• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.7607-7611
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• 2013

Background: Cervical cancer continues to be a major problem in Bangladesh with approximately 18,000 new cases annually of which over 10,000 women die from it. Visual inspection of the cervix after 3-5% acetic acid (VIA) application is a simple and easy to learn method for cervical cancer screening, although cytology-based screening is more often applied in developed countries where it has successfully reduced the prevalence of cervical cancer. Objective: To compare the efficacy of VIA and cytology-based primary methods for cervical cancer screening in Bangladesh. Materials and Methods: This hospital based comparative study was conducted at the VIA centre and Colposcopy Clinic of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) from October 2008 to October 2010. Results: Among 650 women, 74 (11.4%) were VIA+ve and 8 (1.2%) had abnormalities in their Pap smear reports. During colposcopy, 38 (7.7%) women had different grades of CIN and 4 (0.6%) had cervical cancer. The gold standard histology findings proved 20 women had CIN I, 14 had CIN II/II and 4 had cervical cancer. Among the 38 histology diagnosed abnormalities, VIA test could identify 30 abnormalities including two cervical cancers. However, Pap smear could detect only 8 cases of histological abnormalities (2 low grade and 6 had high grade lesion) and it missed all the cervical cancer cases. The sensitivity and specificity of VIA were 88.9% and 52.1%. The positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were 41.0%, and 92.6% respectively. Moreover, the sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of Pap smear were 33.3%, 95.8%, 75.0% and 79.3%, respectively. Conclusions: VIA test should be used as the primary screening tool even with its low sensitivity and specificity in low resource countries like Bangladesh. False positive results may be greater, but overtreatment can be minimized by colposcopy evaluation of the VIA positive women.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.53-63
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• 2009

This work proposes a 10b 100MS/s 27.2mW $0.8mm^2$ 0.18um CMOS ADC for WLAN such as an IEEE 802.11n standard. The proposed ADC employs a three-stage pipeline architecture and minimizes power consumption and chip area by sharing as many circuits as possible. Two multiplying DACs share a single amplifier without MOS switches connected in series while the shared amplifier does not show a conventional memory effect. All three flash ADCs use only one resistor ladder while the second and third flash ADCs share all pre-amps to further reduce power consumption and chip area. The interpolation circuit employed in the flash ADCs halves the required number of pre-amps and an input-output isolated dynamic latch reduces the increased kickback noise caused by the pre-amp sharing. The prototype ADC implemented in a 0.18um n-well 1P6M CMOS process shows the DNL and INL within 0.83LSB and 1.52LSB at 10b, respectively. The ADC measures an SNDR of 52.1dB and an SFDR of 67.6dB at a sampling rate of 100MS/s. The ADC with an active die area of $0.8mm^2$ consumes 27.2mW at 1.8V and 100MS/s.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.40 no.9
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• pp.673-684
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• 2003

A degenerated differential pair has been widely used as a standard topology for digitally programmable CMOS VGAs. A variable degeneration resistor has been implemented using a resistor string or R-2R ladder with MOSFET switches. However, in the VGAs using these conventional methods, low-voltage and high-speed operation is very hard to achieve due to the dc voltage drop over the degeneration resistor. To overcome this problem a new variable degeneration resistor is proposed where the dc voltage drop is almost removed. Using the proposed gain control scheme, a low-voltage and high-speed CMOS VGA is designed. HSPICE simulation results using a 0.25${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ CMOS process parameters show that the designed VGA provides a 3dB bandwidth of 360MHz and a 80dB gain control range in 2dB step. Gain errors are less than 0.4dB at 200MHz and less than l.4dB at 300MHz. The designed circuit consumes 10.8mA from a 2.5V supply and its die area is 1190${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$${\times}$360${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.91-96
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• 2011

