A linear air bearing stage with active magnetic preloads for ultraprecise straight motion

In this paper, we propose a linear motion stage designed with magnetically preloaded air bearings. The magnetic actuators for preloading air bearings were combined with permanent magnets and coils to adjust the air bearing clearance by actively controlling the magnetic force. The system was designed to achieve a simplified configuration of air bearing stage while providing ultraprecise straight motion by actively compensating for the motion errors. The porous aerostatic bearings and magnetic preload actuators were designed and analyzed numerically for a single-axis prototype linear stage driven by a coreless linear motor. A magnetic circuit model was derived for the magnetic actuators. The static stiffness and load capacity of the air bearing stage in the vertical (magnetically preloaded) direction were experimentally measured and compared with the results from the numerical analysis. Motion control laws for three degrees of freedom (i.e., vertical, pitch, and roll motions) were obtained with a high linearity and independence for each axis. The active compensation of three motion errors, the vertical, pitch and roll motion errors were performed through curve-fitting the three errors measured with combination of capacitive gap sensors and a laser interferometer. The errors were reduced from 1.09 to 0.11 μm for the vertical straightness error, from 9.42 to 0.18 arcsec for the pitch motion, and from 2.42 to 0.18 arcsec for the roll motion as level of measured repeatability.     

The implantable cardioverter/defibrillator

Despite all advances in the diagnosis and therapy of cardiovascular diseases, the mortality from malignant ventricular tachyarrhythmias is still a major health problem. In addition to established therapeutic strategies in the prevention of sudden cardiac death such as antiarrhythmic drug treatment, catheter ablation or antiarrhythmic drug treatment, cardioverter/defibrillator was introduced to clinical practice in 1980. The number of 50,000 overall implants reflects the current clinical status of the therapy with implantable cardioverter/defibrillators. Significant technical improvements in the defibrillator therapy may contribute to an increase in therapy acceptance. These advances include the introduction of nonthoracotomy lead systems, enhanced defibrillation efficacy, full programmable devices providing tiered electrical therapy, improved diagnostic Holter functions and enhanced arrhythmia detection algorithms. The major present goals of defibrillator therapy are detection and termination of malignant ventricular tachyarrhythmias, prevention of sudden cardiac death, reduction in patient's mortality and improvement in quality of life. The efficacy and safety of defibrillator therapy to prevent sudden arrhythmic death has been proven in several large clinical investigations In patients with this device the annual sudden cardiac death mortality is < 2% even in high-risk patient populations. Compared to sudden cardiac death rate there is a much higher rate of overall cardiac mortality because a defibrillator is not able to prevent nonarrhythmic cardiovascular deaths. There is a clinical impression that cardiovascular mortality is lower in patients treated with an implantable cardioverter/defibrillator compared to patients treated with other therapies. However, there are no results from controlled studies providing scientific evidence that defribillator therapy can decrease overall cardiovascular mortality.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

A Study on the mechanics of shear spinning of cones

The shear spinning process, where the plastic deformation zone is localized in a very small portion of the workpiece, shows a promise for increasingly broader application to the production of axially symmetric parts. In this paper, the three components of working force are calculated by the newly proposed deformation model in which the spinning process is understood as shearing deformation after uniaxial yielding by bending, and shear stress, τ _rz becomesk, yield limit in pure shear, in the deformation zone. The tangential forces are first calculated and the feed forces and the normal forces are obtained by the assumption of uniform distribution of roller pressure on the contact surface. The optimum contact area is obtained by minimizing the bending energy required to get the assumed deformation of the blank. The calculated forces are compared with experimental results. A comparison shows that theoretical prediction is reasonably in good agreement with experimental results.     

CDK4 down-regulation induced by paclitaxel is associated with G1 arrest in gastric cancer cells

Paclitaxel induces a cell cycle block at G2-M phase by preventing the depolymerization of microtubules and induces p53-independent apoptosis in many cancer cells. We observed that gastric cancer cells treated with paclitaxel have shown a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)4 down-regulation. This paclitaxel-induced CDK4 down-regulation resulted in a cell cycle arrest at G1-S phase. To confirm this observation, we prepared stable transfectants that overexpressed CDK4 and analyzed the cell cycle progression. Ectopic expression of CDK4 in SNU cells resulted in a release of paclitaxel-induced G1 arrest. The release of G1 arrest by enforced expression of CDK4 seems to make the cells more sensitive to paclitaxel-induced apoptosis. From this finding, we could then suggest that paclitaxel treatment induces both G1-S and G2-M blocks in the cell cycle progression of gastric cancer cells.     

Synthesis and antiplatelet, antiinflammatory, and antiallergic activities of substituted 3-chloro-5,8-dimethoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone and related compounds

2-Amino (6), 2-alkylamino (7-8), 2-methoxy (9), 2-acetamido (10), and 5,8-diacetoxy (11) derivatives of the lead compound 2,3-dichloro-5,8-dimethoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (4) were synthesized, together with 6,7-dichloro-5,8dimethoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (5), a positional isomer of 4. Antiplatelet, antiinflammatory, and antiallergic activities were evaluated, and most compounds were quite potent in all assays. Compounds 5 and 9-11 were especially active; however, 5 was ineffective against neutrophil superoxide formation, and 10 was ineffective against mast cell degranulation.     

Non-contact measurement methods for micro- and meso-scale tool positioning

The demand for manufacturing microscale components for applications in electronic, biological, and microtool industries has resulted in a reduction in the overall size of machine tools. This trend has motivated the development of new measurement techniques to accurately determine the position of the tool. In this study, two noncontact methods to control the initial position of micro- and meso-scale tools and trace the tool position are described: a laser-based measurement system and a halogen lamp-based measurement system. To evaluate the feasibility of these measurement systems, the prototype per each measurement has been constructed. The laser-based measurement system had a positioning error of ±4.5 μm and the halogen lamp-based measurement system had a positioning error of ±2 μm. Several experiments and simulations were performed to identify the effects of a range of factors likely to be encountered in real-world situations.     

Mode shape reconstruction of an impulse excited structure using continuous scanning laser Doppler vibrometer and empirical mode decomposition

For vibration testing, discrete types of scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) have been developed and have proven to be very useful. For complex structures, however, SLDV takes considerable time to scan the surface of structures and require large amounts of data storage. To overcome these problems, a continuous scan was introduced as an alternative. In this continuous method, the Chebyshev demodulation (or polynomial) technique and the Hilbert transform approach have been used for mode shape reconstruction with harmonic excitation. As an alternative, in this paper, the Hilbert-Huang transform approach is applied to impact excitation cases in terms of a numerical approach, where the vibration of the tested structure is modeled using impulse response functions. In order to verify this technique, a clamped-clamped beam was chosen as the test rig in the numerical simulation and real experiment. This paper shows that with additional innovative steps of using ideal bandpass filters and nodal point determination in the postprocessing, the Hilbert-Huang transformation can be used to create a better mode shape reconstruction even in the impact excitation case.