[en] In an endeavour to assess scintigraphic features of leukemia a retrospective analysis of hepatosplenic scintigrams using ^99mTc-Sn phytate was made in 12 cases of chronic myelocytic leukemia and 6 cases of acute myelocytic leukemia. Diagnosis was proven in every case in bone marrow aspirate and peripheral blood tests. The age of patient ranged from 18 to 72 years old. There was 12 males and 6 females. 1. The great majority (83.3%) of the patient with chronic myelocytic leukemia revealed less radionuclide activity (RNA) in the spleen than in the liver, although the spleen was moderately to markedly enlarged. The RNA distribution both in the liver and spleen was inhomogeneous, but no focal defect was observed. Those findings indeed contrasted with those of chronic leukemia and liver cirrhosis in which splenic RNA is typically more prominent than hepatic RNA. 2. All of the patient with acute myelocytic leukemia showed mild splenomegaly. The splenic RNA was equal in density to that of the liver in 66.7% and less in the remainder

[en] Antiferromagnetic spin chains play an important role in condensed matter and statistical mechanics. Recently XXX spin chain was discussed in relation to information theory. Here we consider localizable entanglement. It is how much entanglement can be localized on two spins by performing local measurements on other individual spins (in a system of many interacting spins). We consider the ground state of antiferromagnetic spin chain. We study localizable entanglement [represented by concurrence] between two spins. It is a function of the distance. We start with isotropic spin chain. Then we study effects of anisotropy and magnetic field. We conclude that anisotropy increases the localizable entanglement. We discovered high sensitivity to a magnetic field in cases of high symmetry. We also evaluated concurrence of these two spins before the measurement to illustrate that the measurement raises the concurrence

[en] Information theory based Shannon entropy increment analysis of the differential pressure fluctuations was successfully developed to recognize dynamic behavior of gas-solid flow and different flow patterns. Experiments were carried out in a biomass fluidized bed with cross-section of 100 mmx30 mm and height of 500 mm was carried out. Cylinder-shaped biomass particles with the size of 2.6 mm in diameter and 6 mm in length were used to as bed materials. Pressure fluctuations and flow patterns were obtained by a multi-channel differential pressure sampling system and a high-resolution digital CCD camera, respectively. It was found that both Shannon entropy and the present developed Shannon entropy increment analyses were pronounced with the flow patterns and transitions. Besides, Shannon entropy increment analyses, i.e. Shannon entropy increment and Shannon entropy increment rate, are very helpful to obtain the chaotic nature especially the change of chaotic nature with operating condition in gas-solid flow.

[en] Highlights: • Vehicle is one of the most crucial sources of fuel consumption and emission in China. • Reducing fuel consumption and emissions as optimization targets of path planning • Real time path planning was achieved by combining dynamic traffic with built models. -- Abstract: The rapidly increasing and widespread use of vehicles has intensified fuel consumption and environmental pollution. Big data on urban dynamic traffic flow can be used to improve the economics and environmental impact of vehicle travel by effectively reducing fuel usage and pollution. In this study, a fuel consumption and emissions measurement model of vehicles coupled with a dynamic traffic network were established based on a large dataset of real-world vehicle experiments. This study improved upon the traditional Dijkstra algorithm used for path planning and then, the improved algorithm was combined with a vehicle fuel consumption and emissions measurement model. An optimal path simulation analysis was performed in MATLAB based on road networks generated by ArcGIS and different optimization targets were assessed including the shortest time, shortest distance, least fuel consumption, and lowest emissions. The results show that factors such as the road type and traffic environment at intersections can greatly affect fuel consumption and emissions. Large differences in path planning results were observed depending on the optimization target. The proposed economic and environmental protection model for vehicle path planning based on a dynamic traffic network can effectively reduce fuel consumption and emissions during travel, thus, providing a new method to improve urban environmental pollution in China.

[en] A pot experiment was carried out to examine the influence of vermicompost application on some key enzymes and metabolites involved in carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) metabolism as well as nutrient status in the leaves of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.). Two types of vermicompost with two application rates were used in this study. Regardless of application rate, both types of vermicompost significantly increased total N, phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) contents in the leaves. They also caused enhancements in contents of total soluble carbohydrates, reducing sugars, starch and total organic C as well as amylase and invertase activities involved in C metabolism, contents of soluble protein and nicotine in N metabolism in the leaves. With an increase in application rate, each vermicompost type had an increasing effect on almost all measured parameters except nitrate reductase activity. Regardless of vermicompost type, the high rate (50%) of application showed the best effects compared with controls. The effects of V1 type vermicompost were superior to those of V2 at the same application rate. Therefore, the above effects might appear to be dependent on both type and dose. Vermicompost could be considered as an effective organic matter for attaining improved plant nutrition as well as C and N metabolism. (author)

