Tuberculosis of the tarsal conjunctiva

A woman sixty-five old presents one pronounced swelling of the eyelids at the both eyes with the appearance of the multiple chalasions. The patient at twenty-six years old presented pulmonary tuberculosis, in the present stabilized. The morphopathology exam by a fragment of tarsus and conjunctiva shows an lymphocyt inflammatory infiltration with the presence of the epithelial cells and caseation areas. At level of conjunctiva it constats the presence of tuberculum follicles that are present too at the level of Meibomius canals of excretions. The disease is considered like an allergical reaction at endotoxin of Koch bacillus, secondary by some old tubercular lesions.     

Some difficulties within the framework of relativistic electrodynamics

Contents In this paper four difficulties within the framework of relativistic electrodynamics are revealed. The first two refer to the incompatibility of addition law of noncollinear velocities with the equations of Einstein-Minkowski electrodynamics. The lack of covariance of equations describing the electromagnetic wave propagation in any direction different from that of the velocity is the object of the last difficulties.

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Schwierigkeiten in der relativistischen Elektrodynamik

Übersicht In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden vier Schwierigkeiten der relativistischen Elektrodynamik besprochen. Die ersten zwei beziehen sich auf die Unverträglichkeit des Additionsgesetzes verschieden gerichteter Geschwindigkeiten mit den elektrodynamischen Einstein-Minkowski-Gleichungen. Die letzten beiden Schwierigkeiten behandeln das Fehlen der Gleichungskovarianz in der Beschreibung von elektromagnetischen Wellen, die sich in beliebiger, von der Geschwindigkeitsrichtung verschiedener Richtung ausbreiten.

     

Fault-Tolerant Memory Architecture Against Radiation-Dependent Errors: A Mixed Error Control Approach

We present a high qualitative reconfigurability method for fault-tolerant memory systems against radiation influence on semiconductors. Its novelty lies in a joint failure repair mechanism. It uses a concurrent on-line technique based on asynchronous built-in current sensors (BICS), parity check and cold spare modules against electrical abnormal behaviour due to latch-up (LU), and the Hamming SEC code to counterattack single error upset (SEU), manifested in logical failures. Complete reliability computations, which underlie the proposed scheme, search for a 99.902% tolerance, thought to meet typical spatial irradiation conditions, to the cost of a small hardware overhead (2 spare (additional) 1K1 modules for each 1K16 of a memory system of 512K16, and Mean Time To Failure = 10–7 h–1). Finally, as we envisage a 2.4 m CMOS implementation, we performed complexity estimations, which show that the supplementary self-tolerance ensuring circuitry involves an overhead of 0.0094% for a 512K16 memory. The recovering latency is minimised. For SEU in DRAM it requires zero latency and no more than the duration of an equivalent refresh cycle in SRAM. LU reflects a locality property, as only the affected module is submitted to the recovering algorithm.     

Triaxial extension and tension tests on lime-cement-improved clay

This paper presents the results of a series of undrained and drained isotropic consolidated triaxial extension, tension and compression laboratory tests on lime-cement-improved very soft clay. The main objective of these tests was to investigate the material strength and stiffness properties for stress conditions similar to those expected on the passive side of excavations where a retaining structure is supported by Deep Mixing columns. The different stress paths to failure were obtained by varying the directions of the major and minor principal stresses in a conventional triaxial test cell. The undrained tests conducted at low consolidation stresses, corresponding to depths of approximately 0–10 m below the ground surface, revealed significant differences in undrained strength depending on the directions of the major and minor principal stresses, indicating anisotropic material behavior. Based on the undrained triaxial test results, the relationship among the undrained strength, the effective consolidation stress and the over-consolidation ratio (OCR) is presented for different stress paths to failure.The experimental data from the drained tests show that a failure surface comprised of a shear failure function based on the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion and a tensile failure function based on the tensile strength and the confining stress can be applied for lime-cement-stabilized clay.     

