bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Comparison of clinical outcomes and spectral Doppler indices of uterine and ovarian stromal arteries in women undergoing myomectomy with or without hypogastric arterial ligation
Authors: Fu H.‐C. , Huang K.‐H. , Tseng C.‐W. , Liang H.‐M. , Lin H. , Chou Y.‐J. , Kung F.‐T. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractObjectiveTo compare clinical outcomes and hemodynamic alterations of uterine and ovarian stromal arteries between patients with symptomatic myomas undergoing myomectomy preceded by arterial ligation and those undergoing myomectomy alone.MethodsIn this prospective, non‐randomized comparative study, myomectomy was performed on 69 women with symptomatic myomas. Myomectomy alone was performed in 31 patients (Group I) and myomectomy with concomitant bilateral hypogastric arterial ligation was performed in 38 patients (Group II). In both groups, surgical results and clinical outcomes were evaluated by peripheral hemoglobin levels, a pictorial blood‐loss assessment chart, and visual analog scales. Spectral Doppler indices of uterine and ovarian stromal arteries, including peak systolic velocity, end‐diastolic velocity, pulsatility index and resistance index were performed preoperatively, and 1 day and 1 or more months postoperatively.ResultsTwenty‐two patients in Group I and 31 patients in Group II received regular follow‐up examinations for a mean follow‐up period of 10.1 months. Menstrual flow, dysmenorrhea and hemoglobin levels improved significantly after surgery in both groups. Blood loss during surgery was less in Group II than it was in Group I (P = 0.02). Doppler indices of uterine and ovarian stromal arteries from preoperation to mean follow‐up point were not significantly different between the groups, except for a significantly lower uterine artery pulsatility index in Group II (P = 0.01).ConclusionsMyomectomy with hypogastric arterial ligation for symptomatic myomas is as efficient as is myomectomy alone and reduces blood loss during surgery. Serial Doppler studies showed that hypogastric ligation does not block uterine and ovarian perfusion, and even reduces the impedance of the uterine arteries. The long‐term recurrence rate after myomectomy with hypogastric arterial ligation remains to be determined. Copyright © 2006 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Left ventricular diastolic function during normal pregnancy: assessment by spectral tissue Doppler imaging
Authors: Fok W. Y. , Chan L. Y. , Wong J. T. , Yu C. M. , Lau T. K. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractObjectiveTissue Doppler imaging (TDI) is an echocardiographic technique for assessing the diastolic function that is relatively independent of preload. Since loading conditions change significantly during pregnancy, a load‐independent technique will give a more accurate assessment of diastolic function in pregnant women. The aim of this study was to evaluate maternal diastolic function using tissue Doppler imaging.MethodsThis was a prospective observational study on 35 healthy pregnant women. M‐mode, transmitral inflow (peak transmitral flow velocities during early diastole (E wave) and atrial contraction (A wave)) and TDI studies (peak myocardial velocities during early diastole (Em wave), during atrial contraction (Am wave) and peak systole in ejection phase (Sm)) were performed in each trimester and postpartum. The differences in variables between trimesters were analyzed.ResultsThe peak transmitral inflow velocity during early diastole (E wave) was significantly decreased during the third trimester and postpartum. The peak flow velocity during atrial contraction (A wave) was increased in the second trimester, but decreased again in the third trimester and postpartum period. As a result, the E/A ratio progressively reduced as pregnancy advanced. TDI showed that peak myocardial velocities during early diastole (Em) tended to increase during the second trimester, and then decreased significantly in the third trimester or postpartum period. The peak myocardial velocities during atrial contraction (Am) increased significantly with advancing gestational age. As a consequence, both Em/Am and E/Em ratios decreased significantly throughout pregnancy.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates the changes in myocardial relaxation velocity throughout pregnancy. Because of its advantage of being relatively load‐independent, TDI may be a useful non‐invasive technique for monitoring maternal cardiac function in high‐risk pregnancies to detect the early signs of cardiac failure and to prevent further deterioration with prompt interventions. Copyright © 2006 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bilateral agenesis of the superior vena cava associated with congenital hydrothorax
Authors: Römer S. , Opgen‐Rhein B. , Chaoui R. , Scheer I. , Czernik C. , Obladen M. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractAgenesis of the superior vena cava is a rare anomaly that is generally asymptomatic in the neonate. We report a male neonate with bilateral (total) agenesis of the superior vena cava with obstructed thoracic duct and subsequent congenital hydrothorax, anomalies that were detected by prenatal ultrasound at 25 weeks' gestation. The cardiac anomaly was confirmed by postnatal magnetic resonance angiography. The chylothorax disappeared with conservative therapy. Copyright © 2006 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ad hoc networks with heterogeneous smart antennas: performance analysis and protocols
Authors: Sundaresan Karthikeyan , Sivakumar Raghupathy 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe use of smart antennas in wireless ad hoc networks has garnered attention over the last few years. Given the unique capabilities of smart antennas, and how they can improve performance in a typically constrained ad hoc network environment, the attention is with merit. However, not much light has been shed on wireless ad hoc networks that have nodes with varying antenna capabilities. While homogeneous ad hoc networks with all nodes having the same antenna capabilities will have certain applications, we argue that ad hoc networks with nodes having heterogeneous antenna capabilities are more likely to be the norm due to a variety of motivating factors. In this context, we answer two fundamental questions in this paper: (i)what is the theoretical capacity of an ad hoc network when its nodes have varying antenna capabilities? We consider nodes equipped with only omnidirectional antennas to those that are equipped with more sophisticated adaptive‐array and MIMO capable antennas. Perhaps more interestingly, we provide insights into what percentage of nodes in an ad hoc network have to be ‘smart’ to get a certain overall network capacity. (ii)What medium access control (MAC) and routing protocols should nodes use in such a heterogeneous network? We present MAC and routing protocols for ad hoc networks with heterogeneous antenna capabilities that allow nodes to interact with each othereffectivelydespite their heterogeneity, and in the process deliver considerably improved performance over simplistic strategies. We substantiate our theoretical results, and evaluate the proposed protocols using ns2‐based network simulations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A new binary conflict resolution‐based MAC protocol for impulse‐based UWB ad hoc networks
Authors: Broustis Ioannis , Molle Mart , Krishnamurthy Srikanth , Faloutsos Michalis , Foerster Jeffrey 
Published: October 2006