In this paper, a low-power direct-conversion transmitter based on current-mode operation, which satisfies the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, is proposed and implemented in a $0.13{\mu}m$ CMOS technology. The proposed transmitter consists of DACs, LPFs, variable gain I/Q up-conversion mixer, a divide-by-two circuit with LO buffer, and a drive amplifier. By combining DAC, LPF, and variable gain I/Q up-conversion mixer with a simple current mirror configuration, the transmitter's power consumption is reduced and its linearity is improved. The drive amplifier is a cascode amplifier with gain controls and the 2.4GHz I/Q differential LO signals are generated by a divide-by-two current-mode-logic (CML) circuit with an external 4.8GHz input signal. The implemented transmitter has 30dB of gain control range, 0dBm of maximum transmit output power, 33dBc of local oscillator leakage, and 40dBc of the transmit third harmonic component. The transmitter dissipates 10.2mW from a 1.2V supply and the die area of the transmitter is $1.76mm{\times}1.26mm$.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2023

Lab-on-a-disc is a circular disc shape of cartridge that can be used for blood-based liquid biopsy to diagnose an early stage of cancer. Currently, liquid biopsies are regarded as a time-consuming process, and require sophisticated skills to precisely separate cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) floating in the bloodstream for accurate diagnosis. However, by applying the lab-on-a-disc to liquid biopsy, the entire process can be operated automatically. To do so, the lab-on-a-disc should be designed to prevent blood leakage during the centrifugation, transport, and dilution of blood inside the lab-on-a-disc in the process of liquid biopsy. In this study, the main components of lab-on-a-disc for liquid biopsy are fabricated by injection molding for mass production, and ultrasonic welding is employed to ensure the bonding strength between the components. To guarantee accurate ultrasonic welding, the flatness of the components is optimized numerically by using the response surface methodology with four main injection molding processing parameters, including the mold & resin temperatures, the injection speed, and the packing pressure. The 27 times finite element analyses using Moldflow® reveal that the injection time and the packing pressure are the critical factors affecting the flatness of the components with an optimal set of values for all four processing parameters. To further improve the flatness of the lab-on-a-disc components for stable mass production, a quarter-disc shape of lab-on-a-disc with a radius of 75 mm is used instead of a full circular shape of the disc, and this significantly decreases the standard deviation of flatness to 30% due to the reduced overall length of the injection molded components by one-half. Moreover, it is also beneficial to use a quarter disc shape to manage the deviation of flatness under 3 sigma limits.

• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.62
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• pp.313-334
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• 2020

As an element of education, the educational space cannot be separated from the purpose of education. The place of education is not only the passage to deliver actual curriculum, but also the purpose itself that can be accomplished through educational content. That is because the purpose of education cannot be achieved only with instructors, students, curriculum, and methods, but requires a change in the perception of the educational space that represents the goal and the place where it all can be implemented. Nevertheless, the problem that lies with educational space is easy to be overlooked and it has been rather considered as an issue related to the finances or scale of the church. The church educational space gives birth to faith and growth, where spiritual development and experience may occur. However, the reality follows the drawbacks of conventional school classroom arrangements and structures. In addition, even if the church educational space can be arranged according to the needs of its students, it cannot deviate much from the standard uniform format. In particular, the basic environment of church educational space is similar to that of standard school system in terms of arrangement of furniture such as chairs, desks, and its physical structure. As the school system was originally designed and tailored for the purpose of delivering knowledge and standardization, the space for church education must stay away from it. Humans are born and die in a space, where encounter with God also happens. Also, communication with God causes spacial conversion to humans, changing the place of their visitation. So the church educational space must be more meticulously designed and comprehensive than that of school which pursues physical, educational, psychological, social, and artistic purposes because the church educational space pursues the liturgical elements, as well. Therefore, the Christian learning environmental arrangements must seek liturgical elements, which is the major Christian value, by placing Christian artwork or symbols for church visitors. So in this research, I want to stress the role of Christian educational space for spiritual growth and pursue intrinsic and extrinsic changes in learning environment, leading to a greater awareness of the Christian educational space.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2019

