A Perinatal Monitoring Display Based on the Fetal Topogram

One of the fundamental snags often encountered in the development of expert systems is the difficulty of effective liaison between the knowledge engineer and the specialists for whom the system is designed, especially when the latter have no engineering background. In our case, this problem has arisen in the course of working towards a comprehensive system for the automatic diagnosis and prognosis of fetal condition during labor, an important task which has traditionally been carried out by visual inspection of fetal heart rate and uterine pressure traces. Although the use of syntactic pattern recognition methods has enabled the system as it stands to achieve success rates of around 95 percent, its further improvement hinges on case-by-case interaction with obstetricians untrained in the concepts of discriminant analysis or formal grammar.     

New aqueous two‐phase systems based on poly(ethylene oxide sulfide) (PEOS) and potassium phosphate for the potential recovery of proteins

A new aqueous two‐phase system (ATPS) based on a degradable polymer called poly(ethylene oxide sulfide) with a molecular weight of 33 000 g mol^?1 (identified as PEOS‐12) and potassium phosphate was exploited for the potential recovery of proteins. An initial characterisation of the ATPS was achieved by the construction of a phase diagram for the PEOS‐12/phosphate system. The protein partitioning behaviour of lysozyme and bovine serum albumin (BSA), selected as single model proteins, and B‐phycoerythrin (BPE) produced by Porphyridium cruentum in the new ATPS under increasing tie line length (TLL) conditions at constant phase volume ratio (V_r) and system pH was investigated. Both single proteins partitioned in the new ATPS, initially exhibiting bottom phase preference; however, lysozyme changed phase preference when TLL was increased. Fractionation of a complex model (production of BPE by P. cruentum) using PEOS‐12/phosphate ATPS was performed to evaluate the potential protein recovery from fermentation broth or cell homogenate. The proposed new ATPS proved to be suitable for the potential recovery of BPE from crude extract of P. cruentum. In general, a system comprising V_r = 1.0, 18% (w/w) PEOS‐12, 8% (w/w) phosphate and 30% (w/w) TLL at pH 7.0 provided conditions to concentrate BPE into the bottom phase (i.e. partitioning behaviour of BPE; lnK_BPE = ?1.8) with a protein recovery of 84%. The findings reported here demonstrate the potential application of the new ATPS for the recovery of proteins from complex biological suspensions. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry     

A practical procedure to analyze singular configurations in closed kinematic chains

The authors present a general method for the automated singularity analysis of any mechanism at a given configuration. The procedure uses a base of the motion space. This is obtained from a velocity equation characterized by a geometric matrix. This special form of Jacobian matrix has some advantages for automatic implementation. This approach provides the degree of freedom associated with the singularity, uncontrolled motion, and kinematic dependencies. It also facilitates the choice of actuators and redundant devices. The method has been implemented in a computer program for kinematic analysis.     

Effect of six organic acids on staphylococcal growth and enterotoxin production.

Four Staphylococcus aureus strains were incubated at 37 degrees C for 24 h in broth progressively acidified with lactic, citric, ascorbic, acetic, pyruvic and propionic acids, and their survival rate and enterotoxin producing ability was studied. Acids were chosen based on their frequent use by the food industry. Periodically, samples were withdrawn to determine counts, pH and the presence of enterotoxins A, B, C, and D. For a given acid, the effect on growth and enterotoxin synthesis was different. The most inhibitory acid for the growth of strains FRI-100 and FRI-472 was pyruvic acid, for strain FRI-137 was lactic acid, all six acids were equally effective on strain S6. Lactic acid was very inhibitory to enterotoxin synthesis, but the effect on this parameter of acetic and citric acids was almost nil. Enterotoxins were seen to be inactivated at acid pH values; enterotoxin B was the most resistant to inactivation.     