AbstractUltra wide band (UWB) technology offers a promising high capacity solution for short‐range wireless ad hoc networks, as in home networks or in wearable ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a novel multi‐band MAC protocol for use in small ad hoc networks that deploy an underlying UWB based physical layer. In our approach, we divide the available UWB bandwidth into multiple simultaneously usable bands. In the absence of a sophisticated equalizer, the size of a slot for transmitting a UWB pulse is typically dictated by thedelay spreadof the channel. Therefore, using a wider frequency band to shorten the transmission time for each pulse does not increase the data rate in proportion to the available bandwidth. A multi‐band approach that uses a plurality of bands that adhere to FCC specifications, with slightly elongated pulse durations, provides a solution that can effectively utilize the UWB spectrum. Our approach is based on the idea of conflict resolution using binary ‘something’/‘nothing’ feedback, which has not been widely studied in wireless and specifically in UWB networks. Our protocol unites binary conflict resolution and multi‐band utilization to effectively utilize the available bandwidth. To ensure that our proposed approach is tightly knit with the underlying physical layer, we discuss physical–layer dependencies and the conformance to FCC‐imposed emission limits. We evaluate our approach via extensive simulations. Our simulation results demonstrate the significant advantages of our approach over single‐band solutions: the throughput increases significantly, and the number of collisions decreases considerably. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Mobility control for throughput maximization in ad hoc networks
Authors: Nadeem Tamer , Parthasarathy Srinivasan 
Published: October 2006

AbstractPhysical topology of an ad hoc wireless network imposes fundamental limits on its throughput capacity. In this work, we present a network design algorithm for configuring node locations in an 802.11 ad hoc network with the goal of improving the throughput capacity of the network. Given a network configuration (i.e., a mapping of network nodes to physical locations), we establish an inverse proportional relationship between the interference degree of the network and the guaranteed link‐throughput. Motivated by this observation, we present an algorithm which progressively guides the network towards better configurations with lower interference degrees, which in turn increases the network's throughput capacity. Packet level simulations using the ns‐2 simulator shows that the reconfigured topologies obtained by our algorithm consistently outperform the original network topologies for throughput and delay‐related metrics. In particular, for many cases, we observed over 100% increase in the total network throughput and the minimum guaranteed throughput, over 60% increase in throughput fairness and over 50% reduction in the mean‐service delay of packets. Our algorithm admits a simple distributed implementation and can be viewed as a distributed mobility control primitive for improving the throughput performance of mobile ad hoc networks. Alternately, our techniques can also be employed by a centralized designer during network creation time to obtain a network configuration with a high throughput capacity. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work which explores the use of guided network configuration strategies for improving the throughput capacity in ad hoc wireless networks. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Geo‐LANMAR: a scalable routing protocol for ad hoc networks with group motion
Authors: Zhou Biao , Lee Yeng‐Zhong , Gerla Mario , de Rango Floriano 
Published: October 2006

