Effects of passive tilt and submaximal exercise on spectral heart rate variability in ventricular fibrillation patients without significant structural heart disease

It has been shown that tilt and exercise elicit significant changes in autonomic activity in normal subjects and that submaximal exercise causes a greater reduction in heart rate variability (HRV) in animals susceptible to ventricular fibrillation (VF). Whether there is an abnormal HRV response to tilt and exercise in patients at risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) remains unknown. Short-term HRV before and during passive tilt and exercise was studied in 12 survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with documented VF and compared with 12 age- and sex-matched normal controls. No patient had significant structural heart disease or left ventricular dysfunction. HRV was computed as total-frequency (TF, 0.01 to 1.00 Hz), low-frequency (LF, 0.04 to 0.15 Hz) and high-frequency (HF, 0.15 to 0.40 Hz) components. There was no significant difference between normal controls and SCD survivors in HRV before or during tilt or submaximal exercise testing. The HF component was significantly decreased during tilt compared with that in the supine position in both normal controls (5.85 +/- 0.61 vs 5.08 +/- 0.95 In(msec2), p = 0.005) and patients (5.58 +/- 1.49 versus 4.74 +/- 1.18 In(msec2), p = 0.003). There was again no significant change in the TF or LF components during tilt in either patients or controls. All frequency components were significantly decreased during submaximal exercise testing in both patients and controls. However, there was no significant difference in any of these tilt- and exercise-induced changes in HRV between normal controls and SCD survivors.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Implementation and experimental studies of an adaptive self-optimizing power system stabilizer

This paper describes the implementation and experimental studies of an adaptive self-optimizing pole shifting power system stabilizer. Using an Intel iSBC386/21 single-board computer, the adaptive power system stabilizer has been tested on a physical model of a single-machine infinite-bus power system. Under different operating conditions and disturbances, the behavior of the proposed adaptive stabilizer was investigated. Comparison has also been made to a digital-type conventional fixed-parameter power system stabilizer. Results of the experimental studies show that the proposed adaptive stabilizer outperforms the conventional stabilizer.     

Temperature and modulation characteristics of resonant-cavitylight-emitting diodes

Resonant-cavity light-emitting diodes (RCLED) are novel, high-efficiency light-emitting diodes which employ optical microcavities. These diodes have higher intensities and higher spectral purity as compared to conventional LEDs. Analytical formulas are derived for the enhancement of the spontaneous emission along the optical axis of the cavity. The design rules for high-efficiency operation of RCLEDs are established. The temperature dependence of the emission intensity is analyzed in the range 20-80° and it is described by an exponential dependence with a characteristic temperature of 112 K. The modulation characteristics of RCLEDs exhibit 3 dB frequencies of 580 MHz. Eye diagrams at transmission rates of 622 Mb/s are wide open indicating the suitability of RCLEDs for high-speed data transmission     

Modeling operation and microarchitecture concurrency for communication architectures with application to retargetable simulation

In multiprocessor-based system-on-chips (SOCs), optimizing the communication architecture is often as important as, if not more than, optimizing the computation architecture. While there are mature platforms and techniques for the modeling and evaluation of computation architectures, the same is not true for the communication architectures. A major challenge in modeling the communication architecture is managing the concurrency at multiple levels: at the operation level, multiple communication operations may be active at any time; at the microarchitecture level, several microarchitectural components may be operating in parallel. Further, it is important to be able to clearly specify how the operation-level concurrency maps to the microarchitectural-level concurrency. This paper presents a modeling methodology and a retargetable simulation framework which fill this gap. This framework seeks to facilitate the design space exploration of the communication subsystem through a rigorous modeling approach based on a formal concurrency model, the operation state machine (OSM). Our OSM-based modeling methodology enables the entire system including both the computation and communication architectures to be modeled in a single OSM framework. This allows us to develop a tool set that can synthesize cycle-accurate system simulators for multiprocessing-element SOC prototypes. We show that, by simulation, critical system information such as timing and communication patterns can be obtained and evaluated. Consequently, system-level design choices regarding the communication architecture can be made with high confidence in early stages of design.     