[en] Actinomycosis still poses a problem for correct clinical and radiologic diagnosis. We retrospectively analyzed CT findings in 7 patients with pathologically proven abdominal actinomycosis. Involved areas were the pelvis (n=3), grater omentum (n=2), liver (n=1), and kidney (n=1). CT confirmed the infiltrative nature of the disease with a tendency to invade across tissue plane and boundary. Five of seven cases were predominantly solid mass (pseudotumor) with focal low-attention areas while two were predominantly cystic mass with thickened wall. Contrast enhanced CT showed dense, inhomogeneous contrast enhancement in the wall and/or solid components of the masses in five. Minimal lymphadenopathy was noted in one case. CT is useful in demonstrating the extent and characteristics of this disease. Despite nonspecific findings, actinomycosis should be included in the differential consideration when CT shows an infiltrative mass with unusual aggressiveness and dense inhomogeneous contrast enhancement in patients with fever, leucocytosis, or long-term use of intrauterine contraceptive devices

[en] The Modbus TCP/IP has been a standard industry communication protocol and widely utilized for establishing sensor-cloud platforms on the Internet. However, numerous existing data acquisition systems built on traditional single-chip microcontrollers without sufficient resources cannot support it, because the complete Modbus TCP/IP protocol always works dependent on a full operating system which occupies abundant hardware resources. Hence, a compact Modbus TCP/IP protocol is proposed in this work to make it run efficiently and stably even on a resource-limited hardware platform. Firstly, the Modbus TCP/IP protocol stack is analyzed and the refined protocol suite is rebuilt by streamlining the typical TCP/IP suite. Then, specific implementation of every hierarchical layer is respectively presented in detail according to the protocol structure. Besides, the compact protocol is implemented in a traditional microprocessor to validate the feasibility of the scheme. Finally, the performance of the proposed scenario is assessed. The experimental results demonstrate that message packets match the frame format of Modbus TCP/IP protocol and the average bandwidth reaches to 1.15 Mbps. The compact protocol operates stably even based on a traditional microcontroller with only 4-kB RAM and 12-MHz system clock, and no communication congestion or frequent packet loss occurs.

[en] Quantum coherent transport through a multiply-connected network is investigated by the free-electron network model (FENM). Within this model, we study π-conjugated molecules such as benzenedithiol (BDT) in order to understand the influence of nontrivial topological structures on the transport behavior. The analytical solutions for transmission functions and I-V characteristics of the simplest networked conjugated molecules are derived. Moreover, quantum effects such as resonance and interference are clearly revealed in this approach. We have also compared our FENM approach with the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method within tight-binding calculation

[en] Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves selective loss of muscarinic m2, but not m1, subtype neuroreceptors in the posterior parietal cortex of the human brain. Emission tomographic study of the loss of m2 receptors in AD is limited by the fact that there is currently no available m2-selective radioligand which can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. In our efforts to prepare such a radioligand, the authors have used competition studies against currently existing muscarinic receptor radioligands to infer the in vitro and in vivo properties of a novel muscarinic receptor ligand, 5-[[4-[4-(diisobutylamino)butyl]-1-phenyl]acetyl]-10,11-dihydro-5H-dibenzo[b,e][1,4]diazepin-11-one (DIBD). In vitro competition studies against [³H](R)-3-quinuclidinylbenzilate ([³H]QNB) and [³H]N-methylscopolamine ([³H]NMS), using membranes derived from transfected cells expressing only m1, m2, m3, or m4 receptor subtypes, indicate that DIBD is selective for m2/m4 over m1/m3. In vivo competition studies against (R,R)-[¹²⁵I]IQNB indicate that DIBD crosses the blood brain barrier (BBB). The relationship of the regional percentage decrease in (R,R)-[¹²⁵I]IQNB versus the percentage of each of the receptor subtypes indicates that DIBD competes more effectively in those brain regions which are known to be enriched in the m2, relative to the m1, m3, and m4, receptor subtype; however, analysis of the data using a mathematical model shows that caution is required when interpreting the in vivo results. The authors conclude that a suitably radiolabeled derivative of DIBD may be of potential use in emission tomographic study of changes in m2 receptors in the central nervous system

[en] We characterized and compared the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) response of superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) and NbN–Au hybrid metamaterials. In our design, the two resonators in a unit cell have strong coupling and are directly excited under terahertz (THz) radiation. A stronger slow light effect was achieved using superconducting metamaterials than hybrid metamaterials. The enhanced slow light effect could be attributed to the remarkably low Ohmic loss and strong interaction of the resonators. (paper)