Usefulness of the codification of multiple causes of death in mortality statistics

BACKGROUND: The codification of multiple causes of death began in the US in 1917 and systematic publication of this data started in 1984. In Spain this began in 1988, and the data from this year have been taken as the basis for investigation. They have also been studied for regional differences. METHODS: A representative sample (595) of Spanish Standard Death Certificates (DC) was collected in Asturias for the year 1988. All were coded according to the International Classification of Diseases and a separate coding was made for each nosological entity included in the certificate (coding of multiple causes). The median, mode and the multiple cause/underlying cause ratio were also calculated. RESULTS: More than 80% of the certificates studied contained more than one cause of death. Chronic diseases are those which are accompanied by a greater number of causes and acute diseases those which appear alone. The highest ratios appear for diseases which are ill defined and also in those which are chronic. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that information is lost in the production of the statistics of mortality and there are repercussions for the usefulness of these statistics.     

Underwater repair of fatigue cracks by gas tungsten arc welding process

A fatigue crack repair method for offshore jacket tubular joints is presented. This method is applicable for fatigue cracks detected and sized by regular inspection techniques such as magnetic particle inspection up to a crack depth in the range of 5 mm. The main advantage of the method relies on its easy implementation allowing to be applied immediately after the crack is detected because equipment required is easy to transport and operate; so, it can be on board of a regular inspection campaign ship. A welding procedure specification has to be prepared and qualified prior to implementation of the repair method, considering particular parameters of the jacket fleet and selecting the welding equipment to be used. The proposed method could reinstall the original fatigue life in early stages of growth avoiding the need of more expensive procedures of repair such as joint clamping.     

Liquid Crystal Enabled Early Stage Detection of Beta Amyloid Formation on Lipid Monolayers

Liquid crystals (LCs) can serve as sensitive reporters of interfacial events, and this property has been used for sensing of synthetic or biological toxins. Here it is demonstrated that LCs can distinguish distinct molecular motifs and exhibit a specific response to beta‐sheet structures. That property is used to detect the formation of highly toxic protofibrils involved in neurodegenerative diseases, where it is crucial to develop methods that probe the early‐stage aggregation of amyloidogenic peptides in the vicinity of biological membranes. In the proposed method, the amyloid fibrils formed at the lipid–decorated LC interface can change the orientation of LCs and form elongated and branched structures that are amplified by the mesogenic medium; however, nonamyloidogenic peptides form ellipsoidal domains of tilted LCs. Moreover, a theoretical and computational analysis is used to reveal the underlying structure of the LC, thereby providing a detailed molecular‐level view of the interactions and mechanisms responsible for such motifs. The corresponding signatures can be detected at nanomolar concentrations of peptide by polarized light microscopy and much earlier than the ones that can be identified by fluorescence‐based techniques. As such, it offers the potential for early diagnoses of neurodegenerative diseases and for facile testing of inhibitors of amyloid formation.     

Gene expression during activation of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis conidia

This study focuses on gene expression during crucial biological phenomena of the dimorphic fungal human pathogen Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, the conidia‐to‐yeast (C‐Y) transition and the conidia‐to‐mycelia (C‐M) germination. We studied 10 genes involved in different cellular functions: oxidative stress response (alternative oxidase (AOX), superoxide dismutase (SOD), flavodoxin, conserved hypothetical protein (Y20)); cell metabolism (glyceraldehyde‐3‐phosphate dehydrogenase (GADPH), cholestenol Delta‐isomerase (ChDI), glycine dehydrogenase (GDh)) and heat shock response (Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90)), and cell synthesis and wall structure (glucan synthase‐1 (GS‐1), α‐1,3‐glucan synthase (αGS), and mannosyltransferase (MT)). Gene expression was measured during the first 72 h and 96 h of C‐Y and C‐M, respectively, previously shown to be a fundamental time frame for the consolidation of these cellular processes. The gene expression of AOX, GAPDH, HSP90, MT, αGS, and GDh was significantly increased during the C‐Y transition, while SOD, ChDI, GAPDH, MT, GDh, and GS‐1 were increased during C‐M germination. Additionally, some were highly expressed in each process: AOX, HSP90, and αGS during C‐Y; SOD, ChDI, and GS‐1 during C‐M. Altogether, these data add new information regarding gene expression during the C‐Y and C‐M processes. Future research will be targeted to further characterize the true relevance of the studied genes during the morphological transition, either during adaptation to the environment or to the infected host. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.