A Role for Human Renal Tubular Epithelial Cells in Direct Allo-Recognition by CD4+ T-Cells and the Effect of Ischemia-Reperfusion

Direct allorecognition is the earliest and most potent immune response against a kidney allograft. Currently, it is thought that passenger donor professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) are responsible. Further, many studies support that graft ischemia-reperfusion injury increases the probability of acute rejection. We evaluated the possible role of primary human proximal renal tubular epithelial cells (RPTECs) in direct allorecognition by CD4+ T-cells and the effect of anoxia-reoxygenation. In cell culture, we detected that RPTECs express all the required molecules for CD4+ T-cell activation (HLA-DR, CD80, and ICAM-1). Anoxia-reoxygenation decreased HLA-DR and CD80 but increased ICAM-1. Following this, RPTECs were co-cultured with alloreactive CD4+ T-cells. In T-cells, zeta chain phosphorylation and c-Myc increased, indicating activation of T-cell receptor and co-stimulation signal transduction pathways, respectively. T-cell proliferation assessed with bromodeoxyuridine assay and with the marker Ki-67 increased. Previous culture of RPTECs under anoxia raised all the above parameters in T-cells. FOXP3 remained unaffected in all cases, signifying that proliferating T-cells were not differentiated towards a regulatory phenotype. Our results support that direct allorecognition may be mediated by RPTECs even in the absence of donor-derived professional APCs. Also, ischemia-reperfusion injury of the graft may enhance the above capacity of RPTECs, increasing the possibility of acute rejection.     

Unsupervised Segmentation of Stereoscopic Video Objects: Constrained Segmentation Fusion Versus Greedy Active Contours

In this paper, we present a novel memory access reduction scheme (MARS) for two-dimension fast cosine transform (2-D FCT). It targets programmable DSPs with high memory-access latency. It reduces the number of memory accesses by: 1) reducing the number of weighting factors and 2) combining butterflies in vector-radix 2-D FCT pruning diagram from two stages to one stage with an efficient structure. Hardware platform based on general purpose processor is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for vector-radix 2-D FCT pruning implementation. Experimental results validate the benefits of the proposed method with reduced memory access, less clock cycle and fewer memory space compared with the conventional implementation.     

An MPEG‐4 Compliant Interactive Multimedia Streaming Platform Using Overlay Networks

This paper presents a multimedia streaming platform for efficiently transmitting MPEG‐4 content over IP networks. The platform includes an MPEG‐4 compliant streaming server and client, supporting object‐based representation of multimedia scenes, interactivity, and advanced encoding profiles defined by the ISO standard. For scalability purposes, we employ an application‐layer multicast scheme for media transmission using overlay networks. The overlay network, governed by the central entity of the network distribution manager, is dynamically deployed according to a set of pre‐defined criteria. The overlay network supports both broadcast delivery and video‐on‐demand content. The multimedia streaming platform is standards‐compliant and utilizes widespread multimedia protocols such as MPEG‐4, real‐time transport protocol, real‐time transport control protocol, and real‐time streaming protocol. The design of the overlay network was architected with the goal of transparency to both the streaming server and the client. As a result, many commercial implementations that use industry‐standard protocols can be plugged into the architecture relatively painlessly and can enjoy the benefits of the platform.     

A PROTOTYPE GRID FRAMEWORK FOR THE CHEMICAL PROCESS INDUSTRIES

This article presents a GRID framework for distributed computations in the chemical process industries. We advocate a generic agent-based GRID environment in which chemical processes can be represented, simulated, and optimized as a set of autonomous, collaborative software agents. The framework features numerous advantages in terms of scalability, software reuse, security, and distributed resource discovery and utilization. It is a novel example of how advanced distributed techniques and paradigms can be elegantly applied in the area of chemical engineering to support distributed computations and discovery functions in chemical process engineering. A prototype implementation of the proposed framework for chemical process design is presented to illustrate the concepts.     

