The effect of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection on clinical parameters in steady-state bronchiectasis

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection on clinical parameters in Chinese patients with noncystic fibrosis and steady-state bronchiectasis. DESIGN: Prospective, cross-sectional clinicomicrobiological study with informed consent. SETTING: Consecutive outpatient recruitment from a specialist bronchiectasis respiratory clinic. PATIENTS: Outpatients (n = 100; 62 women; 55.1+/-16.7 years old; FEV1/FVC 1.4+/-0.7/2.1+/-0.9 L), who had stable respiratory symptoms for more than 3 weeks. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Respiratory pathogens isolated from the sputum were: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (33), Haemophilus influenzae (10), Moraxella catarrhalis (2), other Gram-negative bacilli (5), Streptococcus pneumoniae (6), Staphylococcus aureus (5), mycobacteria (3), and yeast (1). Clinical parameters in patients with positive isolation of P aeruginosa were compared with those without the organism in the sputum culture (non-P aeruginosa). In the P aeruginosa group, the FEV1/FVC ratio and sputum volume were lower (p < 0.005) and higher (p < 0.0001), respectively, than those of the non-P aeruginosa group. The FEV1/FVC ratio (< 60%) and sputum volume (grading > 5) were independently associated with a positive sputum isolation of P aeruginosa with odds ratios of 3.1 (confidence interval [CI] 1.2 to 8.4; p < 0.01) and 4.7 (CI 1.6 to 13.3; p < 0.001), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: P aeruginosa is the predominant respiratory pathogen isolated in the sputum of Chinese patients with steady-state bronchiectasis, and its isolation is associated with high sputum output (> or = 75th quartile) and moderately severe airflow obstruction (FEV1/FVC < 60%).     

Delaminations at the free edge of a composite laminate

The concept of a fracture process zone where damage takes place is used to analyse the delaminations at the free edges of angle ply laminates under uniaxial tension. The use of a fracture process zone removes the singularity in the interlaminar stresses and enables the initiation and growth of delaminations to be modelled for a perfect laminate without any assumed prior defects. Two different models for the stress displacement relationship in the fracture process zone are examined: a constant stress up to critical displacement and a linear relationship. Finite element analysis shows that there is little difference in the predictions obtained from the two models. An approximate analysis is presented for the constant stress stress-displacement model which is shown to agree with a finite element solution and experimental data. Hence it is argued that the approximate method using a constant stress model for the fracture process zone is sufficient for accurate prediction of delaminations.     

Positive state‐bounding observer for positive interval continuous‐time systems with time delay

This paper is concerned with the problem of positive observer synthesis for positive systems with both interval parameter uncertainties and time delay. Conventional observers may no longer be applicable for such kind of systems due to the positivity constraint on the observers, and they only provide an estimate of the system state in an asymptotic way. A pair of positive observers with state‐bounding feature is proposed to estimate the state of positive systems at all times in this paper. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of desired observers is first established, and the observer matrices can be obtained easily through the solutions of a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Then, to reduce the error signal between the system state and its estimates, an iterative LMI algorithm is developed to compute the optimized state‐bounding observer matrices. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the effectiveness and applicability of the theoretical results. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fast full‐color reflective display via photoluminescent enhancement

Reflective displays are advantageous in applications requiring low power or daylight readability. However, there are no low‐cost reflective technologies capable of displaying bright colors. By employing photoluminescence to more efficiently use ambient light, we created a prototype display that provides bright, full color in a simple, low‐cost architecture. This prototype includes a novel electrokinetic shutter, a layer that incorporates patterned luminescent red, green, and blue sub‐pixel elements, and a novel optical out‐coupling scheme. The luminescent elements convert otherwise‐wasted portions of the incident spectrum to light in the desired color band, resulting in improved color saturation and lightness. This prototype provides a color gamut that is superior to competing reflective display technologies that utilize color filters in single‐layer side‐by‐side sub‐pixel architectures. The current prototype is capable of switching in <0.5 s; future displays based on an alternative electro‐optic shutter technology should achieve video rate operation. A transflective version of this technology has also been prototyped. The transflective version utilizes its backlight with a power efficiency that is at least three times that of a conventional liquid crystal display. These photoluminescence‐based technologies enable a host of applications ranging from low‐power mobile products and retail pricing signage to daylight readable signage for outdoor advertising segments.     

