Characteristics of heart rate variability entropy and blood pressure during hemodialysis in patients with end-stage renal disease

Entropy (ENT) is a newly developed measure of the complexity of heart rate variability (HRV). The aim of this study was to characterize the complexity of HRV in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and to find a possible clinical utility. Healthy subjects and patients with ESRD undergoing hemodialysis (HD) were recruited. The HD population consisted of patients with and without diabetes mellitus (DM). An electrocardiogram was recorded before HD, and blood pressure was measured during HD. The coefficients of variation of R-R intervals, high- and low-frequency components, and ratio of the low- to high-frequency components were measured as variables of HRV. The ENT was used to describe the complexity of HRV. Forty-six healthy subjects and 27 HD patients participated in this study. The ENT negatively correlated with the duration of DM (p = 0.001), systolic blood pressure (p = 0.003), and mean blood pressure (p = 0.004) before a HD session. ENT in HD patients was lower than that in healthy subjects (p < 0.01). ENT in HD patients with DM was lower than that in HD patients without DM (p < 0.01). The change in systolic blood pressure (DeltaSBP) during a HD session showed high correlations to ENT and ultrafiltration rate (UFR) of the dialyzer. The following equation was obtained: DeltaSBP = 2.25 x ENT - 2.28 x UFR - 21.27 (R2 = 0.805; p < 0.0001). ENT decreased with uremic and diabetic status. ENT also represents a possible prediction of hypotension during a HD session.     

Analysis of Transglucosylation Products of Aspergillus niger α-Glucosidase that Catalyzes the Formation of α-1,2- and α-1,3-Linked Oligosaccharides

According to whole-genome sequencing, Aspergillus niger produces multiple enzymes of glycoside hydrolases (GH) 31. Here we focus on a GH31 α-glucosidase, AgdB, from A. niger . AgdB has also previously been reported as being expressed in the yeast species, Pichia pastoris ; while the recombinant enzyme (rAgdB) has been shown to catalyze tranglycosylation via a complex mechanism. We constructed an expression system for A. niger AgdB using Aspergillus nidulans . To better elucidate the complicated mechanism employed by AgdB for transglucosylation, we also established a method to quantify glucosidic linkages in the transglucosylation products using 2D NMR spectroscopy. Results from the enzyme activity analysis indicated that the optimum temperature was 65 °C and optimum pH range was 6.0–7.0. Further, the NMR results showed that when maltose or maltopentaose served as the substrate, α-1,2-, α-1,3-, and small amount of α-1,1-β-linked oligosaccharides are present throughout the transglucosylation products of AgdB. These results suggest that AgdB is an α-glucosidase that serves as a transglucosylase capable of effectively producing oligosaccharides with α-1,2-, α-1,3-glucosidic linkages.     

Conservative reliability index for epistemic uncertainty in reliability-based design optimization

In this paper, a simple but efficient concept of epistemic reliability index (ERI) is introduced for sampling uncertainty in input random variables under conditions where the input variables are independent Gaussian, and samples are unbiased. The increased uncertainty due to the added epistemic uncertainty requires a higher level of target reliability, which is called the conservative reliability index (CRI). In this paper, it is assumed that CRI can additively be decomposed into the aleatory part (the target reliability index) and the epistemic part (the ERI). It is shown theoretically and numerically that ERI remains same for different designs, which is critically important for computational efficiency in reliability-based design optimization. Novel features of the proposed ERI include: (a) it is unnecessary to have a double-loop uncertainty quantification for handling both aleatory and epistemic uncertainty; (b) the effect of two different sources of uncertainty can be separated so that designers can better understand the optimization outcome; and (c) the ERI needs to be calculated once and remains the same throughout the design process. The proposed method is demonstrated with two analytical and one numerical examples.     

Effect of Poly(vinyl alcohol) Adsorption on Binder Segregation during Drying

The effect of poly(vinyl alcohol) adsorption on segregation was quantitatively studied by a model experiment of one–dimension drying and simulated by a mathematical model. It was clear that the adsorption of PVA on alumina particle was a slow process, and the adsorbed binder was not desorbed at higher temperature. PVA segregation can significantly be limited by fully adsorbing the binder before drying. The simulation and experiments agreed very well. The effects of drying temperature, initial concentration of the binder, and thickness of specimen on the surface segregation are discussed quantitatively. Mathematical simulation has a great potential for predicting the segregation of soluble components during drying, especially for such cases as thin films and small granules where it is difficult to determine the distribution of the component directly.     

