of all-cause mortality by 85%, that of cardiovascular mortality by 118%, and that of acute myocardial infarction by 45%. These data show how the association between SES and cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality is mediated by known risk factor pathways, but full "explanations" for these associations will need to encompass why these biologic, behavioral, psychologic, and social risk factors are differentially distributed by SES.     

Using a Trust Inference Model for Flexible and Controlled Information Sharing During Crises

The fluid, urgent nature of crises requires flexible, responsive information sharing. Recent studies show, however, that in business catastrophes and other kinds of crises conventional access control mechanisms favor security over flexibility. Our work addresses these seemingly contradictory needs for security and flexibility and designs a trust inference model based on fuzzy logic, a model that can be used with pervasive computing technologies using sensors and mobile devices. Drawing upon research on trust, we design a trust inference model using attributes of affiliation, task performance, and urgency; apply the model to a known crisis; discuss implementation issues; and explore issues for further research. This article is dedicated to Alan Jarman, a founding influence in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management who died in Canberra 15 July 2010. Alan's quantitative, engineering background and his long standing commitment to improving crisis decision making prompted him to encourage our applying fuzzy logic to crisis information sharing. We are grateful for Alan's encouragement and advice.     

Towards Timbre-Invariant Audio Features for Harmony-Based Music

Chroma-based audio features are a well-established tool for analyzing and comparing harmony-based Western music that is based on the equal-tempered scale. By identifying spectral components that differ by a musical octave, chroma features possess a considerable amount of robustness to changes in timbre and instrumentation. In this paper, we describe a novel procedure that further enhances chroma features by significantly boosting the degree of timbre invariance without degrading the features' discriminative power. Our idea is based on the generally accepted observation that the lower mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) are closely related to timbre. Now, instead of keeping the lower coefficients, we discard them and only keep the upper coefficients. Furthermore, using a pitch scale instead of a mel scale allows us to project the remaining coefficients onto the 12 chroma bins. We present a series of experiments to demonstrate that the resulting chroma features outperform various state-of-the art features in the context of music matching and retrieval applications. As a final contribution, we give a detailed analysis of our enhancement procedure revealing the musical meaning of certain pitch-frequency cepstral coefficients.      

Ahead of time static analysis for automatic generation of debugging interfaces to the Linux kernel

The Linux kernel does not export a stable, well-defined kernel interface, complicating the development of kernel-level services, such as device drivers and file systems. While there does exist a set of functions that are exported to external modules, this set of functions frequently changes, and the functions have implicit, ill-documented preconditions. No specific debugging support is provided. We present Diagnosys, an approach to automatically constructing a debugging interface for the Linux kernel. First, a designated kernel maintainer uses Diagnosys to identify constraints on the use of the exported functions. Based on this information, developers of kernel services can then use Diagnosys to generate a debugging interface specialized to their code. When a service including this interface is tested, it records information about potential problems. This information is preserved following a kernel crash or hang. Our experiments show that the generated debugging interface provides useful log information and incurs a low performance penalty.     

Test-retest reliability of Purdue Pegboard performance in thermoneutral and cold ambient conditions

In the cold, Purdue Pegboard (PP) performance declines. The purpose of this study was to determine if this cold-induced impairment is consistent across days (i.e. test-retest reliability) in 5°C. In thermoneutral air (25°C), 14 men were familiarised to the dominant hand (PPa) and bimanual (PPb) PP tasks. They then experienced two 90-min cold exposures (Day 1, Day 2) while wearing ～1 clo. Bare hands were maintained throughout. Performance on both tasks showed high reliability from day to day (intraclass correlations >0.700) in both thermoneutral and cold conditions. However for both tasks, room temperature performance did not predict performance in the cold (intraclass correlations <0.450). When screening applicants for manual labour in the cold, one must consider that room temperature dexterity does not correlate with dexterity in the cold. It is recommended that a 60-min period of cold exposure be employed to assess manual dexterity in these workers. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This study shows that PP performance in room temperature does not predict performance in the cold but performance in the cold is consistent from day to day. When screening applicants for manual labour in the cold, it is recommended that dexterity tests be conducted in the same ambient conditions.     

A threshold insensitive method for locating the forest canopy top with waveform lidar

Lidars have the unique ability to make direct, physical measurements of forest height and vertical structure in much denser canopies than is possible with passive optical or short wavelength radars. However the literature reports a consistent underestimate of tree height when using physically based methods, necessitating empirical corrections. This bias is a result of overestimating the range to the canopy top due to background noise and failing to correctly identify the ground.This paper introduces a method, referred to as “noise tracking”, to avoid biases when determining the range to the canopy top. Simulated waveforms, created with Monte-Carlo ray tracing over geometrically explicit forest models, are used to test noise tracking against simple thresholding over a range of forest and system characteristics. It was found that noise tracking almost completely removed the bias in all situations except for very high noise levels and very low (< 10%) canopy covers. In all cases noise tracking gave lower errors than simple thresholding and had a lower sensitivity to the initial noise threshold.Finite laser pulses spread out the measured signal, potentially overriding the benefit of noise tracking. In the past laser pulse length has been corrected by adding half that length to the signal start range. This investigation suggests that this is not always appropriate for simple thresholding and that the results for noise tracking were more directly related to pulse length than for simple thresholding. That this effect has not been commented on before may be due to the possible confounding impacts of instrument and survey characteristics inherent in field data. This method should help improve the accuracy of waveform lidar measurements of forests, whether using airborne or spaceborne instruments.     

Microgimbal torsion beam design using open, thin-walled crosssections

A thin-film micromolding process enabled the construction of microtorsional springs with unique cross-sectional designs by combining high-aspect-ratio beams with horizontal surface features. Cross sections such as T-bars, pi sections, and channels were utilized in creating torsional springs with low torsional stiffnesses and high in- and out-of-plane bending stiffnesses. Experimental modal analysis was used to determine torsional stiffnesses as low as 0.13 μN·m/deg with T-bar springs 45 μm tall, 50 μm wide, and 100 μm long. Springs of the same outer dimensions but with solid rectangular cross sections were calculated to have torsional stiffnesses of at least two orders of magnitude greater. Several microgimbals were constructed using the thin-film micromolding process with various torsional spring designs. Modal analysis was used to experimentally determine pitch and roll natural frequencies. Torsional stiffness models for open, thin-walled sections that included warping effects were developed and used to analytically predict the torsional natural frequencies of tested spring designs to within 20%     

High-aspect-ratio, molded microstructures with electrical isolation and embedded interconnects

 A thin film molding process was developed to enable the fabrication of monolithic micromechanical structures with built-in electrical isolation and embedded interconnects. High-aspect-ratio composite structures were created from undoped polysilicon, low stress nitride and doped polysilicon, in a dual micromolding process. These monolithic electro-mechanical microstructures are more resistant to thermal effects and misalignment errors compared to microsystems assembled from discrete elements. In addition, the microstructures are molded in a re-usable mold providing an economical advantage. A gimballed electrostatic microactuator was successfully fabricated using this process. Electrical isolation was achieved with a combination of low stress nitride and undoped polycrystalline silicon. Various isolation geometries were investigated. Current leakages of less than 1 nA at 30 V were measured for isolation structures 40 μm long and 80 μm tall. Received: 13 November 2000/Accepted: 16 November 2000