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Escherichia coli , the most studied prokaryote, is an excellent host for producing valuable chemicals from renewable resources as it is easy to manipulate genetically. Since the periplasmic environment can be easily controlled externally, elucidating how the localization of specific proteins or small molecules in the periplasm affects metabolism may lead to bioproduction development using E. coli. We investigated metabolic changes and its mechanisms occurring when specific proteins are localized to the E. coli periplasm. We found that the periplasmic localization of β-glucosidase promoted the shikimate pathway involved in the synthesis of aromatic chemicals. The periplasmic localization of other proteins with an affinity for glucose-6-phosphate (G6P), such as inactivated mutants of Pgi, Zwf, and PhoA, similarly accelerated the shikimate pathway. Our results indicate that G6P is transported from the cytoplasm to the periplasm by the glucose transporter protein EIICBGlc, and then captured by β-glucosidase. • Periplasmic expression of β-glucosidase (BGL) increases L-Phe production in E. coli. • Two key factors involved in this phenomenon, G6P and EIICGlc domain, were defined. • Cytoplasmic G6P is secreted into the periplasm via EIICGlc domain and captured by BGL. • Periplasmic expression of other G6P-capturing proteins also increase L-Phe production. • This technique can be applied to produce other shikimate pathway derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A computational system based on mobile devices that allows to create delinquency indicators in a cartographic map is proposed. With this system, the end user will be capable of identifying, assimilating and avoiding delinquency, as well as collaborating with its reduction and eradication. The work is motivated by the notorious increment of the insecurity perception of the citizens of Mexico City, as stated on the Mexico peace index report of 2017. As a result of the study, models of maps with geo-referenced incidents are provided. Also, it makes use of geo-location and mobile positioning, with the objective of contributing to the surveillance of delinquency, detecting earlier the undesirable events and serve as basis for decision making in terms of security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An environmentally sustainable world can be realized by using microorganisms to produce value-added materials from renewable biomass. Triacetic acid lactone (TAL) is a high-value-added compound that is used as a precursor of various organic compounds such as food additives and pharmaceuticals. In this study, we used metabolic engineering to produce TAL from glucose using an oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica. We first introduced TAL-producing gene 2-pyrone synthase into Y. lipolytica , which enabled TAL production. Next, we increased TAL production by engineering acetyl-CoA and malonyl-CoA biosynthesis pathways by redirecting carbon flux to glycolysis. Finally, we optimized the carbon and nitrogen ratios in the medium, culminating in the production of 4078 mg/L TAL. The strategy presented in this study had the potential to improve the titer and yield of polyketide biosynthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug metabolism and transport processes in the liver, intestine and kidney that affect the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of therapeutic agents have been studied extensively. In contrast, comparatively little research has been conducted on these topics as they pertain to the eye. Recently, however, catalytic functions of ocular cytochrome P450 enzymes have gained increasing attention, in large part due to the roles of CYP1B1 and CYP4V2 variants in primary congenital glaucoma and Bietti's corneoretinal crystalline dystrophy, respectively. In this review, we discuss challenges to ophthalmic drug delivery, including Phase I drug metabolism and transport in the eye, and the role of three specific P450s, CYP4B1, CYP1B1 and CYP4V2 in ocular inflammation and genetically determined ocular disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A description and comparison of three visual extended cryptography algorithms is presented. Currently these methods are often used as a basis for developing more complex schemes. Results related to overlapping shades, pixel expansion, quality of images and shades, and the number of coded images are obtained. In conventional visual cryptography a secret image is encrypted into a set of images that look like random-noise and are distributed to each participant of the scheme. To obtain the