Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis remains an important cause of morbidity and mortality among transplant recipients and patients receiving cancer chemotherapy. The lipid-associated formulation of amphotericin B (AmB), AmB lipid complex (ABLC), was evaluated for its prophylactic efficacy when it was administered as an aerosol in a rat model of pulmonary aspergillosis. Aerosol ABLC (aero-ABLC), in doses from 0.4 to 1.6 mg/kg of body weight given 2 days before infection, significantly delayed mortality compared to the mortality of rats given placebo (P < 0.001). At day 10 postinfection, 50% of rats in the 0.4-mg/kg group and 75% of rats in the 1.6-mg/kg group were alive, while all control animals had died. In a second trial aero-ABLC was more effective than an equivalent dose of aerosol AmB (aero-AmB) in prolonging survival, with 100% survival at day 14 postinfection in the ABLC group, compared to 62.5% survival in the AmB group. Mean concentrations of AmB in lungs were 3.7 times higher at day 1 (P < 0.002) and almost six times higher at day 7 (P < 0.001) after treatment with aero-ABLC than after treatment with a similar dose of aero-AmB. We conclude that aero-ABLC provided higher and more prolonged levels of the parent compound in the lungs than aero-AmB and was more effective in delaying mortality from aspergillosis in this model.
At present, various kinds of robots such as AIBO, ASIMO and etc, are available in public. However, the development of robots is still having some difficulties since of their complexity, continual changes of environments, limitation of resources and etc. To overcome this problem, robot developers often use the simulator that allows to program and test robots' program effectively under ideal environmental conditions where specified various conditions can easily be reproduced. It is still difficult to realize the simulator regardless of its usefulness, because the cost of simulator implementation seems the unexpected cost in the development of robots. As a result, it is need to realize the open robot simulation environment in which any kind of robots can be simulated. This paper focuses on vision-based robot simulation environment and describes a method to construct it. Finally, we implemented a simulator for Robocup Sony 4-Legged League by using this method.
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