Search

Objective: To report a birth of a healthy boy after long-term cryopreservation of oocytes by vitrification. Design: Clinical application. Setting: IVF Center. Patient: A 17 year-old female with secondary pulmonary hypertension caused by transposition of great vessels visited our center in 2002, and she wished oocytes cryopreservation to avoid possible sterility after the following category X medication treatment. Intervention(s): Vitrified oocytes on Electron Microscope (EM) grids were warmed after 5 years of storage. Surviving MII oocytes were microinjected for fertilization and two embryos were transferred into a gestational carrier day 5 after microinjection. Main Outcome Measure(s): Survival, fertilization, cleavage, clinical pregnancy and delivery. Result(s): Eleven out of fourteen oocytes (78.6%) survived warming. Eight Metaphase II (MII) oocytes and 3 in vitro matured oocytes were microinjected; all 11 oocytes (100%) fertilized and 2 embryos were transferred on day 5. A healthy baby boy weighing 3,600 g was delivered at 38 weeks of gestation. Live-birth rates per warmed oocyte and per injected oocyte were 7.1% and 9.1% respectively. Conclusion(s): Cryopreservation after vitrification with EM grids maintained the developmental competence of oocytes after long-term storage and resulted in a successful live birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural and synthetic zeolites are microporous hydrated aluminosilicate minerals known for their high thermal stability and their use in various catalytic applications. In this study, the potential of modified Philippine natural zeolite as a cheap alternative to noble metal catalysts in three-way catalytic converters was investigated. The natural zeolite (Z) of the heulandite variety was treated using hydrochloric acid and then ion-exchanged with sodium (NaZ) and copper (CuZ) ions in succession. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis revealed successful replacement of sodium and other exchangeable cations by copper in the zeolite at 1.19%. Morphological features using scanning electron microscope have shown uniform dispersion of copper as well as uniform particle distribution. In the emission study, a stationary two-stroke 125 cm3 spark-ignition gasoline engine motorcycle at three different speeds of 10 (low), 40 (medium) and 70 (high) kilometers per hour (kph) was used to investigate the catalytic properties of CuZ with the non-catalytic setup as baseline. Using the modified zeolite catalyst, emission test results have shown significant reduction in carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions in all speeds, while nitrogen monoxide (NO) emission was significantly reduced from medium to high speeds, suggesting that NO reduction was highly influenced by reaction temperature. Highest reduction in CO emission was 59.61% at medium speed, while highest HC and NO emissions were 66.52% and 76.63%, respectively, at high speed. While further tests are recommended, results show the potential of modified Philippine natural zeolite as a cheap alternative material for three-way catalytic converters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To compare brachytherapy to external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) with respect to overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS) among NSCLC patients undergoing limited surgical resection. Methods: All cases of T1-4 N0 M0 NSCLC undergoing limited resection and either brachytherapy or EBRT diagnosed between 2004 and 2014 were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. Chi-square test and Fisher's exact analysis were used to analyze categorical variables while Student's t-test was used to analyze continuous variables. Univariate analysis to assess for differences in survival with respect to covariates was performed with the log-rank test. Multivariable analysis was performed with Cox proportional hazards regression models among the entire cohort and after sub-stratification by T stage. Results: Among 543 patients, 471 underwent EBRT and 72 underwent brachytherapy. Brachytherapy demonstrated improved OS and DSS on univariate analysis as compared to EBRT (p < 0.05). Cox regression also demonstrated improved OS and DSS with brachytherapy (HR 0.604; 95% CI [0.380; 0.961] and HR 0.524; 95% CI [0.303; 0.908], respectively). Sub-cohort analysis demonstrated significant improvement in survival only among patients with T1 disease with similar survival between brachytherapy and EBRT among higher stage disease. Conclusions: Patients undergoing brachytherapy for T1-T4, N0, M0 NSCLC demonstrated at least similar survival as compared to those undergoing EBRT among patients undergoing limited resection. Improved survival was demonstrated among patients with T1 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitric oxide synthase (NOS), the enzyme responsible for the production of endogenous nitric oxide from arginine, has been recently discovered in a number of Gram-positive bacteria. While bacterial NOS has been implicated in mediating nitrosative stress, much remains unknown about the functional role of endogenous nitric oxide in bacteria. Using the known NOS inhibitor aminoguanidine, we examined changes in the protein expression profile using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Treatment with aminoguanidine induced several changes in protein expression in Bacillus subtilis. In particular, mreB-like protein (Mbl) was fully down-regulated in the aminoguanidine-treated samples. The expression of Mbl was also examined by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and Mbl was found to be fully down-regulated at the transcriptional level as well. Given the role that Mbl plays in the maintenance of cytoskeletal structure, it appears that bacterial NOS may participate in specific biosynthetic pathways with ramifications toward the regulation of antibiotic resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a review of machine health managements for the smart factory. As the Industry 4.0 leads current factory automation and intelligent machines, the machine health management for diagnostic and prognostic purposes are essential, and their importance is getting more significant for the realization of the smart factory in the Industry 4.0. After brief introductions to important concepts and definitions composing smart factory and Industry 4.0, the developments in maintenance strategies towards Prognostics and health management (PHM) of machines are summarized. The review of machine health managements is followed, classifying the references by the monitoring components, types of measurements, as well as PHM tools and algorithms. 94 existing articles are reviewed and summarized in this regard. The implementations of machine health managements within the smart factory are discussed in terms of data connectivity, communications, Cyber-physical system (CPS) and virtual factory, relating them to Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, and big data management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]