Capillarovenous angioma of the maxillary sinus. Apropos of a case with review of the literature

Metabolic side-effects of antihypertensive drugs may increase the risk of coronary heart disease despite an adequate blood pressure reduction. Since combinations of different antihypertensive drugs are often necessary and frequently used, we performed a randomized study comparing the effects of a fixed combination of hydrochlorothiazide and sotalol (group A), or hydrochlorothiazide and captopril (group B) on blood pressure and on lipid and glucose metabolism in 40 men with essential hypertension over 1 year. Significant blood pressure reductions (p < 0.001) were achieved in both treatment groups: from 160/105 to 128/88 mmHg in group A (mean doses: hydrochlorothiazide 33 and sotalol 197 mg) and from 162/106 to 135/89 mmHg in group B (hydrochlorothiazide 33 and captopril 64 mg) after 12 months, respectively. No significant changes in body weight were observed in either treatment group. Triglycerides increased (p < 0.05) in both treatment groups (from 183 to 262 mg/dl in A, and from 160 to 196 mg/dl in B) and HDL cholesterol decreased (p < 0.001 and < 0.05) in both groups (from 45.1 to 35.7 mg/dl in A, and from 49.3 to 46.3 mg/dl in B), whereas LDL cholesterol increased significantly (p < 0.05) only in group A from 153 to 164 mg/dl. No significant changes were observed in total cholesterol nor in lipoprotein(a) concentrations in either treatment group. Fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1 increased significantly (p < 0.05) only in group A after 1 year of treatment (from 91.6 to 98.0 mg/dl, and from 6.3 to 6.9%, respectively). Serum levels of creatinine and potassium decreased, and uric acid increased significantly under either combination. Our data show that the diuretic/beta-blocker combination has adverse effects on lipid and glucose metabolism after long-term therapy. The effects of the diuretic/ACE inhibitor combination on lipid metabolism are less pronounced and there are no adverse effects on glucose metabolism. However, the ACE inhibitor component could not completely counteract the metabolic effects of the diuretic. Both combinations have no effects on Lp(a). We conclude that the combination of hydrochlorothiazide with an ACE inhibitor has a better metabolic profile for the treatment of essential hypertension than the combination with a beta-blocker.     

An efficient algorithm for maxdominance, with applications

Given a planar setS ofn points,maxdominance problems consist of computing, for everyp S, some function of the maxima of the subset ofS that is dominated byp. A number of geometric and graph-theoretic problems can be formulated as maxdominance problems, including the problem of computing a minimum independent dominating set in a permutation graph, the related problem of finding the shortest maximal increasing subsequence, the problem of enumerating restricted empty rectangles, and the related problem of computing the largest empty rectangle. We give an algorithm for optimally solving a class of maxdominance problems. A straightforward application of our algorithm yields improved time bounds for the above-mentioned problems. The techniques used in the algorithm are of independent interest, and include a linear-time tree computation that is likely to arise in other contexts.The research of this author was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-84-K-0502 and N00014-86-K-0689, and the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8451393, with matching funds from AT&T.This author's research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8506361.     

Effect of SiO2 Addition on Chromium Transitions in Borate Glasses

Silicon - Melt-quenching technique was used to prepare borosilicate glasses of composition xSiO2- (75-x) B2O3–24.7Li2O-0.3Cr2O3 (x = 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50&nbsp;mol%). With...     

Performance evaluation of an efficient reduced-complexity time synchronization approach for OFDM systems

This paper presents a performance analysis of a recently proposed preamble-based reduced-complexity (RC) two-stage synchronization technique. The preamble, composed of two identical subsequences, is first used to determine an uncertainty interval based on Cox and Schmidl algorithm. Then, a differential correlation-based metric is carried using a new sequence obtained by element wise multiplication of the preamble subsequence and a shifted version of it. This second step is performed to fine tune the coarse time estimate, by carrying the differential correlation-based metric over the uncertainty interval of limited width around the coarse estimate, thus leading to low computational load. In this paper, we first discuss some complexity issues of the RC approach compared to previously proposed algorithms. Then, we study the effect of the training sequence class and length choices on the synchronization performance in the case of multipath channels. The impact of the uncertainty interval width on the trade-off between performance and complexity is also studied. The two-stage approach was found to provide almost equal performance to those obtained by the most efficient differential correlation-based benchmarks. However, it has a very reduced computational load, equivalent to that of sliding correlation-based approaches.     

Characteristics of the medical waste generated at the Jordanian hospitals

Recently, Jordan has witnessed increased amounts of medical waste generated at different healthcare facilities. This has resulted in issuance of Medical Waste Regulation that aimed at regulating the management processes of such hazardous waste. To provide information on medical waste generation rates, composition and statistical characteristics, a comprehensive sampling survey was initiated after a regulatory definition of the medical waste was established. Hospitals from Public, private and educational categories were covered by the survey. This paper presents the findings of the survey. The average generation rates ranged from 0.29 to 1.36 kg/bed/day, while in terms of patient numbers it is from 0.36 to 0.87 kg/patient/day. The total daily amount of medical waste generated at the Jordanian hospitals was estimated to be 6 tones/day. The daily amounts of medical waste generated at King Abdullah University Hospital were found to follow a log normal probability distribution. Physical composition analysis of the medical waste, which conducted based on the categories identified by the Jordanian Regulation, indicated that the infectious waste category is the highest, followed by sharps category and finally pathological, cytotoxic and pharmaceutical categories were the lowest. The study concluded that all hospitals covered by the survey are practicing segregation of hazardous medical waste from general medical waste. However, the segregation process in some hospitals is still inefficient and there is a potential for improvements toward minimizing the hazardous medical waste generation.     

