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Terbinafine increases the plasma concentration of paroxetine after a single oral administration of paroxetine in healthy subjects | Paroxetine is believed to be a substrate of CYP2D6. However, no information was available indicating drug interaction between paroxetine and inhibitors of CYP2D6. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of terbinafine, a potent inhibitor of CYP2D6, on pharmacokinetics of paroxetine. Two 6-day courses of either a daily 150-mg of terbinafine or a placebo, with at least a 4-week washout period, were conducted. Twelve volunteers took a single oral 20-mg dose of paroxetine on day 6 of both courses. Plasma concentrations of paroxetine were monitored up to 48 h after dosing. Compared with the placebo, terbinafine treatment significantly increased the peak plasma concentration (Cmax) of paroxetine, by 1.9-fold (6.4 ± 2.4 versus 12.1 ± 2.9 ng/ml, p < 0.001), and the area under the plasma concentration-time curve from zero to 48 h [AUC (0–48)] of paroxetine by 2.5-fold (127 ± 67 vs 318 ± 102 ng/ml, p < 0.001). Elimination half-life differed significantly (15.3 ± 2.4 vs 22.7 ± 8.8 h, p < 0.05), although the magnitude of alteration (1.4-fold) was smaller than Cmax or AUC. The present study demonstrated that the metabolism of paroxetine after a single oral dose was inhibited by terbinafine, suggesting that inhibition of CYP2D6 activity may lead to a change in the pharmacokinetics of paroxetine. However, further study is required to confirm this phenomenon at steady state. |
Java Concurrency in Practice | QueuedSynchronizer, upon which most of the state dependent classes in java.util.concurrent are built (see Section 14.4), exploits the concept of exit protocol. Rather than letting synchronizer classes perform their own notification, it instead requires synchronizer methods to return a value indicating whether its action might have unblocked one or more waiting threads. This explicit API requirement makes it harder to "forget" to notify on some state transitions. 14.3. Explicit Condition Objects As we saw in Chapter 13, explicit Locks can be useful in some situations where intrinsic locks are too inflexible. Just as Lock is a generalization of intrinsic locks, Condition (see Listing 14.10) is a generalization of intrinsic condition queues. Intrinsic condition queues have several drawbacks. Each intrinsic lock can have only one associated condition queue, which means that in classes like BoundedBuffer multiple threads might wait on the same condition queue for different condition predicates, and the most common pattern for locking involves exposing the condition queue object. Both of these factors make it impossible to enforce the uniform waiter requirement for using notifyAll. If you want to write a concurrent object with multiple condition predicates, or you want to exercise more control over the visibility of the condition queue, the explicit Lock and Condition classes offer a more flexible alternative to intrinsic locks and condition queues. A Condition is associated with a single Lock, just as a condition queue is associated with a single intrinsic lock; to create a Condition, call Lock.newCondition on the associated lock. And just as Lock offers a richer feature set than intrinsic locking, Condition offers a richer feature set than intrinsic condition queues: multiple wait sets per lock, interruptible and uninterruptible condition waits, deadline based waiting, and a choice of fair or nonfair queueing. Listing 14.10. Condition Interface. public interface Condition { void await() throws InterruptedException; boolean await(long time, TimeUnit unit) throws InterruptedException; long awaitNanos(long nanosTimeout) throws InterruptedException; void awaitUninterruptibly(); boolean awaitUntil(Date deadline) throws InterruptedException; void signal(); void signalAll(); } Unlike intrinsic condition queues, you can have as many Condition objects per Lock as you want. Condition objects inherit the fairness setting of their associated Lock; for fair locks, threads are released from Condition.await in FIFO order. Hazard warning: The equivalents of wait, notify, and notifyAll for Condition objects are await, signal, and signalAll. However, Condition extends Object, which means that it also has wait and notify methods. Be sure to use the proper versions await and signal instead! Listing 14.11 shows yet another bounded buffer implementation, this time using two Conditions, notFull and notEmpty, to represent explicitly the "not full" and "not empty" condition predicates. When take blocks because the buffer is empty, it waits on notEmpty, and put unblocks any threads blocked in take by signaling on notEmpty. The behavior of ConditionBoundedBuffer is the same as BoundedBuffer, but its use of condition queues is more readable it is easier to analyze a class that uses multiple Conditions than one that uses a single intrinsic condition queue with multiple condition predicates. By separating the two condition predicates into separate wait sets, Condition makes it easier to meet the requirements for single notification. Using the more efficient signal instead of signalAll reduces the number of context switches and lock acquisitions triggered by each buffer operation. Just as with built in locks and condition queues, the three way relationship among the lock, the condition predicate, and the condition variable must also hold when using explicit Locks and Conditions. The variables involved in the condition predicate must be guarded by the Lock, and the Lock must be held when testing the condition predicate and when calling await and signal. [11] ReentrantLock requires that the Lock be held when calling signal or signalAll, but Lock implementations are permitted to construct Conditions that do not have this requirement. 