The health benefits associated with consumption of fresh produce have been clearly demonstrated and encouraged by international nutrition and health authorities. However, since fresh produce is usually minimally processed, increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has also led to a simultaneous escalation of foodborne illness cases. According to the report by the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 10 people suffer from foodborne diseases and 420,000 die every year globally. In comparison to other processed foods, fresh produce can be easily contaminated by various routes at different points in the supply chain from farm to fork. This review is focused on the identification and characterization of possible sources of foodborne illnesses from chemical, biological, and physical hazards and the applicable methodologies to detect potential contaminants. Agro-chemicals (pesticides, fungicides and herbicides), natural toxins (mycotoxins and plant toxins), and heavy metals (mercury and cadmium) are the main sources of chemical hazards, which can be detected by several methods including chromatography and nano-techniques based on nanostructured materials such as noble metal nanoparticles (NMPs), quantum dots (QDs) and magnetic nanoparticles or nanotube. However, the diversity of chemical structures complicates the establishment of one standard method to differentiate the variety of chemical compounds. In addition, fresh fruits and vegetables contain high nutrient contents and moisture, which promote the growth of unwanted microorganisms including bacterial pathogens (Salmonella, E. coli O157: H7, Shigella, Listeria monocytogenes, and Bacillus cereus) and non-bacterial pathogens (norovirus and parasites). In order to detect specific pathogens in fresh produce, methods based on molecular biology such as PCR and immunology are commonly used. Finally, physical hazards including contamination by glass, metal, and gravel in food can cause serious injuries to customers. In order to decrease physical hazards, vision systems such as X-ray inspection have been adopted to detect physical contaminants in food, while exceptional handling skills by food production employees are required to prevent additional contamination.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.646-653
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• 1995

Background: The confirmative diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis(Tb) can be made by the isolation of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis(MTb) in the culture of the sputum, respiratory secretions or tissues of the patients, but positive result could not always be obtained in pulmonary Tb cases. Although there are many indirect ways of the diagnosis of Tb, clinicians still experience the difficulty in the diagnosis of Tb because each method has its own limitation. Therefore development of a new diagnostic tool is clinically urgent. It was reported that silica cause some lysosomal enzymes to be released from macrophages in vitro and one of these enzymes is elevated in workers exposed to silica dust and in silicotic subjects. In pulmonary Tb, alveolar macrophages are known to be activated after ingestion of MTb. Activated macrophages can kill MTb through oxygen free radical species and digestive enzymes of lysosome. But if macrophages allow the bacilli to grow intracellularly, the macrophages will die finally and local lesion will enlarge. Then it is assumed that the lysosomal enzymes would be released from the dead macrophages. The goal of this investigation was to determine if there are differences in the plasma activities of lysosomal enzymes, ($\beta$-glucuronidase(GLU) and $\beta$-N-acetyl glucosaminidase(NAG), among the groups of active and inactive pulmonary Tb and healthy control, and to see if there is any possibility that the plasma activity of GLU and NAG can be used as diagnostic indicies of active pulmonary Tb. Methods: The plasma were obtained from 20 patients with bacteriologically proven active pulmonary Tb, 15 persons with inactive Tb and 20 normal controls. In 10 patients with active pulmonary Tb, serial samples after 2 months of anti-Tb medications were obtained. Plasma GLU and NAG activities were measured by the fluorometric methods using 4-methylumbelliferyl substrates. All data are expressed as the mean $\pm$ the standard error of the mean. Results: The activites of GLU and NAG in plasma of the patients with active Tb were $21.52{\pm}3.01$ and $325.4{\pm}23.37$(nmol product/h/ml of plasma), respectively. Those of inactive pulmonary Tb were $24.87{\pm}3.78$, $362.36{\pm}33.92$ and those of healthy control were $25.45{\pm}4.05$, $324.44{\pm}28.66$(nmol product/h/ml of plasma), respectively. There were no significant differences in the plasma activities of both enzymes among 3 groups. The plasma activities of GLU at 2 months after anti-Tb medications were increased($42.18{\pm}5.94$ nmol product/h/ml of plasma) in the patients with active pulmonary Tb compared with that at the diagnosis of Tb(P-value <0.05). Conclusion: The results of the present investigation suggest that the measurement of the plasma activities of GLU and NAG in the patients with active pulmonary Tb could not be a useful method for the diagnosis of active Tb. Further investigation is necessary to define the reasons why the plasma activities of the GLU was increased in the patients with active pulmonary Tb after Tb therapy.