BackgroundBiomarkers for the early prediction of canine acute kidney injury (AKI) are clinically important. Recently, neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) was found to be a sensitive biomarker for the prediction of human AKI at a very early stage and the development of AKI after surgery. However, NGAL has not yet been studied with respect to dog kidney diseases. The application of NGAL canine AKI was investigated in this study.ResultsThe canine NGAL gene was successfully cloned and expressed. Polyclonal antibodies against canine NGAL were generated and used to develop an ELISA for measuring NGAL protein in serum and urine samples that were collected from 39 dogs at different time points after surgery.AKI was defined by the standard method, namely a serum creatinine increase of greater than or equal to 26.5 μmol/L from baseline within 48 h. At 12 h after surgery, compared to the group without AKI (12 dogs), the NGAL level in the urine of seven dogs with AKI was significantly increased (median 178.4 pg/mL vs. 88.0 pg/mL), and this difference was sustained to 72 h.ConclusionAs the increase in NGAL occurred much earlier than the increase in serum creatinine, urine NGAL seems to be able to serve as a sensitive and specific biomarker for the prediction of AKI in dogs.

In long-term evolution, the service area is partitioned into several tracking areas (TAs), which comprise one or more cells (the radio coverages of base stations). The TAs are grouped into TA list (TAL). When an incoming call arrives, the network attempts to connect to the user equipment (UE) by paging the cells in the UE's TAL, which may incur large paging traffic that significantly consumes the limited radio resources. To resolve this issue, this paper proposes a dynamic paging scheme that determines the paging sequence of cells in real time according to the UE movement and call behavior. We compare the performance of the dynamic paging with that of the previously proposed Cell-TA-TAL (CTT) paging. Our study indicates that the dynamic paging outperforms the CTT paging when movement pattern is regular and the UE moves frequently.

Location-based services (LBS) on web-based maps and images have come into real-time since Google launched its street view imaging services in 2007. This research employs Google Maps API and Web Service, GAE for JAVA, AJAX, Proj4js, cascading style sheets and HyperText markup language in developing a platform for accessing the orientation parameters of Google street view (GSV) panoramas in order to determine the three-dimensional (3D) position of points of interest (POIs) by intersection between two nearby GSV images and to validate the 3D position of a GSV panorama by resection from three known POIs. Extracted 3D positional information of the features are then packed in keyhole markup language format and stored in GAE Servlet for future LBS applications integrated with Google Maps and Google Earth. Experimental results from two tests on intersection and one test on resection of GSV panoramas in National Chung Hsing University campus were examined with error reports and source analyses. With automatic conjugate image-matching capability, the developed system is suitable for volumetric data collection in establishing web-based LBS applications integrated with GSV panoramas and Google Maps/Earth in which positional accuracy is not primarily concerned.

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Poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) have attracted great attention because they preserve conventional characteristics of polymers while having special features of ionic liquids, such as good ionic conductivity and excellent electrochemical and thermal stability. The solvent absorption behaviors and solvent-induced responsiveness of PIL elastomers, however, have been less investigated. In this work, we prepare two PILs, poly[C3mim-MA][Br] and poly[C3mim-MA]-[TFSI], and examine their surface hydrophilicities and solvent-induced responsiveness. Ionic liquid monomers are synthesized and then polymerized with initiators and cross-linkers via free radical polymerization, forming PIL elastomers. The anions in the monomers can be replaced using an ion exchange process to prepare PIL elastomers with different anions. The surface properties, swelling behaviors, and solvent responsiveness of the PIL elastomer films with different anions and cross-linker ratios are investigated. The surface hydrophilicities of the PIL films are characterized by water contact angle measurements; the poly[C3mim-MA][Br] elastomer films are more hydrophilic than the poly[C3mim-MA][TFSI] elastomer films. Due to the different hydrophilicities, the poly[C3mim-MA][Br] and poly[C3mim-MA][TFSI] elastomer films can be swollen selectively in water and acetone, respectively. For both elastomers, the swelling degrees are higher at lower cross-linking densities, and the volume expansions can be up to 655%. Furthermore, we investigate the solvent-vapor-induced responsiveness of bilayer films of PIL elastomers and polyimide (PI) tapes. The bilayer films can be bent selectively by exposing them to water or acetone vapors, depending on the anions.