A common requirement of modern observatory control systems is to allow interaction between various heterogeneous subsystems in a transparent way. However, the integration of off-the-shelf (OTS) industrial products such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) software has long been hampered by the lack of an adequate interfacing method. With ...

Originally identified as an angiogenic factor, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) is now known to play multiple roles in the CNS, including the direct regulation of neuronal and astrocytic functions. Here, we ask whether VEGF-A can also have a novel role in white matter by modulating oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). OPCs were cultured from rat neonatal cortex. Expression of VEGF...

BACKGROUND Induction of labour (IOL) is one of the commonest obstetric interventions, with significant impact on both the individual woman and health service delivery. Outpatient IOL is an attractive option to reduce these impacts. To date there is little data comparing outpatient and inpatient IOL methods, and potential safety concerns (hyperstimulation) if prostaglandins, the standard inpatie...

Oropharyngeal candidiasis (OPC) remains a common opportunistic infection in HIV-infected patients. Candida albicans is the most frequent causative agent of OPC. However, non-albicans spp. are being increasingly isolated. Candidal cell wall proteins and mannoproteins play important roles in the biology and patogenesis of candidiasis. In the present study, we have analyzed the proteinaceous compo...

Most simulation tools excel at only one technical domain. For efficient simulation of multi-domain systems, cooperative simulation (co-simulation) can be used. In co-simulation, a simulation model is divided into smaller submodels to allow each of the submodels to be simulated with a purpose-made simulator. The connectivity between the multiple simulators is a key factor in the performance of a...

Critical size defects in ovine tibiae, stabilised with intramedullary interlocking nails, were used to assess whether the addition of carboxymethylcellulose to the standard osteogenic protein-1 (OP-1/BMP-7) implant would affect the implant's efficacy for bone regeneration. The biomaterial carriers were a 'putty' carrier of carboxymethylcellulose and bovine-derived type-I collagen (OPP) or the s...

Optical proximity correction (OPC) is one of the most important techniques in today’s optical lithography-based manufacturing process. Although the most widely used model-based OPC is expected to achieve highly accurate correction, it is also known to be extremely time-consuming. This paper proposes a regression model for OPC using a hierarchical Bayes model (HBM). The goal of the regression mo...

Poorer survival from oral and pharyngeal cancer (OPC) has been reported for populations of lower socioeconomic status (SES), adjusting for risk factors such as patient and clinical characteristics. Beyond these risk factors, higher rates of tobacco use may be a mediator for the observed poorer OPC survival for low SES populations. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of the relationshi...

A selective V1 antagonist, 1-(1-[4(3-acetylaminopropoxy)benzoyl]-4-piperidyl)-3,4-dihydro-2(1 H)- quinolinone (OPC-21268), which is nonpeptide and orally effective, has been recently synthesized. We studied the effects of vasopressin and OPC-21268 on cell contraction with a video motion detector and cytosolic Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) by using indo-1 in cultured rat vascular smooth muscle ce...