secret image the images received must be super-imposed. .In the extended visual cryptography the shades are visually recognizable images. It is concluded that the three methods present particular advantages depending on the application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a review for threshold-based visual cryptography (VC), a visual representation of the secret sharing scheme is presented. The VC has potential applications in the electronic banking system, as well as in personal identification systems. En la VC a binary image such as letters, logotypes or halftone images are shared among a group of participants using a set of images, so called shares. Until now several VC schemes, such as threshold-based VC, the general access VC and the extended VC, have been proposed. The conditions that must be satisfied for a correct recovery of the secret message, as well as the most relevant security issues of this scheme are also analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A novel telomerase-associated protein was isolated from porcine testis. The 115-kDa protein, purified with telomerase activity, was molecular cloned using human cDNA library, and identified as MOV10. The expression levels of both MOV10 mRNA and MOV10 protein in cancer cells were 2–3 times higher than that of the normal cells, and MOV10 mRNA was highly expressed in human testis and ovary. The anti-MOV10 antibody precipitated the telomerase activity from cancer cell extracts, and inhibited the telomerase activity in vitro. Sf9-expressed MOV10 protein bound to G-rich strand of both single- and double-stranded telomere-sequenced DNA, but not to single C-rich strand. ChIP assay showed the binding of MOV10 to telomere region in vivo. These data suggest that MOV10 is involved in the progression of telomerase-catalyzing reaction via the interaction of telomerase protein and telomere DNA. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A video watermarking algorithm, in which watermark embedding and detection process are carried out during the MPEG-2 coding process is proposed. The watermark signal is embedded in the DCT coefficients of blue channel of I-frames and P-frames. The embedding energy is computed adaptively using perceptual information of the I-frames and the P-frames, and motion vectors information in the P-frame. Computer simulation results show the watermark imperceptibility, obtaining a PSNR greater than 45 dB and maintaining its robustness to common signal distortions such as contamination by noise, cropping, frame dropping, frame swapping and frame averaging, among others. The proposed algorithm has very little influence on the MPEG decoding speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the life history traits of an amphidiploid species,Drosera tokaiensis(Komiya&C. Shibata) T. Nakamura&Ueda, with those of the parental species, a diploidDrosera rotundifoliaL and a tetraploidDrosera spatulataLabill. to characterize them and clarify the conditions for coexistence. The ranges of the parental species are quite different, but overlap in Japan. The amphidiploid and the parents grow together in some natural habitats. Observations and experiments on reproductive properties were carried out in a glasshouse and a laboratory. Seeds ofD. rotundifoliawere dormant, whereas those ofD. spatulatawere not. InD. tokaiensis, the dormant/non-dormant seed ratio varied from site to site.Drosera rotundifoliahas such life history traits as concentrated flowering and seed dormancy, which are relevant to habitats with short growing seasons and a severe winter.Drosera spatulatahas such traits as a prolonged duration of flowering and non-dormancy, relevant to habitats with long growing seasons and a mild winter.Drosera tokaiensispossesses life history traits of the parental species to various degrees, but exhibits no extreme traits. It is suggested that separation of flowering time and autogamy allow the amphidiploid to coexist with the parental species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces the application of temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE)-selections to DNA secondary structure motifs. Design and optimization of the DNA tetraloop library; Selection of stable DNA tetraloops; Identification of stable DNA hairpins; Thermodynamic characterization of minihairpins; Circular dichroism spectroscopic characterization of the minihairpins.

Measures the thermodynamics of RNA/DNA duplexes containing single mismatches. Enhancement of the stability of mismatches; Order for the mismatch stabilities; Hydrogen ion concentration dependence stability and structural changes in rA.dG mismatches.

Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika viruses cause dangerous infections in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world. The World Health Organization estimates that one out of every three persons in the entire human population is in danger of contracting one of these diseases from a single mosquito bite. Currently, these viral infections are not preventable by vaccines and there is not a direct treatment that can effectively diminish the viral infection, which causes a wide range of pathologies, including severe joint pain, internal blood loss, permanent neurological damage in unborn children and even death. Due to this grim scenario, the best and maybe the only line of defense against these diseases is the effective surveillance, control and suppression of the mosquitoes that transmit these viruses: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. In this paper, we present a complete solution that is capable of identifying the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquito in the larval stage, which is easily disposable, restricted to water bodies, and incapable of transmitting diseases according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Our proposal is based on deep neural networks (DNN) that effectively recognize larval samples with an accuracy of 94.19%, which is better than other state-of-the-art automatic methods. Additionally, the capabilities of our proposed DNN allow us to automatically crop the region of interest (ROI) with an accuracy of 92.85% and then automatically classify the region as Aedes positive or Aedes negative, without further human intervention and in less than a second, accelerating the response time for biological control from days to seconds. Our proposal includes hardware designs that allow inexpensive implementation, making it suitable for isolated communities, underdeveloped countries, and rural or urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is proposed to apply the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the compressive sampling (CS) techniques to audio signal compression. Using spectral analysis and the properties of the DCT, audio signals can be treated as sparse signals in the frequency domain. This is especially true for sounds representing tones. Thus, it is proposed using the DCT as a preprocessor to obtain a sparse representation in the frequency domain, combined with CS to obtain an efficient representation of the signals. It is shown that the subsequent application of CS represents the signals with less information than the well-known sampling theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of smoke is the first symptom of fire; therefore to achieve early fire detection, accurate and quick estimation of the presence of smoke is very important. In this paper we propose an algorithm to detect the presence of smoke using video sequences captured by Internet Protocol (IP) cameras, in which important features of smoke, such as color, motion and growth properties are employed. For an efficient smoke detection in the IP camera platform, a detection algorithm must operate directly in the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain to reduce computational cost, avoiding a complete decoding process required for algorithms that operate in spatial domain. In the proposed algorithm the DCT Inter-transformation technique is used to increase the detection accuracy without inverse DCT operation. In the proposed scheme, firstly the candidate smoke regions are estimated using motion and color smoke properties; next using morphological operations the noise is reduced. Finally the growth properties of the candidate smoke regions are furthermore analyzed through time using the connected component labeling technique. Evaluation results show that a feasible smoke detection method with false negative and false positive error rates approximately equal to 4% and 2%, respectively, is obtained [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Bone marrow-derived endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play an important role in angiogenesis and tumor growth. However, the clinical relevance of EPCs in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unclear. Recently, some reports suggested that EPCs correlate with clinical behavior of cancer patients. We assessed the hypothesis that EPCs correlate with efficient of therapy, prognosis, and clinicopathological factors, and EPCs may offer a possible biomarker for treatment outcome in NSCLC. Methods: EPCs labeled with CD34, CD133, and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR-2) antibodies were counted by flow cytometry in the peripheral blood of 31 NSCLC patients. We categorized two groups of NSCLC patients according to circulating EPC numbers. We examined age, pathological stage, histological type, Fluoro- d-glucose Positron emission tomography (FDG-PET ), response to therapy, progression-free survival, and tumor size of NSCLC patients and investigated whether these factors correlate with EPC counts. Results: Circulating EPC numbers before antitumor therapy were increased in NSCLC patients compared with healthy controls ( P < 0.05). In NSCLC patients, therapy was significantly effective in low circulating EPC group compared with that of high ( P < 0.05). Furthermore, the low EPC group showed significantly longer progression-free