Background/aims: There is substantial evidence that mammalian epithelial stem cells are located within well defined niches. Although the corneoscleral limbus is acknowledged as the site of corneal ...epithelial stem cells no anatomical niche for such cells has yet been described. The authors undertook to re-evaluate the microanatomy of the limbus in order to identify possible sites that may represent a stem cell niche. Methods: Systematic serial 5–7 μm sections of human corneoscleral segments obtained from cadaver donors, were examined. The sections were stained with haematoxylin and eosin or toludine blue. Sections with specific areas of interest were further examined immunohistologically for the corneal epithelial marker cytokeratin 14 and the “stem cell” marker ABCG2 transporter protein. Results: Distinct anatomical extensions from the peripheral aspect of the limbal palisades were identified. These consist of a solid cord of cells extending peripherally or circumferentially. The cells stained positive for CK14 and ABCG2. Conclusions: A novel anatomical structure has been identified at the human limbus, which demonstrates characteristics of being a stem cell niche. The authors have termed this structure the limbal epithelial crypt.
In recent times, the utility and privacy are trade-off factors with the performance of one factor tends to sacrifice the other. Therefore, the dataset cannot be published without privacy. It is ...henceforth crucial to maintain an equilibrium between the utility and privacy of data. In this paper, a novel technique on trade-off between the utility and privacy is developed, where the former is developed with a metaheuristic algorithm and the latter is developed using a cryptographic model. The utility is carried out with the process of clustering, and the privacy model encrypts and decrypts the model. At first, the input datasets are clustered, and after clustering, the privacy of data is maintained. The simulation is conducted on the manufacturing datasets over various existing models. The results show that the proposed model shows improved clustering accuracy and data privacy than the existing models. The evaluation with the proposed model shows a trade-off privacy preservation and utility clustering in smart manufacturing datasets.
High performance epoxy biocomposite coating material was prepared using agricultural waste (rice husk) derived biosilica and characterized for visco-elastic, thermal conductivity and hydrophobic ...behavior. The main aim of this research was to prepare a high performance biocomposite coating material for air-duct application in aircraft. The biosilica ultra fine particle was prepared via thermo-chemical method and surface-treated using amino silane. The visco-elastic results revealed that the addition of silane-treated biosilica of 4 vol.% produced highest storage modulus of 7.2 GPa, loss factor of 0.51 and glass transition temperature of 91
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C. The highest thermal conductivity of 0.3w/mK was observed for 4 vol.% of as-received biosilica in epoxy while the silane-treated biosilica of 4 vol.% gives 0.18w/mK. Similarly, the contact angle results revealed that the silane-treated biosilica of 4 vol.% retains higher contact angle of 85
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. This high performance epoxy biocomposite coating material could be used as a coating material for aircraft passenger air-duct to improve the condition of air and reduce the heat loss during flow during flow. Moreover the coating on air-ducts improves the life of welded joints, rivets and overall product.
OFDM is a ubiquitous modulation scheme used to achieve high data rate during transmission and reception in broadband internet of things application. But the envelope aberration of OFDM signal leads ...to high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) which finally results in overall transmitter inefficiency. This article proposes a neural network (NN) based gradient clipping approach at the transmitter and a linear regression model at the receiver to minimize the PAPR in OFDM systems with reasonable computational complexity. The simulation result shows that when compared to the original OFDM signal, the proposed Neural network-based Regression assisted PAPR Reduction achieves PAPR reduction by 82.9% and 84.1% for 64QAM-OFDM and 16QAM OFDM signal respectively without compromising on the bit error rate (BER) performance.
Aims:To describe the long-term risk of bullous keratopathy following argon laser iridotomy (ALI) in Japan and to compare it with other centres in the world.Methods:We retrospectively reviewed the ...case records of all patients with ALI-induced bullous keratopathy that underwent penetrating keratoplasty at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine (KPUM) from January 2001 to December 2004. The results were compared with the other representative centres in Singapore and the UK.Results:Thirty-nine eyes of 33 patients were included in the study. The mean age of patients was 73.3±6.9 years (range, 58 to 87 years). Patients developed bullous keratopathy at a mean duration of 6.9±4.9 years (range, 0.2 to 16 years) after the laser iridotomy procedure. The majority of eyes that developed bullous keratopathy (59.0%) occurred following prophylactic ALI. KPUM had the highest percentage of ALI-induced bullous keratopathy cases that underwent penetrating keratoplasties, as compared with other centres in Singapore and the UK (20.0%, 1.8% and 0%, respectively).Conclusion:Bullous keratopathy may arise many years following ALI, and is a growing problem in Asian countries. This condition is a major cause of ocular morbidity in Japan, which has seen a worrying increase in the number of cases in recent years.
