Interferon-gamma is necessary for the expression of hypersensitivity pneumonitis

Farmers lung disease is a common form of hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) and is characterized by inflammation and granuloma formation in the lung. Interferon-gamma is important for the expression of granulomatous diseases caused by infectious agents; however, the role this mediator in regulating expression of the granulomatous response to inhaled antigen is not known. To evaluate this, we compared the response to inhaled antigen of mice that do not express the gene coding for interferon-gamma (GKO) with that of their normal littermates (WT). GKO and WT mice on a BALB/c background were exposed to 150 microg of the thermophilic bacteria Saccharopolyspora rectivirgula or saline alone, for three consecutive days a week, for 3 wk. After exposure to antigen, WT mice developed a marked granulomatous inflammation associated with an increase in lung weight and numbers of cells in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL). Although GKO mice also exhibited an increase in lung weight and numbers of cells in BAL fluid, they developed minimal inflammation and no granulomas after a similar exposure to antigen. To further evaluate if the lack of a response to antigen in GKO mice was due to lack of IFN-gamma, we replaced this mediator via intraperitoneal injections. When given replacement IFN-gamma, the GKO mice developed granulomatous inflammation in the lung. These studies show that IFN-gamma is essential for the expression of hypersensitivity pneumonitis.     

Digital smoothing of the Langmuir probe I-V characteristic

Electrostatic probes or Langmuir probes are the most common diagnostic tools in plasma discharges. The second derivative of the Langmuir probe I-V characteristic is proportional to the electron energy distribution function. Determining the second derivative accurately requires some method of noise suppression. We compare the Savitzky-Golay filter, the Gaussian filter, and polynomial fitting to the Blackman filter for digitally smoothing simulated and measured I-V characteristics. We find that the Blackman filter achieves the most smoothing with minimal distortion for noisy data.     

Quantifying the Differences in Geometry and Size Distributions of Buildings Within Cities

There have been many studies on the spatial configuration of cities, but few attempts to quantify the difference in building patterns between the old and new parts of cities. This may be partly attributable to lack of suitable study methods. This paper presents a new application of statistical methods for quantifying the geometric difference between different parts of a city using, as a case study, the old (historical) and new parts of the city of Yazd in Iran. We measured 341 edge lengths of 4 bazaars, 302 edge lengths of 5 mosques and tombs, and 239 edge lengths of 3 schools. We also measured 6,804 edge lengths and the areas of 1,243 well-preserved courtyard houses in the old part and 4,948 edge lengths and the areas of 1,237 houses in the new part of the city. In the old part, all edge-length and house-area frequency distributions, to a first approximation, follow power laws, indicating that there are many small and very few large buildings. By contrast, in the new part the edge-length and house-area frequency distributions follow bimodal (two-peak) distributions. The calculated entropies (measures of dispersion) of the house edge lengths and areas in the old part are much higher than of those in the new part and provide a clear, quantitative measure of the geometric differences between the built-up structures of old and the new parts of the cities. The power-law distributions in the old part indicate a gradual and continuous variation in sizes of edge lengths and house areas, whereas the bimodal distributions in the new part indicate abrupt (discontinuous) changes in the edge lengths and house areas. The entropy results imply that the size distributions of houses in the old part are more dispersed than those in the new part, indicating more interconnected structures in the old part of the city. The results also demonstrate quantitatively that there is a lack of coherence between the structures of old and new parts of city.     

The influence of the electron energy distribution on the low pressure chlorine discharge

A global (volume averaged) model of a chlorine discharge is applied to explore the effect of the electron energy distribution on the plasma parameters such as particle densities and reaction rates. The effective electron temperature increases, the densities of charged particles decrease and the total reaction rate for the creation of Cl⁻ decreases as the electron energy distribution function is varied from approximately bi-Maxwellian to Maxwellian to Druyvesteyn distribution, while the applied power is kept fixed. The relative contribution of electron impact dissociation to the creation of the neutral Cl atom increases significantly as the electron energy distribution is varied from approximately bi-Maxwellian to Maxwellian to Druyvesteyn distribution, while the loss processes for Cl are nearly independent of the electron energy distribution.     

Detecting Regular Visit Patterns

We are given a trajectory T\mathcal{T} and an area A\mathcal{A} . T\mathcal{T} might intersect A\mathcal{A} several times, and our aim is to detect whether T\mathcal{T} visits A\mathcal{A} with some regularity, e.g. what is the longest time span that a GPS-GSM equipped elephant visited a specific lake on a daily (weekly or yearly) basis, where the elephant has to visit the lake most of the days (weeks or years), but not necessarily on every day (week or year).     

The measurement of paste content in hardened concrete using automatic image analyzing technique

This paper describes a technique for the measurement of paste contents of mortars and concretes. The technique involves etching the polished surfaces of samples with a saturated solution of salicylic acid in 80:20 methyl alcohol: water mixture which does not affect limestone aggregates. The contrast difference between the exposed aggregates and the etched areas is then enhanced by painting the aggregates black and filling the etched areas with a white powder. An automatic image analyzer can then measure either the blackened aggregates or the whitened etched areas.     

Fabless-foundry partnership: models and analysis of coordinationissues

The fabless-foundry partnership for integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing business is expected to grow from 12% in 1995 to approximately 17% (i.e., $45B) of the total IC market in 2000. The growth of this market will be even more significant for subquarter micron technologies-whose growth is driven by the multimedia industry. The customer base will extend beyond traditional fabless IC companies into vertically integrated IC manufacturers and system vendors. Given the rate of growth and the high technology profile of products, substantial investments in capital, technology, and skilled workforce have to be dedicated and managed effectively for ensuring a successful partnership. In this paper, we outline the potential coordination problems that may arise in such partnerships, and propose a framework for analyzing issues related to yield information sharing and yield improvement. Our analysis indicates that fabless-foundry contracts that are based on a fixed number of good dies, and better yield information are more profitable