5,370 research outputs found
Experience of four UK comprehensive care centres using FEIBA<sup>®</sup> for surgeries in patients with inhibitors
No full textIncreasing evidence indicates that factor VIII (FVIII) inhibitor bypassing agents (FEIBA® and NovoSeven®) can provide effective peri-operative haemostasis in haemophilia patients with high-responding inhibitors. We report the collected experience of all major and minor surgeries, conducted between December 1998 and September 2008, at four UK haemophilia Comprehensive Care Centres with FEIBA® as the first-line bypassing agent in patients with inhibitors. A total of 26 surgical procedures were performed in 18 patients of ages 34-83years including five patients with acquired FVIII inhibitors. A single pre-operative infusion of FEIBA was followed by 6-12h interval dosing for major surgeries at the discretion of the physician to approximate a maximum of 200Ukg-1day-1, with tapering when postoperative haemostasis and wound healing permitted. Haemostatic outcomes were retrospectively reviewed against European consensus thresholds for blood loss and duration of treatment compared with expectations for equivalent procedures in non-inhibitor patients. Peri-operative haemostatic outcome with FEIBA was rated excellent or good in 78% of 18 major surgeries in 12 patients, including 11 major orthopaedic procedures. Haemostatic outcome was rated excellent in all seven procedures in five patients with acquired FVIII inhibitors and in all eight minor surgical procedures in six patients. FEIBA was well tolerated with no intra-operative haemostatic complications. A single, transient postoperative thrombotic adverse event occurred in a patient with cerebrovascular disease. This case series adds significantly to existing evidence that FEIBA can provide adequate, well-tolerated, peri-operative haemostatic cover for a wide variety of major and minor surgical procedures.</p
Coded Modulation Assisted Radial Basis Function Aided Turbo Equalisation for Dispersive Rayleigh Fading Channels
No full textIn this contribution a range of Coded Modulation (CM) assisted Radial Basis Function (RBF) based Turbo Equalisation (TEQ) schemes are investigated when communicating over dispersive Rayleigh fading channels. Specifically, 16QAM based Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo TCM (TTCM), Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) and iteratively decoded BICM (BICM-ID) are evaluated in the context of an RBF based TEQ scheme and a reduced-complexity RBF based In-phase/Quadrature-phase (I/Q) TEQ scheme. The Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm was employed for channel estimation, where the initial estimation step-size used was 0.05, which was reduced to 0.01 for the second and the subsequent TEQ iterations. The achievable coding gain of the various CM schemes was significantly increased, when employing the proposed RBF-TEQ or RBF-I/Q-TEQ rather than the conventional non-iterative Decision Feedback Equaliser - (DFE). Explicitly, the reduced-complexity RBF-I/Q-TEQ-CM achieved a similar performance to the full-complexity RBF-TEQ-CM, while attaining a significant complexity reduction. The best overall performer was the RBF-I/Q-TEQ-TTCM scheme, requiring only 1.88~dB higher SNR at BER=10-5, than the identical throughput 3~BPS uncoded 8PSK scheme communicating over an AWGN channel. The coding gain of the scheme was 16.78-dB
The Intrinsic Tryptophan Fluorescence of B1-Bungarotoxin and the Ca2+- Binding Domains as Probed with Tb3+ Luminescence
No full textA Wideband Radial Basis Function Decision Feedback Equaliser Assisted Burst-by-Burst Adaptive Modem
No full textThe performance of radial basis function-based decision feedback equalized (RBF DFE) burst-by-burst adaptive quadrature amplitude modulation (AQAM) is presented for transmissions over dispersive wide-band mobile channels. This scheme is shown to give a significant improvement in terms of the mean bit error rate (BER) and bits per symbol (BPS) performance compared to that of the individual fixed modulation modes. The structural equivalence of the RBF DFE to the optimal Bayesian equalizer enables it to potentially outperform the conventional Kalman-filtered AQAM DFE scheme. Index Terms—Adaptive modulation, decision feedback equalization, radial basis function, wide-band modem
Student Expectations in the New Millennium
