Patient's self-interpretation of tuberculin skin tests

BACKGROUND: In the outpatient use of tuberculin skin testing (purified protein derivative [PPD]), it is at times inconvenient to have a patient revisit for interpretation. Therefore, we assessed patients' ability to self-interpret these test results. METHODS: In keeping with prior custom, patients were seen by an experienced nurse, who performed skin testing with PPD intermediate strength as well as mumps and Candida anergy control tests in some cases, and explained the procedure. The patients were asked to return 48 to 72 h later, at which time one of the researchers recorded their test interpretations before they were again evaluated by the nurse. RESULTS: Sixty-eight patients were studied, of whom 59 returned at appropriate interval. Eighteen patients had a positive PPD test reaction of 10 to 20 mm induration, which only one patient correctly identified as a positive test result. However, positive anergy control tests were correctly interpreted in 10 of 27 cases. CONCLUSION: The small number of positive PPD test result recognition by these patients may be partially attributed to their lack of education, as well as foreign birth and denial of illness. PPD results should be checked by an experienced professional.     

A fully distributed power control algorithm for cellular mobilesystems

Several distributed power control algorithms that can achieve carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) balancing with probability one have been proposed previously for cellular mobile systems. In these algorithms, only local information is used to adjust transmitting power. However, a normalization procedure is required in each iteration to determine transmitting power and, thus, these algorithms are not fully distributed. In this paper, we present a distributed power control algorithm which does not need the normalization procedure. We show that the proposed algorithm can achieve CIR balancing with probability one. Moreover, numerical results reveal our proposed scheme performs better than the algorithm presented in Grandhi et al. [1994]. The excellent performance and the fully distributed property make our proposed algorithm a good choice for cellular mobile systems     

Substrate-connected high voltage pumping circuits for low supplyvoltages

Novel high voltage pumping circuits for low supply voltages are proposed. Utilising a small pumping circuit and the new substrate-connected techniques can enhance charge transfer efficiency and eliminate the body effect at low supply voltages. Furthermore, a diode-connected transistor technique can improve the reverse charge sharing phenomenon when the output has a load current. With this technique high boosted voltages can be obtained at low supply voltages     

特征X射线能谱法测定Fe^＋注入小麦种子的深度

用１１０ｋｅＶ Ｆｅ＾＋离子束垂直注入小麦种胚后，在扫描电子显微镜上沿种子纵沟剖面，在不同深度上测量Ｆｅ元素被激发出的特征Ｘ射线强度分布，结果表明分布呈指数衰减，与晶体中的热扩散分布相类似，并对此进行了讨论。     

The prospects of non-volatile phase-change RAM

Phase-change read-and-write memory (PRAM) is a promising memory that can solve the problems of conventional memory—scalability, read/write speed, and reliability. We will review the opportunities and technical challenges of PRAM. The most important challenge of PRAM is the reduction of the writing current. Various approaches to reduce the writing current will be reviewed and the prospects of PRAM are discussed.