Aims: To determine the epithelial proliferative capacity of organ cultured limbal tissue and correlate this with various donor and eye banking factors. Methods: 24 corneoscleral limbal (CSL) rims ...left over from penetrating keratoplasty were split in half and set up as in vitro explant cultures. Corneal epithelial proliferative potential (CEPP) was assessed by the number of “cycles” of growth achieved before explants underwent exhaustion and failure to generate an epithelium to subconfluence. The dependence of CEPP on the age of the donor, time of death to enucleation, time of enucleation to organ culture, and time in organ culture in the eye bank was determined. Results: CSL rims were capable of up to four cycles of culture with a wide variation between tissue samples. Of the various factors examined, death to enucleation time was the only statistically significant factor affecting the CEPP (regression coefficient: −0.062 (cycles/hour), CI −0.119 to −0.004, p = 0.037). Time in organ culture had little effect on CEPP. Conclusions: Preselected organ cultured CSL rims from eye banks may offer a viable alternative tissue source for use in allo-limbal transplantation.
STAR collaboration's record system is a collection of heterogeneous and sparse information associated to each members and institutions. In its original incarnation, only flat information was stored ...revealing many restrictions such as the lack of historical change information, the inability to keep track of members leaving and re-joining STAR, or the ability to easily extend the saved information as new requirements appeared. In mid-2013, a new project was launched covering an extensive set of revisited requirements. The requirements led us to a design based on a RESTful API, back-end storage engine relying on key/value pair data representation model coupled with a tiered architecture design. This design was motivated by the fact that unifying many STAR tools, relying on the same business logic and storage engine, was a key and central feature for the maintainability and presentation of records. This central service API would leave no ambiguities and provide easy service integration between STAR tools. The new design stores the changes in records dynamically and allows tracking the changes chronologically. The storage engine is extensible as new field of information emerges (member specific or general) without affecting the presentation or the business logic layers. The new record system features a convenient administrative interface, fuzzy algorithms for data entry and search, and provides basic statistics and graphs. Finally, this modular approach is supplemented with access control, allowing private information and administrative operations to be hidden away from public eyes.
•We relate the severity of engine operating factors into LCF damages of fan blades.•We monitor the life usage of critical parts of an engine by LUMS.•LUMS is designed with interfaces such ...tacho-generators and thermocouples.•We are able to forecast an impending failure of critical components.•It is also easy to estimate the lead time available before such failures.
The airliner operators normally rely on condition monitoring techniques to ascertain the airworthiness state of aero-engine and its components. These techniques are proven tools for forecasting any impending failures and also for optimizing the downtime of maintenance. This paper describes the effectiveness of Life Usage Monitoring Systems for assessing the Low Cycle Fatigue Damages. It also explains how well the LUMS helps the operator to estimate the useful operating life available before any potential failure occurs. Thus, LUMS aids the maintenance planning department to convert the unscheduled maintenance into a scheduled maintenance tasks and also enables the operator to contemplate the possibilities of utilizing the Lean Principles in Planning, Scheduling and Controlling of all Maintenance Tasks.
The elliptic (v2) and triangular (v3) azimuthal anisotropy coefficients in central 3He + Au, d + Au, and p + Au collisions at $\sqrt{S_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV are measured as a function of transverse ...momentum (PT) at midrapidity (|n| < 0.9) via the azimuthal angular correlation between two particles both at |n| < 0.9 while the v2(PT) values depend on the colliding systems, the v3(PT) values are system independent within the uncertainties, suggesting an influence on eccentricity from subnucleonic fluctuations in these small-sized systems. Furthermore, these results also provide stringent constraints for the hydrodynamic modeling of these systems.
We report here the first observation of directed flow ($v_1$) of the hypernuclei $^3_Λ\text{H}$ and $^4_Λ\text{H}$ in mid-central Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}$ = 3 GeV at RHIC. These ...data are taken as part of the beam energy scan program carried out by the STAR experiment. From 165 × 106 events in 5%–40% centrality, about 8400 $^3_Λ\text{H}$ and 5200 $^4_Λ\text{H}$ candidates are reconstructed through two- and three-body decay channels. In this work, we observe that these hypernuclei exhibit significant directed flow. Comparing to that of light nuclei, it is found that the midrapidity $v_1$ slopes of $^3_Λ\text{H}$ and $^4_Λ\text{H}$ follow baryon number scaling, implying that the coalescence is the dominant mechanism for these hypernuclei production in the 3 GeV Au + Au collisions.
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