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In order to explore the concentrations of heavy metals and the influence of fencing on Hongze lake, the content, source, and spatial distribution characteristics of heavy metals in surface sediments and ecological risks were analyzed in 2018 after part of the fence around Hongze Lake was removed. The results showed that the average contents of Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, and Pb in the surface sediments in Hongze Lake were 66.78, 33.89, 25.35, 74.77, 16.55, 0.23, and 27.20 mg·kg

To investigate the distribution, source, and ecological risk of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) residues in Lake Gucheng, surface water, sediment, and biological samples were collected from 12 sampling sites of Lake Gucheng and its inlets and outlets during summer and winter, and the concentrations of 19 OCPs were analyzed. The results showed that the concentration (dry weight) of OCPs in Lake Gucheng ranged from 26.74 to 48.12 ng·L

The objective of this study was to evaluate the tissue distributions of antibiotics in the fish, the bioaccumulation and trophic transfer in freshwater food web in Taihu Lake, a large shallow freshwater lake. Twenty four out of 41 antibiotics were detected in the biotas of the food web; and antibiotic concentrations followed the orders: fish plasma ~ fish muscle fish liver ~ fish bile and fish invertebrates ~ plankton. Antibiotic concentrations in the liver of piscivores were higher than those in omnivores and planktivores. Most bioaccumulation factors (BAFs) of sulfonamides (SAs), macrolides (MLs), ionophores (IPs) and lincomycin (LIN) were less than 2000 L/kg, indicating low bioaccumulation ability of these compounds in fish. Fluoroquinolones (FQs) were frequently detected in fish liver, invertebrates and plankton with much of BAFs great than 5000 L/kg, indicating that FQs have the potential of bioaccumulation in fish. Relationship analysis between BAFs and physicochemical properties of antibiotics showed that the bioaccumulation of antibiotics in the biota was related with their adsorption ability. Generally, the antibiotics in the food web of Lake Taihu including plankton, invertebrates and fish showed trophic dilution. The normalized estimated daily intake (EDI) values are less than the acceptable daily intake (ADI) values, and then hazard quotients were much less than 1. This result suggests the consumption of fish, crab and shrimp in Lake Taihu would probably not pose direct detrimental effects on humans.

Polymer microchannels can be commonly processed using many non-lithographic methods for reducing the manufacturing cost and steps. In this research, an inexpensive and high-precision thermal engraving technology is developed and achieved to machine polymer microchannels ranging from tens to hundreds of micrometers. This paper presents the design of a thermal engraving device, the processing method and the experimental procedure. Thermal engraving microscribers can fabricate microchannels with a width less than 100 μm. Furthermore, the effects of velocity and temperature on the roughness of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) microchannels are also discussed. Finally, a smooth microchannel with these parameters optimally coordinated is achieved. Meanwhile, the contact angle (CA) and the electro-osmotic flow (EOF) of microchannels fabricated by this technology are also measured. The experimental results show that this method of fabrication has the advantages of low cost, high efficiency and small polymer microchannel size compared with several non-lithographic methods. This method of fabrication would be attractive for labs lacking extremely clean rooms and expensive photolithography apparatuses.

A novel CMOS interface circuit with high resolution is designed and realized to achieve the integration of interface circuit for liquid suspended rotor micro-gyroscope. The detecting circuit adopts continuous-time current sensing circuit for capacitance measurement. The equivalent output noise power spectral density of phase-sensitive demodulation is 120 nV/Hz1/2. The whole circuitry is realized with 0.5 μm 2P2M CMOS process and its testing results show the circuit has a relative capacitance resolution of 1×10-8, in which the power supply is 18 V and the power consumption is 30 mW. The area of the chip is merely 18.5 mm2.

We discuss the effect of joule heat which comes from eletroosmosis flow on the microfluidic chip. Our microfluidic chips are fabricated from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). As everyone knows, PMMA is a poor conductor of heat, and its transfer coefficient is only 0.19W/m·K in room temperature. So, the heat is generated by eletroosmosis canʼt conduct outside the microchannels of microfluidic chip easily. We research the effect joule heat on walls of microchannels which are made of PMMA. During our study, interior surface of microchannelsʼ hydrophobicity is changed by effect of joule heat.

