Transcatheter arterial renal and adrenal embolization with iohexol-ethanol solutions. Animal experimental study and clinical application

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The authors compared the embolic effect of radiolucent absolute ethanol (AE) with that of a radiopaque iohexol-ethanol (IES) solution for renal ablation in dogs and for the destruction of human aldosteronomas by the technique of transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) to test whether IES can be an alternative to AE. METHODS: The embolic agents were infused through a balloon catheter into the renal arteries of 17 dogs (9 infused with 0.3 mL/kg AE; 8 infused with IES). The immediate and parenchyma were compared between the two groups. Transcatheter arterial embolization with IES also was performed in three humans with unilateral aldosteronoma. RESULTS: The IES was visualized faintly under fluoroscopy in all dogs. There were no significant differences in embolic effects between the AE and IES. Three patients with aldosteronoma were treated successfully by TAE with IES. CONCLUSIONS: The IES can be used as a "visible ethanol" to improve the safety and ease of ethanol embolization.     

High-wavelength-resolution extreme-ultraviolet multilayer mirror

Multilayer mirrors with a system wavelength resolution (lambda/Dlambda) as high as 30-50 are required for the diagnostics of cosmic plasmas with temperatures of 1-20 MK. Such a high wavelength resolution can be realized by increasing the number of layer pairs contributing to the reflectance, by selecting less-absorbing materials for both the reflector and the spacer, and by decreasing the thickness of the reflector. We have fabricated a multilayer mirror tuned to 284 A with a silicon carbide reflector (20% thickness of the layer period) and an aluminum spacer and achieved lambda/Dlambda ~26.8 with a peak reflectivity of ~13.0%. This wavelength resolution is close to the value obtained with a numerical simulation and is considerably higher than the value obtained with the conventional Mo/Si multilayer.     

Two-photon resonance-enhanced refractive-index change and self-focusing in a dye-solution-filled hollow fiber system

The general behavior of two-photon absorption-enhanced refractive-index change in a third-order nonlinear optical medium is briefly described. The nonlinear medium was the solution of a new dye, trans-4-[p-(N-hydroxyethyl-N-methylamino)styryl]-N-methyl pyridinium iodide (ASPI) in dimethyl sulfoxide as the solvent, that was poured into a 20-cm-long quartz hollow fiber of 100-mum internal diameter. This dye solution has a strong two-photon absorption and subsequent upconversion fluorescence emission when excited with 1064-nm laser radiation. When the input peak intensity reached 500-1500-MW/cm(2) levels, obvious changes in beam profiles of the output IR laser beam were observed due to a self-focusing or self-trapping process occurring inside the fiber system. As a result of this process, highly directional frequency-upconverted superradiant lasing output was obtained with a beam size ~5 times smaller than that of a linearly transmitted He-Ne probe laser beam. The demonstrated mechanism can be useful for fiber laser-amplifier and fiber-integrated optics devices.     

Evaluation of fluorescence emitting characteristics of a microparticle by illumination angle scanning utilizing a resin-based monolithic TAS chip

Microsystem Technologies - An optical sensor, such as a light waveguide implemented total analysis system (TAS), is one of the functional components that will be needed to realize a...     

What Matters the Most? The Key Factors That Lead to a New Service Adoption

On the basis of data collected from an online survey, we used regression analysis to empirically identify the key factors leading to consumers’ adoption intentions toward a new service, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the United States. This study makes the following contributions to the literature: 1) Our results suggest that the influence of strong ties (i.e., family and friends) has a more significant impact on consumers’ adoption intentions for a new service than that from weak ties. 2) We also find that, for a really new product/service category, such as VoIP service, consumers’ trust toward technology (or the product category itself) matters more than their trust toward the sponsoring company. 3) Consumers’ trust also has a moderating impact on perceived performance and perceived effort level.      

Realizing whole-body tactile interactions with a self-organizing,multi-modal artificial skin on a humanoid robot

In this paper, we present a new approach to realize whole-body tactile interactions with a self-organizing, multi-modal artificial skin on a humanoid robot. We, therefore, equipped the whole upper body of the humanoid HRP-2 with various patches of CellulARSkin – a modular artificial skin. In order to automatically handle a potentially high number of tactile sensor cells and motors units, the robot uses open-loop exploration motions, and distributed accelerometers in the artificial skin cells, to acquire its self-centered sensory-motor knowledge. This body self-knowledge is then utilized to transfer multi-modal tactile stimulations into reactive body motions. Tactile events provide feedback on changes of contact on the whole-body surface. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on a humanoid, here HRP-2, grasping large and unknown objects only via tactile feedback. Kinesthetically taught grasping trajectories, are reactively adapted to the size and stiffness of different test objects. Our paper contributes the first realization of a self-organizing tactile sensor-behavior mapping on a full-sized humanoid robot, enabling a position controlled robot to compliantly handle objects.     

Mechanism of bed-wall heat transfer in a fluidized bed at high temperatures

Radiant heat transfer in a fluidized bed was investigated experimentally by means of two kinds of heat exchange pipes. It was found that the contribution due to radiant heat transfer would be insignificant at temperature levels in fluidized beds up to 1000°C.The results are interpreted in terms of a model based on the behaviour of bubbles in the fluidized bed.     

Preparation of Void-Free Calcium Phosphate Glass-Ceramics

Voids frequently form on crystallization of calcium phosphate glasses because of the density difference between the original glass and the resulting glass-ceramic. However, the calcium phosphate glass-ceramic with a composition of 40CaO · 50P₂O₅· 10Al₂O₃ (mol%) has a density nearly equal to that of the original glass; this is caused by the formation of AlPO₄, which has a lower density than Ca(PO₃)₂. The glass-ceramic, being void-free, shows improved mechanical properties.     

Synthesis and gas transport properties of new copolymer membranes with trimethylsilyl groups

Copolymers of 3-methacryloxypropyl tris(trimethylsiloxy) silane (SiMA) with methacrylate (MMA) and copolymers trimethylsilyl methyl methacrylate (TMSMMA) with vinyl acetate (VAc) were synthesized by radical polymerization. Membranes were cast from their solutions. Gas permeability, 10-1000 Barrer, of SiMA-MMA membranes was higher than that of TMSMMA-Vac membranes because of higher concentration of trimethylsilyl groups. Both apparent activation energies for gas permeability were very small compared to those of ordinary polymeric membranes. Poly(SiMA) is rubbery and poly(TMSMMA) is glassy at an ambient temperature. Copoly(SiMA-MMA) and copoly(TMSMMA-VAc) were shown to be random copolymers by the relationship between gas permeability coefficients and the molar ratio of each monomer. A series of copolymers in this investigation was shown to be a rare case of the polymer of which gas permeability increased in spite of the larger side chain, trimethylsilyl group, being introduced in the polymer chains.