Effect of glutamine on protein synthesis in isolated intestinal epithelial cells

The purpose of this study was to determine the etiologic factors of denture stomatitis. Fifteen subjects with clinical evidence of localized simple denture stomatitis, fifteen subjects without clinical signs of denture stomatitis, and forty-five subjects with clinical evidence of generalized simple denture stomatitis were investigated clinically and mycologically. Subjects were evaluated according to age, sex, duration of denture usage, smoking habits, frequency of denture brushing, overnight denture wearing, pH level of saliva and degree of candidal colonization and candidal formation. Salivary samples and swabs were taken from the palate and the mucosal surfaces of the dentures investigated mycologically in order to identify the yeast colonies. Smears were taken from the palate and investigated in order to identify candidal formation. No statistically significant relationship was found between denture stomatitis and age, sex, duration of denture usage, frequency of denture brushing, overnight denture wearing or pH level of saliva. There was however, a statistically significant relationship between denture stomatitis and denture hygiene, smoking habits, candidal colonization and candidal formation.     

Calculation of magnetic shielding of a substation at powerfrequency using FEM

The finite element method (FEM) is used for analyzing the shielding effectiveness of an eddy current shield applied to a 10/0.4 kV substation. The influence of the shield extension is studied, and a calculated magnetic field attenuation of 30 dB is obtained for a 5 mm aluminum shield applied on the ceiling and the walls. With a 3D model, the eddy current distribution in the shield is studied, giving guidance for door positioning. Here, the insertion of a door in the shielded wall off the paths of the main eddy currents is found to create only a locally elevated magnetic field. With a simplified 2D model, the influence of shield conductivity is also analyzed. An increase of the conductivity over that of aluminum here gives a limited shielding improvement     

Energy-ubiquitin-dependent muscle proteolysis during sepsis in rats is regulated by glucocorticoids

The present study is intended to demonstrate the application of impedance spectroscopy to two very different fields of biophysical research. The core component of our measuring setup is a self-constructed continuous wave impedance spectrometer together with special measuring chambers which are individually designed for the systems under investigation. We directed our attention towards: i) the investigation of solid supported lipid bilayers in general, especially systems which are suitable for protein reconstitution such as dimethyldioctadecylammonium bromide (DODAB) immobilized onto a gold electrode, precovered with a negatively charged monolayer of 3-mercaptopropionic acid. Impedance spectroscopy allows to study the stability, the thickness and the electrode coverage of those artificial membranes as well as the observation of ion transport mediated by ionophores like gramicidin D incorporated into a DODAB-bilayer. ii) The characterization of the passive electrical properties of epithelial and endothelial cell monolayers in general and especially the determination of their transepithelial (transendothelial) electrical resistances as a measure for epithelial barrier function. From impedance spectra, as reported here, we are able to follow the formation and modulation of cell layer permeability to small ions.     

Geometrical aspects of magnetic shielding at extremely lowfrequencies

The magnetic shielding effectiveness for closed and open shield structures is studied at extremely low frequencies. Analytical solutions are used for simple geometries, while more complex structures are evaluated using a finite-element method. Both highly conductive and ferromagnetic materials are studied, and their different shielding behavior is shown. Ferromagnetic shields give good results for small and closed shields and they also give a large field attenuation at close range to the source for open shield geometries. Highly conductive materials, on the other hand, are found to be suitable for large shield sizes. The attenuation is, however, reduced in the close vicinity of the source. Comparisons of numerical results with analytical calculations and measurements confirmed the high accuracy of the finite-element model     

Neural Denoising with Layer Embeddings

We propose a novel approach for denoising Monte Carlo path traced images, which uses data from individual samples rather than relying on pixel aggregates. Samples are partitioned into layers, which are filtered separately, giving the network more freedom to handle outliers and complex visibility. Finally the layers are composited front-to-back using alpha blending. The system is trained end-to-end, with learned layer partitioning, filter kernels, and compositing. We obtain similar image quality as recent state-of-the-art sample based denoisers at a fraction of the computational cost and memory requirements.     

An Optimizing Compiler for Automatic Shader Bounding

Programmable shading provides artistic control over materials and geometry, but the black box nature of shaders makes some rendering optimizations difficult to apply. In many cases, it is desirable to compute bounds of shaders in order to speed up rendering. A bounding shader can be automatically derived from the original shader by a compiler using interval analysis, but creating optimized interval arithmetic code is non‐trivial. A key insight in this paper is that shaders contain metadata that can be automatically extracted by the compiler using data flow analysis. We present a number of domain‐specific optimizations that make the generated code faster, while computing the same bounds as before. This enables a wider use and opens up possibilities for more efficient rendering. Our results show that on average 42–44% of the shader instructions can be eliminated for a common use case: single‐sided bounding shaders used in lightcuts and importance sampling.     

Practical HDR Texture Compression

The use of high dynamic range (HDR) textures in real‐time graphics applications can increase realism and provide a more vivid experience. However, the increased bandwidth and storage requirements for uncompressed HDR data can become a major bottleneck. Hence, several recent algorithms for HDR texture compression have been proposed. In this paper, we discuss several practical issues one has to confront in order to develop and implement HDR texture compression schemes. These include improved texture filtering and efficient offline compression. For compression, we describe how Procrustes analysis can be used to quickly match a predefined template shape against chrominance data. To reduce the cost of HDR texture filtering, we perform filtering prior to the colour transformation, and use a simple trick to reduce the incurred errors. We also introduce a number of novel compression modes, which can be combined with existing compression schemes, or used on their own.     

Amino acid incorporation into liver and tumor proteins in patients with hepatic neoplasms-effects of liver dearterialization

The effects of liver dearterialization on the rate of amino acid incorporation into liver and tumor proteins were studied with an in vitro method in seven patients with liver metastases. Before liver dearterialization the incorporation rate was 0.074 +/- 0.020 nmol leucine x mg prot-1 x h-1 in liver tissue and 0.234 +/- 0.049 nmol leucine x mg prot-1 x h-1 in tumor tissue. After dearterialization for 1 h the incorporation rate was reduced to about half of the initial values in both liver and tumor tissue. The vascularity of the tumors was evaluated from preoperative hepatic angiograms. The reduction of the incorporation rate was more pronounced in highly vascularized tumors than in poorly vascularized tumors and liver tissue. The clinical implications of a more pronounced metabolic effect of the dearterialization in high vascularized tumors are discussed.     

A Family of Inexpensive Sampling Schemes

To improve image quality in computer graphics, antialiazing techniques such as supersampling and multisampling are used. We explore a family of inexpensive sampling schemes that cost as little as 1.25 samples per pixel and up to 2.0 samples per pixel. By placing sample points in the corners or on the edges of the pixels, sharing can occur between pixels, and this makes it possible to create inexpensive sampling schemes. Using an evaluation and optimization framework, we present optimized sampling patterns costing 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 and 2.0 samples per pixel.     

Adaptive texture space shading for stochastic rendering

When rendering effects such as motion blur and defocus blur, shading can become very expensive if done in a naïve way, i.e. shading each visibility sample. To improve performance, previous work often decouple shading from visibility sampling using shader caching algorithms. We present a novel technique for reusing shading in a stochastic rasterizer. Shading is computed hierarchically and sparsely in an object‐space texture, and by selecting an appropriate mipmap level for each triangle, we ensure that the shading rate is sufficiently high so that no noticeable blurring is introduced in the rendered image. Furthermore, with a two‐pass algorithm, we separate shading from reuse and thus avoid GPU thread synchronization. Our method runs at real‐time frame rates and is up to 3 × faster than previous methods. This is an important step forward for stochastic rasterization in real time.