This paper presents the design of low noise CMOS pre-amplifiers based on photoelectric detection systems, which can directly affect the detecting precision of the whole systems. The design of pre-amplifier circuit from photoelectric detector was introduced. The photoelectric conversion circuit, amplifier circuit bandwidth, amplifier circuit noise, amplifier circuit stabilization and other questions were mainly discussed, and an amplifier circuit capable of effectively decreasing the noise, the temperature drift and a large dynamic range was designed. This paper analyzes the sources of photoelectric detection circuit internal noise, and gives the formulas of internal noise, designs a variable equivalent load photoelectric conversion circuit, and is verified by experiments. Then the result is used to reduce the noise of CMOS based operational amplifiers and finally implement the design work of pre-amp using 0.5μm CMOS Technology.

This paper presents a photoelectric detection circuit for microfluidics chip. The proposed photoelectric detection system can reduce noise and increase sensitivity. It is consist of pre-amplifier, ac-amplifier and band-pass filter. The transfer function of photoelectric detection circuit is introduced. The circuit implementations and simulation results are given. The proposed photoelectric detection circuit is suitable for integrated microfluidics chip.

This paper presents a micro-displacement sensing circuit, which can detect sensing capacitors of levitated rotor. To ensure the high resolution, noise analysis of pre-amplifier of micro-displacement sensing circuit is conducted. The results show that choosing low noise amp and decreasing Cf /C1 can reduce the electronic noise.

This paper presents a complete set of SIMULINK models, which allow exhaustive behavioral simulations of fluxgate system to be performed. The model construction is detailed and it is applied to the Vacquier-type fluxgate sensor. Well known characteristics of these sensors are confirmed through the simulations. In spite of this simplicity, the model has been successfully used to describe the variation of the output of a Vacquier-type fluxgate sensor with the amplitude and the frequency of the driving current. Using a previously developed 2nd harmonic fluxgate magnetometer, some preliminary experimental results are obtained confirming the appearance at its output.

To evaluate the value of mean corpuscular volume/RBC distribution width (MCV/RDW) combined with reticulocyte parameters in differential diagnosis of aplastic anemia (AA), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), megaloblastic anemia (MA) and hemolytic anemia (HA) in order to provide some laboratorial evidence for clinical doctors in first diagnosis of these diseases.The data of MCV/RDW and reticulocyte parameters of AA, MDS, MA and HA patients from January 1 of 2011 to August 31 of 2014 were retrospectively collected in West China Hospital of Sichuan University. And 158 healthy unrelated individuals with age-, sex-matched were collected as controls. The value of MCV/RDW and reticulocyte parameters in differentiating diagnosis of above mentioned 4 kinds of anemia diseases was assessed. ROC analysis was used to determine the cutoff value of MCV/RDW and the reticulocyte parameters were performed in differentiating diagnosis of AA and MDS.The average values of MCV/RDW of 158 AA patients (79 acute AA patients and 79 chronic AA patients), 107 MDS patients, 13 MA patients and 81 HA patients increased in variable degrees as compared with the controls, and there was statistical difference between them, the MCV/RDW value of acute AA patients was obviously less than that of other patients. In the 4 kinds of anemia diseases, the reticulocyte absolute count in acute AA patients was the lowest, that of chronic AA, MA and MDS patients was higher, and that of HA patients was highest. The ratio of low fluorescent reticulocyte decreased, and the ratio of moderate and high fluorescent reticulocytes increased in the 4 kinds of anemia diseases, as compared to controls. The difference was statistically significant. The analysis of differential diagnosis of chronic AA and MDS showed that RDW-SD could differentiate the chronic AA from MDS. The area under the curve (AUC) of RDW-SD was 0.76 (P0.01). The cutoff value of RDW-SD was 22.75fl. The sensitivity and specificity of RDW-SD for differential of chronic AA and MDS was 49.5% and 98.7%, respectively.MCV/RDW and reticulocyte parameters can be used as the laboratorial differential diagnostic indicators for AA, MDS, MA and HA diseases.

