Search

Amphotericin B (AmB), an effective polyene drug with broad spectrum antifungal activity, is used for serious fungal infections. Liposomal amphotericin B (LAmB) is a lipid dosage form, which has a significantly improved toxicity profile compared with conventional amphotericin B deoxycholate (DAmB). This study focused on verifying the gender differences in the acute toxicity of LAmB and further exploring its causes. Acute toxicity study of LAmB and DAmB were performed in rats, and toxicity responses and mortality of different sexes were observed and recorded. Concentrations of AmB in rat plasma and tissues were determined by a fully validated UPLC-MS/MS assay. The results demonstrated that LAmB showed significant gender differences in acute toxicity, with more severe toxic symptoms and higher mortality for female rats at different doses, but the same differences were not observed for DAmB under the same condition. To explore the cause of differences, toxicokinetic and tissue distribution studies were performed and the results showed that female animals had higher drug exposure, longer half-life and lower plasma clearance compared to male rats, and the drug was mostly distributed in the liver and kidneys, in which female rats displayed a significant higher concentration than that of male rats.

The photoluminescence signals of zinc oxide/silver films based on digital video disk template were carried out compared with that of the planar mode. The spectra that on silicon showed a strong bandgap emission around 378 nm and a defect related emission band centered at ∼470 nm. After adding digital video disk template, it resulted in an increased signal of both the ultraviolet and the visible region, but the ultraviolet emission enhancement was notable. That the enhancement of band edge emission resulted from surface plasmon resonance coupling between silver and zinc oxide was discussed in detail.

This paper introduces the principle and manufacture process of a film-taped metallic mesh, and the influence of the parameters of metallic mesh film on optical and electromagnetic features has also been analyzed. By using the flexographic printing technology, the metal mesh film with the line widthes of 15, 203040μm and the period of 300μm on PET substrates have been made, and the maximal electromagnetic shield effectiveness is more than 15dB. The results indicate that the optical and electrical performance of the metallic mesh film is inconsistent, and it is better to select a thinner line width and smaller period to obtain optimal shielding effectiveness.

The study on the method of the color measurement of gold and silver foil paper is important to control color quality in the printing industry. The methods used in the experiments were to study the role of the gold tone and silver tone by studying the influence of gold tone and silver tone with different content on the chromatic value of normal color ink with different tone and different saturation. In the experiments, chromatic value of SPIN and SPEX respectively in the diffuse light conditions of color measurement could represent the chromatic value of the ink containing gold or silver ink. Then the difference of L values between SPIN and SPEX was defined as lightness difference. The ratio of the difference of saturation between SPIN and SPEX to their sum was defined as saturation ratio. Therefore, the Correlation Properties between lightness difference and saturation ratio was quantified. The result shows that with the quantity of gold and silver ink increasing, saturation ratio has linear relation with lightness difference for the same color. Similarly, with the saturation of normal ink colors increasing, saturation ratio has linear relation with lightness difference for a series of colors containing the same quantity of gold and silver ink .

Aim The remodelling of transmural dispersion of repolarization (TDR) in human heart failure (HF) and in different animal models of cardiac hypertrophy or HF remains a controversial topic. We hypothesize that TDR may exhibit temporal alterations, depending on the stage of the disease. Methods We systematically investigated the temporal alterations of TDR during the development of cardiac hypertrophy and HF in the mouse pressure-overload model using electrophysiological and molecular biology techniques. Results A progressive prolongation of QT interval and changes in the amplitude of the J wave at 2, 5, 9 and 13 weeks were found in anesthetized aorta-banded mice. Action potential duration (APD) at 90% repolarization (APD90) in subendocardial myocytes of the left ventricular free wall remained unchanged at the hypertrophic stage (2 and 5 weeks), but was significantly prolonged in HF mice at 9 and 13 weeks. However, APD90 in subepicardial myocytes exhibited a significant prolongation at 2 weeks and did not progressively extend from 2 weeks to 13 weeks in banded mice. Thus, non-parallel prolongation of APD in subendocardial and subepicardial myocytes led to a reduction in TDR at hypertrophic stage and an amplification of TDR at HF stage. Further experiments revealed that asynchronous down-regulation of voltage-dependent potassium currents (Ito,f, IK,slow and Iss) and L-type calcium currents (ICa-L) in subendocardial and subepicardial myocytes may contribute to the dynamic remodelling of transmural APD. Conclusion The two distinct TDR modes were revealed during the progression of mouse cardiac hypertrophy and failure, indicating that the remodelling of TDR depends on the stage of the disease.