No full textHigher education has experienced vast changes as a result of global political and economic developments. Cultural and social changes in the last decade have also added to the continuing evolution of higher education. These changes inevitably lead to changing expectations of students entering higher education. An adequate understanding of student expectations is crucial in ensuring a good fit between higher educational institutions and their students. This study attempts to carry out a baseline descriptive-quantitative research on student expectations in the higher education of Hong Kong. Four scales have been developed to measure students’ attitude toward: 1. job-oriented curriculum design, 2. user-friendly course delivery method, 3. opportunities for lifelong learning, and 4. student consumerism. Students’ priority of what makes a good university, their reasons for going to university, and their self-perception of ability to cope with university life are also explored. The Student Expectations Questionnaire (developed by the author) was used to gather data from 857 first-year undergrads from nine institutions of higher education in Hong Kong. Analyses include, among others, gender, age, major of study as well as institution comparisons
Utilizing the principles of Gagne’s nine events of instruction in the teaching of Goldmann Applanation Tonometry
No full textYee Ling Wong Ophthalmology Department, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, UK Abstract: Intraocular pressure measurement is important to identify people who are at risk of glaucoma. Goldmann Applanation Tonometry is considered the gold standard with regards to evaluating patients with glaucoma, a sight-threatening condition. The professional execution of this evaluation is critical in the reduction of associated complication rates. This article seeks to put forward a structured lesson plan for ophthalmology trainees, specialist nurses, and optometrists, which integrates Gagne’s nine events of instruction to accomplish this objective. Keywords: IOP, Gagne’s model, lesson plan, Peyton’s steps, glaucoma, ophthalmology teachin
Role of the NH2-terminal Region of the Phospholipase A2 Subunit of B1- Bungarotoxin in the Toxin-Ca2+ Complex
No full textRadial Basis Function Assisted Turbo Equalization
No full textThis paper presents a turbo equalization (TEQ) scheme, which employs a radial basis function (RBF)-based equalizer instead of the conventional trellis-based equalizer of Douillard et al. Structural, computational complexity, and performance comparisons of the RBF-based and trellis-based TEQs are provided. The decision feedback-assisted RBF TEQ is capable of attaining a similar performance to the logarithmic maximum scheme in the context of both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quaternary phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation, while achieving a factor 2.5 and 3 lower computational complexity, respectively. However, there is a 2.5-dB performance loss in the context of 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which suffers more dramatically from the phenomenon of erroneous decision-feedback effects. A novel element of our design, in order to further reduce the computational complexity of the RBF TEQ, is that symbol equalizations are invoked at current iterations only if the decoded symbol has a high error probability. This techniques provides 37% and 54% computational complexity reduction compared to the full-complexity RBF TEQ for the BPSK RBF TEQ and 16QAM RBF TEQ, respectively, with little performance degradation, when communicating over dispersive Rayleigh fading channels. Index Terms—Decision-feedback equalizer (DFE), Jacobian logarithm, neural network, radial basis function (RBF), turbo coding, turbo equalization (TEQ)
DNA fusion gene vaccination mobilizes effective anti-leukemic cytotoxic T lymphocytes from a tolerized repertoire
No full textThe majority of known human tumor-associated antigens derive from non-mutated self proteins. T cell tolerance, essential to prevent autoimmunity, must therefore be cautiously circumvented to generate cytotoxic T cell responses against these targets. Our strategy uses DNA fusion vaccines to activate high levels of peptide-specific CTL. Key foreign sequences from tetanus toxin activate tolerance-breaking CD4+ T cell help. Candidate MHC class Ibinding tumor peptide sequences are fused to the C terminus for optimal processing and presentation. To model performance against a leukemia-associated antigen in a tolerized setting, we constructed a fusion vaccine encoding an immunodominant CTL epitopederived from Friend murine leukemia virus gag protein (FMuLVgag) and vaccinated tolerant FMuLVgag-transgenic (gag-Tg) mice. Vaccination with the construct induced epitopespecificIFN-c-producing CD8+ T cells in normal and gag-Tg mice. The frequency and avidity of activated cells were reduced in gag-Tg mice, and no autoimmune injury resulted. However, these CD8+ T cells did exhibit gag-specific cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. Also, epitope-specific CTL killed FBL-3 leukemia cells expressing endogenous FMuLVgag antigen and protected against leukemia challenge in vivo. These results demonstrate a simple strategy to engage anti-microbial T cell help to activate epitope-specific polyclonal CD8+ T cell responses from a residual tolerized repertoire
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