background: the development of resistance to antimicrobial agents is a major problem in chemotherapy. finding agents which potentiate antimicrobial activity could be favorable. there are some reports that methylxanthines changed the inhibitory effect of antibacterial agents. thus, possible synergistic effect of methylxanthines, aminophylline and caffeine on some antibiotics, carbenicillin, ceft...

Histogram equalization is a very popular technique for image contrast enhancement. However, it at times produces a washedout appearance of the small details present in an image. In this paper, a modified contrast enhancement technique based on conventional histogram equalization algorithm is proposed. This technique modifies the accumulations in the histogram bins of an image before applying th...

This paper is concerned with the problem of estimating the relative translation and orientation between an inertial measurement unit and a camera which are rigidly connected. The key is to realise that this problem is in fact an instance of a standard problem within the area of system identi cation, referred to as a gray-box problem. We propose a new algorithm for estimating the relative transl...

We study the low-energy properties of the geometrically frustrated Hubbard model on a three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice and a two-dimensional checkerboard lattice on the basis of the renormalization group method and mean field analysis. It is found that, in the half-filling case, a (semi)metal to insulator transition (MIT) occurs. Also, in the insulating phase, which has a spin gap, the spin...

Since the breakthrough of twistronics a plethora topological phenomena in correlated systems has appeared. These devices can be typically analyzed terms lattice models using Green's function techniques. In this work we introduce general method to obtain boundary such taking advantage numerical Faddeev-LeVerrier algorithm circumvent some analytical constraints previous works. We illustrate our f...

In this paper, a method based on a combination of an optimization of directions of orthotropy, along with topology optimization, is applied to continuum orthotropic solids with the objective of minimizing their compliance. The spatial discretization algorithm is the so called Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) “mixed collocation” method for the design domain, and the material-orthotropy orie...

This paper introduces a novel method to calibrate 3D shape measurement systems that use the binary defocusing technique. Specifically, this method calibrates the pixelwise z as low-order polynomial functions of absolute phase; (x, y) coordinates are calculated from camera calibration with known z value; and the camera is calibrated using the standard flat checkerboard method. Because this metho...

Fresnel lenses used as primary optics in concentrating photovoltaic modules may show warping produced by lens manufacturing or module assembly (e.g., stress during molding or weight load) or due to stress during operation (e.g., mismatch of thermal expansion between different materials). To quantify this problem, a simple method called "checkerboard method" is presented. The proposed method ide...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the microbiota of acute periradicular abscesses of endodontic origin by using a molecular genetic method. STUDY DESIGN Pus was collected by aspiration from 27 cases diagnosed as acute abscesses of endodontic origin, and DNA was extracted to evaluate the occurrence of 49 bacterial species by using whole genomic DNA probes and ch...

PURPOSE Occult macular dystrophy (OMD) is a hereditary retinal disease characterized by a normal fundus, normal full-field electroretinograms (ERGs), progressive decrease of visual acuity, and abnormal focal macular ERGs. The purpose of this study was to report pattern-reversal visual-evoked potential (pVEPs) findings in OMD patients. PATIENTS AND METHOD The pVEPs recorded from four patients ...