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Selected AbstractsNavigating toward Fetal and Maternal Health: The Challenge of Treating Epilepsy in PregnancyEPILEPSIA, Issue 10 2004Torbjörn Tomson Summary:, A rational approach to the treatment of women of childbearing potential with epilepsy has been hampered by the lack of conclusive data on the comparative teratogenic potential of different antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). Although, several cohort studies on birth defects associated with AED use during pregnancy have been published, these have generally failed to demonstrate differences in malformation rates between AEDs, probably mainly due to insufficient power. In particular, pregnancies with new generation AEDs have been too few. In recent years, pregnancy registries have been introduced to overcome this problem,EURAP (an international collaboration), the North American, and the U.K. AED and pregnancy registries are observational studies that prospectively assess pregnancy outcome after AED exposure using slightly different methods. Each has enlisted 3,5,000 pregnancies in women with epilepsy, and the North American and the U.K. have released preliminary observations. Thus the U.K. registry reported a higher malformation rate with valproate, 5.9% (4.3,8.2%; 95% CI), than with carbamazepine, 2.3% (1.4,3.7%), and lamotrigine, 2.1% (1.0,4.0%). Most of the more recent cohort studies have also identified a nonsignificant trend toward a higher teratogenicity with valproate. These signals need to be interpreted with some caution since none of the studies to date have fully assessed the impact of possible confounders, such as type of epilepsy, family history of birth defects, etc. However, with increasing number of pregnancies it should be possible in the near future for the pregnancy registries to take such confounding factors into account and thus make more reliable assessments of the causal relationship between exposure to specific AEDs and teratogenic risks. While awaiting more conclusive results, it appears reasonable to be cautious in prescribing valproate to women considering to become pregnant if other suitable treatment alternatives, and with less teratogenic potential, are available. Any attempt to change treatment should, however, be accomplished well before conception. The importance of maintained seizure control must also be kept in mind, and the woman who needs valproate to control her seizures should not be discouraged from pregnancy, provided that counseling at the best of available knowledge is given. [source] Classification of leaf imagesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF IMAGING SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 1 2006Chia-Ling Lee Abstract There are tremendous content-based retrieval systems. Most of them are applied to general image databases. Some were proposed for specified databases such as texture databases, ancient paintings, document image databases, digital mammography, face image databases, etc. However, there are fewer for plant databases. Plants are used in various fields such as in foodstuff, medicine, and industry. Recently, plant is important for environment protection. On the other hand, the problem of plant destruction becomes worse in the few years. We should train people to know about plants, in turn, to treasure and protect them. In addition to the limited number of expert botanists, the convenient content-based retrieval system for plant is necessary and useful, since it can retrieve related information and knowledge from plant database for the query leaf so as to facilitate fast learning of plants. In this study, a leaf database is constructed and a classification method for leaves is proposed. Most approaches for leaf classification in literature used contour-based features. The proposed method tries to use region-based features. The reasons are that region-based features are more robust than contour-based features since significant curvature points are hard to find. Those features adopted include aspect ratio, compactness, centroid, and horizontal/vertical projections. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated by various experiments. On the average, our method has the classification accuracy for 1-NN rule as 82.33% and the recall rate for 10 returned images as 48.2%, while the contour-based method has 37.6% and 21.7%, respectively. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 16, 15,23, 2006 [source] Fluorescence spectra of Pr3+ ions in phosphate materials calculated by the DVME methodINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 12 2009Y. Kowada Abstract Recently, fluorescence spectra of rare-earth ions in oxide materials are very attractive for the applications of the optical amplification in optical fiber communications, white LED, etc. However, it has been difficult to calculate the fluorescence spectra of rare-earth ions by the first principle method. In this study, we used the relativistic discrete-variational multielectron (DVME) method, which is a configuration-interaction (CI) calculation program using the molecular orbitals obtained by the relativistic DV-X, method. We applied this method for the calculation of the fluorescence spectrum of the Pr3+ ions in phosphate materials. The transition probability of the fluorescence was calculated in the same manner of the absorption. The obtained theoretical fluorescence spectrum was in good agreement with the experimental one, though the intensity of each peak was deeply dependent on the configuration of the surrounding structural units. The results suggested that the DVME method was useful for the calculation of not only absorption but also fluorescence spectra of rare-earth ions in oxide materials. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2009 [source] Multivariate methods in pharmaceutical applicationsJOURNAL OF CHEMOMETRICS, Issue 3 2002Jon Gabrielsson Abstract This review covers material published within the field of pharmacy in the last five years. Articles concerning experimental design, optimization and applications of multivariate techniques have been published, from factorial designs to multivariate data analysis, and the combination of the two in multivariate design. The number of publications on this topic testifies to the good results obtained in the studies. Much of the published material highlights the usefulness of experimental design, with many articles dealing with optimization, where much effort is spent on getting useful results. Examples of multivariate data analysis are comparatively few, but these methods are gaining in use. The employment of multivariate techniques in different applications has been reviewed. The examples in this review represent just a few of the possible applications with different aims within pharmaceutical applications. A number of companies are using experimental design as a standard tool in preformulation and in combination with response surface modeling. The properties of e.g. a tablet can be optimized to fulfill a well-specified aim such as a specific release profile, hardness, disintegration time etc. However, none of the companies apply multivariate methods in all steps of the drug development process. As this is still very much a growing field, it is only a question of time before experimental design, optimization and multivariate data analysis are implemented throughout the entire formulation process, from performulation to multivariate process control. Copyright ©,2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Effect of Taylor vortices on mass transfer from a rotating cylinderAICHE JOURNAL, Issue 11 2005R. Srinivasan Abstract Mass transfer from solids, which has important applications in a number of chemical and pharmaceutical industries, has been studied experimentally and semiempirically under turbulent flow conditions, and correlations are available in the literature to calculate the mass-transfer coefficients from pellets, rotating cylinders and disks etc. However, mass transfer under laminar flow has not been sufficiently addressed. One of the difficulties here is the strong Reynolds number dependence of the flow pattern, for example, due to the onset of Taylor vortices for the case of a rotating cylinder. This problem is circumvented by using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based solution of the governing equations for the case of a cylinder rotating inside a stationary cylindrical outer vessel filled with liquid. The parameters cover a range of Reynolds number (based on the cylinder diameter, and the tangential speed of the cylinder), Schmidt number and the ratio of the outer to inner cylinder diameters. The results confirm that the circumferential velocity profile is a strong function of the Reynolds number and varies from a nearly Couette-type flow at very low Reynolds numbers to a boundary layer-like profile at high Reynolds numbers. The onset of Taylor vortices has a strong effect on the flow field and the mass-transfer mode. The calculations show that the Sherwood number has a linear dependence on the Reynolds number in the Couette-flow regime, and roughly square-root dependence after the onset of Taylor vortices. Correlations have been proposed to calculate the Sherwood number taking account of these effects. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2005 [source] The Aachen MiniHLM,A Miniaturized Heart-Lung Machine for Neonates With an Integrated Rotary Blood PumpARTIFICIAL ORGANS, Issue 9 2010Jutta Arens Abstract The operation of congenital heart defects in neonates often requires the use of heart-lung machines (HLMs) to provide perfusion and oxygenation. This is prevalently followed by serious complications inter alia caused by hemodilution and extrinsic blood contact surfaces. Thus, one goal of developing a HLM for neonates is the reduction of priming volume and contact surface. The currently available systems offer reasonable priming volumes for oxygenators, reservoirs, etc. However, the necessary tubing system contains the highest volumes within the whole system. This is due to the use of roller pumps; hence, the resulting placement of the complete HLM is between 1 and 2 m away from the operating table due to connective tubing between the components. Therefore, we pursued a novel approach for a miniaturized HLM (MiniHLM) by integrating all major system components in one single device. In particular, the MiniHLM is a HLM with the rotary blood pump centrically integrated into the oxygenator and a heat exchanger integrated into the cardiotomy reservoir which is directly connected to the pump inlet. Thus, tubing is only necessary between the patient and MiniHLM. A total priming volume of 102 mL (including arterial filter and a/v line) could be achieved. To validate the overall concept and the specific design we conducted several in vitro and in vivo test series. All tests confirm the novel concept of the MiniHLM. Its low priming volume and blood contact surface may significantly reduce known complications related to cardiopulmonary bypass in neonates (e.g., inflammatory reaction and capillary leak syndrome). [source] Cloning, overexpression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of a female-specific lipocalin (FLP) expressed in the lacrimal glands of Syrian hamstersACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION F (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2010Ved Prakash Dubey Proteins belonging to the lipocalin superfamily are usually secretory proteins of molecular mass ,20,kDa with a hydrophobic pocket for the binding and transport of diverse small ligands. Various lipocalins have been associated with many biological processes, e.g. immunomodulation, odorant transport, pheromonal activity, retinoid transport, cancer-cell interactions etc. However, the exact functions of many lipocalins and the ligands bound by them are unclear. Previously, the cDNA of a 20,kDa lipocalin (FLP) which is female-specifically expressed in the lacrimal glands of Syrian (golden) hamsters and secreted in the tears of females has been identified and cloned. His-tagged recombinant FLP (rFLP) has now been cloned, overexpressed in Escherichia coli as a soluble protein and purified to homogeneity using Ni-affinity followed by size-exclusion chromatography. Purified rFLP was crystallized using the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion method. The crystals tested belonged to space group P212121 and diffracted to beyond 1.86,Å resolution. Solvent-content analysis indicated the presence of one monomer in the asymmetric unit. [source] | |||||||||||||