Isolation of a genetic locus associated with metronidazole resistance in Helicobacter pylori

We examined the molecular mechanism of metronidazole resistance by constructing a lambda-Zap II phagemid expression library with genomic DNA from a metronidazole-resistance strain of Helicobacter pylori. Twenty-two clones were found to have elevated MTZ resistances in XLOLR strain of E. coli. Phagemids belonging to the twenty two clones were extracted and then retransformed into the XLOLR strain of E. coli. After MTZ selection, five clones could confer metronidazole resistance consistently. According to Southern hybridization and DNA sequencing, the five clones contained a same locus, recA. In addition, transforming the five clones into BL21 strain of E. coli produced a higher resistance to MTZ. Interestingly, electroporation of one of the five phagemid clones into two MTZ sensitive H. pylori yielded MTZ resistant strains. Comparing amino acid sequence in MTZ resistant with sensitive isolates revealed two point mutations at this locus. Above results suggest that mutation in recA may be associated with metronidazole resistance of H. pylori.     

A time-domain approach to transmission network equivalents viaProny analysis for electromagnetic transients analysis

This paper presents a method of obtaining transmission network equivalents from the network's response to a pulse excitation signal. The proposed method is based on modal decomposition representation for the large-scale interconnected system. In this framework we use Prony analysis to identify the network function of the system and to decompose the large system into a parallel combination of simple first-order systems. As a result the network function of the transmission network can be identified easily, and a Thevenin-type of discrete-time filter model can be generated. It can reproduce the driving-point impedance characteristic of the network. Furthermore, the proposed model can be implemented into the EMTP in a direct manner. The simulation results with the full system representation and the developed equivalent system showed a good agreement     

Effect of the pressure drop rate on cell nucleation in continuous processing of microcellular polymers

Microllular plastics are cellular polymers characterized by cell densities greater than 10⁹ cells/cm³ and cells smaller than 10 μm. One of the critical steps in the continuous production of microcellular plastics is the promotion of high cell nucleation rates in a flowing polymer matrix. These high nucleation rates can be achieved by first forming a polymer/gas solution followed by rapidly decreasing the solubility of gas in the polymer. Since, in the processing range of interest, the gas solubility in the polymer decreases as the pressure decreases, a rapid pressure drop element, consisting of a nozzle, has been employed as a continuous microcellular nucleation device. In this paper, the effects of the pressure drop rate on the nucleation of cells and the cell density are discussed. The experimental results indicate that both the magnitude and the cell density are discussed. The experimental results indicate that both the magnitude and the rate of pressure drop play a strong role in microcellular processing. The pressure phenomenon affects the thermodynamic instability induced in the polymer/gas solution and the competition between cell nucleation and growth.     

Cluster analysis in industrial market segmentation through artificial neural network

Market segmentation has commonly applied cluster analysis. This study intends to make the comparison of conventional two-stage method with proposed two-stage method through the simulated data. The proposed two-stage method is the combination of self-organizing feature maps and K-means method. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is better than the conventional two-stage method based on the rate of misclassification.     

Buffering packetised data: an examination of the crossover effect

Buffer analysis has traditionally relied heavily on the use of traffic models with short range (exponentially decaying) autocorrelation, e.g. Poisson and Markov modulated Poisson processes. Recent literature has suggested the presence of traffic with slowly (hyperbolically) decaying autocorrelation functions; these sources collectively and individually seem to be exhibiting the phenomenon of long range dependence (LRD). Furthermore, it has been claimed that this sort of traffic may exhibit behaviour, when buffered, that is advantageous in that a smaller buffer may be required than would be the case with non-LRD traffic. This phenomenon has been named the crossover effect, and the authors quantify its relevance to ATM networking, using simulation studies of a homogenous mix of chaotic sources. These show that there is a crossover effect, but the key finding is that this effect is much nearer to a buffer length of zero than was predicted by previous theoretical studies, actually occurring at a value so low that it has no practical significance     

Self-aligned offset gated poly-Si TFTs with a floating sub-gate

We have fabricated a self-aligned offset-gated poly-Si thin film transistor (TFT) by employing a novel photoresist reflow process. The gate structure of the new device is consisted of two unique patterns: A main-gate and a sub-gate. The new fabrication method extends the gate-oxide over the offset region. With the assistance of the sub-gate and reflowed photoresist a self-aligned offset region is successfully obtained due to the offset oxide acting as an implantation mask. The poly-Si TFT with symmetrical offsets is easily fabricated and the new method does not require any additional offset mask step. Compared with the misaligned offset gated poly-Si TFTs, excellent symmetric electrical characteristics are obtained     

Modified atmosphere packaging of a mixed prepared vegetable salad dish

The aim of this study was to design a modified atmosphere package for a mixed vegetable salad consisting of 75 g of cut carrot, 55 g of cut cucumber, 20 g of sliced garlic and 50 g of whole green pepper. Respiration data of all the components were combined with film permeability data to predict package atmospheres and design optimal packages for experimental testing for improved shelf-life of the produce. The optimal package avoided minimum O₂ and maximum CO₂ tolerance limits, and chilling injury temperatures for any component. A pouch form package made of 27 mm low density polyethylene developed a modified atmosphere of 2.0–2.1% O₂ and 5.5–5.7% CO₂, which was beneficial for all components and provided better quality retention than other test packages.     

Ovarian mucinous cystadenocarcinoma with mural nodules of anaplastic carcinoma: report of a case and review of the literature

A decline of cytosol protein kinase C activity was observed in rat myocardial cells at 4 and 8 h after endotoxin administration, and membrane-associated protein kinase C activity rose at the same time. The activity of membrane protein kinase C in aortic smooth muscle cells at 0.5 and 4 h after endotoxin injection was higher than that in control, while cytosol protein kinase C activity was lower. The results indicate that protein kinase C was activated in myocardial cells and aortic smooth muscle cells during various phases of endotoxemia.     

A neural network-based power system stabilizer using power flowcharacteristics

A neural network-based power system stabilizer (neuro-PSS) is designed for a generator connected to a multi-machine power system utilizing the nonlinear power flow dynamics. The use of power flow dynamics provides a PSS for a wide range of operation with reduced size neural networks. The neuro-PSS consists of two neural networks: neuro-identifier and neuro-controller. The low-frequency oscillation is modeled by the neuro-identifier using the power flow dynamics, then a generalized backpropagation-through-time (GBTT) algorithm is developed to train the neuro-controller. The simulation results show that the neuro-PSS designed in this paper performs well with good damping in a wide operation range compared with the conventional PSS