Misleading symptoms after a minor blunt chest trauma. Thoracoscopic treatment of diaphragmatic rupture

We present a case of missed diaphragmatic rupture which was treated thoracoscopically. Rupture of the diaphragm is a serious complication of blunt trauma. The diaphragmatic injury can easily be overlooked. This report illustrates the diagnostic dilemma in a patient where the injury was missed at the time of initial presentation. The role of thoracoscopy both for diagnosis and therapy is discussed.     

Synthesis and biological activities of phenyl piperazine-based peptidomimetic growth hormone secretagogues

A new class of potent, orally active phenyl piperazine-based GH secretagogues have been discovered from attempts to mimic the arrangement of the phenyl substituent in the spiroindanyl piperidine and spiroindoline sulfonamide privileged structures of 4 and 1, respectively. The best of these compounds, 18 (EC50 = 2.8 nM) is nearly as potent as MK-0677 for releasing GH from rat pituitary cells.     

Current options in prosthetic vascular graft infection

Debate continues over which procedure is the best treatment for prosthetic graft infections. We retrospectively reviewed the medical records at our institution for all vascular graft infections that occurred from 1985 to 1995 to evaluate their occurrence, treatment, and outcome. Twenty-four patients had prosthetic graft infections. The average patient age was 62 years, and 67 per cent of the patients studied were men. The initial operation was for treatment of occlusive disease in 92 per cent of the patients, and aortofemoral bypasses were the most common procedures performed (15 of 24 patients, 63%). The average interval from graft implantation to presentation of infection was 29 months. In lower-extremity bypasses, the site of infection was most commonly in the groin (87%). Gram-positive organisms, including coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (32%) and Staphylococcus aureus (28%), were the most frequently isolated bacteria. Thirty procedures were performed for management of the graft infections. Extra-anatomic bypass was associated with no recurrent graft infections. Graft preservation was successful in two cases of early S. aureus infection (less than 1 year after original procedure), and in situ graft replacement was successful in all four cases of late-appearing coagulase-negative Staphylococcus infection (more than 1 year after original procedure). Both treatments failed in all five cases of Gram-negative infection (P = 0.008 by Fisher's exact test). The overall mortality and amputation rates were 17 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, without significant differences between the treatment modalities. Extra-anatomic bypass remains the best treatment for prosthetic graft infection. In situ replacement and graft preservation treatments should be selective and based on presentation of the infection and the type of pathogenic organism.     

Ohmic contact and transport properties of II–VI Green/Blue laser diodes

The employment of the Zn(Se,Te) pseudo-graded contacting scheme to p-type ZnSe-based alloys contributes directly to the recent demonstration of room temperature continuous-wave operation of II– VI green-blue laser diodes. Contact ohmicity is maintained down to cryogenic temperatures which enabled the investigation of electrical transport properties associated with the p-type nitrogen-doped ZnSe, Zn(S,Se), and (Zn,Mg)(S,Se). The observation of both persistent photoconductivity and a metastable population of holes which are in thermodynamic equilibrium with hydrogenic acceptors having reduced activation energy suggests the presence of a DX-like behavior for holes in p-type (Zn,Mg)(S,Se).     

Delayed self-heterodyne linewidth measurement of VCSELs

We report on high-resolution linewidth measurements of proton-implanted InGaAs-GaAs VCSELs employing the delayed self-heterodyne method. Devices with 16-/spl mu/m active diameter exhibit record low linewidths of 20 MHz and 4-MHz residual linewidth. The linewidth enhancement factor is accurately determined from the ratio of induced phase to amplitude modulation indexes.     

Performance of TZCD-MBOK watermarking scheme in T-DMB systems

Recently, watermarking based data transmission techniques using terrestrial digital TV signal have been proposed since they are also cost-free and can overcome the limitations of GPS. However, in the previous watermarking based methods, the detection accuracy is low and additional data rate is too low. Thus, we propose the throughput enhancement method by employing the TZCD-MBOK watermarking technique in T-DMB system. By applying the proposed scheme to T-DMB, it allows additional data transmission for disaster broadcasting and improves efficiency of data transmission in shadow region and indoor to mobile environment through watermarking spread code. From the simulation results, we confirm the proposed watermarking scheme affected on the existing T-DMB signal. Moreover, it was also confirmed that the system capacity increases as the power of additional watermarking signal rose. The results of the paper can be applied to wireless multimedia digital broadcasting systems.     

Kinetic analysis of the activation of transducin by photoexcited rhodopsin. Influence of the lateral diffusion of transducin and competition of guanosine diphosphate and guanosine triphosphate for the nucleotide site

The activation of transducin (T) by photoexcited rhodopsin (R*) is kinetically dissected within the framework of Michaelis-Menten enzymology, taking transducin as substrate of the enzyme R*. The light scattering "release" signal (Vuong, T.M., M. Chabre, and L. Stryer, 1984, Nature (Lond.). 311:659-661) was used to monitor the kinetics of transducin activation at 20 degrees C. In addition, the influence of nonuniform distributions of R* on these activation kinetics is also explored. Sinusoidal patterns of R* were created with interference fringes from two crossed laser beams. Two characteristic times were extracted from the Michaelis-Menten analysis: t(form), the diffusion-related time needed to form the enzyme-substrate R*-transducin is 0.25 +/- 0.1 ms, and T(cat), the time taken by R* to perform the chemistry of catalysis on transducin is 1.2 +/- 0.2 ms, in the absence of added guanosine diphosphate (GDP) and at saturating levels of guanosine triphosphate (GTP). With t(form) being but 20% of the total activation time t(form) + t(cat), transducin activation by R* is not limited by lateral diffusion. This is further borne out by the observation that uniform and sinusoidal patterns of R* elicited release signals of indistinguishable kinetics. When (GDP) = (GTP) = 500 microM, t(cat) is lengthened twofold. As the in vivo GDP and GTP levels are comparable, the exchange of nucleotides may well be the rate-limiting process.     

CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Generation of Pathogen-Resistant Tomato against Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus and Powdery Mildew

Tomato is one of the major vegetable crops consumed worldwide. Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and fungal Oidium sp. are devastating pathogens causing yellow leaf curl disease and powdery mildew. Such viral and fungal pathogens reduce tomato crop yields and cause substantial economic losses every year. Several commercial tomato varieties include Ty-5 (SlPelo) and Mildew resistance locus o 1 (SlMlo1) locus that carries the susceptibility (S-gene) factors for TYLCV and powdery mildew, respectively. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein (Cas) is a valuable genome editing tool to develop disease-resistant crop varieties. In this regard, targeting susceptibility factors encoded by the host plant genome instead of the viral genome is a promising approach to achieve pathogen resistance without the need for stable inheritance of CRISPR components. In this study, the CRISPR/Cas9 system was employed to target the SlPelo and SlMlo1 for trait introgression in elite tomato cultivar BN-86 to confer host-mediated immunity against pathogens. SlPelo-knockout lines were successfully generated, carrying the biallelic indel mutations. The pathogen resistance assays in SlPelo mutant lines confirmed the suppressed accumulation of TYLCV and restricted the spread to non-inoculated plant parts. Generated knockout lines for the SlMlo1 showed complete resistance to powdery mildew fungus. Overall, our results demonstrate the efficiency of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to introduce targeted mutagenesis for the rapid development of pathogen-resistant varieties in tomato.