Semiconductor process variation and reliability aging effect on CMOS VCO performance has been studied. A technique to mitigate the effect of process variations on the performances of nano-scale CMOS LC-VCO is presented. The LC-VCO compensation uses a process invariant current source. VCO parameters such as phase noise and core power before and after compensation over a wide range of variability...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to investigate whether acupuncture is effective at treating dry eye disease among postmenopausal women and to identify the possible mechanisms. METHODS Twenty-eight postmenopausal women with dry eye disease were randomly divided into two groups: an acupuncture plus artificial tears (AC + AT) group and an artificial tears (AT) only group. After baseline...

Multi-analyte binding assays for rapid screening of food contaminants require mass spectrometric identification of compound(s) in suspect samples. An optimal combination is obtained when the same bioreagents are used in both methods; moreover, miniaturisation is important because of the high costs of bioreagents. A concept is demonstrated using superparamagnetic microbeads coated with monoclona...

Four flavonoids, isoastilbin, astilbin, isoengelitin, and engelitin were isolated and purified simultaneously from Smilacis Glabrae Roxb. for the first time by high performance counter-current chromatography using a system consisting of n-hexane-n-butanol-water (1:2:3, v/v/v). A total of 392.6 mg of astilbin, 71.4 mg of isoastilbin, 47.4 mg of engelitin, and 10.3 mg of isoengelitin were purifie...

Vacuoles play central roles in plant growth, development, and stress responses. To better understand vacuole function and biogenesis we have characterized the vegetative vacuolar proteome from Arabidopsis thaliana. Vacuoles were isolated from protoplasts derived from rosette leaf tissue. Total purified vacuolar proteins were then subjected either to multidimensional liquid chromatography/tandem...

In this study we have evaluated the suitability of a sheathless capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (CE-ESI-MS) interface with a porous tip as the nanospray emitter for use in peptide analysis. A positively charged capillary coating and 0.1% formic acid as background electrolyte were used for separation upstream from mass spectrometry characterization. The influe...

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has traditionally been performed under general anesthesia, however, owing in part to the advancement of surgical and anesthetic techniques, many laparoscopic cholecystectomies have been successfully performed under the spinal anesthetic technique. We hoped to determine the feasibility of segmental epidural anesthesia for LC. METHODS Twelve American...

There is an increasing need for comparable and harmonized retention times (tR) in liquid chromatography (LC) among different laboratories, to provide supplementary evidence the identity of compounds high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)-based suspect nontarget screening investigations. In this study, a rigorously tested, flexible, less system-dependent unified time index (RTI) approach LC pr...

The most widely used ionization techniques in liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) are electrospray ionization (ESI), atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI). All three provide user friendly coupling of LC to MS. Achieving optimal LC-MS conditions is not always easy, however, owing to the complexity of ionization processes and t...

Nano-sized therapeutic agents have several advantages over low molecular weight agents such as a larger loading capacity, the ability to protect the payload until delivery, more specific targeting due to multivalency and the opportunity for controlled/sustained release. However, the delivery of nano-sized agents into cancer tissue is problematic because it mostly relies on the enhanced permeabi...