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A highly reproducible route for the epitaxial growth of single-crystalline monolayer MoS2on a C-plane sapphire substrate was developed using vapor-pressure-controllable inorganic molecular precursors MoOCl4and H2S. Microscopic, crystallographic, and spectroscopic analyses indicated that the epitaxial MoS2film possessed outstanding electrical and optical properties, excellent homogeneity, and orientation selectivity. The systematic investigation of the effect of growth temperature on the crystallographic orientations of MoS2revealed that the surface termination of the sapphire substrate with respect to the growth temperature determines the crystallographic orientation selectivity of MoS2. Our results suggest that controlling the surface to form a half-Al-terminated surface is a prerequisite for the epitaxial growth of MoS2on a C-plane sapphire substrate. The insights on the growth mechanism, especially the significance of substrate surface termination, obtained through this study will aid in designing efficient epitaxial growth routes for developing single-crystalline monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides.

A three-directional motion-compensation mask-based novel look-up table method is proposed and implemented on graphics processing units (GPUs) for video-rate generation of digital holographic videos of three-dimensional (3D) scenes. Since the proposed method is designed to be well matched with the software and memory structures of GPUs, the number of compute-unified-device-architecture kernel function calls can be significantly reduced. This results in a great increase of the computational speed of the proposed method, allowing video-rate generation of the computer-generated hologram (CGH) patterns of 3D scenes. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method can generate 39.8 frames of Fresnel CGH patterns with 1920×1080 pixels per second for the test 3D video scenario with 12,088 object points on dual GPU boards of NVIDIA GTX TITANs, and they confirm the feasibility of the proposed method in the practical application fields of electroholographic 3D displays.

Introduction:3-Phosphoinositide-dependent kinase 1 (PDK1) is a master regulator of the AGC protein kinase family and is a critical activator of multiple pro-survival and oncogenic protein kinases, for which it has garnered considerable interest as an oncology drug target.Areas covered:This manuscript reviews small molecule patent literature disclosures between October 2011 and September 2014 for both PDK1 activators and inhibitors and restates the selective patents published before September 2011. PDK1 modulators are organized according to pharmaceutical company and chemical structural class.Expert opinion:Many academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies continue to research into the development of small molecules that can function as PDK1 inhibitors or modulators. To date, > 50 patent publications on PDK1 disruptors and modulators have been published since the protein was first discovered in 1998. Most of these molecules act as ATP mimetics, forming similar hydrogen bonding patterns to PDK1 as ATP and functioning as hydrophobic pharmacophores. To achieve selectivity in PDK1 inhibition, the discovery of binding pockets structurally distinctive from the ATP site is a challenging but promising strategy.

In this paper, we propose an approach, new to our knowledge, to effectively generate and reconstruct the resolution-enhanced computer-generated hologram (CGH) of three-dimensional (3-D) objects with a significantly reduced in memory size novel look-up table (N-LUT) by taking into account a relationship between the pixel pitch and reconstruction distance of the hologram pattern. In the proposed method, a CGH pattern composed of shifted versions of the principal fringe patterns (PFPs) with a short pixel pitch can be reconstructed just by using the CGH generated with a much longer pixel pitch by controlling the hologram reconstruction distance. Accordingly, the corresponding N-LUT memory size required for resolution-enhanced hologram patterns can be significantly reduced in the proposed method. To confirm the feasibility of the proposed method, experiments are carried out and the results are discussed.

Novel look-up table (N-LUT) method to dramatically reduce the number of pre-calculated interference patterns required for generation of digital holograms was proposed. In this method, the N-LUT contains only the fringe patterns of the object points with unity magnitudes located at each center of the depth-dependent image planes of the object. This principal fringe pattern (PFP) can be regarded as the Fresnel zone pattern (FZP) computed at each depth that has reflection symmetry in geometry. Therefore, if we have only half of the PFP, we can generate the computer generated holography (CGH) without the loss of image quality. But the memory size of LUT could be reduced by half.

