Clonal expansion of T cell specificities in the synovial fluid of patients has been taken as evidence for a local stimulation of T cells. By studying the T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire of CD4+ T cells in the synovial and peripheral blood compartments of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we have identified clonally expanded CD4+ populations. Expanded clonotypes were present in the...

Pseudoachondroplasia (PSACH) and multiple epiphyseal dysplasia (MED) are two human autosomal dominant skeletal dysplasias characterized by variable short stature, joint laxity and early-onset degenerative joint disease. Both disorders can result from mut-ations in the gene for cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), an extracellular matrix glycoprotein. About one-third of PSACH cases result...

This paper proposes a nonlinear H∞ controller to control a single link rotary flexible joint robot which has dead zone problem. Dead zone properties are caused by dry friction and gearbox backlashes. The flexibility in setup robot is performed by means of a solenoid spring, which is connected between actuator shaft-out and joint shaft-input in a bilateral connection form. The effect of dead zon...

Unlike knee plain radiography which can only detect joint space narrowing and osteophytes, magnetic resonance imaging can directly visualize and analyse the whole knee structure, including bone size, cartilage defects and loss of cartilage volume. Tibial subchondral bone area expansion may be primary and is associated with risk factors such as age, body mass index (BMI), genetics and/or limb ma...

In Arc welding heat is transferred to the joint by an electrode. During manual metal Arc Welding this heat is transferred by melting the electrode. The stresses generated in welded plate are due to temperature raise and can be simple and thermal stresses. The stresses generated will cause distortion and changing the shape of the welded plates. The study of the distortion and residual stresses i...

Modular expansion joints (MEJs) are used for accommodating large relative displacements of adjacent bridge segments and for completely eliminating pounding. However, the minimum total gap that an MEJ needs to avoid pounding is not well investigated. To provide guidance for the seismic gap of MEJs, the maximum relative displacement of adjacent bridge segments subject to strong earthquakes was st...

An ideal magnetic rail should provide a homogeneous magnetic field along the longitudinal direction to guarantee the reliable friction-free operation of high temperature superconducting (HTS) maglev vehicles. But in reality, magnetic field inhomogeneity may occur due to lots of reasons; the joint gap is the most direct one. Joint gaps inevitably exist between adjacent segments and influence the...

The technique we describe was developed for cervical foraminal stenosis for cases in which a keyhole foraminotomy would not be effective. Many cervical stenosis cases are so severe that keyhole foraminotomy is not successful. However, the technique outlined in this study provides adequate enlargement of an entire cervical foraminal diameter. This study reports on a novel foraminal expansion tec...

Takemura and Sheena (2002) derived the asymptotic joint distribution of the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors of Wishart matrix when the population eigenvalues become infinitely dispersed. They also showed necessary conditions for an estimator of the population covariance matrix to be minimax for typical loss functions by calculating the asymptotic risk of the estimator. In this paper, we furthe...

It is well-known that the number of planar maps with prescribed vertex degree distribution and suitable labeling can be represented as the leading coefficient of the 1 N -expansion of a joint cumulant of traces of powers of an N -by-N GUE matrix. Here we undertake the calculation of this leading coefficient in a different way. Firstly, we tridiagonalize the GUE matrix à la Trotter and Dumitriu-...