survival times than that of high ( P < 0.05). However, no significant associations with age, gender, histological type, pathological stage, or FDG-PET were detected. Conclusion: Peripheral blood levels of bone marrow-derived EPCs are significantly increased in patients with NSCLC and correlate with response to chemotherapy. EPCs may offer a possible biomarker for efficient of treatment and prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The DNA chip that immobilizes DNA oligonucleotides on a solid plate surface is used for many diagnostic applications. For maximizing the detection sensitivity and accuracy, it is important to control the DNA density on a chip surface and establish a convenient method for optimizing the density. Here, the binding of DNA mismatch-binding protein MutS to the DNA substrate on the chip was investigated, which can be applied for high-throughput single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis in a genome. We prepared the DNA chips where the DNA substrate density was changed simply by using a mixed DNA solution. The binding of MutS was significantly influenced by the amount of DNA substrate on the chip as a consequence of steric crowding, and the moderate density that gave the distance between the DNA substrates greater than the size of the protein was appropriate to obtain accurate kinetic parameters. The substrate density-controlled DNA chip prepared using the mixed DNA solution has distinctive advantages for maximizing the detection capability and kinetic analysis of the binding of MutS and probably also other large proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uterine artery embolization (UAE) is a type of noninvasive treatment for symptomatic uterine fibroids. One of the complications of UAE is fibroid expulsion. Here, we report a case of a 45-year-old woman who underwent UAE for an intramural fibroid, which resulted in fibroid expulsion. To the best of our knowledge, there are only few reports of expulsion of intramural fibroids. The process of fibroid protrusion from the myometrium into the uterine cavity was depicted on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in this case. We discuss the risk factors and mechanisms of fibroid expulsion after UAE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spiking neural P (SN P) systems, neurons are interconnected by means of synapses, and they use spikes to communicate with each other. However, in biology, the complex structure of dendritic tree is also an important part in the communication scheme between neurons since these structures are linked to advanced neural process such as learning and memory formation. In this work, we present a new variant of the SN P systems inspired by diverse dendrite and axon phenomena such as dendritic feedback, dendritic trunk, dendritic delays and axonal delays, respectively. This new variant is referred to as a spiking neural P system with dendritic and axonal computation (DACSN P system). Specifically, we include experimentally proven biological features in the current SN P systems to reduce the computational complexity of the soma by providing it with stable firing patterns through dendritic delays, dendritic feedback and axonal delays. As a consequence, the proposed DACSN P systems use the minimum number of synapses and neurons with simple and homogeneous standard spiking rules. Here, we study the computational capabilities of a DACSN P system. In particular, we prove that DACSN P systems with dendritic and axonal behavior are universal as both number-accepting/generating devices. In addition, we constructed a small universal SN P system using 39 neurons with standard spiking rules to compute any Turing computable function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a teleophthalmology support system in which we use algorithms of object detection and semantic segmentation, such as faster region-based CNN (FR-CNN) and SegNet, based on several CNN architectures such as: Vgg16, MobileNet, AlexNet, etc. These are used to segment and analyze the principal anatomical elements, such as optic disc (OD), region of interest (ROI) composed by the macular region, real retinal region, and vessels. Unlike the conventional retinal image quality assessment system, the proposed system provides some possible reasons about the low-quality image to support the operator of an ophthalmoscope and patient to acquire and transmit a better-quality image to central eye hospital for its diagnosis. The proposed system consists of four steps: OD detection, OD quality analysis, obstruction detection of the region of interest (ROI), and vessel segmentation. For the OD detection, artefacts and vessel segmentation, the FR-CNN and SegNet are used, while for the OD quality analysis, we use transfer learning. The proposed system provides accuracies of 0.93 for the OD detection, 0.86 for OD image quality, 1.0 for artefact detection, and 0.98 for vessel segmentation. As the global performance metric, the kappa-based agreement score between ophthalmologist and the proposed system is calculated, which is higher than the score between ophthalmologist and general practitioner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To increase the efficiency of the independent component analysis (ICA) and reduce the computational complexity of the system, this paper proposes a methodology based on the compressive