Search results for "CONTRAST"
showing 10 items of 1162 documents
Temporal weights in the perception of sound intensity: Effects of sound duration and number of temporal segments
2018
Loudness is a fundamental aspect of auditory perception that is closely related to the physical level of the sound. However, it has been demonstrated that, in contrast to a sound level meter, human listeners do not weight all temporal segments of a sound equally. Instead, the beginning of a sound is more important for loudness estimation than later temporal portions. The present study investigates the mechanism underlying this primacy effect by varying the number of equal-duration temporal segments (5 and 20) and the total duration of the sound (1.0 to 10.0 s) in a factorial design. Pronounced primacy effects were observed for all 20-segment sounds. The temporal weights for the five-segment…
A comparative biochemical, pharmacological and immunological study of Clostridium novyi alpha-toxin, C. difficile toxin B and C. sordellii lethal tox…
1991
The three clostridial cytotoxins, i.e. alpha-toxin of C. novyi (Tox alpha-nov), toxin B of C. difficile (ToxB-dif) and lethal toxin of C. sordellii (LT-sor) consist of single peptide chains of about 200,000 (Tox alpha-nov), 250,000 (LT-sor) and 275,000 (ToxB-dif) mol. wts. ToxB-dif and LT-sor but not Tox alpha-nov cross-reacted with rabbit polyclonal antibodies. Toxicity upon i.v. injection in mice was similar (LD50, 100 hr, 50-200 ng/kg) and was characterized by a slowly developing fluid loss into the interstitial space. When injected into the rat paw the toxins caused a delayed local edema lasting for days. In vitro the three toxins provoked a persistent retraction of endothelial cells cu…
O perdimento de bens da criminalidade organizada no ordenamento brasileiro
2021
O tratamento da criminalidade organizada é uma questão muito delicada e de extrema importância para qualquer Estado moderno porque da capacidade de reagir corretamente a esse fenômeno depende a capa- cidade de garantir a estabilidade externa e a efetividade do governo do território. A periculosidade específica do crime organizado, de fato, não de- pende apenas da sua habilidade de controlar as atividades ilícitas que pratica, mas especialmente da sua propensão a controlar também os mercados e os territórios em que se instala, interferindo na atuação legítima das instituições públicas e, assim, minando as bases do Estado de direito sobre o qual se constroem as democracias contemporâneas. À l…
Structural difficulty in grammatical evolution versus genetic programming
2013
Genetic programming (GP) has problems with structural difficulty as it is unable to search effectively for solutions requiring very full or very narrow trees. As a result of structural difficulty, GP has a bias towards narrow trees which means it searches effectively for solutions requiring narrow trees. This paper focuses on the structural difficulty of grammatical evolution (GE). In contrast to GP, GE works on variable-length binary strings and uses a grammar in Backus-Naur Form (BNF) to map linear genotypes to phenotype trees. The paper studies whether and how GE is affected by structural difficulty. For the analysis, we perform random walks through the search space and compare the struc…
Hybrid assemblies based on a gadolinium-containing polyoxometalate and a cationic polymer with spermine side chains for enhanced MRI contrast agents.
2013
Supramolecular assembly: Spherical and stable hybrid assemblies based on a cationic polymer with spermine side chains and an anionic Gd(3+)-containing polyoxometalate cluster (GdW) are prepared by electrostatic interaction. The T1-weighted MRI performance of GdW is enhanced about three times in the assemblies; meanwhile, the assemblies show good biocompatibility, which enables them to be promising candidates for MRI contrast agents.
Highly Loaded Semipermeable Nanocapsules for Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
2017
Magnetic resonance imaging has become an essential tool in medicine for the investigation of physiological processes. The key issues related to contrast agents, i.e., substances that are injected in the body for imaging, are the efficient enhancement of contrast, their low toxicity, and their defined biodistribution. Polyurea nanocapsules containing the gadolinium complex Gadobutrol as a contrast agent in high local concentration and high relaxivity up to 40 s-1 mmol-1 L are described. A high concentration of the contrast agent inside the nanocapsules can be ensured by increasing the crystallinity in the shell of the nanocapsules. Nanocapsules from aliphatic polyurea are found to display hi…
Minor changes in the macrocyclic ligands but major consequences on the efficiency of gold nanoparticles designed for radiosensitization
2016
International audience; Many studies have been devoted to adapting the design of gold nanoparticles to efficiently exploit their promising capability to enhance the effects of radiotherapy. In particular, the addition of magnetic resonance imaging modality constitutes an attractive strategy for enhancing the selectivity of radiotherapy since it allows the determination of the most suited delay between the injection of nanoparticles and irradiation. This requires the functionalization of the gold core by an organic shell composed of thiolated gadolinium chelates. The risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis induced by the release of gadolinium ions should encourage the use of macrocyclic chelat…
Giant liposomes as model membranes for immunological studies: spontaneous insertion of purified K1-antigen (poly-alpha-2,8-NeuAc) of Escherichia coli.
1990
A flow chamber has been constructed to use giant liposomes (diameter 5-50 microns) as model membranes for immunological studies and other experiments involving the interaction with water-soluble compounds. As an example of immunological importance, the insertion of purified K-antigen from Escherichia coli K1 has been studied. Despite its large hydrophilic part (poly-alpha-2,8-NeuAc), which is capped at its potential reducing end with phosphatidic acid acting as a lipid anchor group, this water-soluble material is readily incorporated into liposomal membranes of dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC). The incorporation has been proven by immunofluorescence using a FITC-labeled monoclonal anti…
3D DCE-MRI Radiomic Analysis for Malignant Lesion Prediction in Breast Cancer Patients
2022
Rationale and Objectives: To develop and validate a radiomic model, with radiomic features extracted from breast Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) from a 1.5T scanner, for predicting the malignancy of masses with enhancement. Images were acquired using an 8-channel breast coil in the axial plane. The rationale behind this study is to show the feasibility of a radio-mics-powered model that could be integrated into the clinical practice by exploiting only standard-of-care DCE-MRI with the goal of reducing the required image pre-processing (ie, normalization and quantitative imaging map generation).Materials and Methods: 107 radiomic features were extracted from a …
Angiocardiographic digital still images compressed via irreversible methods: concepts and experiments.
1997
Abstract We defined, implemented and tested two new methods for irreversible compression of angiocardiographic still images: brightness error limitation (BEL) and pseudo-gradient adaptive brightness and contrast error limitation (PABCEL). The scan path used to compress the digital images is based on the Peano–Hilbert plane-filling curve. The compression methods limit, for each pixel, the brightness errors introduced when approximating the original image (i.e. the difference between the values of corresponding pixels as grey levels). Additional limitations are imposed to the contrast error observed when considering along the scan path consecutive pixels of both the original and the reconstru…