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A phase-cut dimmable AC-DC buck LED driver is presented with a sine-reference band (SRB)-controlled average current technique as a new control scheme. The proposed SRB-controlled average current technique can perform both sine current control and phase dimming control. The sine current control regulates the average LED current as a sine-wave maintaining high power factor. The phase dimming control removes visible flicker at AC line frequency without an electrolytic capacitor and makes the driver compatible with two types of phase-cut dimmer. Experimental results show line regulation 0.95, and 90.7% peak efficiency.

Reed (Phragmites communis) is a potential bioenergy plant. We report on its first Agrobacterium-mediated transformation using mature seed-derived calli. The Agrobacterium strains LBA4404, EHA105, and GV3101, each harboring the binary vector pIG121Hm, were used to optimize T-DNA delivery into the reed genome. Bacterial strain, cocultivation period and acetosyringone concentration significantly influenced the T-DNA transfer. About 48% transient expression and 3.5% stable transformation were achieved when calli were infected with strain EHA105 for 10 min under 800 mbar negative pressure and cocultivated for 3 days in 200 lM acetosyringone containing medium. Putative transformants were selected in 25 mg l 1 hygromycin B. PCR, and Southern blot analysis confirmed the presence of the transgenes and their stable integration. Independent transgenic lines contained one to three copies of the transgene. Transgene expression was validated by RT-PCR and GUS staining of stems and leaves.

Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is an important cool season forage plant that is not well suited to extreme heat, salts, or heavy metals. To develop transgenic tall fescue plants with enhanced tolerance to abiotic stress, we introduced an alfalfa Hsp23 gene expression vector construct through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Integration and expression of the transgene were confirmed by polymerase chain reaction, northern blot, and western blot analyses. Under normal growth conditions, there was no significant difference in the growth of the transgenic plants and the non-transgenic controls. However, when exposed to various stresses such as salt or arsenic, transgenic plants showed a significantly lower accumulation of hydrogen peroxide and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances than control plants. The reduced accumulation of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances indicates that the transgenic plants possessed a more efficient reactive oxygen species-scavenging system. We speculate that the high levels of MsHsp23 proteins in the transgenic plants protect leaves from oxidative damage through chaperon and antioxidant activities. These results suggest that MsHsp23 confers abiotic stress tolerance in transgenic tall fescue and may be useful in developing stress tolerance in other crops.

Despite the widespread occurrence of chromium toxicity, its molecular mechanism is poorly documented in plants compared to other heavy metals. To investigate the molecular mechanisms that regulate the response of Miscanthus sinensis roots to elevated level of chromium, seedlings were grown for 4 weeks and exposed to potassium dichromate for 3 days. Physiological, biochemical and proteomic changes in roots were investigated. Lipid peroxidation and H2O2 content in roots were significantly increased. Protein profiles analyzed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis revealed that 36 protein spots were differentially expressed in chromium-treated root samples. Of these, 13 protein spots were up-regulated, 21 protein spots were down-regulated and 2 spots were newly induced. These differentially displayed proteins were identified by MALDI-TOF and MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry. The identified proteins included known heavy metal-inducible proteins such as carbohydrate and nitrogen metabolism, molecular chaperone proteins and novel proteins such as inositol monophosphatase, nitrate reductase, adenine phosphoribosyl transferase, formate dehydrogenase and a putative dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase that were not known previously as chromium-responsive. Taken together, these results suggest that Cr toxicity is linked to heavy metal tolerance and senescence pathways, and associated with altered vacuole sequestration, nitrogen metabolism and lipid peroxidation in Miscanthus roots.

In order to improve the workflow of 3D video production, this paper analyzes the visual fatigue caused from distortions in 3D video production stage through a set of subjective visual assessment tests. To establish a set of objective indicators for subjective visual tests, various distortions in production stage are investigated to be categorized into 7 representative visual-fatigue-producing factors, and to conduct visual assessment tests for each selected category, 4 test video clips are produced by combining the extent of camera movement as well as the object(s) movement in the scene. Each produced test video is distorted to reflect each of the selected 7 visual-fatigue-producing factors, and we set 7 levels of distortion for each factor, resulting in 196 5-second-long video clips for testing. Based on these test materials and the recommendation of ITU-R BT.1438, subjective visual assessment tests are conducted by 101 applicants. The test results provide a relative importance and the tolerance limit of each visual-fatigue-producing factor, which corresponds to various distortions in 3D video production field.

