No abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of intrahepatic vessels is very useful in visualizing the complex anatomy of hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein. It also provides a 3D anatomic basis for diagnostic imaging and surgical operation on the liver. In the present study, we built a 3D digitized model of hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein based on the coronal sectional anatomic dataset of the liver. The dataset was obtained using the digital freezing milling technique. The pre-reconstructed structures were identified and extracted, and then were segmented by the method of manual intervention. The digitized model of hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein was established using 3D medical visualization software. This model facilitated a continuous and dynamic displaying of the hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein at different orientations, which demonstrated the complicated relationship of adjacent hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein realistically in the 3D space. This study indicated that high-quality 2D images, precise data segmentation, and suitable 3D reconstruction methods ensured the reality and accuracy of the digital visualized model of hepatic veins and intrahepatic portal vein.

As the proteomics project has progressed during recent years, scientists are purifying and identifying ever smaller proteins that are active at very low concentrations in biological fluids. The routine methods of protein determination (such as the Lowry 1 and Bradford 2 methods) are not possible to control the protein concentration in these studies due to their low sensitivities. Although a high sensitivity of protein assay can be obtained by silver staining, 3,4 colloidal gold staining 5 and fluorometric methods, 6-9 they require a complicated procedure or expensive reagent. Recently, a resonance light scattering (RLS) technique, as a new spectral method, has been widely studied to determine proteins based on protein aggregation, or the interaction between proteins and dyes. [10][11][12][13][14] However, RLS generally suffers from the disadvantage of an instable response signal resulting from serious effects of the experimental and instrumental conditions. Also, most of the RLS assays can only allow the determination of proteins at concentrations higher than 0.1 µg/ml because of their high background. It is thus still desired to develop some sensitive, inexpensive and rapid techniques for the determination of proteins.It is well known that the chemiluminescence (CL) method can achieve high sensitivity by using a simple instrument. It has been exploited with a wide range of applications in different fields. [15][16][17] However, the direct detection of proteins with the CL method has been restricted because the general proteins can not produce CL signal directly. Hara et al. have described a series of methods for protein determination based on the suppression of CL reactions catalyzed by metal ions. [18][19][20] In previous papers, 21,22 it has been demonstrated that an unsaturated complex of Cu(II) with proteins has a strongly catalytic effect on the luminol and 1,10-phenanthroline CL reaction. Based on this result, a simple and sensitive CL assay for proteins has been established. However, all of these CL methods for protein determination were based on the difference in the CL intensity between metal ions and the complexes of metal ions with proteins. Thus, these CL methods must be applied under rigid experimental conditions, and the sensitivity has been limited by the high CL background.In the present work, we discovered that CL emission produced by an unsaturated complex of Cu(II) with proteins is much more long-lived than that by free Cu(II). The CL signals originated from proteins were identified and measured with a timeresolved technique. Due to the decrease in the CL background by using a time-resolved technique, the proposed method has about an order of magnitude higher sensitivity for protein detection compared to that of the former CL method. Experimental ApparatusThe CL intensity and intensity-time profiles were measured and recorded with a BPCL ultra-weak luminescence analyzer and software BPCL172 (Institute of Biophysics Academia Sinica, Beijing, China Based on the complexation between proteins and...

A new technique for reducing the offset of latch-type sense amplifier has been proposed and effect of enable signal voltage upon latch-type sense amplifier offset in SRAM has been investigated in this paper. Circuit simulation results on both StrongARM and Double-tail topologies show that the standard deviation of offset can be reduced by 31.23% (StrongARM SA) and 25.2% (Double-tail SA) , respectively, when the voltage of enable signal reaches 0.6V in TSMC 65nm CMOS technology. For a column of bit-cell (1024 bit-cell), the total speed is improved by 14.98% (StrongARAM SA) and 22.26% (Double-tail SA) at the optimal operation point separately, and the total energy dissipation is reduced by 30.45% and 29.47% with this scheme.

Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin film on glass substrate is subjected to excimer laser crystallized by varying the laser energy density in the range of 50~600 mJ/cm2. The effect of excimer laser crystallization on the structure of silicon film is investigated using Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results show that polycrystalline silicon thin films can be obtained by excimer laser crystallization of nc-Si films. A laser threshold energy density of 200 mJ/cm2 is estimated from the change of crystalline fraction and surface roughness of the treated films. The growth of grain is observed and the crystallization mechanism is discussed based on the super lateral growth model. The nanocrystalline silicon grains in the films act as seeds for lateral growth to large grains.