To determine the impacts of Wnt signaling pathway products-polymorphisms of rs4135385, rs11079571 and rs7832767 located in β-catenin gene (CTNNB1), Axin gene (AXIN2), and secreted frizzled-related protein gene (SFRP1) on the risk and treatment outcomes of acute leukemia.Bone marrows (volume 1-1. 5 mL) were collected from 372 untreated patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and peripheral blood samples (2. 0 mL) were obtained from 401 healthy controls for the purpose of total DNA extraction. Polymorphisms of rs4135385, rs11079571 and rs7832767 located in CTNNB1, AXIN2 and SFRP1 were genotyped with high-resolution melting method (HRM). Chi-square analyses were performed to compare the genotype and allele distributions of the three single nucleotides (SNPs) between the leukemia patients and healthy controls. Single factor variance tests were performed to compare the differences in clinical features among different genotype groups. Complete remission (CR) rates after induction chemotherapy were also compared between different genotype groups using Chi-square tests.No significant differences were found beiween the leukemia patients and healthy controls in the frequencies of alleles and genotypes of CTNNB1 rs4135385, SFRP1 rs7832767 polymorphisms. Those with A allele in AXIN2 rs11079571 polymorphism was less likely to have acute myelomonocytic/monocytic leukemia than those with G allele (P = 0. 016, OR=0. 677, 95%CI:0. 439-0. 930). Acute bead monocyte/mononuclear cell leukemia (AML-M4/5)patients with AA genotype presented higher platelet count (P = 0. 040), and higher complete remission rate after chemotherapy (P = 0. 040), compared with the patients with AG and GG genotypes.AML-M4/5 patients have less frequency of A allele in AXIN2 rs11079571 polymorphism than healthy controls. Patients carrying A allele have higher platelet counts and higher sensitivity to chemotherapy.

In order to investigate the distribution characteristics of nutrients and heavy metals in sediments from different eastern dredging regions of Lake Taihu, the surface and core sediment samples at 5 sites (in East Taihu Lake and Xukou Bay) were collected in 2012. Contents of nutrients (TOC, TN and TP) and heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn) in the sediments were measured and the pollution degrees of heavy metals were evaluated with the potential ecological risk method. The results showed that the heavy metal contents in Xukou Bay were generally higher than those in East Taihu Lake, whereas the nutrients contents showed the reverse trend. There were significant differences between the phytoplankton-dominated and culture lake regions. The concentrations of both nutrients and heavy metals decreased with increasing profile depth. Moreover, the contents of nutrients and heavy metals in the sediments of all dredged areas were lower than those in the un-dredged areas, suggesting that dredging may be a useful approach for decreasing nutrients and heavy metals loading in sediments, but its effectiveness decreased with time. Significant positive correlations were found among different heavy metals and nutrients, indicating that they were from the same pollution source. The Hakanson potential ecological risk index was applied for assessing the status of sediment heavy metal enrichment and the result indicated that sediment dredging could reduce the extent of potential ecological risk. The risk index in different sites followed the order: X1D1D3X2D2, while the risk index in site X1 of Xukou Bay was higher than that in site D1 of East Taihu Lake. And the comprehensive ecological risk grades in sites X1 and D1 were in the moderate range, while the sites D2, D3 and X2 were low.

To determine the expression of O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) in pituitary adenomas and its association with tumour aggressiveness.From October 2011 to August 2012, all the patients with pathologically confirmed pituitary adenomas in our hospital were recruited for this study. The expression of MGMT in the tumor tissues was detected with immunohistochemistry.A total of 138 (including 71 male) patients participated in this study. The majority of the participants had nonfunctional (71%) and macroadenomas (92.8%). Aggressive and relapsed pituitary adenomas accounted for 31.2% and 8.7% of the cases, respectively. Low MGMT expression was found in 79 cases. The MGMT expression had no significant associations with gender, age, aggressiveness and relapse of tumors. However, prolactinomas were more likely to have low MGMT expression than nonfunctional adenomas (P = 0.025) and growth hormone adenomas (P = 0.043).The expression of MGMT has no associations with the aggressiveness and relapse of pituitary adenomas. Prolactinomas are more likely to have low expression of MGMT, which indicates that temozolomide might become an alternative treatment for aggressive and dopamine resistant prolactinomas.