Injectable Thixotropic β–Cyclodextrin–Functionalized Hydrogels Based on Guanosine Quartet Assembly

Facile method for the preparation of β–cyclodextrin–functionalized hydrogels based on guanosine quartet assembly was described. A series of seven hydrogels were prepared by linking β–cyclodextrin molecules with guanosine moieties in different ratios through benzene–1,4–diboronic acid linker in the presence of potassium hydroxide. The potassium ions acted as a reticulation agent by forming guanosine quartets, leading to the formation of self–sustained transparent hydrogels. The ratios of the β–cyclodextrin and guanosine components have a significant effect on the internal structuration of the components and, correspondingly, on the mechanical properties of the final gels, offering a tunablity of the system by varying the components ratio. The insights into the hydrogels’ structuration were achieved by circular dichroism, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and X–ray diffraction. Rheological measurements revealed self–healing and thixotropic properties of all the investigated samples, which, in combination with available cyclodextrin cavities for active components loading, make them remarkable candidates for specific applications in biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. Moreover, all the prepared samples displayed selective antimicrobial properties against S. aureus in planktonic and biofilm phase, the activity also depending on the guanosine and cyclodextrin ratio within the hydrogel structure.     

Parathyroid Hormone Induces Human Valvular Endothelial Cells Dysfunction That Impacts the Osteogenic Phenotype of Valvular Interstitial Cells

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is a key regulator of calcium, phosphate and vitamin D metabolism. Although it has been reported that aortic valve calcification was positively associated with PTH, the pathophysiological mechanisms and the direct effects of PTH on human valvular cells remain unclear. Here we investigated if PTH induces human valvular endothelial cells (VEC) dysfunction that in turn could impact the switch of valvular interstitial cells (VIC) to an osteoblastic phenotype. Human VEC exposed to PTH were analyzed by qPCR, western blot, Seahorse, ELISA and immunofluorescence. Our results showed that exposure of VEC to PTH affects VEC metabolism and functions, modifications that were accompanied by the activation of p38MAPK and ERK1/2 signaling pathways and by an increased expression of osteogenic molecules (BMP-2, BSP, osteocalcin and Runx2). The impact of dysfunctional VEC on VIC was investigated by exposure of VIC to VEC secretome, and the results showed that VIC upregulate molecules associated with osteogenesis (BMP-2/4, osteocalcin and TGF-β1) and downregulate collagen I and III. In summary, our data show that PTH induces VEC dysfunction, which further stimulates VIC to differentiate into a pro-osteogenic pathological phenotype related to the calcification process. These findings shed light on the mechanisms by which PTH participates in valve calcification pathology and suggests that PTH and the treatment of hyperparathyroidism represent a therapeutic strategy to reduce valvular calcification.     

Efficient and effective training of sparse recurrent neural networks

Neural Computing and Applications - Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art performances on various applications. However, RNNs are prone to be memory-bandwidth limited in...     

High performance metal microstructure for carbon-based transparent conducting electrodes

In this work, a metal busbar microstructure is introduced to decrease the effective sheet resistance of both graphene and carbon nanotube films to a value suitable for use as transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs). The proposed busbar architecture, implemented with Cu, theoretically can reduce the sheet resistance by a factor of 1000, while yet limiting the optical absorption to 4%. Experimental sheet resistance and optical transparency data are presented for two metals with differing contact resistance (Pd and Cu) and for mono- and multi-layer graphene as well as nanotube films. It is found that the metal busbar microstructure decreases the sheet resistance by a factor of 8 and 70 on graphene and nanotube films respectively, a sufficient resistance reduction to enable utilization as a TCE. The contact resistance between the metal grid and carbon film is believed to limit the ultimate performance. The metal busbar microstructure provides a viable route to the use of carbon films in photovoltaic and display applications.     

Influence of different abstractions on the performance analysis of distributed hard real-time systems

System level performance analysis plays a fundamental role in the design process of hard real-time embedded systems. Several different approaches have been presented so far to address the problem of accurate performance analysis of distributed embedded systems in early design stages. The existing formal analysis methods are based on essentially different concepts of abstraction. However, the influence of these different models on the accuracy of the system analysis is widely unknown, as a direct comparison of performance analysis methods has not been considered so far. We define a set of benchmarks aimed at the evaluation of performance analysis techniques for distributed systems. We apply different analysis methods to the benchmarks and compare the results obtained in terms of accuracy and analysis times, highlighting the specific effects of the various abstractions. We also point out several pitfalls for the analysis accuracy of single approaches and investigate the reasons for pessimistic performance predictions.     

Unsupervised deep learning for real-time assessment of video streaming services

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Evaluating quality of experience in video streaming services requires a quality metric that works in real time and for a broad range of video types and network...