Giant Electro‐Optical Effect through Electrostriction in a Nanomechanical Metamaterial

Electrostriction is a property of all naturally occurring dielectrics whereby they are mechanically deformed under the application of an electric field. It is demonstrated here that an artificial metamaterial nanostructure comprising arrays of dielectric nanowires, made of silicon and indium tin oxide, is reversibly structurally deformed under the application of an electric field, and that this reconfiguration is accompanied by substantial changes in optical transmission and reflection, thus providing a strong electro‐optic effect. Such metamaterials can be used as the functional elements of electro‐optic modulators in the visible to near‐infrared part of the spectrum. A modulator operating at 1550 nm with effective electrostriction and electro‐optic coefficients of order 10^?13 m² V^?2 and 10^?6 m V^?1, respectively, is demonstrated. Transmission changes of up to 3.5% are obtained with a 500 mV control signal at a modulation frequency of ≈6.5 MHz. With a resonant optical response that can be spectrally tuned by design, modulators based on the artificial electrostrictive effect may be used for laser Q‐switching and mode‐locking among other applications that require modulation at megahertz frequencies.     

Ultrafast Coherent Absorption in Diamond Metamaterials

Diamond is introduced as a material platform for visible/near‐infrared photonic metamaterials, with a nanostructured polycrystalline diamond metasurface only 170 nm thick providing an experimental demonstration of coherent light‐by‐light modulation at few‐optical‐cycle (6 fs) pulse durations. “Coherent control” of absorption in planar (subwavelength‐thickness) materials has emerged recently as a mechanism for high‐contrast all‐optical gating, with a speed of response that is limited only by the spectral width of the absorption line. It is shown here that a free‐standing diamond membrane structured by focused ion beam milling can provide strong, spectrally near‐flat absorption over a visible to near‐infrared wavelength range that is wide enough (wider than is characteristically achievable in plasmonic metal metasurfaces) to facilitate coherent modulation of ultrashort optical pulses comprising only a few oscillations of electromagnetic field.     

The Citizen Health System (CHS): a modular medical contact center providing quality telemedicine services.

In the context of the Citizen Health System (CHS) project, a modular Medical Contact Center (MCC) was developed, which can be used in the monitoring, treatment, and management of chronically ill patients at home, such as diabetic or congestive heart failure patients. The virtue of the CHS contact center is that, using any type of communication and telematics technology, it is able to provide timely and preventive prompting to the patients, thus, achieving better disease management. In this paper, we present the structure of the CHS system, describing the modules that enable its flexible and extensible architecture. It is shown, through specific examples, how quality of healthcare delivery can be increased by using such a system.     

Combination chemotherapy with cisplatin-vinblastine in malignant mesothelioma

From June 1985 to March 1993, 20 consecutive patients with histologically proven malignant mesothelioma were treated with cisplatin 100 mg/m2 i.v. infusion on day 1 and vinblastine 6 mg/m2 i.v. on day 1 and 8. Treatment was repeated every 4 weeks until progression. All patients were evaluated clinically and by CT-scan and were staged (Stage IV), according to Butchard's criteria, on entry to the study. None had prior surgical excision. Eighty-one chemotherapy cycles were administered to 20 patients. One complete response, four partial responses, nine stable diseases and six progressions were noted. One partial responder entered complete response following an operation. Toxicity was acceptable and no treatment-related deaths occurred. The median survival for responders was 19.3 months; for patients with stable disease 15.7 months and for non-responders, 5.2 months. The mean duration of response was 13 months. We conclude that for this small group of patients, the combination cisplatin-vinblastine is effective, with acceptable toxicity in malignant mesothelioma. Further study with a larger number of patients is necessary.     

Design and implementation of an efficient integer count sort in CUDA GPUs

We describe experience on design and implementation of an efficient count sort algorithm on Compute Unified Device Architecture graphics processing units. The novelty of this work is twofold. At first, we propose a count sort algorithm for integers that needs no synchronization at its last step and thus, offers superior performance. At second, this work contributes ad hoc techniques for optimizing the performance of the algorithm on Compute Unified Device Architecture‐enabled graphics processing units. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiscale-patient-specific artery and atherogenesis models

In this work, we present a platform for the development of multiscale patient-specific artery and atherogenesis models. The platform, called ARTool, integrates technologies of 3-D image reconstruction from various image modalities, blood flow and biological models of mass transfer, plaque characterization, and plaque growth. Patient images are acquired for the development of the 3-D model of the patient specific arteries. Then, blood flow is modeled within the arterial models for the calculation of the wall shear stress distribution (WSS). WSS is combined with other patient-specific parameters for the development of the plaque progression models. Real-time simulation can be performed for same cases in grid environment. The platform is evaluated using both animal and human data.     

An automated methodology for fetal heart rate extraction from the abdominal electrocardiogram.

This paper introduces an automated methodology for the extraction of fetal heart rate from cutaneous potential abdominal electrocardiogram (abdECG) recordings. A three-stage methodology is proposed. Having the initial recording, which consists of a small number of abdECG leads in the first stage, the maternal R-peaks and fiducial points (QRS onset and offset) are detected using time-frequency (t-f) analysis and medical knowledge. Then, the maternal QRS complexes are eliminated. In the second stage, the positions of the candidate fetal R-peaks are located using complex wavelets and matching theory techniques. In the third stage, the fetal R-peaks, which overlap with the maternal QRS complexes (eliminated in the first stage) are found using two approaches: a heuristic algorithm technique and a histogram-based technique. The fetal R-peaks detected are used to calculate the fetal heart rate. The methodology is validated using a dataset of eight short and ten long-duration recordings, obtained between the 20th and the 41st week of gestation, and the obtained accuracy is 97.47%. The proposed methodology is advantageous, since it is based on the analysis of few abdominal leads in contrast to other proposed methods, which need a large number of leads.     

Graft copolymerization of methacrylates onto wool fibers

Grafting of butyl (BuMA), decyl (DeMA), and octadecyl methacrylate (ODeMA) onto reduced wool was carried out by using K₂S₂O₈ or K₂S₂O₈–LiBr redox system as initiator. The influence of the monomer and monomer concentration, temperature, and duration of the reaction on the percentage of grafting was studied. Evidence of grafting was provided by scanning electron microscopy, size exclusion chromatography, and infrared spectroscopy.