A rare complication of hemodialysis catheters: superior vena cava syndrome

Central venous catheters in hemodialysis patients may result in superior vena cava (SVC) syndrome. With the increasing use of these catheters, the SVC syndrome will probably be more common among hemodialysis patients. This report describes 3 cases of SVC syndrome due to central venous catheters that developed in hemodialysis patients with previous multiple catheter placements.     

Slip-flow heat transfer in microtubes with axial conduction and viscous dissipation – An extended Graetz problem

This study is an extension of the Graetz problem to include the rarefaction effect, viscous dissipation term and axial conduction with constant-wall-heat-flux thermal boundary condition. The energy equation is solved analytically by using general eigenfunction expansion. The temperature distribution and the local Nusselt number are determined in terms of confluent hypergeometric functions. The effects of the rarefaction, axial conduction and viscous dissipation on the local Nusselt number are discussed in terms of dimensionless parameters such as the Knudsen number, Peclet number and Brinkman number.     

Production of a whey‐based functional beverage supplemented with soy isoflavones and phytosterols

Reconstituted whey beverages were prepared from whey powder by adding either soy isoflavones or phytosterols as functional compounds (at levels of 0%, 0.25%, 0.50% or 1.0% w/v) and probiotic bacteria (Lactobacillus acidophilus LA‐5 or Lactobacillus casei LBC‐81). The addition of nutraceuticals did not change the basic composition of the products. However, a time‐dependent increase in sedimentation/phase separation and acidity of fermented functional beverages was observed. Samples supplemented with phytosterols were more preferred by the panel group than the samples supplemented with isoflavones, and no considerable differences were noted between the control and phytosterol‐added samples in terms of overall perception.     

Proximate composition and selected mineral content of commercially important fish species from the black sea

Proximate composition, selected mineral (Zn, Fe, Cd, As, Hg, Pb, Ni, Cu) content and fatty acid profiles were determined in some widely consumed fish species obtained from the Black Sea. All fish species analysed individually were fairly high in protein (14·1–25·1%) and lipid (7·4–18·4%). Moisture and ash content varied within a narrow range. The mineral content was highly variable. The most abundant microelements in fish were Zn and Fe followed by Cu, and the remaining elements were present in amounts below toxic levels. Eight fatty acids (16: 0, 16:1, n-7, 18: 0, 18:1 n-9, 18: 2 n-6, 20:1 n-9, 20: 5 n-3, 22: 6 n-3) represented more than 60% of the fatty acid content. Saturated fatty acids ranged from 25·8 to 45·1%. Anchovy and whiting contained almost 35% of polyunsaturated fatty acids. The percentage of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) exceeded that of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in almost all the fish species examined, and the actual content of these acids has shown that sprat, whiting, garfish, red mullet, shad and sea bream provide the recommended daily intake of 1 g of EPA+DHA with reasonable amounts of fillet. These results indicate that biological differences existing in fish species can influence the values to be set for the standards and composition. © 1998 Society of Chemical Industry.     

Tree network 1-median location with interval data: a parameter space-based approach

We consider a family of 1-median location problems on a tree network where the vertex weights are ranges rather than point values. We define a new framework for making sound decisions under uncertainty which is primarily based on the interplay between the points in the tree and the data that induce the family of problems. An important feature of this framework is that it provides a novel understanding of the problem under uncertainty by collectively handling all possible realizations of the weights. The key element is the notion of a region of a optimality. Based on the regions of optimality, we define three optimality criteria and give low-order polynomial methods to compute the associated solution sets.     

A THz-range planar NDR device utilizing ballistic electron acceleration in GaN

A planar and ultra-short gallium nitride (GaN) diode structure is investigated as a potential Terahertz (THz) range negative differential resistance (NDR) diode. An empirical velocity-field relation, exhibiting a peak electron velocity as high as 7 × 10⁷ cm/s, is employed to characterize the high-field transport in the simulations, accounting for ballistic electron acceleration and velocity reduction due to phonon build up. The resulting device operation is in accumulation-layer transit-time mode and large-signal circuit simulation results are reported along with discussions. Conversion efficiencies up to ∼3.4% at ∼1.5 THz are shown to be possible.     

Double bound method for solving the p-center location problem

We give a review of existing methods for solving the absolute and vertex restricted p-center problems on networks and propose a new integer programming formulation, a tightened version of this formulation and a new method based on successive restrictions of the new formulation. A specialization of the new method with two-element restrictions obtains the optimal p-center solution by solving a series of simple structured integer programs in recognition form. This specialization is called the double bound method. A relaxation of the proposed formulation gives the tightest known lower bound in the literature (obtained earlier by Elloumi et al., [1]). A polynomial time algorithm is presented to compute this bound. New lower and upper bounds are proposed. Problems from the OR-Library [2] and TSPLIB [3] are solved by the proposed algorithms with up to 3038 nodes. Previous computational results were restricted to networks with at most 1817 nodes.     

Improving the viability of Bifidobacterium bifidum BB-12 and Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-5 in white-brined cheese by microencapsulation

The viability of Bifidobacterium bifidum BB-12 and Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-5 microencapsulated by either an extrusion or an emulsion technique and used in white-brined cheese was monitored. Both microencapsulation techniques were effective in keeping the numbers of probiotic bacteria higher than the level of the therapeutic minimum (>10⁷ cfu g^?1). While the counts of probiotic bacteria decreased approximately 3 log in the control cheese in which probiotics were used as free cells, the decrease was more limited in the cheeses containing microencapsulated cells (approximately 1 log). Medium- and long-chain free fatty acid contents of the cheeses with immobilized probiotics were much higher than in the control cheese. Similarly, cheeses made with immobilized probiotics contained higher acetaldehyde and diacetyl levels than the control. Experimental cheeses containing microencapsulated probiotics were not different from the control cheese in terms of sensory properties.     

Toward wafer scale fabrication of graphene based spin valve devices

We demonstrate injection, transport, and detection of spins in spin valve arrays patterned in both copper based chemical vapor deposition (Cu-CVD) synthesized wafer scale single layer and bilayer graphene. We observe spin relaxation times comparable to those reported for exfoliated graphene samples demonstrating that chemical vapor deposition specific structural differences such as nanoripples do not limit spin transport in the present samples. Our observations make Cu-CVD graphene a promising material of choice for large scale spintronic applications.