By using Biosonics DT-X echosounder (208 kHz), a hydroacoustic investigation was conducted on the fish resources in three mesotrophic reservoirs (Daxi Reservoir, Shahe Reservoir, and Jinniushan Reservoir) with different fishery management in late autumn and early winter 2011, and a GIS model was constructed to assess the fish resource distribution in the reservoirs. No significant difference was observed in the average size of fish in the three reservoirs, but the distribution curves of fish target strength (TS) showed that the fish size distribution proportion was different, and had close correlation with fishery management. The fish density in Daxi Reservoir (averagely 0.0183 ind x m(-3)) had no significant difference with that in Shahe Reservoir (averagely 0.0124 ind x m(-3)), but the fish density in Jinniushan Reservoir (averagely 0.0085 ind x m(-3)) was significantly lower than that in Daxi and Shahe reservoirs. There was no significant correlation between the horizontal distribution of fish density and the water depth in the three reservoirs. The fish in the three reservoirs were in group distribution, and fish aggregation was found in Daxi and Shahe reservoirs. In the three reservoirs, the fish biomass was the highest in downstream, and there was a greater biomass near the dam, except in Shahe Reservoir which was affected by fish catch activity. Based on the raster data obtained from GIS fish distribution model and the surface water area of each grid, the total amount of fish resources with the TS-60 dB in the Daxi, Shahe and Jinniushan reservoirs was estimated as about 480000, 610000 and 520000 individuals, and that with the TS-40 dB was about 50400, 52900 and 90700 individuals, respectively.

A snail-macrophyte simulation system was built and isotope tracer technique was adopted to study the environmental fate of nitrogen in snail-macrophyte purification system, the results showed that: Vallisneria spiralis increased its wet weight by 580% and its number by 6.6 ramets, moreover, Vallisneria spiralis absorbed 1.07% 15N by the roots and 7.74% by stems and leaves, while Bellamya only absorbed 0.06%. And 5.73% 15N was retained in the sediment. Through analyzing of the results, it indicated that: in such simulation system, sediment was the main nutrition source for the growth of Vallisneria spiralis, which absorbed only few dissolved nitrogen from water; ammonium nitrogen in water was transformed mainly in the sediment-water interface, most of which was absorbed by Vallisneria spiralis, a small amount was removed through nitrification and denitrification, and the rest was kept by sediment; Vallisneria spiralis was final vector for removing nitrogen in the system, and Bellamya could also boost the growth of Vallisneria spiralis and strengthen the processes of nitrification and denitrification, thus promoting the nitrogen removal from the system indirectly. So, during the period of culture, rational allocation of snail-macrophyte structure in different stages plays an important role in controlling water quality in ponds.

Through vegetation investigation and soil analysis, this paper studied the evolvement of soil quality during natural vegetation succession and after farmland reclamation in the Yancheng coastal wetland of Jiangsu Province. Along with the process of vegetation succession, the soil physical, chemical, and biological properties in the wetland improved, which was manifested in the improvement of soil physical properties and the increase of soil nutrient contents, microbial biomass, and enzyme activities. Different vegetation type induced the differences in soil properties. Comparing with those in salt marshes, the soil salt content in reclaimed farmlands decreased to 0.01 - 0.04%, the soil microbial biomass and enzyme activities increased, and the soil quality improved obviously. The soil quality index (SQI) in the wetland was in the order of mudflat (0.194)Suaeda salsa flat (0.233)Imperata cylindrica flat (0.278)Spartina alterniflora flat (0.446)maize field (0.532)cotton field (0.674)soybean field (0.826), suggesting that positive vegetation succession would be an effective approach in improving soil quality.

