OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors associated with the prognosis of a subchondral insufficiency fracture of the femoral head (SIF). METHODS Between June 2002 and July 2009, 25 patients diagnosed with SIF were included in this study. Sequential radiographs were evaluated for the progression of collapse. Clinical profiles, including age, body mass index, follow-up ...

This paper illustrates the possibility of measuring chlorophyll (Chl) content and Chl fluorescence parameters by the solar-induced Chl fluorescence (SIF) method using the Fraunhofer line depth (FLD) principle, and compares the results with the standard measurement methods. A high-spectral resolution HR2000+ and an ordinary USB4000 spectrometer were used to measure leaf reflectance under solar a...

The three-dimensional (3D) cultivation of intestinal cells and tissues in dynamic bioreactor systems to represent in vivo intestinal microenvironments is essential for developing regenerative medicine treatments for intestinal diseases. We have previously developed in vitro human intestinal tissue systems using a 3D porous silk scaffold system with intestinal architectures and topographical fea...

W e were interested to read the recent article in Diabetes Care by Sun et al. (1) showing that higher levels of certain advanced glycation end products (AGEs) were inversely correlated with the progression of retinopathy in individuals with long-standing type 1 diabetes. The data appear potentially consistent with an inverse relationship we recently noted between skin intrinsic fluorescence (SI...

Wireless sensor networks are rapidly evolving technological platforms with tremendous applications in several domains. Since sensor nodes are battery powered and may be used in dangerous or inaccessible environments, it is difficult to replace or recharge their power supplies. Clustering is an effective approach to achieve energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks. In clustering-based routi...

This work deals with the interaction of P-waves between a moving central crack and a pair of outer cracks situated at the interface of an orthotropic layer and an elastic half-space. Initially, we considered a two-dimensional elastic wave equation in orthotropic medium. The Fourier transform has been applied to convert the basic problem to solve the set of four integral equations. These set of ...

A closed-form solution is obtained for the problem of a mode-III interfacial edge crack between two bonded semi-infinite dissimilar elastic strips. A general out-of-plane displacement potential for the crack interacting with a screw dislocation or a line force is constructed using conformal mapping technique and existing dislocation solutions. Based on this displacement potential, the stress in...

For persistent infections of the mammalian host, African trypanosomes limit their population size by quorum sensing of the parasite-excreted stumpy induction factor (SIF), which induces development to the tsetse-infective stumpy stage. We found that besides this cell density-dependent mechanism, there exists a second path to the stumpy stage that is linked to antigenic variation, the main instr...

In this paper, in order to predict the crack growth trajectory and to evaluate the SIF under mixed modes (I & II), one proposes a new finite element program for crack growth using the source code written in FORTRAN. The fin ite element mesh is generated using an advancing front method, where the generation of the background mesh and the construction of singular elements are also added to this d...