Comparison of digital focus criteria for a TV microscope system

Existing focusing methods, such as standard deviation of gray values, gradients, information content of the image and the lateral inhibition function, were compared, and a new combination criterion was developed. This combined method consists of using the standard deviation of the image for coarse focusing followed by a modified form of the lateral inhibition for the fine focus. The lateral inhibitor model of the eye is a recursive filter that can be simplified to a nonrecursive filtering algorithm, as postulated by Rechenberg. The reported focus method operates over a focusing range (z-axis) of +/- 300 micron and is accurate within +/- 0.1 micron in the transmission, dark-field, and phase contrast microscope.     

Association of TNF-α polymorphism rs1800629 with multisomatoform disorder in a group of German patients and healthy controls: An explorative study

IntroductionThe etiology of multisomatoform disorder (MSD) is still largely unknown, but genetic factors seem to have an influence on pathogenesis. Pain is a major symptom of MSD and polymorphisms of different proinflammatory cytokines have been found associated with pain in former studies. Therefore, we presumed that cytokine polymorphisms could also be associated with MSD.Patients and methodsGroups of 148 MSD patients with pain as the leading clinical symptom and 149 age and gender matched healthy controls participated in this study. Nine cytokine polymorphisms were genotyped and statistically analyzed for associations with MSD.ResultsAllelic and genotypic associations were found for rs16944 (interleukin 1β), rs1800629 (tumor necrosis factor) and rs909253 (lymphotoxin α). After correcting for multiple testing, the association of rs1800629 with MSD remained significant. The rare A-allele was correlated with MSD (p = 0.007).DiscussionSince the common G-allele of rs1800629 (TNFα) occurs much more often in the control group than in the MSD group it is assumed to be protective. Being carrier of the A-allele seems to be a risk factor for MSD.     

Genetic serum protein markers (PH,GC, PI) in two South Indian caste populations

The results of HP, GC and PI typings on two caste populations (Relli-I: fruit vendors, Relli-II: scavengers) from Andhra Pradesh (South India) are reported and compared with data obtained on other Indian population samples.