AbstractNetwork scalability is one of the critical challenges and requirements in routing protocols for ad hoc networks. This paper presents a novel scalable routing protocol called Geo‐LANMAR. The proposed protocol inherits the group motion support of landmark routing (LANMAR) and applies the geo‐routing concept to deliver packets efficiently. In this framework, the integration between geo‐coordinates and table‐driven IP addressing is introduced. There is also an integration of group management with geo‐forwarding and IP group management. Geo‐LANMAR uses link‐state propagation over a virtual topology built on landmarks, and a fisheye like scheme makes this propagation very efficient. The virtual topology helps recover from voids. For extra efficiency, a novel metric called effective traveled distance (ETD) allows us to predict voids or obstacles.With respect to LANMAR, Geo‐LANMAR reduces advertisement update overhead (O/H) and features robust forwarding. Consequently, Geo‐LANMAR is more scalable to large ad hoc networks with group motion. The performance evaluation of Geo‐LANMAR shows that Geo‐LANMAR gives high scalability for large networks in terms of control O/H, end‐to‐end delay, and packet delivery ratio as compared with other routing protocols such as AODV, LANMAR, and GPSR. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dynamic combinatorial key management scheme for sensor networks
Authors: Moharrum Mohamed , Eltoweissy Mohamed , Mukkamala Ravi 
Published: October 2006

AbstractSecuring sensor networks has received much attention in the last few years. In a typical field deployment, a sensor network self‐organizes, closely interacts with its physical environment, and works unattended possibly in a hostile environment such as a battlefield. In such environments, sensor networks are subject to node capture as well as a myriad of other attacks. Constrained energy, memory, and computational capabilities of sensor nodes mandate a clever design of security solutions to minimize overhead while maintaining secure communications over the lifespan of the network. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic Combinatorial Key management scheme, DCK, to provide efficient, scalable, and survivable dynamic keying in a clustered sensor network with a large number of sensor nodes. DCK employs the Exclusion‐Basis Systems (EBS) as the underlying framework for key management at both the cluster and the sensor node levels. DCK enhances network security by localizing cluster key management functions, thus, limiting the impact of sensor node capture to the attacked cluster. Within a cluster, DCK decouples key generation, assignment, and distribution, and distributes the key management tasks among cluster nodes. Simulation results show that DCK is efficient in terms of energy consumption and storage. Also, it significantly outperforms other dynamic keying schemes, in particular with regards to energy consumed in key refreshment and re‐keying after node capture. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Molecular characterization of Portuguese patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type II shows evidence that the IDS gene is prone to splicing mutations
Authors: Alves S. , Mangas M. , Prata M. J. , Ribeiro G. , Lopes L. , Ribeiro H. , Pinto‐Basto J. , Lima M. Reis , Lacerda L. 
Published: October 2006

SummaryMucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II) is an X‐linked recessive lysosomal storage disease caused by a defect in the iduronate‐2‐sulfatase gene (IDS). Alternative splicing of the IDS gene can occur and the underlying regulatory mechanism may be rather complex. Nevertheless, little information is available on the role of variations at the IDS locus in the splicing process. Here we report that splice mutations at the IDS locus are an important source of MPS II pathogenicity, accounting for almost 56% of Portuguese cases. Among 16 unrelated Portuguese MPS II patients, 15 different mutations were identified: six intronic splice mutations (c.104−2AG, c.241−2A>G, c.241−1G>A, c.418+1G>A, c.880−8AG and c.1181−1G>C); two exonic splice mutations (c.1006G>lC and c.1122C>T); five missense mutations (D269V, D69V, D148N, R88C and P86L); one nonsense mutation (Q465Ter); one total IDS gene deletion; and one rearrangement involving a IDS gene inversion. Furthermore, nine of the 15 detected mutations affected the usual splicing pattern at the locus. Some of them are responsible for dramatic changes in the splicing mechanism. For example, the substitution mutation, c.418+1G>A, revealed the presence of an exonic sequence inside intron 3. Our study provides evidence that the IDS locus is prone to splicing mutations and that such susceptibility is particularly high in exon 3 and neighbouring regions. Consequently, mutation screening of the IDS gene cannot be restricted to gDNA examination. Unless cDNA analysis is also conducted, misclassifications as silent or missense mutations can be produced and even uncharacteristic splice‐site mutations can be misinterpreted as classic splicing defects that may generate severe, unconventional splicing alterations.
Land use change in Asia and the ecological consequences
Authors: Zhao Shuqing , Peng Changhui , Jiang Hong , Tian Dalun , Lei Xiangdong , Zhou Xiaolu 
Published: October 2006

AbstractViewed within a historical context, Asia has experienced dramatic land transformations, and currently more than 50% of Asian land area is under agriculture. The consequences of this transformation are manifold. Southeast Asia has the highest deforestation rate of any major tropical region. Many of the world's large rivers and lakes in Asia have been heavily degraded. About 11 of 19 world megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants are in Asia. These land use activities have resulted in substantial negative ecological consequences, including increased anthropogenic CO2emissions, deteriorated air and water quality, alteration of regional climate, an increase of disease and a loss of biodiversity. Although land use occurs at the local level, it has the potential to cause ecological impact across local, regional and global scales. Reducing the negative environmental impacts of land use change while maintaining economic viability and social acceptability is an major challenge for most developing countries in Asia.
Magnetic resonance imaging: is a single scan ever enough for the diagnosis of acoustic neuroma?
Authors: Kernohan M D , Blackmore K J , Johnson I J M , Zammit-Maempel I 
Published: October 2006