Disparity field and depth map coding for multiview 3D image generation

In the present paper techniques are examined for the coding of the depth map and disparity fields for stereo or multiview image communication applications. It is assumed that both the left and right channels of the multiview image sequence are coded using block- or object-based methods. A dynamic programming algorithm is used to estimate a disparity field between each stereo image pair. Depth is then estimated and occlusions are optionally detected, based on the estimated disparity fields. Spatial interpolation techniques are examined based on the disparity/depth information and the detection of occluded regions using either stereoscopic or trinocular camera configurations. It is seen that the presence of a third camera at the transmitter site improves the estimation of disparities, the detection of occlusions and the accuracy of the resulting spatial interpolation at the receiver. Various disparity field and depth map coding techniques are then proposed and evaluated, with emphasis given to the quality of the resulting intermediate images at the receiver site. Block-based and wireframe modeling techniques are examined for the coding of isolated depth or disparity map information. Further, 2D and 3D motion compensation techniques are evaluated for the coding of sequences of depth or disparity maps. The motion fields needed may be available as a byproduct of block-based or object-based coding of the intensity images. Experimental results are given for the evaluation of the performance of the proposed coding and spatial interpolation methods.     

Viscous and Aeroelastic Effects on Wind Turbine Blades. The VISCEL project. Part I: 3D Navier–Stokes Rotor simulations

Aerodynamic modelling of HAWT rotors by means of “engineering methods” has reached a saddle point, where no further development can be expected without a breakthrough in understanding the physics of unsteady, rotating three‐dimensional flows. However, such a breakthrough becomes ever more necessary, as the size of the wind turbines increases. With the experimental work in that direction being mostly limited to observing the phenomena and interpreting the associated mechanisms, and its increased cost, alternatives are being sought. The use of CFD techniques and state‐of‐the‐art Navier–Stokes solvers is considered a very serious contender, a belief shared by the members of the present consortium, which has worked on the VISCEL JOR3‐CT98‐0208 Joule III project. This project's goal was to determine the aerodynamic characteristics as well as the aeroelastic behaviour of wind turbine blades across their broad range of operational conditions, from attached to highly separated flow regimes. The work programme included specific tasks for the validation and assessment of existing 3D solvers, for the parametric study of 3D flow around realistic blades and for the investigation of aeroelastic stability, at the blade section level. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Scheduling Technique Wireless Personal for Bandwidth Communication Allocation in Networks

Future generation wireless personalcommunication networks (PCN) are expected to providemultimedia capable wireless extensions of fixedATM/B-ISDN. This paper presents a scheduling techniquefor PCN based on TDMA and the leaky bucket regulator, thewell known bandwidth enforcement mechanism for fixedATM. The main objective of the proposed technique is toensure fair and efficient treatment of various types oftraffic on the air interface, includingconstant-bit-rate (CBR) voice and variable-bit-rate(VBR) video. Two alternative priority mechanisms areintroduced and their performance is evaluated. Theperformance comparison of the alternatives reveals aninteresting tradeoff between fairness and quality ofservice (QoS).     

Microstructural changes accompanying repair welding in 5xxx aluminium alloys and their effect on the mechanical properties

At the shipyards, the aluminium alloy 5083 is welded with a multi-pass sequence using the metal inert gas technique. If, while checking the weld integrity either after welding or during service, defects are detected in the vicinity of the weldment, repairs are usually employed to extend the service life.

The repair method involves removal of the upper passes, depending on the thickness and re-welding under the same conditions.

Purpose of this paper is to examine the microstructural changes accompanying repair welding, define their effect on properties of primary importance and set, if possible, an upper limit as far as the number of repairs is concerned.     

Infra-red and Raman spectroscopic study on the thermal stability and high temperature transformation of hydroazafullerene C59HN

Hydroazafullerene C₅₉HN was studied by vibrational infra-red and Raman spectroscopy and its thermal stability was examined. Fingerprints modes were identified and unambiguously differentiate it from bisazafullerene. At 700 K full transformation to bisazafullerene occurred, while an intermediate metastable phase was identified at 540 K showing different spectra where the splitting of most of the lines is strongly reduced.