Effect of temperature on the optical and electro-optical properties of poly(methyl methacrylate)/E7 polymer-dispersed liquid crystal composites

Experiments on the effect of temperature on the optical and electro-optical behaviors of polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) are considered. Composite films composed of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and the nematic-type liquid crystal (LC) E7 were prepared by solvent casting in chloroform. The PDLC film contained droplets of E7 from 10 to 80 wt % in a PMMA matrix. Morphological studies illustrated the formation of isolated droplets of LC due to phase separation, and their homogeneous distribution increased with increasing E7 content. Thermo-optical studies showed an increase in the nematic–isotropic transition temperature of composites, which indicated preferential solvation during the phase-separation process. The electro-optical characteristics were studied under the conditions of an externally applied square wave electric field with a He–Ne laser (λ = 632.8 nm) as a light source. The responses improved as the E7 content in PMMA increased. Semipermanent memory effects were noticed in composites at higher temperatures. Changes in the transmittance due to thermal variations provided the possibility of using such a device as a temperature sensor. The results obtained indicate that under these experimental conditions, the output can be controlled to the desired level by the selection of a suitable loading of LC to prepare PDLC electro-optically active composite films with a response time on the order of only a few milliseconds. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

An analog of the hollow cathode effect in low-pressure high-frequency capacitive discharge

We have studied the process of ion flux formation in a low-pressure high-frequency capacitive discharge in the presence of a cavity on the electrode surface. If the cavity size is on the order of an electrode space charge sheath thickness, the spectrum of ions arriving at the cavity bottom surface contains a low-energy peak. The mechanism responsible for this peak is analogous to the hollow cathode effect in a dc discharge.     

The pacemaker inverse problem--computer diagnosis of paced electrocardiograms

Like the electrocardiographic inverse problem, the object of which is the algorithmical analysis and diagnosis of the electrocardiogram (ECG), the pacemaker inverse problem is the analysis of the ECG in order to establish details of heart-pacemaker interaction (HPI) with special reference to the diagnosis of pacemaker failure. The solution to this problem is of practical importance, since it is often difficult to evaluate such records clinically. The ECG patterns of natural cardiac depolarizations and paced events may not be distinguishable and many combinations of potential pacemaker response must be taken into account. A computer system providing automatic analysis of the HPI, based on ECG data, has been developed and implemented on an IBM PC AT computer. The system uses a complex algorithm which enables the evaluation of all possible combinations of HPI events, and establishes for each of these combinations its correspondence to the specified pacemaker algorithm. The system is written in Pascal and its source text has approximately 11,000 lines. The first version of the system has been tested with algorithms of the dual chamber cardiac pulse generator AUTIMA-II (Telectronics). The interactive input of the system allows the pacemaker algorithm and the ECG, in the form of timing of "definite" and "possible" sensing events and pacemaker pulses, to be specified. The analysis establishes whether the device operates correctly within permitted error. Should one or more correct explanations of the specified case be found, the system prints simplified patterns of the ECG accompanied by a simulated marker channel tracing the possible HPIs.     

An Insight View on Synthetic Protocol,Surface Activity,and Biological Aspects of Novel Biocompatible Quaternary Ammonium Cationic Gemini Surfactants

In this study, we prepared a novel series of diester-functionalized cationic gemini surfactants (C_m-E2O2-C_m) containing ethylene oxide as a spacer with varying alkyl chain lengths and characterized by ¹H NMR, FT-IR, elemental analysis, and ESI-MS. The physicochemical properties of the geminis were explored by tensiometry, fluorescence, dye solubilization, and Krafft point. These geminis acquire superior surface activity than the conventional surfactants. Fluorescence spectroscopy analysis affirmed that the micropolarity and aggregation number of micelles diminished with increase in the alkyl chain length. These geminis represent a new group of amphiphiles of considerably high biodegradability, better cleavability, and low toxicity as assessed by BOD test, FT-IR analysis, and HC₅₀ analysis, respectively. They also showed significant level of antimicrobial activity toward some specified bacterial strains of Gram-positive and Gram-negative by using agar well diffusion method. Furthermore, the thermogravimetric analysis provided information regarding thermal stabilities of the newly synthesized gemini surfactants.