A patient presented with unilateral, right-sided hearing loss and tinnitus and underwent gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A pure tone audiogram showed a right-sided sensorineural hearing loss. The MRI scan was initially negative but when repeated seven years later, following a further deterioration of symptoms, it showed a 2 mm, right-sided acoustic neuroma.This case has great potential significance for the diagnosis of acoustic neuroma, and it may raise medico-legal issues regarding the exclusion of this diagnosis. The case illustrates that a single negative scan may not be adequate if pure tone audiograms show deterioration in hearing loss.
Sex in a cyclical parthenogen: mating behaviour of Chydorus sphaericus (Crustacea; Branchiopoda; Anomopoda)
Authors: DAMME KAY VAN , DUMONT HENRI J. 
Published: October 2006

Summary1. We describe the interactions during mating in Chydorus sphaericus, a cyclical parthenogenetic anomopod. Mating behaviour is more complex than previously assumed, with evidence for a diffusible chemical to which males react at the onset of mating, for reproductive isolation, and for postcopulatory mate guarding.2. During mating, the male and female form a ‘mating cross’ that may be maintained for several hours, while copulation itself typically lasts less than a minute. Furthermore, males invariably attach to the right valve of females. Copulation involves intromission of the postabdomen between the valves, so that the gonopores approach the left ovarium.3. This behaviour is reflected in the morphology of both sexes: males have a specialised anterior valve margin, postabdomen, first limb and rostrum, under selective pressure for successful mate guarding and copulation, while gamogenetic females have asymmetric ovaries, and a species‐specific setulation of the valves. Males of the structurally related Chydorus ovalis react to the presence of C. sphaericus, but fail to dock to females, suggesting a lock‐antilock element in the reproductive isolation of both species.4. The morphological and ethological adaptations in C. sphaericus suggest that there is a strong selective pressure on mating behaviour in this cyclical parthenogen and specifically towards the formation of the ‘mating cross’.
Yeast application for desalting fibersol‐2
Authors: Bangoura Aboubacar Oumar , Jian Tang , He Qian 
Published: October 2006

SummaryThe following study made use of applying brewing yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for removing free glucose liberated during enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated cornstarch in the preparation of fibersol‐2. The fermentation condition was optimally realized at 20 °C, with 0.5% of yeast for 24 h without total soluble sugars dilution. The glucose removal rate was 98.27%, which is considered acceptable and economical, compared with other removal rates. The recovery of fibersol‐2 was 67.18% and the total dietary fibre content was 94%.
Phenolic composition of European cranberrybush (Viburnum opulus L.) berries and astringency removal of its commercial juice
Authors: Sedat Velioglu Y. , Ekici Lutfiye , Poyrazoglu Ender S. 
Published: October 2006

SummaryPhenolic composition of the European cranberrybush (ECB) (Viburnum opulus L.) juice was determined using high‐performance liquid chromatography. The juice contained 2037 mg kg−1 chlorogenic acid, which was 54% of total phenolics, and several other phenolics such as (+)‐catechin, (−)‐epicatechin, cyanidin‐3‐glucoside, cyanidin‐3‐rutinoside and six different glucosides of quercetin. Because of its strong astringent taste, the juices were treated with various doses of two different types of activated carbons (Granucol Bi and Granucol Ge) in order to remove phenolic compounds. Results revealed that both types of activated carbons were equally effective on astringency removal (P < 0.01). A 20–30% reduction in total phenolics was achieved by application of 2.0–3.0 g L−1 activated carbon which also removed unpleasant taste and odour.
Low‐dose irradiation as a measure to improve microbiological quality of Turkish raw meat ball (cig kofte)
Authors: Vural Aydın , Aksu Harun , Erkan Mehmet E. 
Published: October 2006

SummaryRaw meat ball is a traditional food, which is prepared by adding ground meat, spices and different supplements and consumed without any cooking process. The effect of low‐dose gamma irradiation application on microbiological quality of raw meat ball was examined. In this study, 1, 2, and 3 kGy irradiation doses have decreased or eliminated the microorganism counts in raw meat ball, parallel with the increased doses. Coliform bacteria counts were reduced under detectable value after application of 2 kGy irradiation doses; Staphylococcus aureus, sulphite‐reducing Clostridia, yeast and mould by the application of 3 kGy. It has been concluded that the low‐dose gamma irradiation applications have increased the hygienic quality of raw meat balls and possible public health risks can be prevented.