Sentences of Visual Languages (VLs) may often be regarded as assemblies of pictorial objects with spatial relationships like “above” or “contains” between them, i.e. their representations are a kind of directed graphs. Such a spatial relationship graph is often complemented by a more abstract graph, which provides information about the syntax (and the semantics) of the visual sentence in a more...

There are two mass diffusion processes regarding the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth of nanostructures: one is inside the catalyst droplet toward the liquid-solid interface; the other is along the side surface planes of the growing nanostructures. In this letter, microscale, modulated mass diffusion scenarios are exhibited through the synthesis of two types of ZnS nanostructures in an Au-cataly...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Visible light spectroscopy (VLS) is the technology behind the Food and Drug Administration-approved TSTAT device that is used to monitor tissue oxygen (StO(2)) and relative total hemoglobin (rtHb) levels by measuring reflected visible light. The purpose of this novel, pilot study was to determine if VLS is a reliable and valid method of measuring StO(2) and rtHb levels in ...

Fixed length switching (FLS) and variable length switching (VLS) are two main types of switching architecture in high-speed input-queued switches. FLS is based on a cell-by-cell scheduling algorithm, while VLS operates on the variable packet granularity. This paper aims to make a comprehensive comparison between these two switching modes to guide the industrial design and academic research. We ...

The presence of circulating villous lymphocytes (VLs) in lymphoma patients usually points to splenic marginal zone B-cell lymphoma (SMZL), even if the VLs can be found occasionally in other small B-cell lymphomas. However, those cells are variably described, and detailed cytologic characterization is often lacking. We identified lymphoma cases with numerous basophilic VLs among the large group ...

The vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth model has been widely used to direct the growth of one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials, but the origin of the proposed process has not been experimentally confirmed. Here we report the experimental evidence of the origin of VLS growth. Al(69)Ni(31) alloyed particles are used as "catalysts" for growing AlN nanowires by nitridation reaction in N(2)-NH(3) at diff...

Brain and vascular cells form a functionally integrated signalling network that is known as the neurovascular unit (NVU). The signalling (autocrine, paracrine and juxtacrine) between different elements of this unit, especially in humans, is difficult to disentangle in vivo. Developing representative in vitro models is therefore essential to better understand the cellular interactions that gover...

BACKGROUND The increasing incidence of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and multidrug-resistant organisms demonstrate the need for innovative technological solutions. Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumonia, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in particular are common pathogens responsible for a large percentage of indwelling medical device-associated clinical infections....

OBJECTIVES : Diffusion-weighted steady-state free precession (DW-SSFP) sequences have shown great potential for the differential diagnosis of benign osteoporotic and malignant neoplastic vertebral compression fractures, which appear hypo- to isointense or hyperintense in DW-SSFP magnetic resonance imaging, respectively. In contrast to other diffusion weighting sequences, the DW-SSFP signal depe...

BACKGROUND Lichen sclerosus is an inflammatory disease of unknown etiology affecting the anogenital skin and associated with the development of squamous cell carcinoma. It is not known whether long-term topical treatment with a potent steroid can cure this disease and thus prevent malignant evolution. OBJECTIVES To analyze the rates of remission, recurrence, and chronic evolution of vulvar li...