Abstract: The state and stability of hemoglobin adsorbed on the
glass surface was investigated using slab optical waveguide (SOWG)
spectroscopy. The peak position of the absorption band of hemoglobin
adsorbed on the glass surface was same as that of the hemoglobin in
solution. This result suggests that no significant denaturation occurred
by adsorption. The adsorption of hemoglobin is relatively strong that
the hemoglobin molecules even remained adsorbed after rinsing the
cell with buffer solution. The peak shift caused by the reduction of
adsorbed hemoglobin was also observed.
Abstract: To understand life as biological system, evolutionary
understanding is indispensable. Protein interactions data are rapidly
accumulating and are suitable for system-level evolutionary analysis.
We have analyzed yeast protein interaction network by both
mathematical and biological approaches. In this poster presentation,
we inferred the evolutionary birth periods of yeast proteins by
reconstructing phylogenetic profile. It has been thought that hub
proteins that have high connection degree are evolutionary old. But
our analysis showed that hub proteins are entirely evolutionary new.
We also examined evolutionary processes of protein complexes. It
showed that member proteins of complexes were tend to have
appeared in the same evolutionary period. Our results suggested that
protein interaction network evolved by modules that form the
functional unit. We also reconstructed standardized phylogenetic trees
and calculated evolutionary rates of yeast proteins. It showed that
there is no obvious correlation between evolutionary rates and
connection degrees of yeast proteins.
Abstract: It is known that the heart interacts with and adapts to
its venous and arterial loading conditions. Various experimental
studies and modeling approaches have been developed to investigate
the underlying mechanisms. This paper presents a model of the left
ventricle derived based on nonlinear stress-length myocardial
characteristics integrated over truncated ellipsoidal geometry, and
second-order dynamic mechanism for the excitation-contraction
coupling system. The results of the model presented here describe the
effects of the viscoelastic damping element of the electromechanical
coupling system on the hemodynamic response. Different heart rates
are considered to study the pacing effects on the performance of the
left-ventricle against constant preload and afterload conditions under
various damping conditions. The results indicate that the pacing
process of the left ventricle has to take into account, among other
things, the viscoelastic damping conditions of the myofilament
excitation-contraction process.
Abstract: In this paper we study a food chain model with three trophic levels and Michaelis-Menten type ratio-dependent functional response. Distinctive feature of this model is the sensitive dependence of the dynamical behavior on the initial populations and parameters of the real world. The stability of the equilibrium points are also investigated.
Abstract: Prolonged immobilization leads to significant
weakness and atrophy of the skeletal muscle and can also impair the
recovery of muscle strength following injury. Therefore, it is
important to minimize the period under immobilization and accelerate
the return to normal activity. This study examined the effects of heat
treatment and rest-inserted exercise on the muscle activity of the lower
limb during knee flexion/extension. Twelve healthy subjects were
assigned to 4 groups that included: (1) heat treatment + rest-inserted
exercise; (2) heat + continuous exercise; (3) no heat + rest-inserted
exercise; and (4) no heat + continuous exercise. Heat treatment was
applied for 15 mins prior to exercise. Continuous exercise groups
performed knee flexion/extension at 0.5 Hz for 300 cycles without rest
whereas rest-inserted exercise groups performed the same exercise but
with 2 mins rest inserted every 60 cycles of continuous exercise.
Changes in the rectus femoris and hamstring muscle activities were
assessed at 0, 1, and 2 weeks of treatment by measuring the
electromyography signals of isokinetic maximum voluntary
contraction. Significant increases in both the rectus femoris and
hamstring muscles were observed after 2 weeks of treatment only
when both heat treatment and rest-inserted exercise were performed.
These results suggest that combination of various treatment techniques,
such as heat treatment and rest-inserted exercise, may expedite the
recovery of muscle strength following immobilization.
Abstract: In the present study, changes of morphology and
mechanical characteristics in the lumbar vertebrae of the
ovariectomised (OVX) rat were investigated. In previous researches,
there were many studies about morphology like volume fraction and
trabecular thickness based on Micro - Computed Tomography (Micro
- CT). However, detecting and tracking long-term changes in the
trabecular bone of the lumbar vertebrae for the OVX rat were few. For
this study, one female Sprague-Dawley rat was used: an OVX rat. The
4th Lumbar of the OVX rat was subjected to in-vivo micro-CT.
Detecting and tracking long-term changes could be investigated in the
trabecular bone of the lumbar vertebrae for an OVX rat using in-vivo
micro-CT. An OVX rat was scanned at week 0 (just before surgery), at
week 4, at week 8, week 16, week 22 and week 56 after surgery. Finite
element (FE) analysis was used to investigate mechanical
characteristics of the lumbar vertebrae for an OVX rat. When the OVX
rat (at week 56) was compared with the OVX rat (at week 0), volume
fraction was decreased by 80% and effective modulus was decreased
by 75%.
Abstract: Intelligent systems based on machine learning
techniques, such as classification, clustering, are gaining wide spread
popularity in real world applications. This paper presents work on
developing a software system for predicting crop yield, for example
oil-palm yield, from climate and plantation data. At the core of our
system is a method for unsupervised partitioning of data for finding
spatio-temporal patterns in climate data using kernel methods which
offer strength to deal with complex data. This work gets inspiration
from the notion that a non-linear data transformation into some high
dimensional feature space increases the possibility of linear
separability of the patterns in the transformed space. Therefore, it
simplifies exploration of the associated structure in the data. Kernel
methods implicitly perform a non-linear mapping of the input data
into a high dimensional feature space by replacing the inner products
with an appropriate positive definite function. In this paper we
present a robust weighted kernel k-means algorithm incorporating
spatial constraints for clustering the data. The proposed algorithm
can effectively handle noise, outliers and auto-correlation in the
spatial data, for effective and efficient data analysis by exploring
patterns and structures in the data, and thus can be used for
predicting oil-palm yield by analyzing various factors affecting the
yield.