In recent years, hypertension has become one of the leading causes of illness and death worldwide. Changes in lifestyle among the population have led to an increasing prevalence of hypertension. This ...study proposes a non-contact blood pressure estimation method that allows patients to conveniently monitor their blood pressure values. By utilizing a webcam to track facial features and the region of interest (ROI) for obtaining forehead images, independent component analysis (ICA) is employed to eliminate artifact signals. Subsequently, physiological parameters are calculated using the principle of optical wave reflection. The Nelder–Mead (NM) simplex method is combined with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the empirical parameters, thus enhancing computational efficiency and accurately determining the optimal solution for blood pressure estimation. The influences of light intensity and camera distance on the experimental results are also discussed. Furthermore, the measurement time is only 10 s. The superior accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methodology are demonstrated by comparing them with those in other published literature.
By employing an electrical micro-titration system, in which a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector（C^4D） was used to monitor the reaction process in real time, herein a novel method ...for determining ciprofloxacin hydrochloride（CIPHCl） was developed for the first time. Mode 1： Standard CIPHCl solutions at different concentrations were loaded into reaction cells, respectively, and were titrated with standard Ag^＋. Upon the titration, the formation of a precipitate alters the number of ions in the solution, raising the change of conductivity, which was monitored by a special C-4 D to construct a titration curve. The endpoint of the titration was located from the peak of the curve. Between the elapsed time and the initial concentration of titrand, a linear relationship was established over the range of2.0–8.0 mmol/L. Mode 2： Standard Fe^3＋ took the place of Ag^＋, and was used as titrant to recognize ciprofloxacin contributed to the formation of complexation, which also resulting a change of solution conductivity. Under optimized conditions, a working range of 1.0–5.0 mmol/L CIPHCl was found. Because the reaction solutions were isolated from the working electrodes, this pioneer work shows significant simplicity and cost-effectiveness, by eliminating the requirements for detector exchange/renewal between different measurements, and by involving no auxiliary chemicals. Both of the two approaches were applied successfully to determine CIPHCl in tablet samples. And the results were in good agreement with those obtained by reference method.
A novel protein with anti-tumor activities named malanin was isolated and purified from an endemic plant in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces. Effects of copper ion, silver ion and calcium ion on malanin ...and apo-malanin fluorescence spectra were studied. The results showed that copper ion leads to obvious statistic quenching of malanin and apo-malanin fluorescence. The dissociation constant of them from malanin and apo-malanin were about 2.37 X 10(-4) and 2.66 X 10(-4) mol · L(-1), respectively. The silver ion did not have quenching action on malanin fluorescence, but it had statistic quenching effect on apo-malanin fluorescence, and its dissociation constant was 2.37 X 10(-4) mol · L(-1). Calcium ion did not have quenching action on malanin and apo-malanin fluorescence. It plays an important role in keeping malanin natural conformation.
A method based on polynomial regression algorithm (PRA) is proposed in this paper to compensate the nonlinear phase noise in optical frequency domain reflection (OFDR) systems. In this method, the ...nonlinear phase of OFDR systems is represented by the polynomial phase function, and then the coefficients of the polynomial phase function are estimated by PRA. Finally, the nonlinearity is compensated by match Fourier transform (MFT). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good performance in compensating both weak and strong nonlinear phase noises of OFDR systems.
Because of extreme weather and frequent natural disasters, improvement of disaster prevention capabilities and early warning technologies is an urgent matter. Inshore areas are where ocean and land ...intersect; the sea conditions and environment are complex and changeable, and human activities are frequent in these areas. Natural disasters, such as a substantial rise in sea levels, coastal erosion and transitions, and rapid flooding from tsunamis, and human development projects, pollution, and ecological damage must be thoroughly investigated, monitored, recorded, and prevented. The west coast of Taiwan, particularly the southeast coastal plain, is a highly populated narrow area; thus, field survey tools with a high degree of freedom and flexible applications are required for data collection to reach its full potential. The Taiwan Ocean Research Institute developed an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) for the “Long Term Observation for Research Performed in TORI” 2010 project. This USV is a platform that integrates scientific equipment, including Wi-Fi communication and a satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) with navigation images and signals, to form an internal network with onshore control bases to allow the instant acquisition of measured data and enable researchers to conduct surveys in safe conditions. USVs are appropriate for various types of inshore research and surveys, such as marine topography, sediment disposition analysis, inshore engineering measurements, and the monitoring of hydrology, water quality, and the environment. One aim of the Taiwan Ocean Research Institute (TORI) is to establish a method to use the USV for collecting inshore marine topography, hydrology, water quality, and meteorological data. Integrating field investigations of Taiwan’s coastal waters will provide data for verifying numerical simulations and lead scientists to explore novel and unknown areas.
Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a clinical syndrome with chronic gastroduodenal symptoms without noticeable organic or systemic diseases. According to the Rome III consensus, FD can be subdivided into ...PDS (postprandial distress syndrome) and EPS (epigastric pain syndrome). Neurotransmitters are involved in the development and pathology of FD. However, the expression profiles of neurotransmitters in FD patients are not clear. This study aimed to investigate the expression profile of neurotransmitters in the duodenal mucosa of FD patients.
A total of 48 FD patients treated at our hospital were included in this study: 23 patients with PDS and 25 patients with EPS. Another 21 healthy volunteers served as normal controls. The duodenal mucosa was biopsied with gastroscopy and examined with immunohistochemical staining against serotonin, substance P, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP). Mast cells were identified with toluidine blue staining.
The duodenal iNOS levels were significantly higher in PDS patients than the normal controls (P<0.05). The expression of serotonin, substance P, and VIP did not differ significantly among the groups. Mast cell counts and the percentage of mast cells with degranulation were significantly higher in PDS and EPS patients than normal controls (P<0.001) In addition, iNOS expression levels were positively correlated with percentage of degranulating mast cells (r=0.321, P=0.008).
In conclusion, duodenal iNOS may be involved in the pathogenesis of PDS.
This paper describes a highly sensitive CMOS chopper amplifier for a monolithic magnetic hall sensor. It is realized by using chopper stabilization technique to overcome the low frequency noise and ...drift problems. In order to eliminate the residual offset due to input switching transient spikes, we choose a double track-and-hold (T/H)-based demodulation. This chopper amplifier can effectively eliminate the amplifier input offset, low-frequency input noise components and residual offsets due to input switching spikes, without requiring any low-pass filtering.
In this paper, a full integrated high-speed ring VCO is designed. The VCO consists of three stages, each of which is composed of a fast path and a slow path while the outputs of both paths are ...summed. Since the 0.25 um CMOS technology and 3.3 v voltage supply, the VCO has a wide operating frequency ranging from 800 MHz to 2.1 GHz with a high gain of 1.08 GHz/V PLL and frequency synthesizer will be the potential applications.
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