Hardware implementation for holographic 3D display application is researched by many researchers. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the hardware implementation method for novel look-up table (N-LUT) method using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. In the proposed method, calculation process is divided by some segment block for fast parallel processing of calculation of N-LUT method. That is, by using parallel processing by use of some segmented block based on FPGA technology, calculation speed of CGH can be increased

Brucella abortusis a bacterium of brucellosis causing abortion in cattle. The diagnosis of bovine brucellosis mainly relies on serologic tests using smooth lipopolysaccharide (S-LPS) from B. abortus. However, the usefulness of this method is limited by false-positive reactions due to cross-reaction with other Gram-negative bacteria. In the present study, the eryCgene encoding B. abortusD-erythrulose 1-phosphate dehydrogenase, which is involved in the erythritol metabolism in virulent B. abortusstrain but is absent from a B. abortusvaccine strain (S19), was cloned. Recombinant EryC was expressed and purified for the evaluation as a diagnostic reagent for bovine brucellosis. Other B. abortusproteins, Omp16, PP26, and CP39 were also purified and their seroreactivities were compared. Recombinant EryC, Omp16, PP26, and PP39 were all reactive to B. abortus-positive serum. The specificity of recombinant Omp 16, PP26, CP39, and EryC, were shown to be approximately 98%, whereas that of B. abortuswhole cell lysates was shown to be 95%. The sensitivity of Omp16, PP26, CP39, and EryC were 10%, 51%, 64%, and 43%, respectively, whereas that of B. abortuswhole cell lysates was 53%. These results suggested that B. abortusEryC would be a potential reagent for diagnosis for bovine brucellosis as a single protein antigen.

Several approaches for fast generation of digital holograms of a three-dimensional (3D) object have been discussed. Among them, the novel look-up table (N-LUT) method is analyzed to dramatically reduce the number of pre-calculated fringe patterns required for computation of digital holograms of a 3D object by employing a new concept of principal fringe patterns, so that problems of computational complexity and huge memory size of the conventional ray-tracing and look-up table methods have been considerably alleviated. Meanwhile, as the 3D video images have a lot of temporally or spatially redundant data in their inter- and intra-frames, computation time of the 3D video holograms could be also reduced just by removing these redundant data. Thus, a couple of computational methods for generation of 3D video holograms by combined use of the N-LUT method and data compression algorithms are also presented and discussed. Some experimental results finally reveal that by using this approach a great reduction of computation time of 3D video holograms could be achieved.

In this paper, we propose a novel computational integral-imaging reconstruction (CIIR)-based three-dimensional (3-D) image correlator system for the recognition of 3-D volumetric objects by employing a 3-D reference object. That is, a number of plane object images (POIs) computationally reconstructed from the 3-D reference object are used for the 3-D volumetric target recognition. In other words, simultaneous 3-D image correlations between two sets of target and reference POIs, which are depth-dependently reconstructed by using the CIIR method, are performed for effective recognition of 3-D volumetric objects in the proposed system. Successful experiments with this CIIR-based 3-D image correlator confirmed the feasibility of the proposed method.

In this paper, a new approach is proposed for the efficient generation of computer-generated holograms (CGHs) using the spatially redundant data on a 3D object and the novel look-up table (N-LUT) method. First, the pre-calculated N-point principle fringe patterns (PFPs) were calculated using the 1-point PFP of the N-LUT. Second, spatially redundant data on a 3D object were extracted and re-grouped into the N-point redundancy map using the run-length encoding (RLE) method. Then CGH patterns were generated using the spatial redundancy map and the N-LUT method. Finally, the generated hologram patterns were reconstructed. In this approach, the object points that were involved in the calculation of the CGH patterns were dramatically reduced, due to which the computational speed was increased. Some experiments with a test 3D object were carried out and the results were compared with those of conventional methods.

In this paper we propose a new approach for fast generation of computer-generated holograms (CGHs) of a 3D object by using the run-length encoding (RLE) and the novel look-up table (N-LUT) methods. With the RLE method, spatially redundant data of a 3D object are extracted and regrouped into the N-point redundancy map according to the number of the adjacent object points having the same 3D value. Based on this redundancy map, N-point principle fringe patterns (PFPs) are newly calculated by using the 1-point PFP of the N-LUT, and the CGH pattern for the 3D object is generated with these N-point PFPs. In this approach, object points to be involved in calculation of the CGH pattern can be dramatically reduced and, as a result, an increase of computational speed can be obtained. Some experiments with a test 3D object are carried out and the results are compared to those of the conventional methods.

Even though there are many types of methods to generate CGH (computer-generated hologram) patterns of three-dimensional (3D) objects, most of them have been applied to still images but not to video images due to their computational complexity in applications of 3D video holograms. A new method for fast computation of CGH patterns for 3D video images is proposed by combined use of data compression and lookup table techniques. Temporally redundant data of the 3D video images are removed with the differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) algorithm, and then the CGH patterns for these compressed videos are generated with the novel lookup table (N-LUT) technique. To confirm the feasibility of the proposed method, some experiments with test 3D videos are carried out, and the results are comparatively discussed with the conventional methods in terms of the number of object points and computation time.

