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Since the early days of thermography in the 1950s, image processing techniques, sensitivity of thermal sensors and spatial resolution have progressed greatly, holding out fresh promise for infrared (IR) imaging techniques. Applications in civil, industrial and healthcare fields are thus reaching a high level of technical performance. The relationship between body temperature and disease was documented since 400 bc. In many diseases there are variations in blood flow, and these in turn affect the skin temperature. IR imaging offers a useful and non-invasive approach to the diagnosis and treatment (as therapeutic aids) of many disorders, in particular in the areas of rheumatology, dermatology, orthopaedics and circulatory abnormalities. This paper reviews many usages (and hence the limitations) of thermography in biomedical fields.

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The identification of centrally efficacious β-secretase (BACE1) inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has historically been thwarted by an inability to maintain alignment of potency, brain availability, and desired absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties. In this paper, we describe a series of truncated, fused thioamidines that are efficiently selective in garnering BACE1 activity without simultaneously inhibiting the closely related cathepsin D or negatively impacting brain penetration and ADME alignment, as exemplified by 36. Upon oral administration, these inhibitors exhibit robust brain availability and are efficacious in lowering central Amyloid β (Aβ) levels in mouse and dog. In addition, chronic treatment in aged PS1/APP mice effects a decrease in the number and size of Aβ-derived plaques. Most importantly, evaluation of 36 in a 2-week exploratory toxicology study revealed no accumulation of autofluorescent material in retinal pigment epithelium or histology findings in the eye, issues observed with earlier BACE1 inhibitors.

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This paper presents a unified architecture for a live video over the Internet with emphasis on solving some challenging problems such as network bandwidth adaptation for rate and congestion, loss packet recovery, joint source and channel coding, and packetization. In our architecture, a time-varying bit rate for the source coding and time-varying ratios for the channel coding are simultaneously computed by a new congestion-control protocol. An adaptive rate-control scheme is then proposed to calculate quantization parameters and to determine the number of skipping frames corresponding to the bit rate. An adaptive unequal error-control scheme is also provided to protect the bitstream. Furthermore, a simple and MPEG-4 standard compatible algorithm is designed to packetize generated bitstream at the SyncLayer by using the existing resynchronization marker approach. With the proposed architecture, the coding efficiency and the robustness of the whole system are improved greatly.Index Terms-Adaptive rate control, congestion control, joint source and channel coding, packetization, unequal error control, video over the Internet.

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