Cyclosporine A in the treatment of early rheumatoid arthritis. A prospective, randomized 24-month study

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficacy, tolerability and safety of cyclosporine A (CSA) in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. METHODS: Patients with an early diagnosis of RA, a disease duration of less than 3 years, and without prior disease modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) treatment were studied. They randomly received oral CSA (3 mg/kg/day) or oral methotrexate (MTX) (0.15 mg/kg/week). In addition, all patients in both groups received oral prednisone (7.5 mg/day). RESULTS: Fifty-two patients were assigned to the CSA group and 51 to the MTX group. After 24 months of treatment, 48 patients from the CSA group and 48 from the MTX group showed significant clinical improvement. This was evaluated by the duration of morning stiffness, grip strength, the total joint count, joint swelling, and joint tenderness and pain, compared to pre-treatment values. The clinical improvement was also associated with a significant decrease in ESR and CRP values in both groups. No significant radiological deterioration was observed in the CSA patients compared to those treated with MTX after 24 months. Four patients from the CSA group dropped out of the study, two because of a synovitis flare, one because of severe hypertrichosis and one because of severe gingival hyperplasia. Three patients from the MTX group withdrew, one because of disease flare-up and two because of gastrointestinal disturbances. CONCLUSION: Early immunointervention in RA patients appears to be crucial to limit the development of joint damage. Cyclosporine A appears to be effective, well tolerated and safe in the long-term treatment of RA and can therefore be used as a first immunomodulatory drug in the armamentarium for the treatment of RA.     

Denoising of the fetal heart rate signal with non-linear filtering of the wavelet transform maxima

The fetal heart rate (FHR) signal provides valuable information for fetal development and well-being. However, the FHR traces derived from present-day ultrasound cardiotocographs are not of the desired quality. The paper applies the wavelet transform (WT) in order to denoise effectively the FHR signal. The denoising procedure analyses the evolution of the WT maxima across scales. The singularities of the signal create wavelet maxima with different properties from those of the induced noise. Since it is difficult to formulate precise rules that distinguish between the wavelet maxima of the FHR signal from those of the noise we have trained a neural network for this classification task. The neural network draws out successfully the noise induced wavelet maxima. An improved FHR signal can be obtained from the coarser wavelet approximation signal component and the filtered wavelet maxima by means of the inverse dyadic wavelet transform. Also, feature extraction and processing algorithms can be defined on the denoised wavelet coefficients (instead of on the original signal).     

Determination of sulphur and copper depth distribution in patina layers using nuclear reaction techniques

A method for Cu and S profiling in patina layers was developed by applying a combination of nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS). The copper profiling was performed by using the 1327 keV γ-ray deexciting the third excited state to the ground state of ⁶³Cu produced by the reaction ⁶³Cu(p,p^′γ)⁶³Cu. For the determination of sulphur the 2230 keV γ-ray was used deexciting the first excited state to the ground state of ³²S formed through the reaction ³²S(p,p^′γ)³²S, which exhibits three sharp resonances at projectile energies 3.094, 3.195 and 3.379 MeV. The relevant cross-sections were measured in the energy range between 3.0 and 3.7 MeV in steps of 20 keV at 125° to the incident proton beam direction. The technique was tested using artificially produced and natural copper patina layers. Supporting information on the depth distribution of the constituent elements of the patina samples was obtained by p-RBS (E_p: 1.5 MeV, θ: 160°).     

Special Issue on the Internet of Things (ISCC 2020)

Journal of Signal Processing Systems -     

CoopStor: a cooperative reliable and efficient data collection protocol in fault and delay tolerant wireless networks

Wireless Networks - Internet of things consist in the deployment of constrained and battery-powered devices with a radio interface. Most industrial applications require to respect strict...     

Bayesian Confidence Bounds for the Weibull Failure Model

The following bounds are derived for the Weibull failure model when the parameter is being characterized by the inverted gamma and uniform probability density functions (pdf); they are lower and upper Bayes-confidence bounds for the scale parameter and lower bounds for the reliability function. To illustrate the results a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to obtain 90% and 95% Bayes-confidence bounds for the scale parameter and lower limits for the corresponding reliability function of the Weibull failure distribution. The consequences that one encounters when the following ``wrong' priors have been chosen to characterize the random behavior of the scale parameter are investigated. The results are compared when the prior pdf of ? is uniform but inverted gamma was used, and vice versa.     

Photonic bandgap fibre oscillators and amplifiers

In the search for ever higher output power or energy from fibre oscillators or amplifiers a nowadays mature technology relies on enlarging the fibre mode area. Broadening of the core diameter, all other things being equal, inevitably yields a multimode fibre, thereby dramatically limiting the device usefulness. Various strategies have been deployed to design and manufacture single transverse mode fibre oscillators and amplifiers, among which making use of the so-called photonic bandgap effect to restrict the modal population seems promising. Helped by efficient and reliable numerical tools the design of large mode area singlemode photonic bandgap fibres is presented. Two fibres with 20-μm and 40-μm core diameter, both of them heavily doped with Yb³⁺ ions, have been fabricated by the widespread modified chemical vapour deposition process and are shown to behave properly when used as the core element of either continuous wave oscillators or femtosecond amplifiers. Good output beam quality (M² parameter spanning from 1.12 to 1.5 for the set of fibres studied) and high slope efficiency of 80% in cw oscillation regime are demonstrated. Furthermore the 40-μm core diameter fibre is shown to be resilient to tight bending down to 7.5-cm radius. The stack-and-draw process makes it easy to tailor the outer cladding so that a large numerical aperture can be reached. Subsequently, from this air-clad fibre, 500 fs 47 W pulses at 35 MHz are obtained from a two-stage chirped pulse amplification system.     

Distributed computation of averages over ad hoc networks

In this paper, we develop algorithms for distributed computation of averages of the node data over networks with arbitrary but fixed connectivity. The algorithms we develop are linear dynamical systems that generate sequences of improving approximations to the desired computation at each node, via iterative processing and broadcasting. The algorithms are locally constructed at each node by exploiting only locally available and macroscopic information about the network topology. We present methods for optimizing the convergence rates of these algorithms to the desired computation, and evaluate their performance characteristics in the context of a problem of signal estimation from multinode noisy observations. By conducting simulations based on simple power-loss propagation models, we perform a preliminary comparison of the algorithms we develop against other types of distributed algorithms for computing averages, and identify transmit-power optimized algorithmic implementations as a function of the size and density of the sensor network.     

Simultaneous broadcasting of analog FM and digital audio signals bymeans of adaptive precanceling techniques

A method for broadcasting digital audio simultaneously with existing analog frequency modulation (FM) radio is presented. The method is based on precomputing the response of the host analog FM signal at the digital receiver and precanceling it at the transmitter. As a result, the digital transmission is free from interference from analog FM. We select the rate and power level of the digital transmission in a manner that the interference the digital data incur on the analog FM signal remains at acceptably low levels. The digital transmission is based on adaptive orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) (adaptive multicarrier). The frequencies and number of carriers of the digital multicarrier modem are judiciously selected in a time-varying fashion so as to cause a negligible distortion in a standard receiver for analog FM. Simulations based on conservative nonoptimized signal design indicate that data rates up to about 130 kb/s inside the 200-kHz FM channel are achievable for acoustic test signals. We present a number of numerical examples where the average digital data use up to 50% of the 200-kHz power spectrum with digital signal power levels 25-35 dB below the analog signal. Due to the resulting variable-rate digital transmission, a control channel is required. A method of precanceling with multiple orthogonal direct-sequence spread-spectrum schemes is also presented