We have implemented experimental code to compute a compensated phase-added stereogram (CPAS), which was proposed in a previous paper, on a graphic processing unit (GPU). In this paper, we show an acceleration method for CPAS computation by means of the GPU and compare the computation time between CPU-based and GPU-based calculations, which are programmed in our laboratories. In addition, we demonstrate their reconstructed images. As a result, we could achieve a performance gain of a factor of over 33 compared with a CPU-based computing environment and digital holograms can be displayed at 30 frames per second with 15,000 points.

We present a novel approach for generating three-dimensional (3-D) integral images from a fringe pattern of 3-D objects. A recorded hologram of 3-D objects is segmented into a number of subholograms. Then, different views of 3-D objects are reconstructed from them because each subhologram has its own perspective of 3-D objects in the recording process. These locally reconstructed images can be rearranged as the same subimage array of the conventional integral-imaging system and transformed into virtually picked-up elemental images of 3-D objects. From this newly generated elemental image array, 3-D images could easily be reconstructed by using a white light. Experiments with a 3-D test object have been performed and the results have been presented.

A novel approach to extract the depth data of 3D objects in space by using the computational integral imaging reconstruction (CIIR) technique is proposed. With elemental images of 3D objects captured by the CCD camera through a pinhole array, depth-dependent object images can be reconstructed on the output plane by the CIIR technique. Only the images reconstructed on the output planes where 3D objects were located are clearly focused; so the depth data of 3D objects in space can be extracted by discriminating these focused output images from the others by using an image separation technique. A feasibility test of the proposed CIIR-based depth extraction method is carried out, and its results are discussed as well.

Several approaches for increasing the speed in computation of the digital holograms of three-dimensional objects have been presented with applications to real-time display of holographic images. Among them, a look-up table (LUT) approach, in which the precalculated principal fringe patterns for all possible image points of the object are provided, has gained a large speed increase in generation of computer-generated holograms. But the greatest drawback of this method is the enormous memory size of the LUT. A novel approach to dramatically reduce the size of the conventional LUT, still keeping its advantage of fast computational speed, is proposed, which is called here a novel LUT (N-LUT) method. A three-dimensional object can be treated as a set of image planes discretely sliced in the z direction, in which each image plane having a fixed depth is approximated as some collection of self-luminous object points of light. In the proposed method, only the fringe patterns of the center points on each image plane are precalculated, called principal fringe patterns (PFPs) and stored in the LUT. Then, the fringe patterns for other object points on each image plane can be obtained by simply shifting this precalculated PFP according to the displaced values from the center to those points and adding them together. Some experimental results reveal that the computational speed and the required memory size of the proposed approach are found to be 69.5 times faster than that of the ray-tracing method and 744 times smaller than that of the conventional LUT method, respectively.

A computational integral imaging reconstruction technique can reconstruct a set of plane images of three-dimensional (3-D) objects along the output plane, in which only the plane object image (POI) reconstructed on the right planes where the objects were positioned is highly focused, whereas the other POIs reconstructed away from these planes are unfocused and blurred. In fact, these blurred POIs act as additional noises to other object images reconstructed on different output planes, so that the resolution of reconstructed object images should be considerably deteriorated. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to effectively reduce the blurred images occurring in the focused POIs by employing a blur metric. From the estimated blur metric of each reconstructed POI, the right output planes where the objects were located can be detected. In addition, with an estimated blur metric, focused POIs can be adaptively eroded by a simple gray level erosion operation because it reduces regional expansion caused by the blur effect. The gray values of the eroded POIs are then finally remapped by referencing the original POIs. Some experiments revealed an average increase of 1.95 dB in the peak signal-to-noise ratio in the remapped POIs compared with that of the originally reconstructed POIs, and that the original forms of the object images in the remapped POIs could be preserved even after they had gone through an erosion operation. This feasibility test of the proposed scheme finally suggests a possibility of its application to robust detection and recognition of 3-D objects in a scene.

A novel method of using stereoscopic video images to synthesize the computer-generated hologram (CGH) patterns of a real 3D object is proposed. Stereoscopic video images of a real 3D object are captured by a 3D camera system. Disparity maps between the captured stereo image pairs are estimated and from these estimated maps the depth data for each pixel of the object can be extracted on a frame basis. By using these depth data and original color images, hologram patterns of a real object can be computationally generated. In experiments, stereoscopic video images of a real 3D object, a wooden rhinoceros doll, are captured by using the Wasol 3D adapter system and its depth data are extracted from them. Then, CGH patterns of 1280 pixels × 1024 pixels are generated with these depth-annotated images of the wooden rhinoceros doll, and the CGH patterns are experimentally displayed via a holographic display system.