This paper adopts Finite Volume Method, with the aid of GT-POWER platform, building the joint model of engine with cracking sound attenuation coupler. Based on the correctness of verification model, we research the cracking sound attenuation coupler’s influence on exhaust noise with engine performance. The results show that the muffler causes little power loss for engine at low and medium speed. At high speed the muffler brings power loss to engine mainly coming from muffler tail. Comparing with original muffler in the aspects of noise elimination performance and engine performance is not obvious effect and at the meantime providing a feasible technology method for realizing high efficiency and cleaning burning of methanol.

In order that a better analysis and evaluation of the color performance of developed color inks according to the printing requirements could be obtained, every ink will get abundant levels of ink supply amount made by double-channel control method. The max density obtained by the above method represents the color strength of inks. Then Color Management System is applied to building color gamut of matching process inks, and the color gamut represents the replicable color scope in practice. First, color strength of inks was identified by the following methods. Every ink was put respectively in two ink channels of the color printer and the total values of these two channels were applied to controlling the output, obtaining the wedge diagram of the multilevel output of ink supply amount. In the diagram, the max ink supply amount was large enough and the max density could represent the color strength. Because every ink needs a suitable range of the max density and needs to match the others well in practice. Referring to the standard of offset printing, a suitable density value for a certain ink was chose as its max ink supply amount. Second, within the range of the max ink supply amount, the data set of color patch in the characterization software of Color Management System was used to control ink supply amounts. The color patch was overprinted in the color sequences of Y, M, C and K, and ICC Profile was made according to the making process of standard Profile. Color gamut of the inks could be obtained from the Profile by using self-developed computing equipment and be compared with standard printing process. The result shows that the method used in the experiments is feasible and effective. In addition, the inks in the experiments have a large enough color strength and a color gamut satisfying the practical requirements of the color performance of inks in the printing industry.

This paper mainly focuses on the quality assessment of line output of digital printers. Line patterns with various color, width and of two direction(Horizontal and Vertical) have been carefully designed to constitute a test chart. And then printed with a typical color inkjet printer (Epson 1390)and color laser printer(HP4700) separately. The substrates including common print paper and glossy photo paper. Based on the ISO13660 standard, a measurement software was programmed in Matlab, and was used to test the line characteristics. Through analyzing the test results, some conclusion can be drawn: The outputted lines are generally wider than the designed line width. Raggedness of horizontal lines and vertical lines show significant differences, this has a great deal to do with the imaging mechanism of the printer. The ink and surface of the substrate have great influences on blurriness of the line edge, for example, the coating of a glossy paper usually help the pigments spreading on the substrates, but this will aggravate the blurriness of the line edge.

IS0-13660 has defined line attributes in digital prints. In order to investigate the effect of these attributers on perceived text definition (PTD), the correlation model between the two was developed in this study. The test target with a multi-stroke Black Type Chinese character in two sizes of 6.5 and 10.5 points, as well as some single lines, was designed and printed, coming into being 16 test samples with different qualities. The objective line attribute measurements and subjective definition evaluations were carried out, and linear correlation model was built between the two. The experimental results indicate that the PTD could be relevant to line’s contrast, raggedness, blurriness and width, and is always positively relevant to the contrast and negatively relevant to the later three attributes.

Color output capability and output accuracy of digital printing machine used for simulating the offset printing were analyzed. A digital machine, HpIndigo 1050, was used in this study. The colorimetric values of its primaries, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, were not the same as that primaries used in the offset printing, and the differences between them could not be removed by adjusting the maximal output ink level. The HpIndigo’s color gamut, consequently, could not completely meet the offset print requirement, typically presenting the absence of some colors equal to or close to the offset’s color gamut. So, color management technique was accepted in our experiment, and the offset’s CMYK values were translated into the digital machine’s CMYK values with the relative intent color simulation through these two machine’s profiles. The results showed that the color output accuracy within the offset color gamut was raised on the whole, and the big color differences only happened on these colors outside the digital machine’s gamut. Numerically, for 928 colors in IT8.7/3 chart, the CIELAB average/maximal color differences dropped from 4.98/13.90 to 3.13/13.13 respectively corresponding to the cases before and after color management accepting. Specially, for gray colors, the average/maximal color differences changed from 4.91/5.59 to 0.92/2.00, improving the gray balance dramatically.

