Diagnostic Role of Tumour Markers CEA, CA15-3, CA19-9 and CA125 in Lung Cancer

The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic yield of the tumour markers carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 15-3, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125, in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid in a group of patients with bronchogenic carcinoma. Serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples were collected in a group of 90 patients with benign or malignant pulmonary diseases. After appropriate processing, tumour markers were determined by enzyme immunoassay. The diagnostic yields (sensitivity, specificity and predictive values) in each environment (serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid) were obtained by using "Receivers operating characteristic" curve. Determined individually, carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125, showed the greatest diagnostic accuracy in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Carbohydrate antigen 15-3 did so in serum. Carcinoembryonic antigen was the most relevant marker in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. For the factors evaluated in this study, determination of carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125 in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were clinically more useful markers in comparison with serum, although the latter may also be helpful in certain situations. Although there is no specific tumour marker for lung cancer, the combination of several can be used to diagnose most patients with lung cancer and also to rule out false positive and negative cases.     

LTSA conformance testing to architectural design of LMS using ontology

This paper proposes a new methodology for checking conformance of the software architectural design of Learning Management System (LMS) to Learning Technology System Architecture (LTSA). In our approach, the architectural designing of LMS follows the formal modeling style of Acme. An ontology is built to represent the LTSA rules and the software architecture in Acme style. Conformity of the design with LTSA rules is tested by reasoning the ontology with the query language SPARQL. A Java-based plug-in system is introduced to implement functionalities like loading the elements of the architectural design into the ontology, mapping the architectural elements with LTSA elements, and performing the conformance test. The advantage of the proposed methodology is two-folded. First, it verifies an important software quality attribute – conformance to technical standard – at an early stage of development, like high-level design phase. Secondly, instead of the conventional manual checklist based approach of conformance testing, this methodology focuses on an automated way to finding the conformance level of the system under check.     

A new set of orthogonal functions and its application to the analysis of dynamic systems

The present work proposes a complementary pair of orthogonal triangular function (TF) sets derived from the well-known block pulse function (BPF) set. The operational matrices for integration in TF domain have been computed and their relation with the BPF domain integral operational matrix is shown. It has been established with illustration that the TF domain technique is more accurate than the BPF domain technique as far as integration is concerned, and it provides with a piecewise linear solution.As a further study, the newly proposed sets have been applied to the analysis of dynamic systems to prove the fact that it introduces less mean integral squared error (MISE) than the staircase solution obtained from BPF domain analysis, without any extra computational burden. Finally, a detailed study of the representational error has been made to estimate the upper bound of the MISE for the TF approximation of a function f(t) of Lebesgue measure.     

Serum LCAT and lipoprotein—Transport cholesterol in hyperthyroid patients

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the serum levels of lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase and lipoprotein cholesterol in hyperthyroid patients. The serum levels of total cholesterol and triacylglycerols were also determined in order to assess the lipid status of these patients. It was observed that serum content of total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and high density liproprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were significantly lower (P<0.001) in these patients whereas serum triacylglycerols (Tg.) and very low density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-C) (P>0.05) did not show any significant change as compared to control values. However, the serum level of lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase (LCAT) was significantly higher (P<0.001) in these patients. It is concluded that an increased LCAT activity plays a significant role in regulating lipoprotein cholesterol levels in hyperthyroid patients.