Electrokinetically driven concentration of particles and cells by dielectrophoresis with DC-offset AC electric field

Insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) has been successfully used for on-chip manipulations of biological samples. Despite its effectiveness, iDEP typically requires high DC voltages to achieve sufficient electric field; this is mainly due to the coupled phenomena among linear electrokinetics: electroosmosis (EO) and electrophoresis (EP) and nonlinear electrokinetics: dielectrophoresis (DEP). This paper presents a microfluidic technique using DC-offset AC electric field for electrokinetic concentration of particles and cells by repulsive iDEP. This technique introduces AC electric field for producing iDEP which is decoupled from electroosmosis (EO) and electrophoresis (EP). The repulsive iDEP is generated in a PDMS tapered contraction channel that induces non-uniform electric field. The benefits of introducing AC electric field component are threefold: (i) it contributes to DEP force acting on particles, (ii) it suppresses EO flow and (iii) it does not cause any EP motion. As a result, the required DC field component that is mainly used to transport particles on the basis of EO and EP can be significantly reduced. Experimental results supported by numerical simulations showed that the total DC-offset AC electric field strength required to concentrate 15-μm particles is significantly reduced up to 85.9% as compared to using sole DC electric field. Parametric experimental studies showed that the higher buffer concentration, larger particle size and higher ratio of AC-to-DC electric field are favorable for particle concentration. In addition, the proposed technique was demonstrated for concentration of yeast cells.     

Usher Syndrome in the Inner Ear: Etiologies and Advances in Gene Therapy

Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder with ~466 million people worldwide affected, representing about 5% of the population. A substantial portion of hearing loss is genetic. Hearing loss can either be non-syndromic, if hearing loss is the only clinical manifestation, or syndromic, if the hearing loss is accompanied by a collage of other clinical manifestations. Usher syndrome is a syndromic form of genetic hearing loss that is accompanied by impaired vision associated with retinitis pigmentosa and, in many cases, vestibular dysfunction. It is the most common cause of deaf-blindness. Currently cochlear implantation or hearing aids are the only treatments for Usher-related hearing loss. However, gene therapy has shown promise in treating Usher-related retinitis pigmentosa. Here we review how the etiologies of Usher-related hearing loss make it a good candidate for gene therapy and discuss how various forms of gene therapy could be applied to Usher-related hearing loss.     

Non-existence of finite-time stable equilibria in fractional-order nonlinear systems

We note that in the literature it is often taken for granted that for fractional-order system without delays, whenever the system trajectory reaches the equilibrium, it will stay there. In fact, this is the well-known phenomenon of finite-time stability. However, in this paper, we will prove that for fractional-order nonlinear system described by Caputo’s or Riemann–Liouville’s definition, any equilibrium cannot be finite-time stable as long as the continuous solution corresponding to the initial value problem globally exists. In addition, some examples of stability analysis are revisited and linear Lyapunov function is used to prove the asymptotic stability of positive fractional-order nonlinear systems.     

Lipid hydrolysis and oxidation on the surface of milled rice

The changes in milled rice FFA content and composition and in conjugated diene (CD) content and bacterial, yeast, and mold counts were determined at 24, 37, and 50°C and 70% RH over 50 d. There was a rapid rate of FFA formation during the first few days of storage, which was optimal at 37°C, but that slowed after 2, 4, and 5 d at 37, 24, and 50°C, respectively. There was a second increase in FFA after about day 12 that increased with increasing temperature, indicating nonlipase hydrolysis. Linoleic and oleic acids were the main components of the total FFA produced on the surface of milled rice. The pattern of CD development followed that of FFA increase. Bacterial growth correlated with increased FFA levels after 12 d of storage, suggesting that bacterial lipase rather than bran lipase may be responsible for rice lipid hydrolysis     

A new result on the delay‐dependent stability of discrete systems with time‐varying delays

This paper proposes an improvement to the delay‐dependent stability of discrete systems with time‐varying delays. The approach is based on the observation that the positive definiteness of a chosen Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional does not necessarily require all the involved symmetric matrices to be positive definite, which has been overlooked in the literature. The derived delay‐dependent stability conditions are in terms of linear matrix inequalities. It is theoretically proved that our results are less conservative than the corresponding ones obtained by requiring the positive definiteness of all the symmetric matrices in a chosen Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional. The importance of the present approach is that a great number of delay‐dependent analysis and synthesis results obtained by the aforementioned requirement in the literature can be improved by the present approach without introducing any new decision variables. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of platinum and silver deposits in the photocatalytic oxidation of resorcinol

The effects of platinum (Pt) and silver (Ag) metallisation in the photocatalytic oxidation of resorcinol at pH 3 ± 0.5 have been investigated. The photocatalytic degradation of resorcinol was significantly improved by Pt/TiO₂, while the presence of Ag/TiO₂ enhanced the initial photocatalytic degradation rate of resorcinol slightly. Likewise, the photocatalytic mineralisation of resorcinol continued to be enhanced by Pt/TiO₂, but it was retarded when Ag/TiO₂ was used.

The function of Pt and Ag deposits on the surface of TiO₂ has been found to be markedly influenced by the interaction of resorcinol and its degradation products with the metal deposits. The presence of Pt or Ag on the surface of TiO₂ altered the distribution of degradation products of resorcinol as well as the production of photoactive species for the photocatalytic oxidation of resorcinol. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), zeta potential and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses have indicated that the contrasting effect of Pt and Ag deposits were governed by the oxidation states and the catalytic property of metal deposits. In addition to that, it has been found that the roles of metal deposits are specific and should not be generalised.