Although it is conventionally regarded as an inflammatory caspase, recent studies have shown that caspase-4 plays a role in induction of apoptosis by endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. We report here that activation of caspase-4 is also involved in induction of apoptosis by TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) in human melanoma cells. Treatment with TRAIL resulted in activation of caspase-4. This appeared to be mediated by caspase-3, in that caspase-4 was activated later than caspase-8, -9, and -3, and that inhibition of caspase-3 blocked TRAIL-induced caspase-4 activation. Notably, TRAIL triggered ER stress in melanoma cells as shown by up-regulation of the GRP78 protein and the spliced form of XBP-1 mRNA. This seemed to be necessary for activation of caspase-4, as activation of caspase-3 by agents that did not trigger ER stress did not cause activation of caspase-4. Importantly, inhibition of caspase-4 also partially blocked caspase-3 activation, suggesting that activation of caspase-4 may be positive feed-back mechanism to further enhance caspase-3 activation. Collectively, these results show that activation of caspase-4 contributes to TRAIL-induced apoptosis and is associated with induction of ER stress by TRAIL in melanoma cells, and may have important implications for improving therapeutic efficacies of TRAIL in melanoma.

To compare the diagnostic accuracy of different myocardial injury markers and their combinations in diagnosing acute myocardial infarction (AMI).The myocardial injury markers: AST, CK, CK-MB, LDH, HBDH, cTnI, CK-MB mass were detected in patients with acute chest pain-onset who were hospitalized in Sichuan University West China Hospital from July 2005 to October 2006. The accuracy of those markers in diagnosing AMI were evaluated by their sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, positive likelihood ratio, and negative likelihood ratio. Student t-test and one-way ANOVA were performed to compare the diagnostic accuracy of the markers.cTnI had the highest diagnostic accuracy, with 85% of sensitivity and 92.5% of specificity (P0.05). cTnI in parallel with myocardial enzymes produced the highest combined diagnostic accuracy, with 100% of sensitivity and 37.29% of specificity (P0.05). Myocardial enzymes in sequence with cTnI produced the highest sequential diagnostic accuracy, with 50% of sensitivity and 100% of specificity (P0.05).cTnI is the best indicator for diagnosis and differential diagnosis of AMI. Myocardiozymogram is poor in sensitivity and specificity, which should be used only in combination with cTnI or CK-MB mass. Parallel testing can increase sensitivity, while sequential testing can improve specificity.

Soil samples under different salt marsh vegetations in Yancheng coastal wetland were collected, and their organic carbon (C) and total nitrogen (N) were determined, aimed to analyze the influence of salt marsh vegetation on the spatial distribution of soil carbon and nitrogen. The results showed that the organic C and total N contents in top soils varied from 1.71 to 7.92 g x kg(-1) and from 0.17 to 0.36 g x kg(-1), respectively, and there were significant differences among different vegetation zones. The top soils organic C and total N contents in vegetation zones were higher than those in mudflat without vegetation. In the soil profiles in vegetation zones, organic C and total N contents had a trend of decreasing with depth, but changed little below the depth of 15 cm. Soil organic C was significantly positively correlated with soil total N and C/N, but soil total N had no significant correlation with soil C/N.

Resistance of melanoma cells to chemotherapeutics remains a major obstacle to successful treatment of melanoma once it has spread beyond locoregional sites. We report in this study that activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR) is involved in resistance of melanoma cells to two chemotherapeutic drugs, cisplatin (CDDP) and adriamycin, and this is associated with glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78)-mediated inhibition of activation of caspase-4 and -7. The UPR was constitutively activated in cultured melanoma cell lines and fresh melanoma isolates as evidenced by elevated expression levels of the GRP78 protein and the active form of x-box-binding protein 1 messenger RNA. Treatment with CDDP or adriamycin further increased the levels, indicative of induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress and activation of the UPR by the drugs. Inhibition of GRP78 by small-interference RNA (siRNA)-sensitized melanoma cells to CDDP- and adriamycin-induced apoptosis. This was associated with enhanced caspase-4 and -7 activation as siRNA knockdown of the caspases blocked induction of apoptosis. In contrast, overexpression of GRP78 attenuated activation of caspase-4 and -7 and induction of apoptosis by the drugs. CDDP- and adriamycin-induced activation of caspase-4 and -7 appeared to be mediated by calpain activity in that it was blocked by the calpain inhibitors calpeptin and PD150606 even when GRP78 was inhibited by siRNA. These results provide new insights into resistance mechanisms of melanoma cells to CDDP and adriamycin and identify GRP78 as a potential target for enhancing chemosensitivity in melanoma.

