The band areas of proteins determined by fluorescent scanning in the commercial automated gel electrophoresis apparatus

An automated gel electrophoresis apparatus, recently available commercially, allows one to follow the band during electrophoresis in real time, and lends itself therefore to an evaluation of bandwidth as a function of migration time (the dispersion coefficient), resolution and band shape. These determinations assume the constancy of band area with migration time and at various gel concentrations. The purpose of the present study was to verify these assumptions. Representative proteins and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-proteins, either natively fluorescent or fluorescein carboxylate labeled, were found to exhibit band areas which approach constancy as a function of migration time in both agarose and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, provided that (i) the protein concentration under the band was low enough to obviate self-quenching of fluorescence; (ii) the separation of the protein of interest from contaminants had progressed sufficiently during the time at which band areas were measured; (iii) the baseline under the peak was sufficiently well defined. However, band areas decrease with increasing gel concentration. Protein peaks exhibited leading and trailing tails. The ratio of the combined tail area to total area appeared to be near-constant at varying migration times. However, that ratio increases with increasing gel concentration. The tail area does not appear to be an artifact of fluorometric detection since it is reproduced upon fluorimetric analysis of the protein eluted from gel slices after electrophoresis. However, it may be due to photochemical destruction under the conditions of repetitive fluorometric peak detection.     

Quantitative prediction of the degree of pollution of effluent from reactive dye mixtures

By using mathematical formulae developed in previous studies, certain pollution parameters of dye effluent obtained from reactive dyeing with a single dye can be predicted with good accuracy. In this study, the degree of pollution of reactive dyeing effluent using dye mixtures was also predicted by other approaches, such as linear and non-linear regression. The prediction accuracy was found to be satisfactory.     

The binding of substrates and inhibitors to the metal center of myoinositol monophosphatase

The synthetic substrate anthraniloyl-beta-glycerol-P binds to myoinositol monophosphatase with a Kd = 5 microM at pH 7.5. The anthraniloyl chromophore, excited at 330 nm, sensitizes the long lived luminescence of bound Tb(III) at 490, 545, 585 and 620 nm. Assuming a mechanism of radiationless energy transfer, the actual distance of separation between the donor-acceptor pair was calculated to be R = 10 A. Tb(III) binds to the monophosphatase with a Kd = 2 microM, whereas Ca-(II) displaces the lanthanide at concentrations above 0.1 mM. The binding studies support the notion that Tb(III), Ca(II) and Mg(II) interact with a common binding site on the protein. Phosphate ion, a strong competitive inhibitor, perturbs the luminescence of bound Tb(III), whereas the substrate beta-glycero-P has no effect on the luminescence yield and long-lived emission of bound Tb(III). It is suggested that the phosphate group of the substrate is not in direct contact with the metal ion coordinated to several amino acid residues of the enzyme.     

Development of the bi-directional ultrasound system for base of tongue imaging

The use of conventional ultrasound systems to image the upper airway has been limited because ultrasound energy is attenuated by the air column. In an attempt to study upper airway geometry, we developed a computer controlled bi-directional ultrasound system which combines two conventional ultrasound devices with computer image processing to yield images of upper airway structures. Human studies and cadaver studies were performed to evaluate the system. Images acquired by the bi-directional ultrasound system were comparable to images from 3D volume rendered CT scans. This system may provide valuable data in the study of upper airway physiology and pathology.     

Triangular ray-tube analysis of dielectric lens antennas

A new method of analysis for the radiation characteristics of dielectric lens antennas with arbitrary inner and outer surfaces is presented. The analysis is based on representing the feed illumination by a contiguous set of ray tubes and including the effects of surface reflections and ray divergence. Radiation patterns and the antenna gain are then computed by evaluating the closed-form expressions developed for the Kirchhoff's integral of the aperture fields. The validity of the analysis method has been demonstrated by comparing the computations with measured results of two different spherical lenses and a shaped lens configurations. The analysis method presented takes into account some of the practical aspects associated with lens design such as surface zoning to reduce the mass and surface matching to minimize the reflection loss     

Data mining of resilience indicators

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced several financial setbacks, including speculative attacks in 1998 and the SARS outbreak in 2003. Financial stresses of this nature are unanticipated, and not all of the dangers can be predicted by the examination of market information and macroeconomic indicators. The Early Warning System (EWS) that has been adopted by the International Monetary Fund may not be able to predict future financial crises for all possible scenarios, because shocks come in many different forms. To supplement the EWS, this paper proposes a data mining framework to measure the resilience of an economy. The resilience framework does not predict a crisis, but rather assesses the current state of health of an economy and its ability to withstand a financial shock should one occur. The framework is based on a feedback system consisting of two stages. The first stage assigns a resilience score to each economy based on a fuzzy logic scoring scheme that is built on the ambiguous reasoning of experts. The second stage uses the classification tree approach to estimate thresholds for each economic indicator, and examines the quality of the fuzzy score. The result from the second stage is then passed back to the first stage as feedback. The final result is obtained when the feedback system reaches its equilibrium state. The proposed resilience framework is applied to the external-sector and the public-sector economies of several countries to illustrate its applicability.     

A systematic design method to obtain broadband characteristics for singly-fed electromagnetically coupled patch antennas for circular polarization

We present a systematic, empirical design technique to obtain optimum broadband impedance, axial-ratio (AR) and gain bandwidths for a singly-fed electromagnetically coupled patch antenna for circular polarization. Our investigation has also revealed tradeoffs amongst obtainable AR, impedance bandwidth and AR bandwidth. Using two design examples at different frequency bands and for different senses of circular polarization, we have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed knowledge-based tuning method. We have obtained at C-band measured values of impedance bandwidth (VSWR/spl les/2) equal to 43%, 3-dB AR bandwidth of 8%, AR of less than 0.3 dB and a mean gain level of 7 dB. For the Ku-band element, a 40% impedance bandwidth and a 17.3% of 3-dB AR bandwidth have been obtained with a peak gain of 7.2 dBic.     

Hash function based on block cipher

A new 2m-bit iterated hash function based on an m-bit block cipher with a 2m-bit key is presented. The results of security analysis show that the hash function can be expected to have ideal computational security against the five attacks when the underlying cipher is assumed to have no weakness