Do chart reviews and interviews provide the same information about breast and cervical cancer screening?

Magnetic resonance imaging allows a noninvasive assessment of myelination during normal brain maturation as well as the detection of genetically determined and acquired diseases that affect the synthesis and maintenance of myelin. If this high sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging for white matter changes is completed by adequate clinical and biochemical information, a unique diagnostic tool is available to gain new insights in the formation of myelin and pathogenesis of myelin disorders.     

Novel sulfated oligosaccharides containing 3-O-sulfated glucuronic acid from king crab cartilage chondroitin sulfate K. Unexpected degradation by chondroitinase ABC

We prepared a series of oligosaccharides from king crab cartilage chondroitin sulfate K after exhaustive digestion with testicular hyaluronidase, and determined the structures of four tetrasaccharides and a pentasaccharide by fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry, high performance liquid chromatography analysis of chondroitinase AC-II digests, and 500-MHz 1H NMR spectroscopy. The tetrasaccharides shared the common core structure GlcAbeta1-3GalNAcbeta1-4GlcAbeta1-3GalNAc with various sulfation profiles. One structure was GlcAbeta1-3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcAbeta1-3GalNAc(4S), whereas three of them have the following hitherto unreported structures including a novel glucuronate 3-O-sulfate: GlcA(3S)beta1-3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcAbeta1-3GalNAc(4S), GlcAbeta1-3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcA(3S)beta1-3GalNAc(4S), and GlcA(3S)beta1-3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcA(3S)beta1-3GalNAc(4S), where 3S or 4S represents 3-O- or 4-O-sulfate, respectively. The structure of the pentasaccharide was determined as GlcA(3S)beta1-3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcA(3S)beta1- 3GalNAc(4S)beta1-4GlcA. Chondroitinase ABC digestion of the tetrasaccharides with GlcA(3S) at the internal position destroyed the disaccharide unit containing GlcA(3S) derived from the reducing side and resulted in only the disaccharide unit from the non-reducing side. In contrast, these tetrasaccharides remained totally resistant to chondroitinase AC-II. The results indicated that it is necessary to reevaluate the disaccharide composition of chondroitin sulfate poly- or oligosaccharides purified from various biological sources, since they were usually determined after chondroitinase ABC digestion. It is probable that the structures containing GlcA(3S) would not have been detected.     

Automatic recognition fingerspelling gestures in multiple languages for a communication interface for the disabled

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a multi-lingual fingerspelling recognition module that is designed for an information terminal. Through the use of multimodal input and output methods, the information terminal acts as a communication medium between deaf and blind people. The system converts fingerspelled words to speech and vice versa using fingerspelling recognition, fingerspelling synthesis, speech recognition and speech synthesis in Czech, Russian, and Turkish languages. We describe an adaptive skin color based fingersign recognition system with a close to real-time performance and present recognition results on 88 different letters signed by five different signers, using above four hours of training and test videos.     

Plasma alloying and spheroidization process and development

Elemental and blended refractory metal powders were processed using a plasma alloying and spheroidization (PAS) process. The powders were characterized to determine changes in chemistry and morphology after processing. Five refractory metal powders were evaluated during this investigation: (1) crystalline W, (2) spray dried Mo, (3) W-25 wt.% Re composite powder, (4) W-2 wt.% Re composite powder, and (5) Mo-40 wt.% Re composite powder. Benefits of the PAS process, such as a two-order of magnitude reduction in oxygen contamination, production of highly spherical powders for enhanced flow characteristics, and the ability to produce prealloyed powders were demonstrated. This paper was presented at the 2nd International Surface Engineering Congress sponsored by ASM International, on September 15–17, 2003, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and appears on pp. 441–47 of the Proceedings.     

Real-time inverse dynamics control of parallel manipulators using general-purpose multibody software

This work deals with the problem of computing the inverse dynamics of complex constrained mechanical systems for real-time control applications. The main goal is the control of robotic systems using model-based schemes in which the inverse model itself is obtained using a general purpose multibody software, exploiting the redundant coordinate formalism. The resulting control scheme is essentially equivalent to a classical computed torque control, commonly used in robotics applications. This work proposes to use modern general-purpose multibody software to compute the inverse dynamics of complex rigid mechanisms in an efficient way, so that it suits the requirements of realistic real-time applications as well. This task can be very difficult, since it involves a higher number of equations than the relative coordinates approach. The latter is believed to be less general, and may suffer from topology limitations. The use of specialized linear algebra solvers makes this kind of control algorithms usable in real-time for mechanism models of realistic complexity. Numerical results from the simulation of practical applications are presented, consisting in a “delta” robot and a bio-mimetic 11 degrees of freedom manipulator controlled using the same software and the same algorithm.     

Particle flow control by induced dipolar interaction of superparamagnetic microbeads

Magnetic particles diluted in liquid agglomerate in rod-like particle arrays if an external homogeneous magnetic field is applied. This work introduces a method to specifically exploit particle–particle interaction to obtain flow control of magnetic particles without changing the motion state of the carrier liquid. Experiments show the possibility to uncouple the particle flux from the motion state of liquid. We show how this method may be applied to design a microfluidic geometry in which the particle flow in a specific direction is either enabled or suppressed by the relative orientation of the fluid velocity and the external field.     

Controlled counter-flow motion of magnetic bead chains rolling along microchannels

We demonstrate controlled transport of superparamagnetic beads in the opposite direction of a laminar flow. A permanent magnet assembles 200 nm magnetic particles into about 200 μm long bead chains that are aligned in parallel to the magnetic field lines. Due to a magnetic field gradient, the bead chains are attracted towards the wall of a microfluidic channel. A rotation of the permanent magnet results in a rotation of the bead chains in the opposite direction to the magnet. Due to friction on the surface, the bead chains roll along the channel wall, even in counter-flow direction, up to at a maximum counter-flow velocity of 8 mm s⁻¹. Based on this approach, magnetic beads can be accurately manoeuvred within microfluidic channels. This counter-flow motion can be efficiently be used in Lab-on-a-Chip systems, e.g. for implementing washing steps in DNA purification.