A zero voltage switching (ZVS) dc–dc converter with high voltage gain is proposed. It consists of a ZVS boost switch cell converter stage and a ZVS half-bridge converter stage with resonant converter and all these stages are merged into a single stage. The ZVS boost converter stage provides a continuous input current and ZVS operation of the power switches. The ZVS halfbridge converter stage pr...

The impact of gain of Bcl-2 function on mammary epithelial cell survival was compared with loss of Bax function during the two stages of mammary gland involution. Bcl-2 gain of function reduced apoptosis 50% during the first stage and increased cell survival 70% during the second stage. Complete loss of Bax reduced apoptosis by 20% during the first stage without second stage effect. Partial los...

Although the clinical complications of atherosclerosis arise from developed lesions in old age, the atherosclerotic disease is a lifelong process with roots in childhood. Endothelial dysfunction is currently considered an early stage in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, which precedes the formation of structural atherosclerotic changes. Improvements in noninvasive imaging modalities, mainly ...

In modern high-tech machinery, lubrication has nearly the same signifi cance as the machine itself. Its main function is to minimize wear on moving parts even in the harshest environments. Due to its essential role in modern engines lube oil degradation can lead to costly failure of the equipment if not detected at an early stage. A continuous oil condition monitoring program helps to avoid unn...

Although the bacterium Symbiobacterium thermophilum has a genome with a high guanine-cytosine (GC) content (69%), it belongs to a low GC content bacterial group. We detected only 18 low GC content regions with 5 or more consecutive genes whose GC contents were below 65% in the genome of this organism. S. thermophilum has 66 transposase genes, which are markers of transposable genetic elements, ...

A Bayesian procedure, which allows consideration of the individual variation in the feed resource allocation pattern, is described and implemented in 2 sire lines of rabbit (Caldes and R). The procedure is based on a hierarchical Bayesian scheme, where the first stage of the model consists of a multiple regression model of feed intake on metabolic BW and BW gain. In a second stage, an animal mo...

In protein engineering, useful information may be gained from systematically generating and screening all single-point mutants of a given protein. We model and analyze an iterative two-stage procedure to generate all these mutants. At each position, L variants are generated in the first stage via saturation mutagenesis and are sequenced. In the second stage, the missing variants (out of the 19 ...

We report the first measurements of mass gain and expansive strain in clay ceramics immediately following firing. The results show that both mass gain and expansive strain follow a well defined two-stage process, each stage of which is linear with (time)1/4, with a transition from the first to the second stage commencing at t ∼ 1.5 h. The first stage mass gain and strain rates are ∼3.5 times gr...