Clustered superscalar is an attractive alternative to large monolithic superscalar, and point-to-point (p-to-p) network is often used as inter-cluster communication networks (ICCN) to transfer dependent values between clusters. This new class of networks has demands and characteristics different from traditional networks. In order to pursue high performance, it should be highly coupled with the microarchitecture of microprocessor, and requires ultra low communication latency. In this paper, a novel microarchitecture of ICCN is proposed. And it performs 5.8% better than the network proposed in [1].

Although the etiology underlying scar formation is not well understood, previous studies revealed that endothelial cells play a role in the pathogenesis of scar development. Recently, the authors developed a reliable technique to obtain endothelial cells from hypertrophic scars that involved separation of cells from the scar tissue matrix and isolation from other cell types. Using phase-contract and electron microscopy, the cells were observed to have a characteristic morphology consistent with cells of endothelial origin. The cells were further characterized as endothelial cells by assessment of endothelin (ET)-1 and intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM) mRNA expression, and the presence of factor VIII antigen, CD34, CD31, and VE-cadherin. This isolation method provides a simple method for culturing endothelial cells from hypertrophic scar tissue and should prove useful for studying the role of endothelial cell involvement in scar formation.

To explore the biological function of vascular endothelial cells from hypertrophic scar, and to analyze the relationship between them.The samples from human hypertrophic scar and normal skin tissue were harvested for histological examination. Then vascular endothelial cells were purified and isolated from the samples, and the level of transforming growth factor (TGF) beta1, platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), endothelin1 (ET)-1, fibroblast growth factor (FGF)2 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were determined in a single cell with ELISA.Few capillary vessels were observed in normal skin under microscope, while an increased number of them were present in hypertrophic scar, with slender, tortuous in morphology and even occluded. The diameter of blood capillary in hypertrophic scar was tiny under electron microscope, and the exfoliation of endothelial cells was observed. The levels of TGF-beta1, PDGF, ET-1, bFGF and VEGF from vascular endothelial cells from hypertrophic scar were 60 +/- 8, 30 +/- 4, 0.12 +/- 0.03, 52 +/- 5, 18.1 +/- 1.2 microg/cell, respectively, which were obviously lower than those in normal skin (P0.05).The biological function of vascular endothelial cells was attenuated in the hypertrophic scar, which mightbe the result of the production of large amounts of collagen in the scar tissue, as well as hypoxia.

Dermal defection and the degree of its loss determine the natural process of wound healing, which is the key reason leading to excess scar hyperplasia. The function of tri-dimensional structure in dermis acts as a template to regulate the properties of reparative cells. The template structure induces the reparative cells to grow into the structure which changes the skin mechanic status on wound area. Also, the component of extracellular matrix can affect behaviours of fibroblasts negatively or positively, for the reason that the structure of dermal tissue has a permissive effect on the dermal components in regulating behaviours of reparative cells. Therefore, the behaviors of cells depend on the structure of the template. The suitable tri-dimensional structure of dermis facilitates normal cell cycling. The more the structure of dermis closed to its physiological status, the better the biological behaviors of cells act. Moreover, the integrity as well as the continuity of dermal tissue is the prerequisite for serving as a template. The damage to the integrity and the continuity of dermal tissue may be one of the key reasons to lead abnormal tissue repair and scar formation. Thus, we hypothesize that the loss of dermal template may be one of the mechanism of abnormal scar formation and propose the theory of extracellular matrix framework deficiency or destruction.

Efficient 1D and 2D mixed motion estimation array architectures for MPEG-4 AS profile video encoding are presented in this paper. To reduce the utilization of the global bus to the external memory and to improve the computation efficiency of the array, a novel local memory scheme and an improved 2D systolic array architecture for 16/spl times/16 macroblock motion estimation are proposed. For 8/spl times/8 block motion estimation, a 1D broadcast array architecture is also presented. The motion estimation processor is implemented using TSMC 0.25 /spl mu/m 1-poly 5-metal CMOS technology, which occupies a silicon area of 3.19/spl times/3.19mm/sup 2/. Experimental results show that it is able to estimate texture motion vectors of MPEG-4 AS profile in ITU-R601 format (720/spl times/576 at 25 Hz/PAL) in real-time at around 93.7 MHz.

