No abstract

Systemic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been shown to reduce alveolar bone loss in periodontitis. This study assesses the efficacy of a topical NSAID rinse, containing ketorolac tromethamine as the active agent. Adult periodontitis patients (n = 55) were studied in this 6-month randomized, double blind, parallel, placebo and positive-controlled study. Each patient had a least 3 sites at high risk for bone loss as assessed by low dose bone scan. Groups, balanced for gender, were assigned to one of three regimens: bid ketorolac rinse (0.1%) with placebo capsule; 50 mg bid flurbiprofen capsule (positive control) with placebo rinse; or bid placebo rinse and capsule. Prophylaxes were provided every 3 months. Monthly examinations assessed safety, gingival condition, and gingival crevicular fluid PGE2. Standardized radiographs were taken at baseline and at 3 and 6 months for digital subtraction radiography. A significant loss in bone height was observed during the study period in the placebo group (-0.63 +/- 0.11; P < 0.001), but not in the flurbiprofen (-0.10 +/- 0.12; P = 0.40) or ketorolac rinse (+0.20 +/- 0.11 mm; P = 0.07) groups. Nested ANOVA revealed that ketorolac and flurbiprofen groups had less bone loss (P < 0.01) and reduced gingival crevicular fluid PGE2 levels (P < 0.03) compared to placebo. ANOVA suggests (P = 0.06) that ketorolac rinse preserved more alveolar bone than systemic flurbiprofen at the dose regimens utilized. These data indicate that ketorolac rinse may be beneficial in the treatment of adult periodontitis.

Abstract. The increasing need for continuous monitoring of the world oceans has stimulated the development of a range of autonomous sampling platforms. One novel addition to these approaches is a small, relatively inexpensive data-relaying device that can be deployed on marine mammals to provide vertical oceanographic profiles throughout the upper 2000 m of the water column. When an animal dives, the CTD-Satellite Relay Data Logger (CTD-SRDL) records vertical profiles of temperature, conductivity and pressure. Data are compressed once the animal returns to the surface where it is located by, and relays data to, the Argos satellite system. The technical challenges met in the design of the CTD-SRDL are the maximising of energy efficiency by minimising size, whilst simultaneously maintaining the reliability of an instrument that cannot be recovered and is required to survive its lifetime attached to a marine mammal. The CTD-SRDLs record temperature and salinity with an accuracy of better than 0.005°C and 0.02 respectively. However, due to the limited availability of reference data for post-processing, data are often associated with slightly higher errors. The potential to collect large numbers of profiles cost-effectively makes data collection using CTD-SRDL technology particularly beneficial in regions where traditional oceanographic measurements are scarce. Depending on the CTD-SRDL configuration, it is possible to sample and transmit hydrographic profiles on a daily basis, providing valuable and often unique information for a real-time ocean observing system.

Treatment effects over time are frequently investigated using repeated measures designs, but analyses of these experiments frequently fail to address a primary objective of collecting data over time, namely description of the response curve. The analysis advocated in this paper utilizes the intrinsic continuity of the repeated measures factor by focusing on response curves. Treatments are compared by analyzing estimated coefficients of response curves proposed by the investigator. This approach provides more information on treatment effects than analyses that compare treatments separately at each time period. Analysis of estimated coefficients is easier to interpret than multivariate analyses of variance and does not require often biologically implausible assumptions of split-plot analyses currently in vogue. An example describing effects of aluminum on sugar maple (Acersaccharum Marsh.) seedling growth illustrates the method.

and MICHAEL MEREDITH Forte Design SystemsWith increasing design complexity, the gap from ESL (Electronic System Level) design to RTL synthesis becomes more and more crucial to many industrial projects. Although several behavioral synthesis tools exist to automatically generate synthesizable RTL code from C/C++/SystemCbased input descriptions and software generation for embedded processors is automated as well, an efficient ESL synthesis methodology combining both is still missing. This article presents SYS-TEMCODESIGNER, a novel SystemC-based ESL tool to automatically optimize a hardware/software SoC (System on Chip) implementation with respect to several objectives. Starting from a SystemC behavioral model, SYSTEMCODESIGNER automatically extracts the mathematical model, performs a behavioral synthesis step, and explores the multiobjective design space using state-of-the-art multiobjective optimization algorithms. During design space exploration, a single design point is evaluated by simulating highly accurate performance models, which are automatically generated from the SystemC behavioral model and the behavioral synthesis results. Moreover, SYSTEMCODESIGNER permits the automatic generation of bit streams for FPGA targets from any previously optimized SoC implementation. Thus SYSTEMCODESIGNER is the first fully automated ESL synthesis tool providing a correct-by-construction generation of hardware/software SoC implementations. As a case study, a model of a Motion-JPEG decoder was automatically optimized and implemented using SYSTEMCODESIGNER. Several synthesized SoC variants based on this model show different tradeoffs between required hardware costs and achieved system throughput, ranging from software-only solutions to pure hardware implementations that reach real-time performance for QCIF streams on a 50MHz FPGA. ACM Reference Format:Keinert, J., Streubühr, M., Schlichter, T., Falk, J., Gladigau, J., Haubelt, C., and Teich, J. 2009. SYSTEMCODESIGNER-An automatic ESL synthesis approach by design space exploration and behavioral synthesis for streaming application.