Generation and Selection of Specific Aptamers Targeting Brucella Species through an Enhanced Cell-SELEX Methodology

Brucellae are Gram-negative, aerobic, non-motile coccobacilli causing brucellosis in man and animals. The disease is one of the most significant yet neglected global zoonoses. Especially in developing countries, brucellosis is causing public health problems and economic losses to private animal owners and national revenues. Composed of oligonucleotides, aptamers are chemical analogues of antibodies that are promising components for developing aptamer-based rapid, sensitive, and specific tests to identify the Brucella group of bacteria. For this purpose, aptamers were generated and selected by an enhanced protocol of cell systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (cell-SELEX). This enhanced cell-SELEX procedure involved the combination of both conventional and toggle cell-SELEX to boost the specificity and binding affinity to whole Brucella cells. This procedure, combined with high-throughput sequencing of the resulting aptamer pools, comprehensive bioinformatics analysis, and wet lab validation assays, led to the selection of a highly sensitive and specific aptamer for those Brucella species known to circulate in Egypt. The isolated candidate aptamer showed dissociation constant (K_D) values of 43.5 ± 11, 61.5 ± 8, and 56 ± 10.8 nM for B. melitensis, B. abortus, and B. suis, respectively. This is the first development of a Brucella-specific aptamer using an enhanced combination of conventional and toggle cell-SELEX to the authors’ best knowledge.     

Genuinity Signatures: Designing Signatures for Verifying 3D Object Genuinity

3D computer graphics models and digitally-controlled manufacturing have come together to enable the design, visualization, simulation, and automated creation of complex 3D objects. In our work, we propose and implement a framework for designing computer graphics objects and digitally manufacturing them such that no adversary can make imitations or counterfeit copies of the physical object, even if the adversary has a large number of original copies of the object, knowledge of the original object design, and has manufacturing precision that is comparable to or superior to that of the legitimate creator of the object. Our approach is to design and embed a signature on the surface of the object which acts as a certificate of genuinity of the object. The signature is detectable by a signature-reading device, based on methods in computer graphics and computer vision, which contains some of the secret information that was used when marking the physical object. Further, the compromise of a signature-reading device by an adversary who is able to extract all its secrets, does not enable the adversary to create counterfeit objects that fool other readers, thereby still enabling reliable copy detection. We implemented a prototype of our scheme end-to-end, including the production of the physical object and the genuinity-testing device.     

ARCHER: an automated RF-IC Rx front-end circuit design tool

This paper presents a tool capable of automatically compiling the circuit of a direct-conversion receiver at the schematics level based on system specifications that include the frequency of operation, gain, noise figure, IIP2 and IIP3 linearity. The front-end of a direct-conversion receiver is built using inductive source degeneration (LSD) LNA and double-balanced source-degenerated Gilbert Cell mixers with charge injection. The tool uses power constrained noise and linearity optimization vector-space algorithms that automatically size the transistors, passive components, and find the optimum biasing points. The solution generated by the tool is automatically read by Agilent ADS where the blocks are easily fine-tuned and validated before layout. Case studies involving WiMAX, UMTS, GSM, Bluetooth and WLAN are presented to reveal the capabilities of the tool in reducing the design time.     

Inhibition of pyrite oxidation by a phospholipid in the presence of silicate

The influence of sodium silicate on the ability of a diacetylene-containing phospholipid (23:2 diyne PC) to inhibit the oxidation of pyrite at pH 2 and pH 6 was investigated. The phospholipid used has previously been reported to show up to 80% suppression of pyrite oxidation and to show excellent stability down to at least pH 2. Pyrite was leached with a solution containing Fe3+ but no coating agent and three different solutions or treatments: a lipid treatment, a silicate treatment, and a lipid + silicate treatment. Pyrite oxidation was based on iron (Fe3+, Fe2+) leached out of a continuous-flow porous-bed reactor system. The results show that at pH 6 the silicate and lipid both bind strongly to the pyrite surfaces, providing a barrier that inhibits the production and subsequent release of oxidation products. The lipid is superior to the silicate in suppressing pyrite oxidation at both pH 2 and pH 6. Also, the presence of silicates decreased the ability for the lipid to suppress pyrite oxidation, both at pH 2 and pH 6. The reaction mechanism for pyrite oxidation at pH 2 is first order for pyrite leached by solutions containing only ferric, ferric together with silicate, and ferric combined with silicate and lipid. The only treatment that effectively prevented pyrite oxidation at pH 2 was the lipid treatment. The Fe speciation results are supported by both SEM images and EDS calculations.