A method for evaluating the line sharpness in digital printings is established. First of all, a test diagram, with some lines spaced with the same distance as the lines width, orienting in horizontal and vertical direction, was designed. A digital printer was used to output the test diagram on eighteen kinds of paper commonly used in market. From the eight attributes of line quality in ISO/IEC 13660 standard, three attributes, that are contrast, edge raggedness and line width, which were extracted our to be the main index describing the line sharpness. Furthermore, connecting them with the subjective evaluation, an evaluation model for predicting the perceived line sharpness were established, and the model show that the perceived line sharpness was highly correlated with these three attributes, among which quantified contrast exhibits the highest correlation with subjective, while raggedness and width exhibits a similar and weaker correlation. The perceived line sharpness was able to be predicted through a linear model.

Impaired ventricular repolarization can lead to long QT syndrome (LQT), a proarrhythmic disease with high risk of developing lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmias. The compound ICA-105574 is a recently developed hERG activator and it enhances IKr current with very high potency by removing the channel inactivation. The present study was designed to investigate antiarrhythmic properties of ICA-105574. For comparison, the effects of another compound NS1643 was in-parallel assessed, which also acts primarily to attenuate channel inactivation with moderate potency. We found that both ICA-105574 and NS1643 concentration-dependently shortened action potential duration (APD) in ventricular myocytes, and QT/QTc intervals in isolated guinea-pig hearts. ICA-105574, but not NS1643, completely prevented ventricular arrhythmias in intact guinea-pig hearts caused by IKr and IKs inhibitors, although both ICA-105574 and NS1643 could reverse the drug-induced prolongation of APD in ventricular myocytes. Reversing prolongation of QT/QTc intervals and antagonizing the increases in transmural dispersion of repolarization and instability of the QT interval induced by IKr and IKs inhibitors contributed to antiarrhythmic effect of ICA-105574. Meanwhile, ICA-105574 at higher concentrations showed a potential proarrhythmic risk in normal hearts. Our results suggest that ICA-105574 has more efficient antiarrhythmic activity than NS1643. However, its potential proarrhythmic risk implies that benefits and risks should be seriously taken into consideration for further developing this type of hERG activators.

In order to realize measurement for digitally printed line's attributes in accordance with the international standard ISO13660, wavelet de-noising technique is used in pre-processing the CCD digital image with high resolution of hardcopy line prints. First, the line attributes and their measurement indexes are presented. Then, Symltes (SymN) and Coiflets (CoifN) wavelets with hard threshold method are chosen based on theories and experiments. Further, dividing the image signals into two sections, signals of the line itself and the background, and analyzing their de-noising effects with different indexes, the proper wavelet parameters, which are order N in the wavelet functions and decomposition levels, are determined for a high resolution image of a line printed on a ink-jet printer. Experimental results indicate that the most properly parameter N and decomposition levels are 5 and 3 or 4 respectively for SymN, and for CoifN the results are 3 and 3 or 4 respectively. They can satisfy the de-noising requirements of a line CCD image with objectively keeping the line information and the same time smoothing the background information at the most extent.

Background Expandable screws have greater pullout strength than conventional screws. The purpose of this study was to compare the biomechanical stability provided by a new built-in expandable anterior spinal fixation system with that of 2 commonly used anterior fixation systems, the Z-Plate and the Kaneda, in a porcine partial vertebral corpectomy model. Methods Eighteen porcine thoracolumbar spine specimens were randomly divided into 3 groups of 6 each. A vertebral wedge osteotomy was performed by removing the anterior 2/3 of the L1 vertebral body and the T15/L1 disc. Vertebrae were fixed with the Z-Plate, Kaneda, or expandable fixation system. The 3-dimensional spinal range of motion (ROM) of specimens in the intact state (prior to osteotomy), injured state (after osteotomy), and after internal fixation were recorded. The pullout strength and maximum torque of common anterior screws, the expandable anterior fixation screw unexpanded, and the expandable anterior fixation screw expanded was tested. Results After internal fixation, the expandable device and Z-plate system exhibited higher left bending motion than the Kaneda system (5.50° and 5.37° vs. 5.04, p = 0.001 and 0.008, respectively), and the Z-plate and Kaneda groups had significantly higher left axial and right axial rotation ROM as compared to the expandable device group (left axial rotation: 5.23° and 5.02° vs. 4.53°; right axial rotation: 5.23° and 5.08° vs. 4.49°). The maximum insertion torque of the expandable device was significantly greater than of a common screw (5.10 vs. 3.75 Ns). The maximum pullout force of the expandable device expanded was significantly higher than that of the common screw and the expandable device unexpanded (3,035.48 N vs. 1,827.38 N and 2,333.49 N). Conclusions The built-in anterior fixation system provides better axial rotational stability as compared to the other 2 systems, and greater maximum torque and pullout strength than a common fixation screw. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2474-15-424) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.