sampling with minimum measurements. This allows compressing and modifying the Gaussian characteristics of audio signals. ICA is one of the most widely used schemes for separating the sources involved in an audio mixture received in a set of sensors. However, for proper operation it is required that the signals involved in the mixture do not have Gaussian characteristics or at most only one of them be Gaussian, characteristics that are not satisfied by the audio signals, which have in general Gaussian characteristics. The proposed methodology allows obtaining a better separation with lower computational complexity, and with a more efficient separation of the mixed signals, even if the signals involved in the mixture are of Gaussian toe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pilomatricoma is a relatively common benign cutaneous adnexal neoplasm with differentiation towards the hair matrix, inner sheath of hair follicle and hair cortex. Proliferating pilomatricoma is a rare variant of pilomatricoma that can rapidly increase and may be misidentified as a malignant tumor. We herein report the cytopathological findings of proliferating pilomatricoma misdiagnosed as a malignant parotid tumor. Case presentation: A 64-year-old man noticed an acne-like nodule in the left parotid region. It was painless, but it increased to a maximum diameter of 4.5 cm over 2 years. Clinically, left parotid gland carcinoma was suspected, and fine-needle aspiration cytology was performed. Clusters of epithelial cells were observed in a necrotic background, and malignant epithelial cells derived from salivary glands were suspected. Histologically, the resected tumor was diagnosed as proliferating pilomatricoma composed of basophilic cells and shadow cells apart from the parotid gland. However, on a re-evaluation of the cytological specimens, the irregular-shaped epithelial cells were considered to be from basophilic cells. Shadow cells with nuclear disappearance were also confirmed. Tumor recurrence and metastasis have not been observed in the four years since surgery. Conclusion: The present case was first interpreted as a malignant parotid gland tumor, but it was actually a benign skin appendage tumor. Pilomatricoma sometimes rapidly increases and may be mistaken for a malignant tumor. Although it is critical to recognize not only basophilic cells but also shadow cells, it cannot be diagnosed by cytological findings. The final diagnosis should be made on excision specimen only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

View large Download slide View large Download slide OBJECTIVES The through-and-through guidewire technique has been utilized for safe advancement of a high-profile stent graft delivery system through the tortuous aorta. A brachial-to-femoral configuration is most commonly established, but a few alternatives have been described. This study aimed to report our experience with the externalized transapical guidewire (ETAG) technique in patients who underwent thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) and to explore its utility, feasibility and safety. METHODS Patients who underwent TEVAR between April 2015 and March 2017 were retrospectively reviewed, and 5 patients who underwent the procedure with the ETAG technique were found eligible for the study. Indications for the ETAG technique were the following challenging aortic anatomical configurations: (i) severely angulated aorta in 3; (ii) proximity of the proximal landing zone to the aortic valve in 2; (iii) a limited proximal landing zone in 1; and (iv) complex atheroma predominantly on the greater curvature of the aorta in 3 patients. RESULTS TEVAR was completed in all cases. The ETAG technique was utilized in all patients. The delivery system tip was navigated along the lesser curvature of the aortic arch as it was advanced. During deployment, conformability was increased by pushing both ends of the wire. Tip retrieval was also enhanced in 3 patients. Patients with complex aortic atheroma had no embolic complications. All patients survived TEVAR, but 1 patient with an aorto-oesophageal fistula did not survive the second-stage oesophagectomy. Postoperative complications included delayed cardiac tamponade requiring drainage in 2 patients. CONCLUSIONS The ETAG technique was useful in overcoming several anatomical challenges encountered during TEVAR. Contact of the delivery system with the greater curvature of the aortic arch could be avoided with this technique, potentially reducing embolization risk related to the complex aortic arch atheroma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An imperceptible visible watermarking (IVW) algorithm is proposed to deliver auxiliary information about the visual contents, including ownership information. The proposed algorithm overcomes several inconveniences presented in previously reported IVW algorithms using the just noticeable difference (JND) criterion, invisible watermarking and binarisation function. The proposed algorithm consists of the visible watermark embedding and the exhibition stages. The JND criterion is used to embed visible watermark pattern in an imperceptible manner by the human visual system, while invisible watermarking based on the discrete cosine transform is used to share crucial parameters between both stages, which makes possible the watermark visualisation without any side