Induction of neutralizing antibody in mice by immunization with recombinant 56 kDa protein of Orientia tsutsugamushi

Anti-oriential antibody inhibits Orientia tsutsugamushi attachment to, and penetration of, host cells. However, O. tsutsugamushi antigens that induce the production of a neutralizing antibody have not been identified. The authors immunized mice and rabbits with the recombinant 56 kDa protein of O. tsutsugamushi fused to the maltose binding protein of Escherichia coli (MBP-Bor56) and analysed their effect on O. tsutsugamushi attachment to or penetration of L929 cells. O. tsutsugamushi attachment and penetration were measured by using an indirect immunofluorescent antibody assay (IFA). O. tsutsugamushi growth in L929 cells was determined by [3H]thymidine uptake assay. By IFA, we observed a 96% reduction of attachment or penetration of O. tsutsugamushi treated with rabbit anti-MBP-Bor56 sera. [3H]thymidine uptake showed that mouse anti-MBP-Bor56 sera caused a 91% reduction in O. tsutsugamushi growth, when compared to mouse anti-MBP sera. These results suggest that the 56 kDa protein of O. tsutsugamushi plays an important role in O. tsutsugamushi attachment to or penetration of cells.     

SQUIDs on the Base of Strained YBCO Films

Strained films of YBCO in which stresses caused by mismatching of film and substrate lattices and thermal expansion coefficients are frozen by quenching are grown on substrates LAO (1 0 0) by laser ablation method. Critical current in these films is suppressed about 2–3 orders of magnitude. The strained films have unusual temperature dependences with the minimum at the temperature range of 55–57~K. In spite of granular films with the same critical current the strained films are stable to thermocycles. DC-SQUIDs are manufactured on the base of the strained films with the sensitivity by flux up to 4.5 mk ₀/ Hz.     

MobileNurse: hand-held information system for point of nursing care

Healthcare information travels with patients and clinicians and therefore the need for information to be ubiquitously available is key to reliable patient care and reliable medical systems. We have implemented MobileNurse, a prototype point-of-care system using PDA. MobileNurse has four modules each of which performs: (1) patient information management; (2) medical order check; (3) nursing recording; and (4) nursing care plan. MobileNurse provides easy input interface and various outputs for nursing records. The system consists of PDAs and a mobile support system (MSS) which supports clinical data exchange between PDAs and hospital information system. Two synchronization modules have been developed to keep the patient data consistent between PDAs and MSS. Clinical trials were performed with six volunteered nurses. They tried MobileNurse for 1-day caring-simulated patients. According to the survey after the trials, most of volunteers agreed that MobileNurse is more helpful and convenient than other non-mobile care systems to check medical orders and retrieve the results of recent clinical tests at the bedside. Through the involvement, we found out that ease-to-use interface is the most critical successful factor for mobile patient care systems.     

An optimized hybrid remote display protocol using GPU-assisted M-JPEG encoding and novel high-motion detection algorithm

In this paper, we design a novel hybrid remote display for mobile thin-client system. The remote frame buffer (RFB) protocol and motion JPEG (M-JPEG) protocol are assigned to handle remote display tasks in the slow-motion region and high-motion region, respectively. Graphic processing units (GPU) are utilized to do a part of a real-time JPEG compression task. A novel quality of experience (QoE)-based high-motion detection algorithm is also proposed to reduce the network bandwidth consumption and the server-side computing resource consumption. The continuity of screen delivery remains whenever the JPEG compression is applied to different screen regions. The proposed hybrid remote display approach has many good features which have been justified by comprehensive simulation studies.     

M:N object matching between image and map object data sets by means of latent semantic analysis

In this article, we propose a method to find corresponding object-set pairs between image and map polygon object data sets by means of latent semantic analysis. Latent semantic analysis assigns each polygon object of both data sets to feature vectors in a continuous geometric space in which the similarities between the vectors are proportional to the priorities to constitute a corresponding object-set pair. Thus, object clusters can be obtained by applying an agglomerative hierarchical clustering to the feature vectors. These object clusters are separated into object-set pairs according to the data sets to which the objects belong and are evaluated with a geometric matching criterion to find corresponding object-set pairs. We applied the proposed method to the segmentation result of a composite image with six normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images and a forest inventory map. The proposed method was compared to a graph-embedding-based method. The results showed that the proposed method found more corresponding object-set pairs with a similar accuracy in terms of shape similarities and shared information of found pairs.     