A new integral imaging (II) system that can magnify 3D reconstructed images by employing an intermediate-view reconstruction technique (IVRT) is proposed in which the number of the elemental images obtained from a one-step pickup process can be computationally increased by use of an IVRT without mechanical movement and a long multistep pickup process. To show the feasibility of the proposed II system, some optical experiments on the magnification of 3D reconstructed images with a real 3D object have been carried out and results are presented.

ERCC1 is a DNA repair gene and has been associated with resistance to DNA damaging agents. In this study we hypothesized that a polymorphism of ERCC1 Asn118Asn (C?T) might affect the platinum-resistance of epithelial ovarian cancer patients to platinum-taxane chemotherapy administered postoperatively. Using the SNapShot assay, we assessed this polymorphism in ERCC1 in 60 ovarian cancer patients. Platinum-resistance was defined as progression on platinum-based chemotherapy or recurrence within 6 months of completing therapy. Although not significant, platinum-resistance was less frequently observed in patients with the C/T+T/T genotype (P=0.064). Multivariate analysis showed that the C/T+T/T genotypes constituted an independent predictive factor of reduced risk of platinum-resistance in ovarian cancer (odds ratio 0.17, 95% confidence interval 0.04-0.74, P=0.018, Fisher's exact test). No significant correlation was observed between overall survival and the ERCC1 polymorphism. Our results suggest that genotyping of the ERCC1 polymorphism Asn118Asn may be useful for predicting the platinum-resistance of epithelial ovarian cancer patients. However, these findings require prospective confirmation.

Bacterial vaginosis can be treated by restoring the normal vaginal flora using lactobacilli.Lactobacillus crispatusKLB46 that was isolated from the human vagina has a strong antimicrobial activity and was grown in a batch and in a continuous fermentor. During batch cultivation, the maximum specific growth rate ofL. crispatusKLB 46 was 0.63 h−1and the highest viable cell count (1.9×109CFU/mL) was obtained at pH 5.5.L. crispatusKLB 46 did not grow well at either pH 3.5 or 7.5. During continuous cultivation, the highest viable cell count (1.53×109CFU/mL) was obtained at a dilution rate of 0.32 h−1. However, the maximum productivity of viable cells was obtained at a dilution rate of 0.52 h−1, and was 7.33×1011CFU L−1h−1, that is approximately 5 times higher than that obtained from batch culture.

Previous studies concerned with the normal development of the sphenoid sinus have reported that the onset of initial pneumatization varies from 6 months to 4 years of life, and that the pneumatization is completed by 12 to 14 years of age. This study was designed to evaluate the age-related development of the sphenoid sinus pneumatization in children using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique. MR images of the sphenoid sinus in 152 children, ages 2 months to 163 months, were retrospectively reviewed. The degree of pneumatization was classified into four grades as 0, 1, 2, and 3 in axial images, and into five grades as 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 in sagittal images. The numbers of grades were age-matched in the studied children. The pneumatized sphenoid sinus was identifiable as early as 2 months of age on axial image, and 4 months on sagittal image. Pneumatized sphenoid sinuses were identified in 100% of the subjects studied at the age of 3 years on axial image, and 6 years on sagittal image. All the children over 9 years old showed pneumatization of grade 2 or more both on axial and sagittal images. The results of this study may indicate that the sphenoid sinus begins and completes pneumatization earlier than previously described.

ABSTRACTThe inhibitory potential of sulforaphane against cancer has been suggested for different types of cancer, including ovarian cancer. We examined whether this effect is mediated by mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and reactive oxygen species (ROS), important signaling molecules related to cell survival and proliferation, in ovarian cancer cells. Sulforaphane at a concentration of 10 μM effectively inhibited the growth of cancer cells. Use of specific inhibitors revealed that activation of MAPK pathways by sulforaphane is unlikely to mediate sulforaphane-induced growth inhibition. Sulforaphane did not generate significant levels of intracellular ROS. Pretreatment with thiol reducers, but not ROS scavengers, prevented sulforaphane-induced growth inhibition. Furthermore, diamide, a thiol-oxidizing agent, enhanced both growth inhibition and cell death induced by sulforaphane, suggesting that the effect of sulforaphane on cell growth may be related to oxidation of protein thiols or change in cellular redox status. Our data indicate that supplementation with thiol-reducing agents should be avoided when sulforaphane is used to treat cancer.