This paper presents a new hardware architecture that calculates SAD for variable block-size motion estimation (VBSME). The proposed architecture with a 16t1-PE array, a 4-stage adder tree and two flexible register arrays supports 16t16, 16t8, 8t8, 8t4, 4t8, and 4t4 block's SAD calculation. The architecture can be used in the encoder that supports the enhanced motion estimation with variable block size in the MPEG-4 AVC (advanced video coding) and the emerging H.264 standard. Our design was described in Verilog-HDL and implemented in a Altera FPGA APEX20K with a clock frequency of 120MHz allowing the processing of 29296 16t16 per search area.

The nonideal factors of a liquid-suspended rotor micro-gyroscope include the gas-liquid two-phase flow voids, medium temperature and its dielectric relaxation, in which the role of the nonideal factors on the capacitor dielectric constant is altered, thereby affecting the capacitance detection precision of the micro-gyroscope. By comparing four different liquid media, the experimental results reveal the nonideal character of the capacitor dielectric constant. The 7# white oil is suitable for use as the liquid-suspended gyro cavity liquid medium.

Conventional methods for rotor position detection of micro-gyroscopes include common exciting electrodes (single frequency) and common sensing electrodes (frequency multiplex), but they have encountered some problems. So we present a high resolution and low noise pick-off circuit for micro-gyroscopes which utilizes the time multiplex method. The detecting circuit adopts a continuous-time current sensing circuit for capacitance measurement, and its noise analysis of the charge amplifier is introduced. The equivalent output noise power spectral density of phase-sensitive demodulation is 120 nV/Hz1/2. Tests revealed that the whole circuitry has a relative capacitance resolution of 1 × 10−8.

BACKGROUND: Non-reactive platelet counts elevation occurs mainly in myeloproliferative disorders (MPDs), which have been reported to be closely associated with JAK2 V617F mutation. Complete blood cell count (CBC) is essential in diagnosis of MPDs, however, the impact of JAK2 V617F mutation on the patients' hemogram variation remains not clear. METHODS: JAK2 V617F mutation was detected by allele specific real-time quantitative fluorescence PCR (AS-qPCR). RESULTS: Of the 402 non-reactive platelet elevating patients, JAK2 V617F mutation was detected in 222 (55.2%) patients. RBC counts, WBC counts, platelet-large contrast ratio (P-LCR), platelet distribution width (PDW) and mean platelet volume (MPV) were much higher in JAK2 V617F mutated patients, except platelet counts. In addition, when the patients were classified into subgroups by blood cell counts, it was found that JAK2 V617F mutation rate increased progressively with the increase of RBC counts and WBC counts, other than platelet counts. Furthermore, trilineage hyperplasia group showed highest JAK2 V617F mutation rate (93.26%), followed by the bilineage hyperplasia groups. Lastly, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden was found much higher in polycythemia vera (PV) patients [median(P25-P75): 45.02%(35.12%-54.22%)] than in essential thrombocythemia (ET) patients [median(P25-P75): 28.23%(17.77%-41.66%)], and that it increased with WBC counts (r = 0.393, p = 0.000) and RBC counts(r = 0.215, p = 0.001), other than platelet counts (r = -0.051, p = 0.452). Further analysis revealed that in ET patients, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden correlated with WBC counts and platelet counts positively, other than RBC counts, while in PV patients, it correlated with WBC counts and RBC counts positively, but not platelet counts. CONCLUSIONS: JAK2 V617F mutation occurs frequently in patients with non-reactive elevated platelet counts. The presence of JAK2 V617F mutation has great impact on hemogram variation, including RBC counts, WBC counts, platelet parameters and lineage hyperplasia, but not on platelet counts. Besides, JAK2 V617F mutant allele burden affects the blood cell proliferation pattern.