Aortic aneurysm complicated with coarctation of the aorta and Turner syndrome

A 23-year-old female with Turner syndrome and horse-shoe kidney underwent the operation of the coarctation of the aorta associated with the thoracic aortic aneurysm. The aortic aneurysm was located between the left carotid artery and the coarctation of the aorta, and the subclavian artery which was branched away from the aortic aneurysm was also aneurysmal. Aneurysmectomies and the reconstruction of the descending thoracic aorta and the left subclavian artery were performed with knitted Dacron grafts under assisting of the left atriodescending thoracic aortic bypass with Bio-pump. The disease was rare and such a case was not reported previously.     

Study of 90-nm MOSFET subthreshold hump characteristics using newly developed MOSFET array test structure

We report 90-nm MOSFET subthreshold hump characteristics obtained for the first time by using a newly developed MOSFET array test structure. The array contains small-scale device-under-test groups with a new poly-Si gate layout pattern, which eliminates the influence of gate leakage and off leakage currents observed on measured MOSFET parameter data such as Vth, Ion, and subthreshold slope. We confirmed that subthreshold humps occur at random in an array. The rate at which humps occur is expressed as a percentage with respect to the whole array (referred to as the hump occurrence rate); the rate depends on chips from a wafer. It is also confirmed that the influence of subthreshold humps on /spl sigma/(Vth) is not negligible, and we revealed that it is important to design RF/analog circuits with an appropriate current density to reduce their influence. By extracting hump variations using a MOSFET array, it is possible to accurately estimate and reduce the standby current in logic large-scale integration (LSI) chips.     

A simple scheme for the finite element solution of a pure advection equation

The present paper deals with the finite element solution of an advection equation. The method of characteristic lines is combined with the finite element method. Three interpolating functions are employed: a cubic, a quadratic and a linear polynomials. The proposed scheme has two key features. One is the simplicity of its algorithm. The other is the combination of the proposed algorithm with the limiting procedure for the purpose of the suppression of numerical oscillations. Three interpolating functions are tested through four numerical examples: the advection of a box-shaped profile, the advection of an elliptic profile, the rotation of a cosine-shaped hill, and the advection of a square-shaped hill. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is shown by comparing the present numerical results with other popular finite element schemes, i.e., SUPG, Taylor-Galerkin methods and so on. In the present test calculations, the scheme with a quadratic interpolating function has given the best results. The computing time of the proposed scheme is much faster than that of other well-known finite element schemes.     

The effect of dam strain on the craniofacial morphogenesis of CL/Fr mouse fetuses

The embryo transfer technique and cephalometry were used to investigate the effect of dam strain in intrauterine craniofacial growth and the severity of cleft lip and palate (CLP) in a CLP-susceptible CL/Fr strain of embryos. The CL/Fr strain of embryos at early blastocyst stage was transferred to the same dam strain and to the CLP-resistant C57BL dam strain. On the 18th gestational day, each dam was laparotomized to take out the fetuses. The spontaneous incidence of CLP in the fetuses was checked and a cephalometric observation of the craniofacial complex of each fetus was done just after laparotomy. The dorsoventral craniofacial size of the unaffected fetuses and the severity of CLP i the affected ones were compared between both dam strains. The following results were obtained: 1) The overall craniofacial sizes of the unaffected fetuses observed in the CL/Fr dam strain were significantly smaller than those seen in the C57/BL dam strain. Those of the affected fetuses observed in the CL/Fr dam strain were smaller than those seen in the C57BL dam strain although the interstrain difference was not significant. 20 The dam strain had a highly significant effect on the craniofacial size of the unaffected fetuses. 3) The CLP frequency in the CL/Fr dam strain was significantly higher than that in the C57BL dam strain. 4) The severity of CLP in the affected fetuses observed in the CL/Fr dam strain was significantly more serious than that seen in the C57BL dam strain. These results indicated that the CLP-susceptible CL/Fr dam strain retarded the intrauterine craniofacial growth of the fetuses and that the cleft condition in the affected fetuses observed in the CL/Fr dam strain was more seriously affected than that seen in the CLP-resistant C57BL dam strain. Thus, it can be concluded that the effect of the dam strain played an important role in the craniofacial morphogenesis of the CL/Fr strain of mouse fetuses that developed from the embryo transferred to the CL/Fr and C57BL dam strains along with the genotype of embryos.     

Importance analysis for the systems with common cause failures

This paper extends the importance analysis technique to the research field of common cause failures to evaluate the structure importance, probability importance, and β-importance for the systems with common cause failures. These importance measures would help reliability analysts to limit the common cause failure analysis framework and find efficient defence strategies against common cause failures.     

Investigation of equivalent circuit quantities and equations for calculation of characteristics of single-sided linear induction motors (LIM)

We wish to derive an improved analytic method and performance equations for estimation of the characteristics and the design of a reasonable LIM. An approximation that simplifies the estimation of the performance of the single-sided linear induction motor is presented. The original equations were derived from the two-dimensional electromagnetic analysis and the equivalent circuit quantities, such as the magnetizing reactance, the secondary resistance and reactance, and are given in combination with hyperbolic and trigonometric functions of complex number. In this paper, these functions are approximated by the MacLaurin's expansion, and the equivalent circuit quantities are expressed by polynomial approximations. The computed thrust, primary current, power factor and efficiency-slip curves for the test of urban-transit SLIM at Kyushu University, calculated from the original equation and the new approximation, show a close agreement. The magnetizing reactance plays an important role in the LIM performance and the larger it is, the better. The ratio of air gap length to pole pitch is the key to the performance of the LIM.     

The study of SPRM method for a short-length rod-shaped sample

The SRPM (simultaneous resistivity and permeability measurement) method, which simultaneously estimates the electrical and magnetic properties of a rod-shaped sample conductor, has been studied. In the SRPM method, the theoretical and measured values of the difference in the complex impedance of a solenoid coil with and without the sample are used. To estimate the resistivity of a short-length sample, the difference in the complex impedance was calculated by the method of weighted residual (MWR), as the difference calculated by the former SRPM method was valid only for a longer sample. The resistivity of copper samples of various lengths was estimated by the SRPM method, and their ratios to those measured by the DC four-probe method were obtained. The ratio was less than 1.3% when the ratio of the length of the sample conductor to the length of the solenoid coil was larger than 1 and less than 3.1% when the length ratio was less than 1