The cloning and characterization of a gene (MsHSP23) coding for a heat shock protein in alfalfa in a prokaryotic and model plant system is described. MsHSP23 contains a 633 bp ORF encoding a polypeptide of 213 amino acids and exhibits greater sequence similarity to mitochondrial sHSPs from dicotyledons than to those from monocotyledons. When expressed in bacteria, recombinant MsHSP23 conferred tolerance to salinity and arsenic stress. Furthermore, MsHSP23 was cloned in a plant expressing vector and transformed into tobacco, a eukaryotic model organism. The transgenic plants exhibited enhanced tolerance to salinity and arsenic stress under ex vitro conditions. In comparison to wild type plants, the transgenic plants exhibited significantly lower electrolyte leakage. Moreover, the transgenic plants had superior germination rates when placed on medium containing arsenic. Taken together, these overexpression results imply that MsHSP23 plays an important role in salinity and arsenic stress tolerance in transgenic tobacco. This approach could be useful to develop stress tolerant crops including forage crops. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10529-011-0750-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In order to achieve the ease of development and to facilitate the maintenance of codes for complex Ajax (Asynchronous Java Script and XML)-based web clients, this paper proposes a CVC (Communicator-View-Controller) architecture pattern by modifying the well-known MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework. By composing the Communicator of codes for asynchronous data retrieval, which is common to Ajax-based clients, the proposed architecture pattern is able to cut out the graphic design related codes to constitute the View layer. Based on such declarative generalization of complex web-client codes, Ajax-related codes can be easily modularized and efficiently reused in development and maintenance stages, and graphics design can be done separately regardless of the other business logic related codes development, resulting in highly efficient development and maintenance of complex Ajax-based web clients.

In order to improve forage characteristics of Italian ryegrass by genetic transformation, an efficient callus induction from mature seed and optimal plant regeneration system were established using a domestic cultivar 'Kospeed'. Addition of 5 mg/L of 2,4-D showed highest frequency of embryogenic callus induction from mature seeds. N6 medium showed higher frequency of both callus induction and plant regeneration as compared with MS and SH medium. The highest plant regeneration frequency 67% was obtained when embryogenic calli were transferred to N6 medium containing 1 mg/L 2,4-D and 5 mg/L BA. Supplementation of regeneration medium with sucrose at 30 g/L level maximized regeneration frequency as compared to the other concentrations. These data would be very helpful for molecular breeding of domestic Italian ryegrass cultivar through genetic transformation.

In order to develop an efficient, reliable and reproducible tissue culture system for reed (Phragmites communis Trinius), an efficient plant regeneration system via callus induction was established using mature seeds as explants. MS medium containing 1 mg/L 2,4-D and 0.5 mg/L BA was optimal for callus induction from mature seeds. The highest frequency (88.7%) of callus formation was obtained in 1.0 mg/L 2,4-D. The highest plant regeneration frequency (59.6%) was found when the embryogenic calli were subcultured on MS medium supplemented with 100 mg/L myo-inositol, whereas, adding of plant growth regulators was not so promising in this case. Our result would be useful for development of transgenic reed plants. (Key words : Callus, Plant regeneration, Reed, Mature seed)

Salinity together with waterlogging or flooding, a condition that occurs frequently in the field, can cause severe damage to crops. Combined flooding and salinity decreases the growth and survival of plants more than either stress alone. We report here the first proteomic analysis to investigate the global effects of saline flooding on multiple metabolic pathways. Soybean seedlings at the emergence (VE) stage were treated with 100 mM NaCl and flooded with water or 100 mM sodium chloride solution for 2 days. Proteins were extracted from hypocotyl and root samples and analyzed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by MALDI-TOF, MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry or immunoblotting. A total of 43 reproducibly resolved, differentially expressed protein spots visualized by Coomassie brilliant blue staining were identified by MALDI-TOF MS. Identities of several proteins were also validated by MS/MS analysis or immunoblot analysis. Twenty-nine proteins were upregulated, eight proteins were downregulated and six spots were newly induced. The identified proteins include well-known salt and flooding induced proteins as well as novel proteins expressed by the salinity-flooding combined stress. The comparative analysis identified changes at the proteome level that are both specific and part of a common or shared response. The identification of such differentially expressed proteins provides new targets for future studies that will allow assessment of their physiological roles and significance in the response of glycophytes to a combination of flooding and salinity.

IBDI (Internal Bit Depth Increase) is able to significantly improve the coding efficiency of high definition video compression by increasing the bit depth (or precision) of internal arithmetic operation. However the scheme also increases required internal memory for storing decoded reference frames and this can be significant for higher definition of video contents. So, the reference frame memory compression method is proposed to reduce such internal memory requirement. The reference memory compression is performed on 4x4 block called the processing unit to compress the decoded image using the correlation of nearby pixel values. This method has successively reduced the reference frame memory while preserving the coding efficiency of IBDI. However, additional information of each processing unit has to be stored also in internal memory, the amount of additional information could be a limitation of the effectiveness of memory compression scheme. To relax this limitation of previous memory compression scheme, we propose a selective merging-based reference frame memory compression algorithm, dramatically reducing the amount of additional information. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides much smaller overhead than that of the previous algorithm while keeping the coding efficiency of IBDI.

Forages are the backbone of sustainable agriculture. They includes a wide variety of plant species ranging from grasses, such as tall fescue and bermudagrass, to herbaceous legumes, such as alfalfa and white clover. Abiotic stresses, especially salinity, drought, temperature extremes, high photon irradiance, and levels of inorganic solutes, are the limiting factors in the growth and productivity of major cultivated forage crops. Given the great complexity of forage species and the associated difficulties encountered in traditional breeding methods, the potential from molecular breeding in improving forage crops has been recognized. Plant engineering strategies for abiotic stress tolerance largely rely on the gene expression for enzymes involved in pathways leading to the synthesis of functional and structural metabolites, proteins that confer stress tolerance, or proteins in signaling and regulatory pathways. Genetic engineering allows researchers to control timing, tissue-specificity, and expression level for optimal function of the introduced genes. Thus, the use of either a constitutive or stress-inducible promoter may be useful in certain cases. In this review, we summarize the recent progress made towards the development of transgenic forage plants with improved tolerance to abiotic stresses.

The evolution of display technologies makes high dynamic range/wide color gamut (HDR/WCG) media of great interest in various applications including cinema, TV, blue-ray titles, and others. However, the HDR/WCG media format for consumer electronics requires the sampling rate conversion of chroma signals, resulting in a quality problem on the luminance perception of media, even without compression. In order to reduce such luminance perception problems, this paper proposes a fast and reliable luma control scheme which takes advantage of the bounds on the best luma value derived from the solution based on truncated Taylor series. Simulations performed for an extensive comparison study demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the previous representative fast luma control schemes, resulting in almost the same quality of the iterative optimal solution with a fixed amount of computations per processing unit.

At 37th VCEG meeting in Jan. 2009, Toshiba proposed Quadtree-based Adaptive Loop Filter (QALF). The basic concept of QALF is to apply Wiener filter to decoded image after the conventional deblocking filter and to represent the filter on/off flag data for each basic filtering unit in a more efficient way of quadtree structure. QALF could enhance the compression performance of around more than 9%, but the structure of one filter for a decoded frame leaves room for further improvement in the sense that optimal filter for one region of a frame could quite different from the optimal filter for other parts of a picture. This paper proposes multiple adaptive loop filters for better utilization of local characteristics of decoded frame to optimize the region-based Wiener filters. Additional filters, proposed in this paper, cover separate spatial area of each decoded frame according to the performance of previously designed filter(s) to provide the flexibility of rate-distortion based selection of the number of filters.

요 약대부분의비디오부호화시스템은 색공간에서부호화가수행되나초고화질비디오가사용되는분야에서는 색공간YCbCr YCbCr에서부호화하는것이 색공간에서부호화는것에비해높은압축효율을제공하지않기때문에 공간에서부호화하는것RGB RGB이선호된다 비디오신호의압축부호화효율을증대시키기위하여본논문은잔여신호의적응적주파수선택가중예측기법. RGB -을제안한다 비디오신호의색평면간상관도를최대한활용하기위해제안기법은잔여신호평면사이의주파수영역에서의. RGB ,부호일치도와상관강도에근거하여적응적으로잔여신호평면간예측될주파수영역과그에상응하는예측가중치를선택한다실.험결과는최신의비디오압축표준인 에서 비디오부호화의공통모드에비해약 정도압축부호화성능을개H.264/AVC 4:4:4 13%선시켰음을보여준다.AbstractMostvideocodingsystemsuseYCbCrcolorspacefortheirinputs,butRGBspaceismorepreferredinthefieldofhighfidelityvideobecause the compression gain from YCbCr becomes disappeared in the high quality operation region. In order to improve the codingperformance of RGB video signal, this paper presents an adaptive frequency-selective weighted prediction algorithm. Based on the signagreementandthestrengthoffrequency-domaincorrelationofresidualcolorplanes,theproposedschemeadaptivelyselectsthefrequencyelementsaswellasthecorrespondingpredictionweightsforbetterutilizationofinter-planecorrelationofRGBsignal.Experimentalresultsshowedthattheproposedalgorithmimprovesthecodinggainofaround13%bitratereduction,onaverage,comparedtothecommonmodeof4:4:4videocodinginthestate-of-the-artvideocompressionstandard,H.264/AVC.Keyword : RGB video coding, Residual color space transform, selective prediction scheme

Time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) characteristics of La2O3-doped high-k dielectric in Hf-based high-k/TaN metal gate stack were studied. Unlike the abrupt breakdown in the conventional SiO2 , dielectric breakdown behaviors of La-incorporated HfON and HfSiON dielectrics show progressive breakdown characteristics. Moreover, the extracted Weibull slope beta of breakdown distribution is in the range of 0.87-1.19, and it is independent on capacitor areas and stress conditions. Moreover, field dependence of TBD and stress-induced leakage current strongly suggest that the E-model is more applicable to explain in TDDB of La-incorporated high-k dielectric in Hf-based high-k/metal gate stack structure.

Although the adaptive deblocking filter of H.264/AVC efficiently reduces blocking artifacts for most images, it is limited in removing the blocking artifacts of the directional edge on the block boundaries. In order to solve this problem, we propose a directional deblocking filter based on intra prediction direction. The proposed algorithm performs directional filtering according to the direction of the intra prediction mode in order to correctly find the block edge while avoiding computational burden. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides subjective improvements at the directional edge and PSNR gain of up to 0.13dB.

We evaluated major cytogenetic abnormalities associated with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) through both fluorescent in situ hybridization and conventional chromosomal analysis for 132 ALL patients diagnosed at St Mary's Hospital in Korea. Chromosome abnormalities have been detected in 92% of patients. Eighteen (14%) patients showed numerical abnormalities only, 50 (38%) patients showed structural abnormalities only, and 53 (40%) patients showed both. The simultaneous trisomies 4, 10 and 17 were observed in 23 (17%) patients. Of the patients with abnormal karyotypes, recurrent structural abnormalities were determined in 103 (78%) cases. t(12;21)(q13;q22) was found in 29 (22%) out of 132 patients, 9p abnormalities in 13 (10%) patients, t(1;19)(q23;p13.3) in 11 (8%) patients, t(9;22)(q34;q11.2) in 11 (8%) patients, and 11q23 abnormalities in 7 (5%) patients. Interestingly, we identified five uncommon translocations such as t(5;12) (q33;p13), t(14;19)(q32;q13.1), t(12;16)(p13;q13), der(1)t(1;12)(p32;p13), and t(5;15)(p15;q11.2). Our study pool is representative of pediatric ALL patients in Korea as it consists of about 20% of patients diagnosed annually in Korea. We believe that the data provided will aid in comparative studies of the treatment outcomes, as well as the type and incidence of chromosomal abnormalities associated with childhood ALL in various Asian nations and Western countries.

In this paper, we investigated the device performance and negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) degradation for thermally nitrided oxide (TNO) and plasma nitrided oxide (PNO) in nanoscale p-channel metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (PMOSFET). PNOs show the improvement of dielectric performance compared to TNO with no change of the device performance. PNOs also show the improvement of NBTI immunity than TNO at low temperature stress, whereas NBTI immunity of PNO with high N concentration can be worse than TNO at high temperature stress. Recovery effect of NBTI degradation of PNO is lower than that of TNO and it is increased as the N concentration is increased in PNO because the dissociated Si dangling bonds and generated positive oxide charges are repassivated and neutralized, respectively. Moreover, complete recovery of ΔVth is dominated by neutralization of positive oxide charges. Therefore, N contents at polycrystalline Si/SiO2 interface as well as N contents at Si/SiO2 interface can affect significantly on NBTI degradation and recovery effect.

The error resilient entropy coding (EREC) provides efficient resynchronization method to the coded bitstream, which might be corrupted by transmission errors. The technique has been given more prominence, nowadays, because it achieves fast resynchronization without sizable overhead, and thereby provides graceful quality degradation according to the network conditions. This paper presents a novel framework to analyze the performance of EREC in terms of the error probability in decoding a basic resynchronization unit (RU) for various error prone networks. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed framework, this paper also proposes a novel EREC algorithm based on the slightly modified H.263 bitstream syntax. The proposed scheme minimizes the effect of errors on low frequency DCT coefficients and incorporates near optimal channel-matched searching pattern (SP), which guarantees the best possible quality of reproduced video. Given the number of bits generated for each RU, the near optimal SP is produced by the proposed iterative deterministic partial SP update method, which reduces the complexity of finding optimal solution, O((N - 1)!), to O(m . N 2 ). The proposed EREC algorithm significantly improves the decoded video quality, especially when the bit error rate is in the rage of 10 -3 -10 -4 . Up to 5 dB enhancement of the PSNR value was observed in a single video frame.

In this paper, novel Ni germanosilicide technology using NiPt alloy and Co overlayer has been proposed. Using the Co overlayer after NiPt deposition on Si1-xGex, the formation temperature of low resistive Ni germanosilicide is lowered with high thermal stability. The thermal stability of Ni germanosilicide with different Ge fraction in is also characterized. The sheet resistance degrades as increasing the Ge fraction (x) in Si1-xGex when NiPt/TiN is used. However, using the Co overlayer, the sheet resistance property among Ni germanosilicide formed with different Ge fraction is improved greatly compared with those of NiPt/TiN case (without Co overlayer). Therefore, low-temperature formation of highly thermal robust Ni germanosilicide can be achieved through the NiPt/Co/TiN tri-layer.

In this paper, thermally stable Ni-germanosilicide technology utilizing Ni-Pd alloy and Co/TiN capping layer (Ni-Pd/Co/TiN tri-layer) is proposed for high performance strained-Si CMOS technology. The proposed Ni-germanosilicide technology exhibits low temperature silicidation with a wide temperature window for rapid thermal process (RTP). Moreover, sheet resistance shows stable characteristics in spite of the high temperature postsilicidation annealing up to 700 for 30 min. In addition, the surface of Ni-Pd/Co/TiN structure is much smoother than that of Ni/Co/TiN structure for both before and after the postsilicidation annealing. Therefore, the Ni-germanosilicide using the Ni-Pd/Co/TiN tri-layer is highly promising for future SiGe based nanoscale CMOS technology.

EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy has achieved favorable clinical outcomes in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutations. However, patients eventually develop resistance to EGFR-TKIs by several mechanisms. Adenine nucleotide translocase-2 (ANT2) is an oncogenic mitochondrial membrane–associated protein. We investigated the therapeutic potential of ANT2 inhibition to EGFR-TKI resistance in NSCLC using gefitinib-sensitive (PC9 and HCC827) and gefitinib-resistant (H1975 and HCC827/GR) NSCLC cell lines. ANT2 was inhibited by transfecting cells with an ANT2-specific shRNA. ANT2 expression was elevated in the H1975 and HCC827/GR cells compared with the PC9 and HCC827 cells. ANT2 upregulation in gefitinib-resistant cells was associated with increased SP1 binding to the ANT2 promoter. ANT2-specific shRNA decreased NSCLC cell viability. Moreover, ANT2-specific shRNA sensitized the H1975 and HCC827/GR cells to gefitinib, accompanied by HSP90 and EGFR downregulation. ANT2-specific shRNA also inactivated the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in the H1975 and HCC827/GR cells, which was mediated by the suppression of miR-221/222 levels and by the subsequent restoration of PTEN. In EGFR-TKI–treated NSCLC patients, ANT2 expression was higher in patients exhibiting poor responses compared with patients showing excellent responses. Furthermore, ANT2 expression increased in tumor tissues biopsied after acquiring gefitinib resistance compared with tissues before gefitinib treatment. These findings suggest that ANT2 overexpression contributes to EGFR-TKI resistance in NSCLC and that ANT2 targeting may be considered a novel strategy for overcoming this resistance. Mol Cancer Ther; 15(6); 1387–96. ©2016 AACR.

Total hip arthroplasties with hydroxyapatite coatings have shown encouraging results after early-term followup. We presumed hydroxyapatite-coating on a smooth hemispheric press-fit acetabular cup would enhance bone osseointegration and maintain stability of cup after midterm (minimum 5-year) followup. Sixty-three patients had 70 consecutive total hip arthroplasties. Five patients (eight hips) died from problems unrelated to surgery. The remaining patients (62 hips) were followed up for an average of 7 years (range, 6-9 years). The mean age of the patients was 49 years (range, 23-61 years). The average Harris hip score improved from 59 points (range, 32-82 points to 82 points (range, 37-100 points) at final followup. There were seven acetabular component revisions. Of the 55 unrevised cups, 47 hips (85%) were stable by bony ingrowth, five hips (9%) were fibrous stable, and three hips (5%) were unstable with cup migration. Osteolysis around the cup was observed in 18 hips (33%). The average polyethylene wear rate was 0.15 mm/year. Survival rates of the cups at 6 and 8 years were 94.3% and 60.5%, respectively. Total hip arthroplasties using an hydroxyapatite-coated smooth hemispheric acetabular cup showed an unexpected high failure rate in terms of fixation, occurrence of osteolysis, and revision after midterm followup.Therapeutic study, Level IV (case series). See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Unstable intertrochanteric fractures in elderly patients are associated with a high rate of complications. The purpose of this investigation was to compare the results of long-stem cementless calcar-replacement hemiarthroplasty with those of treatment with a proximal femoral nail for unstable intertrochanteric fractures in elderly patients.Fifty-eight elderly patients with an AO/OTA type 31-A2 intertrochanteric fracture of the femur were randomized into two treatment groups and were followed for a minimum of two years. The twenty-nine patients in Group I were treated with a long-stem cementless calcar-replacement prosthesis, and the twenty-nine patients in Group II were treated with a proximal femoral nail. The two treatment groups were comparable with regard to demographic and injury variables.There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of functional outcomes, hospital stay, time to weight-bearing, or general complications. Patients treated with a proximal femoral nail had a shorter operative time, less blood loss, fewer units of blood transfused, a lower mortality rate, and lower hospital costs compared with those treated with the long-stem cementless calcar-replacement prosthesis.In elderly patients with an unstable intertrochanteric femoral fracture, a proximal femoral nail provides superior clinical outcomes but no advantage with regard to functional outcome when compared with a long-stem cementless calcar-replacement arthroplasty.Therapeutic Level I.

We reviewed 164 consecutive cases (158 patients) of arthroscopic examinations for lateral meniscal variants during the last 10 years. We classified lateral meniscal variants into four types by arthroscopic appearance, into six tear patterns by modifying O'Connor's classification, and compared magnetic resonance images (MRI) with arthroscopic findings. Regarding the four types, 131 cases were complete, 25 cases were incomplete, 4 cases were Wrisberg, and 4 cases were ring-shaped meniscus. The six tear patterns were as follows: 33 simple horizontal, 21 combined horizontal, 37 longitudinal, 27 central, 14 complex, and 12 radial tear. Among the 31 knees with a central tear or ring-shaped meniscus, we reviewed 25 MR images. Fifteen (60%) MRI findings were interpreted to represent a bucket-handle (displaced) tear of the normal C-shaped meniscus; 7(28%) MRI findings, a discoid meniscal tear; and the remaining 3(12%) MRI findings, a simple meniscal tear. Moreover, all ring-shaped menisci were interpreted as a displaced lateral meniscal tear on the MRI findings. Twelve patients (13 knees, 7.9%) had osteochondritis dissecans: Nine patients (10 knees) of them had a central tear, two patients (2 knees) of them had a simple horizontal tear of the discoid meniscus, and one patient (1 knee) had a ring-shaped meniscus. Twenty three patients (92.6%) with a central tear of the discoid meniscus did not have any traumatic events. For the differential diagnosis of a central tear or a ring-shaped meniscus from a bucket-handle tear of the normal C-shaped meniscus, we should take a careful history, in particular any traumatic events, we should also consider the possibility of misinterpreting the MR images though these images can provide additional information about associated abnormalities and probe carefully in the arthroscopic operations.

There have only been a few reports regarding the long-term results of uncemented THAs in patients with osteonecrosis.We evaluated the long-term results of 65 consecutive uncemented total hip arthroplasties (Harris-Galante type I prostheses) in 54 men (59 hips) and 5 women (6 hips) with osteonecrosis of the femoral head. The mean age was 53 (33-64) years. The mean duration of follow-up was 12.5 (10-16) years.9 femoral stems and 3 acetabular metal shells were revised. 2 polyethylene liners were changed due to excessive wear. A girdlestone procedure was done in 2 patients (2 hips) due to delayed deep infection. The mean polyethylene wear was 0.14 mm per year. 3 non-revised hips had pelvic osteolysis and 18 had femoral osteolysis. The 15-year survival rates, using failure defined as the removal of any component for any reason, were 85 (95% CI; 79-91)% for the acetabular and 80 (74-86)% for the femoral component and 70 (63-77)% for any of the components.The first generation of the HGP design was frequently associated with pain, unstable fixation, and osteolysis. Excessive wear was frequent. The cup showed better durability than the stem.

In this paper, novel methods for improvement of thermal stability of Ni-germano Silicide were proposed for nano CMOS applications. It was shown that there happened agglomeration and abnormal oxidation in case of Ni-germano Silicide using Ni only structure. Therefore, 4 kinds of tri-layer structure, such as, Ti/Ni/TiN, Ni/Ti/TiN, Co/Ni/TiN and Ni/Co/TiN were proposed utilizing Co and Ti interlayer to improve thermal stability of Ni-germano Silicide. Ti/Ni/TiN structure showed the best improvement of thermal stability and suppression of abnormal oxidation although all kinds of structures showed improvement of sheet resistance. That is, Ti/Ni/TiN structure showed only 11 ohm/sq. in spite of 600 , 30 min post silicidation annealing while Ni-only structure show 42 ohm/sq. Therefore, Ti/Ni/TiN structure is highly promising for nano-scale CMOS technology.

Synovial chondromatosis is a, relativly rare disease, moreover the shoulder joint is very rarely affected. The authors report two cases of synovial chondromatosis of the glenohuneral Joint and biceps tendon sheath that were managed by arthrclscopic loose body removal and partial synovectomy. Excellent subjective and objective results were obtained.

Mean-shift tracking has gained more interests, nowadays, aided by its feasibility of real-time and reliable tracker implementation. In order to reduce background clutter interference to mean-shift object tracking, this paper proposes a novel indicator function generation method. The proposed method takes advantage of two ‘a priori’ knowledge elements, which are inherent to a kernel support for initializing a target model. Based on the assured background labels, a gradient-based label propagation is performed, resulting in a number of objects differentiated from the background. Then the proposed region growing scheme picks up one largest target object near the center of the kernel support. The grown object region constitutes the proposed indicator function and this allows an exact target model construction for robust mean-shift tracking. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed exact target model could significantly enhance the robustness as well as the accuracy of mean-shift object tracking.

Experimental Studies of a 1 Ton/Day coal slurry feed type oxygen blown, entrained flow gasifier have been performed with the slurry concentration and gasifier temperature at 65% and above 1,300 ‡C, respectively. The characteristics of ash fusion temperature with addition of CaO as a flux were investigated to maintain the proper slag tapping condition in the range of reaction temperature. As the flux addition increased, ash fusion temperature showed a eutectic effect with the eutectic at around 20–30% CaO. In order to analyze the gasification characteristics, the effects of O2/coal feed ratio on the product gas composition, heating value, gasifier temperature and cold gas efficiency were evaluated. From the results, it was shown in the case of Kideco coal that the cold gas efficiency was 44–60% and the heating value was 1,700-2,200 kcal/Nm3, while Drayton coal showed a cold gas efficiency of 55–62% and a heating value of 1,800-2,200 kcal/Nm3. In the case of Datong coal, the cold gas efficiency was 38–65%, and the heating value was 2,000-2,300 kcal/Nm3. Also, the results showed that the optimal operating condition of O2/coal ratio for the three different coals was 0.9.

In this letter, hydrogen plasma immersion ion implantation (H PIII) with Ni-Co-TiN tri-layer is introduced for the first time to enhance the thermal stability of the Ni-silicide for nanoscale CMOS technology. The Ni-silicided poly-Si gate and source/drain showed stable sheet resistance in spite of 650/spl deg/C, 30 min post-silicidation annealing. The junction leakage current is even improved a lot without degradation of device performance using the proposed method.

This Paper presents an SVM (Support Vector Machine) based real-time pedestrian detection scheme for next-generation automotive vision applications. To meet the requirement of real-time detection with high accuracy, we designed the proposed system consisting of 2-stage hierarchical SVMs. In the proposed system, most of the input data are classified by the 1st stage linear SVM and only the inputs between positive and negative hyper-plane of the linear SVM are transferred to the 2nd stage non-linear SVM. This hierarchical 2-stage classifier can be suited for various systems via controlling the amount of data processed by the 2nd stage classifier, which trades off the detection accuracy and the required system resources. To make the proposed 2nd stage non-linear SVM further appropriate for various systems, a hyper-plane approximation technique by sample pruning has been adopted. By reducing the number of required SVs (Support Vectors) using this technique and controlling the amount of data processed via the 2nd stage classifier, high precision non-linear SVM can be employed in the proposed real-time pedestrian detection system. Simulations using HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradient) features and Daimler pedestrian dataset show the proposed system provides highly accurate classification results under the real-time constraint of application.

The recursive quad-tree structure of Coding Unit (CU) in HEVC can improve coding efficiency while the encoding complexity is increased significantly. In this paper, a fast CU size decision algorithm to reduce the complexity of HEVC intra coding is proposed. It introduces the early termination method based on the statistics of rate-distortion costs in CU splitting process. Experimental results show the encoding time can be reduced by 24% on average without significant loss of BD-rate.

The goal of the paper is to present an efficient way for providing satellite UHD broadcasting services via Ka frequency band and, for the purpose, to develop a service adaptation and stabilization technology which is adaptive to the channel conditions including rain attenuation.

Depth image-based rendering (DIBR) requires to efficiently fill out holes in rendered image, and this has a great impact on the quality of 3D depth perception. In this paper, we propose a hole-filling method using depth estimation and image inpainting for high quality 3D video. In this algorithm, we first generate rendered image and its associated depth map. Then, we estimate the depths in generated depth map's hole. Using these values, we fill out the hole with depth-aided image inpainting based on the sparsity of hole. This method enables the inpainting to refer similar background texture. The proposed algorithm also fills out the patches of hole based on an edge-preserving priority, so that background edges of the image texture can be reconstructed faithfully. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides better objective and subjective quality than previous works.

Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is an important cool season forage plant that is not well suited to extreme heat, salts, or heavy metals. To develop transgenic tall fescue plants with enhanced tolerance to abiotic stress, we introduced an alfalfa Hsp23 gene expression vector construct through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Integration and expression of the transgene were confirmed by polymerase chain reaction, northern blot, and western blot analyses. Under normal growth conditions, there was no significant difference in the growth of the transgenic plants and the non-transgenic controls. However, when exposed to various stresses such as salt or arsenic, transgenic plants showed a significantly lower accumulation of hydrogen peroxide and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances than control plants. The reduced accumulation of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances indicates that the transgenic plants possessed a more efficient reactive oxygen species-scavenging system. We speculate that the high levels of MsHsp23 proteins in the transgenic plants protect leaves from oxidative damage through chaperon and antioxidant activities. These results suggest that MsHsp23 confers abiotic stress tolerance in transgenic tall fescue and may be useful in developing stress tolerance in other crops.

Small heat shock proteins are involved in stress tolerance. We previously isolated and characterized a rice cDNA clone, Oshsp26, encoding a chloroplast-localized small heat shock protein that is expressed following oxidative or heat stress. In this study, we transferred this gene to tall fescue plants by an Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system. The integration and expression of the transgene was confirmed by PCR, Southern, northern, and immunoblot analyzes. Compared to the control plants, the transgenic plants had significantly lower electrolyte leakage and accumulation of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances when exposed to heat or methyl viologen. The photochemical efficiency of photosystem II (PSII) (Fv/Fm) in the transgenic tall fescue plants was higher than that in the control plants during heat stress (42°C). These results suggest that the OsHSP26 protein plays an important role in the protection of PSII during heat and oxidative stress in vivo.

Generation of object-boundary-matched accurate depth map is important to semi-automatic 2D to 3D conversion for high quality perception of converted 3D video. In this paper, we propose an accurate depth map generation scheme using an MRF-based initial contour tracking followed by a robust graph-cut-based contour refinement. To limit the propagation of potential tracking errors, key-frames as well as current and previous video frames are considered together in composing the graph cut seeds of the proposed contour refinement. In addition, the proposed scheme checks the ambiguity of seeds in foreground and background to eliminate the seeds, which may cause confusion in graph-cut segmentation, and thereby further improves the accuracy of contour tracking. Experiment results demonstrate the proposed scheme is especially useful when there is complex background or deformation of object, indicating the power of the proposed scheme in object-boundary-matched accurate depth map generation.

We compared an automated quantitative heart-type fatty acid–binding protein (H-FABP) assay with other cardiac-marker assays to examine its usefulness as an early diagnostic marker of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Serum samples for cardiac troponin T (cTnT), creatine kinase-MB isozyme (CK-MB), myoglobin, and H-FABP were obtained from 64 patients with AMI and 53 patients with other conditions (control group). H-FABP was measured by using 2 immunoassays, the H-FABP enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA; Biocheck, Foster City, CA) and the H-FABP latex turbidimetric immunoassay (LTIA; HBI, Anyang, Korea). Sensitivities of assays for cTnT, CK-MB, myoglobin, H-FABP (by ELISA), H-FABP (by LTIA), and electrocardiogram (ECG) for the diagnosis of AMI at hospital admission were 39.1%, 59.4%, 64.1%, 68.7%, 70.3%, and 54.7%, respectively. Specificities of cTnT, CK-MB, myoglobin, H-FABP (by ELISA), H-FABP (by LTIA), and ECG were 98.1%, 71.7%, 81.1%, 77.4%, 90.6%, and 92.5%, respectively. The automated H-FABP (by LTIA) is superior to cTnT, CK-MB, myoglobin, and H-FABP (by ELISA) tests for the diagnosis of AMI in patients admitted within 4 hours from the onset of chest pain.

The conventional embedded wavelet image coder exploiting the adjacent neighbors is limited to efficiently compress the sign coefficients, since the wavelet coefficients are highly correlated along the dominant image features, such as edges or contours. To solve the problem, in this paper, we propose the direction-adaptive sign context modeling by adaptively exploiting the neighbors suitable to the dominant image features. Experimental results show that the sign coding based on the proposed context modeling reduces the sign bits up to 5.5% compared to the conventional sign coding method.

This paper proposes a novel scheme to significantly reduce mode decision time by predicting optimal mode candidates. Unlike previous fast mode decision algorithms computing RDcost in a pre-defined mode order, the proposed scheme predicts optimal mode candidates and calculates their RDcosts first, increasing the possibility to satisfy early-exit conditions sooner, resulting in fast mode decision. This H.264 mode decision time reduction enables small computing power mobile devices to handle H.264 encoding effectively. Extensive simulations show that, when compared with JM11.0, the proposed scheme boosts H.264 encoding speed by up to 322% with a reasonable image quality degradation.

This paper proposes a novel scheme to significantly reduce mode decision time by predicting optimal mode candidates. Unlike previous fast mode decision algorithms computing RDcost in a pre-defined mode order, the proposed scheme predicts optimal mode candidates and calculates their RDcosts first, increasing the possibility to satisfy early-exit conditions sooner, resulting in fast mode decision. This H.264 mode decision time reduction enables small computing power mobile devices to handle H.264 encoding effectively. Extensive simulations show that, when compared with JM10.2 and AMD, the proposed scheme boosts H.264 encoding speed by up to 575% with a reasonable image quality degradation.