Effects of triton WR 1339 and orotic acid on lipid metabolism in rats

In order to investigate the effect of hepatic cholesterol flux on biliary bile acids, Triton WR 1339 and orotic acid were administered to rats, and the biliary cholesterol, phospholipids and bile acids were analyzed together with serum lipoproteins and hepatic lipids. Triton, which raised serum very low density lipoprotein and lipid levels and decreased serum high density lipoprotein liver lipid levels, increase the biliary cholic acid group/chenodeoxycholic acid group ratio (CA/CDCA) in the bile without affecting the total amount of bile acids and the other biliary lipids. Orotic acid, which decreased serum lipid and lipoprotein concentrations and increased liver lipid levels, increased the biliary excretion of cholesterol and phospholipids, but produced no significant change in the total amount of bile acids and in the CA/CDCA ratio in bile.     

Eletrical Conductivity of Antimony-Doped Tin Dioxide Prepared by Hot Isostatic Pressing

High-purity and high-density tin dioxide doped with 1 × 10²⁰/cm³ antimony was prepared by hot isostatic pressing, and its electrical conductivity was measured over the temperature range 20° to 1200°C in various atmospheres. The conductivity decreased with increasing temperature and reached the value found in specimens normally sintered under the same conditions at normal pressure. The effect of microstructure on the carrier transport is discussed. Grain boundaries only slightly affect carrier transport at high temperatures.     

Enhanced centralized management of gateways using redirection-based rules sharing for mobile network virtualization

One of the current issues in the peer-to-peer streaming systems is to supply sufficient upload bandwidth for continuous streaming of high-quality video channels. The helpers as upload bandwidth boosters can improve the streaming capacity of system, so that the imbalance of upload bandwidth between different video channel overlays is compensated. With the deployment of helpers as an intermediate level between server and peers, building and maintaining the optimal peer-helper topology becomes a challenging task since the one-directional nature of video streaming from the helpers to users makes the well-known reciprocity-based algorithms useless. Because of selfish behavior of peers and lack of a central authority among them, selection of helpers requires implicit coordination. In this paper, we design a decentralized, stochastic approximation helper selection mechanism which is adaptable to supply and demand pattern of various video channels. Our regret-tracking-based solution for allowing peers to strategically exploit their shared resources is guaranteed to converge to the correlated equilibria (CE) among the helper selection strategies. Online convergence to the set of CE is achieved through the regret-tracking algorithm which tracks the equilibrium in the presence of stochastic dynamics of helpers’ bandwidth. The resulting CE can help to select proper cooperation policies. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm achieves good convergence, load distribution on helpers and sustainable streaming rates for peers.     

Experiment study on fracture fixation with low rigidity titanium alloy

In order to investigate bone tissue reaction to the low rigidity titanium alloy of TNTZ in bone plate fixation, animal experiment with rabbit was performed with X-ray follow-up and histological observation. Experimental fractures were made in rabbit tibiae, and fixed by different bone plates of SUS316L, Ti–6Al–4V and TNTZ. Although there was no significant difference in fracture healing, bone atrophy was observed in cortical bone especially under the bone plate, which was different in time course among three materials. The bone atrophy under the bone plate was confirmed as porous or poor bone tissue in histological observation. In addition, the diameter of the tibia bone was increased in TNTZ as the result of bone remodeling with a new cortical bone. It is confirmed that the elastic modulus of the bone plate will naturally influence bone tissue reaction to the bone plate fixation according to the Wolff’s law of functional restoration.     

Thermal mixing characteristics of helium gas in high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, (I) thermal mixing behavior of helium gas in HTTR

The future high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is now designed in Japan Atomic Energy Agency. The reactor has many merging points of helium gas with different temperatures. It is needed to clear the thermal mixing characteristics of helium gas at the pipe in the HTGR from the viewpoint of structure integrity and temperature control. Previously, the reactor inlet coolant temperature was controlled lower than specific one in the high-temperature engineering test reactor (HTTR) due to lack of mixing of helium gas in the primary cooling system. Now, the control system is improved to use the calculated bulk temperature of reactor inlet helium gas. In this paper, thermal–hydraulic analysis on the primary cooling system of the HTTR was conducted to clarify the thermal mixing behavior of helium gas. As a result, it was confirmed that the thermal mixing behavior is mainly affected by the aspect ratio of annular flow path, and it is needed to consider the mixing characteristics of helium gas at the piping design of the HTGR.