information. In the watermark exhibition stage, the imperceptibly embedded visible watermark pattern is exhibited by the binarisation function. The proposed algorithm can be applied to any class of images with different characteristics and several visible watermark patterns can be embedded into an input image. Evaluation results show that performance of the proposed algorithm is better compared with previously reported algorithms from several practical points of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a novel unary spiking circuit for a serial multiplier with variable dendritic delays. Serial multipliers commonly use the soma model for the arithmetic operation. The structure of the serial multiplier and the efficient implementation of the dendritic delays on customized neuromorphic hardware are the major contributions of this work. The design of the multiplier was inspired by the biological processes of dendrites, which use feedback connections and dendritic growth to synchronize the neural processing performed by the soma. The multiplier eliminates complex rules by adopting the soma model with dendritic connectivity configurations, increasing the processing speed compared with previously reported solutions based on Spiking Neural Networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, active noise control (ANC) systems have attracted a lot of attention since they are considered as potential alternative for solving acoustic noise problems. Until now, some practical ANC applications have employed filtered-x least-mean-square (FXLMS) adaptive algorithm since exhibits low computational cost, however, it provides a slow convergence speed. The filtered-x affine projection-like (FXAPL) algorithm can be seen as a potential strategy to improve this factor. However, the achievement of a significant improvement of this property and computational cost are still remaining challenges. In this work, we present a new variant of the FXAPL algorithm based on nearest Kronecker product decomposition to create an efficient algorithm in terms of convergence speed and tracking capabilities because in ANC systems is essential to cancel the noise signal as quickly as possible. In addition, we use the normalized least mean square (NLMS) to update the right-singular vectors of the adaptive filter coefficients. As consequence, the computational cost of the proposed FXAPL algorithm is decreased. From the engineering point of view, the implementation of the Kronecker product decomposition demands a large number of matrix additions, subtractions and multiplications, which represents a large area consumption. Hence, we introduce, for the first time, a new high-precision multi-arithmetic neural circuit based on spiking neural P systems along with their cutting-edge variants, such as synaptic weights, astrocyte-like controls, rules on the synapses and dendritic behavior, to perform either the addition, subtraction or multiplication of two numbers efficiently. Specifically, we use the dendritic pruning feature to enable dynamic dendritic connectivity. As a consequence, the circuit can support multiple arithmetic operations using the same neurons with simple and homogeneous spiking rules. Besides, we develop an compact FPGA-based neuromorphic architecture, which supports dynamic dendritic connectivity, to efficiently implement the proposed parallel adder/subtractor/multiplier neural circuit. Our results demonstrate that the resulting filtered-x Kronecker product affine projection-like and normalized least mean square (FXKAPL-NLMS) algorithm along with the neuromorphic architecture have allowed us to develop practical real-time ANC applications. • An efficient filtered-X Kronecker product APL-NLMS algorithm. • High performance and compact neuromorphic architecture based on SN P systems. • Dynamic dendritic connection in a multi-arithmetic circuit. • Ultra-compact neuromorphic architecture to be applied in ANC systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mammalian CYP4B1 enzymes are cytochrome P450 mono-oxygenases that are responsible for the bioactivation of several exogenous pro-toxins including 4-ipomeanol (4-IPO). In contrast with the orthologous rabbit enzyme, we show here that native human CYP4B1 with a serine residue at position 427 is unable to bioactivate 4-IPO and does not cause cytotoxicity in HepG2 cells and primary human T-cells that overexpress these enzymes. We also demonstrate that a proline residue in the meander region at position 427 in human CYP4B1 and 422 in rabbit CYP4B1 is important for protein stability and rescues the 4-IPO bioactivation of the human enzyme, but is not essential for the catalytic activity of the rabbit CYP4B1 protein. Systematic substitution of native and p.S427P human CYP4B1 with peptide regions from the highly active rabbit enzyme reveals that 18 amino acids in the wild-type rabbit CYP4B1 protein are key for conferring high 4-IPO metabolizing activity. Introduction of 12 of the 18 amino acids that are also present at corresponding positions in other human CYP4 family members into the p.S427P human CYP4B1 protein results in a mutant human enzyme (P+12) that is as stable and as active as the rabbit wild-type CYP4B1 protein. These 12 mutations cluster in the predicted B-C loop through F-helix regions and reveal new amino acid regions important to P450 enzyme stability. Finally, by minimally