Effect of hydrostatic pressure on the decomposition behavior of Cu54Zr22Ti18Ni6 bulk metallic glass alloy in supercooled liquid region

The effect that hydrostatic pressure has on the decomposition behavior in Cu₅₄Ni₆Zr₂₂Ti₁₈ bulk metallic glass (BMG) alloy was assessed using samples, which were isothermally annealed in the supercooled liquid region (SLR) with and without application of hydrostatic pressure. During subsequent annealing for the thermal analysis, the samples annealed under hydrostatic pressure displayed a slower crystallization process in the SLR, which is attributed to a retarded compositional decomposition of the BMG alloy under pressure.     

Benign and malignant esophageal strictures: treatment with a polyurethane-covered retrievable expandable metallic stent

PURPOSE: To evaluate the clinical effectiveness of a polyurethane-covered, retrievable, self-expandable metallic stent and hook catheter in the treatment of esophageal strictures. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Stents were constructed of 0.4-mm stainless steel wire in a cylindric zig-zag configuration of six to nine bends. Four to eight stents were connected in tandem by dipping in a polyurethane solution. A nylon loop was hooked inside to each bend of the proximal portion of the stent and strung with a thread. Under fluoroscopic guidance, 22 stents were placed in 16 patients with a malignant stricture and five patients with a benign stricture. The stent was removed with a hook catheter 2 months after placement in patients with a benign stricture and when complications occurred in patients with a malignant stricture. All patients had dysphagia with ingestion of soft foods or liquids. RESULTS: Stent placement was technically successful and well tolerated in 20 patients. In one patient, the stent was misplaced but relocated successfully. After stent placement, all patients were able to ingest solid and/or soft foods without dysphagia. After stent removal, strictures showed improvement but recurred in two patients. CONCLUSION: Use of polyurethane-covered, retrievable expandable stents seems to be a feasible and effective method of treatment of benign and malignant esophageal strictures.     

Damage detection method for large structures using static and dynamic strain data from distributed fiber optic sensor

A method for damage detection applicable to large slender steel structures such as towers of large-scale wind turbines, long-span bridges, and high-rise buildings is presented. This method is based on continuous strain data obtained by distributed fiber optic sensor (FOS) and neural network (NN) analysis. An analytical model for cracked beam based on an energy balance approach was used to train a NN. The continuous static strains and the natural frequencies obtained from the distributed FOSs were used as the input to the trained NN to estimate the crack depths and locations. An experimental study was carried out on a cracked cantilever beam to verify the present method for damage identification. The cracks were inflicted on the beam, and static and free vibration tests were performed for the intact case and the damage cases. The distributed FOSs were used to measure the continuous strains. The damage estimation was carried out for the 5 damage cases using the NN technique. It has been found that the identified crack depths and locations agree reasonably well with the inflicted cracks on the structure.     

Electrical properties of colloidal polyaniline‐2‐naphthalene sulfonic acid/graphene nanoparticle composite films

Polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposites containing different weight percentages of graphene (GR) are chemically prepared in the presence of β‐naphthalene sulfonic acid (NSA) and characterized using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and X‐ray diffraction. The characterization results suggest that the composites are formed via the interconnected fibrillar structure forming the semi‐crystalline/amorphous configuration by the β‐napthalene sulfonic acid (β‐NSA). The conductivities of the composites suggest that the composites undergo by two different regions of I and II before and after 378 K. The electrical conductivity of the composites is increased by increasing temperature. The dependence of conductivity on temperature implies that the PANI‐NSA/GR composites are organic semiconductors. POLYM. COMPOS., 35:60–67, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers