Effects of near-infrared laser and superluminous diode irradiationon Escherichia coli division rate

An investigation is conducted of the effect of a 1300-nm continuous-wave (CW) laser diode 950-nm modulated superluminous diode which had a fixed average power density of 1.2×10³ W/m ² at all variable repetition rates of 2, 26, 700, 1000, and 5000 Hz and had an equivalent pulse duration of 410, 31.1, 1.15, 0.82, and 0.16 ms, respectively. The effect of both diodes on the rate of Escherichia coli WP2 division was examined. It was found that the radiation of the CW mode of the 1300-nm laser diode increased the division of E. coli in the dose range of 0.9-9.0 J/cm². The 950-nm pulsed irradiation increased or inhibited the division rate of bacteria depending on the pulsing frequency and/or pulse duration     

A real-time matching system for large fingerprint databases

With the current rapid growth in multimedia technology, there is an imminent need for efficient techniques to search and query large image databases. Because of their unique and peculiar needs, image databases cannot be treated in a similar fashion to other types of digital libraries. The contextual dependencies present in images, and the complex nature of two-dimensional image data make the representation issues more difficult for image databases. An invariant representation of an image is still an open research issue. For these reasons, it is difficult to find a universal content-based retrieval technique. Current approaches based on shape, texture, and color for indexing image databases have met with limited success. Further, these techniques have not been adequately tested in the presence of noise and distortions. A given application domain offers stronger constraints for improving the retrieval performance. Fingerprint databases are characterized by their large size as well as noisy and distorted query images. Distortions are very common in fingerprint images due to elasticity of the skin. In this paper, a method of indexing large fingerprint image databases is presented. The approach integrates a number of domain-specific high-level features such as pattern class and ridge density at higher levels of the search. At the lowest level, it incorporates elastic structural feature-based matching for indexing the database. With a multilevel indexing approach, we have been able to reduce the search space. The search engine has also been implemented on Splash 2-a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based array processor to obtain near-ASIC level speed of matching. Our approach has been tested on a locally collected test data and on NIST-9, a large fingerprint database available in the public domain     

Change in the metabolism and toxic effect of benz(a)pyrene by its metabolites and a series of phenols

Effects of some phenols and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon derivatives on benz(a)-pyrene metabolism have been studied in the microsomal system isolated from the mouse embryonic cell cultures. The rate of benz(a)pyrene metabolism was shown to depend on the structure and concentration of the agents added. The toxic effect of benz(a)pyrene was summed up with that of either agent studied (except ionol) added simultaneously to the cell culture.     

Irradiation with a diode at 820 nm induces changes in circulardichroism spectra (250-780 nm) of living cells

A sensitive method for measuring the circular dichroism (CD) of living HeLa cells in the visible-near infrared (IR) region is developed. The changes in CD spectra from 250 to 780 nm of HeLa cell suspension after the first and second irradiation at 820 nm in dose 9 J/cm² are investigated. The CD spectrum of the intact cells is well structured and characterized by a positive signal in the UV (250-290 nm) and visible-near IR (500-780 nm) regions as well as by a negative signal in 300-450 nm region. Distinct maxima in the visible-near IR region are recorded at 566, 634, 680, 712, and 741 nm. As a rule, the peak circular dichroism signals decrease in the irradiated cells except of the area 750-770 nm. Peak positions (except the peak at 680 nm) shift as a rule to the long-wavelength direction. The most remarkable changes in peak positions as well as in CD signals are recorded in the region 750-770 nm: an appearance of the new peak at 767 nm after the first irradiation and its shift to 752 nm after the second irradiation. The peaks at 712 and 741 nm disappear after the irradiation. A new peak appears at 601 nm. It is assumed that the changes in the degree of oxidation of the chromophores of cytochrome c oxidase caused by the irradiation are accompanied by conformational changes in their vicinity. It can be suggested that these changes are occurring in Cu_B environment     

Reducing muscle fatigue in FES applications by stimulating withN-let pulse trains

Applications of electrical stimulation for restoration of functional movements such as standing, gait, and grasp have always been hindered by the rapid fatigue of stimulated muscle. This paper describes an experimental investigation of stimulation with N-lets (a set of N closely spaced stimulation pulses) as a means of producing contractions with improved fatigue characteristics. Experiments were conducted on 27 able-bodied and four SCI human subjects using surface stimulation of the quadriceps muscle to produce isometric knee joint torque. Based upon evidence from the literature on muscle fatigue, parameters of the N-let trains for N=1-6 were optimized to produce the most force per pulse. The results demonstrated that: 1) nonlinear summation of the twitch response occurs in human subjects with N-let surface stimulation; 2) for most subjects, doublet stimulation (N=2) with a pulse interval of about 5 ms produced the maximum torque-time integral per pulse of the resulting twitch; and 3) on average, optimal N-let stimulation resulted in a 36% increase in isometric torque tracking when compared to traditional singlet stimulation. The results have immediate implications for alleviating the problem of premature fatigue during functional electrical stimulation     

Changes in absorbance of monolayer of living cells induced by laserradiation at 633, 670, and 820 nm

Redox absorbance changes in living cells (monolayer of HeLa cells) under laser irradiation at 633, 670, and 820 nm have been studied by the method of multichannel recording in spectral range 530-890 nm. It has been found that the irradiation causes changes in the absorption spectrum of the cells in two regions, near 754-795 nm (maxima at 757, 775, and 795 nm) and near 812-873 nm (maxima at 819, 837, 858, and 873 nm). Changes occur in band parameters (peak positions, width, and integral intensity). Virtually no changes occur in the red spectral region and a few changes are recorded in the green region near 556-565 nm. The results obtained evidence that cytochrome c oxidase becomes more oxidized (which means that the oxidative metabolism is increased) due to irradiation at all wavelengths used. The results of present experiment support the suggestion (Karu, Lasers Life Sci., 2:53, 1988) that the mechanism of low-power laser therapy at the cellular level is based on the electronic excitation of chromophores in cytochrome c oxidase which modulates α redox status of the molecule and enhances its functional activity     

Monoclonal antibody-based ELISAs for part-per-billion determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: effects of haptens and formats on sensitivity and specificity

BACKGROUND: Mitral annuloplasty is an important element of most mitral repairs, yet the effects of various types of annuloplasty rings on mitral annular dynamics are still debated. Recent studies suggest that flexible rings preserve physiologic mitral annular area change during the cardiac cycle, while rigid rings do not. METHODS: To clarify the effects of mitral ring annuloplasty on mitral annular dynamic geometry, we sutured 8 radiopaque markers equidistantly around the mitral anulus in 3 groups of sheep (n = 7 each: no ring, Carpentier-Edwards semi-rigid Physio-Ring [Baxter Healthcare Corp, Edwards Division, Santa Ana, Calif], and Duran flexible ring [Medtronic, Inc, Minneapolis, Minn]). Ring sizes were selected according to anterior leaflet area and inter-trigonal distance (Physio-Ring 28 mm, n = 7; Duran ring 31 mm, n = 5, and 29 mm, n = 2). After 8 +/- 1 days of recovery, the sheep were sedated and studied by means of biplane videofluoroscopy. Mitral annular area was calculated from 3-dimensional marker coordinates without assuming circular or planar geometry. RESULTS: In the no ring group, mitral annular area varied during the cardiac cycle by 11% +/- 2% (mean +/- SEM; maximum = 7.6 +/- 0.2, minimum = 6.8 +/- 0.2 cm2; P 相似文献   

Analysis of spiral metamaterials by use of group theory

Monofilar, bifilar, trifilar and quadrifilar Archimedean spiral metamaterial particles are analyzed by using point group symmetry and the methods of crystallography. From the symmetry properties electromagnetic response is determined. Magnetic, electric and magnetoelectric modes of the particles are identified along with their isotropy characteristics. Theoretical methods show that all the particles, except monofilar spiral, are non-bianisotropic. Numerical simulation results are presented to verify the analysis. Finally, effective medium theory is applied to extract the effective permeability of the spiral medium. The results indicate negative values for permeability in certain frequency ranges.     

A closed‐form analysis of printed wide‐slot antennas

A mixed‐potential integral equation is formulated for the wide‐slot antenna, fed by a microstrip line, and solved using the method of moments (MoM). Our MoM implementation makes use of the Ge and Esselle (G–E) closed‐form Green's functions for layered substrates. The key advantage of this new approach is that all the MoM matrix elements are evaluated using closed‐form expressions, without any numerical integration, and with minimal approximations. Hence a significant increase in computational efficiency has been achieved while maintaining the high precision of the full‐wave MoM. The numerical results obtained from the new method are compared with measured results, and good agreements are observed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 13, 389–397, 2003.     

Learning texture discrimination masks

A neural network texture classification method is proposed in this paper. The approach is introduced as a generalization of the multichannel filtering method. Instead of using a general filter bank, a neural network is trained to find a minimal set of specific filters, so that both the feature extraction and classification tasks are performed by the same unified network. The authors compute the error rates for different network parameters, and show the convergence speed of training and node pruning algorithms. The proposed method is demonstrated in several texture classification experiments. It is successfully applied in the tasks of locating barcodes in the images and segmenting a printed page into text, graphics, and background. Compared with the traditional multichannel filtering method, the neural network approach allows one to perform the same texture classification or segmentation task more efficiently. Extensions of the method, as well as its limitations, are discussed in the paper