re-engineering the human CYP4B1 enzyme for efficient activation of 4-IPO, we have developed a novel human suicide gene system that is a candidate for adoptive cellular therapies in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Halftoning is an indispensable technique used for showing digital images on screen and printing them on paper using any kind of printer such as Inkjet and Laser. Additionally, halftoning technique has been employed recently in several applications in the computation and communication fields, such as compression and authentication of images, visual cryptography, etc. This article provides as detailed review of the main halftoning methods, such as ordered dither, error diffusion, error diffusion with edge emphasis, dot diffusion, green noise, and direct binary search. For analyzing advantages and disadvantages of each halfoning method, a quality comparison of the halftone image generated by the already named methods was performed using Mean Opinion Score (MOS) measurement. Likewise, computational complexity of each halftoning method was taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typical cytochrome P450s secure the heme prosthetic group with a cysteine thiolate ligand bound to the iron, electrostatic interactions with the heme propionate carboxylates, and hydrophobic interactions with the heme periphery. In addition to these interactions, CYP4B1 covalently binds heme through a monoester link furnished, in part, by a conserved I-helix acid, Glu310. Chromatography, mass spectrometry, and NMR have now been utilized to identify the site of attachment on the heme. Native CYP4B1 covalently binds heme solely at the C-5 methyl position. Unexpectedly, recombinant CYP4B1 from insect cells and Escherichia coli also bound their heme covalently at the C-8 methyl position. Structural heterogeneity may be common among recombinant CYP4 proteins because CYP4A3 exhibited this duality. Attempts to evaluate functional heterogeneity were complicated by the complexity of the system. The phenomenon of covalent heme binding to P450 provides a novel method for assessing microheterogeneity in heme orientation and raises questions about the fidelity of heme incorporation in recombinant systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To determine the utility of low-dose gelatin sponge particles and 5% ethanolamine oleate iopamidol (EOI) mixture in retrograde transvenous obliteration (GERTO) for gastric varices (GV). 57 consecutive patients who underwent balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration (B-RTO) for GV were divided into three groups with Hirota's grade by balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous venography. Hirota's Grade 1 patients were assigned to G1 group and underwent treatment with 5% EOI. Grade ≥ 2 patients prior to August 2015 were G ≥ 2 group treated with 5% EOI, and those treated thereafter were GERTO group. The amount of EOI used per unit GV volume (EOI/GV ratio), the times to embolization and recurrence rate of GV were evaluated. The EOI/GV ratio was 0.66 ± 0.19 in G1, 1.5 ± 0.8 in G ≥ 2, and 0.58 ± 0.23 in GERTO (G ≥ 2 vs GERTO, p < 0.0001). The times to embolization were 26.5 ± 10.5 min for G1, 39.2 ± 26.8 for G ≥ 2, and 21.4 ± 9.4 for GERTO (G ≥ 2 vs GERTO, p = 0.005). The recurrence rate was not significantly different in any of the groups. GERTO was performed in lower amount of sclerosants and in less time compared to conventional B-RTO in Hirota's grade ≥2. Feasibility of low-dose gelatin sponge particles and 5% EOI mixture as sclerosants for GV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nephroblastoma (NB) is a malignant embryonal neoplasm derived from nephrogenic blastemal cells. NB usually forms a solid mass, but in extremely rare cases, it may show cystic changes. Case presentation: A six-month-old girl with persistent high fevers was found to have pyuria and bacteriuria. Ultrasonography revealed multilocular cysts in the right kidney. Right nephrectomy was performed with cyst wall rupture during surgery. An intraoperative rapid diagnosis, based on peritoneal fluid cytology, confirmed three components of blastemal, stromal, and epithelial cells. The blastemal cells were dyshesive, with scant to no cytoplasm and were the predominant cell type. The spindle-shaped stromal cells were arranged in fascicles. The epithelial cells demonstrated tubular structures. Macroscopically, the resected cystic tumor measured 80 mm in maximum diameter with a prominently thin cyst wall, but solid areas were also apparent. Histologically, the tumor was diagnosed as cystic NB (blastemal-predominant) displaying a triphasic pattern. Hyperchromatic nuclei and apoptotic bodies were found. The clinical stage classification of Japan Wilms Tumor Study group was 3. The patient was treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Tumor recurrence and metastasis have not been observed in the 8 months since surgery. Conclusion: This is an extremely rare case of infantile cystic NB. We diagnosed the NB cells that appeared in the peritoneal fluid by intraoperative rapid cytology. Cytological examination proved to be a very useful technique for determining the clinical stage of NB. Additionally, we propose that massive tumor degeneration and necrosis be considered as a pathogenic mechanism of cyst formation in NB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]