189 7BPart IV: Advanced Topics 26BChapter 14 Building Custom Synchronizers Choose between using explicit Conditions and intrinsic condition queues in the same way as you would choose between ReentrantLock and synchronized: use Condition if you need its advanced features such as fair queueing or multiple wait sets per lock, and otherwise prefer intrinsic condition queues. (If you already use ReentrantLock because you need its advanced features, the choice is already made.) 14.4. Anatomy of a Synchronizer The interfaces of ReentrantLock and Semaphore have a lot in common. Both classes act as a "gate", allowing only a limited number of threads to pass at a time; threads arrive at the gate and are allowed through (lock or acquire returns successfully), are made to wait (lock or acquire blocks), or are turned away (tryLock or tryAcquire returns false, indicating that the lock or permit did not become available in the time allowed). Further, both allow interruptible, uninterruptible, and timed acquisition attempts, and both allow a choice of fair or nonfair queueing of waiting threads. Given this commonality, you might think that Semaphore was implemented on top of ReentrantLock, or perhaps ReentrantLock was implemented as a Semaphore with one permit. This would be entirely practical; it is a common exercise to prove that a counting semaphore can be implemented using a lock (as in SemaphoreOnLock in Listing 14.12) and that a lock can be implemented using a counting semaphore. In actuality, they are both implemented using a common base class, Abstract-QueuedSynchronizer (AQS)as are many other synchronizers. AQS is a framework for building locks and synchronizers, and a surprisingly broad range of synchronizers can be built easily and efficiently using it. Not only are ReentrantLock and Semaphore built using AQS, but so are CountDownLatch, ReentrantReadWriteLock, SynchronousQueue, and FutureTask. [12] Java6 replaces the AQS based SynchronousQueue with a (more scalable) non blocking version. Listing 14.11. Bounded Buffer Using Explicit Condition Variables. @ThreadSafe public class ConditionBoundedBuffer<T> { protected final Lock lock = new ReentrantLock(); // CONDITION PREDICATE: notFull (count < items.length) private final Condition notFull = lock.newCondition(); // CONDITION PREDICATE: notEmpty (count > 0) private final Condition notEmpty = lock.newCondition(); @GuardedBy("lock") private final T[] items = (T[]) new Object[BUFFER_SIZE]; @GuardedBy("lock") private int tail, head, count; // BLOCKS-UNTIL: notFull public void put(T x) throws InterruptedException { lock.lock(); try { while (count == items.length) notFull.await(); items[tail] = x; if (++tail == items.length) tail = 0; ++count; notEmpty.signal(); } finally { lock.unlock(); } } // BLOCKS-UNTIL: notEmpty public T take() throws InterruptedException { lock.lock(); try { while (count == 0) notEmpty.await(); T x = items[head]; items[head] = null; if (++head == items.length) head = 0; --count; notFull.signal(); return x; } finally { lock.unlock(); } } } 190 Java Concurrency In Practice Listing 14.12. Counting Semaphore Implemented Using Lock. // Not really how java.util.concurrent.Semaphore is implemented @ThreadSafe public class SemaphoreOnLock { private final Lock lock = new ReentrantLock(); // CONDITION PREDICATE: permitsAvailable (permits > 0) private final Condition permitsAvailable = lock.newCondition(); @GuardedBy("lock") private int permits; SemaphoreOnLock(int initialPermits) { lock.lock(); try { permits = initialPermits; } finally { lock.unlock(); } } // BLOCKS-UNTIL: permitsAvailable public void acquire() throws InterruptedException { lock.lock(); try { while (permits <= 0) permitsAvailable.await(); --permits; } finally { lock.unlock(); } } public void release() { lock.lock(); try { ++permits; permitsAvailable.signal(); } finally { lock.unlock(); } } } AQS handles many of the details of implementing a synchronizer, such as FIFO queuing of waiting threads. Individual synchronizers can define flexible criteria for whether a thread should be allowed to pass or be required to wait. Using AQS to build synchronizers offers several benefits. Not only does it substantially reduce the implementation effort, but you also needn't pay for multiple points of contention, as you would when constructing one synchronizer on top of another. In SemaphoreOnLock, acquiring a permit has two places where it might block once at the lock guarding the semaphore state, and then again if a permit is not available. Synchronizers built with AQS have only one point where they might block, reducing context switch overhead and improving throughput. AQS was designed for scalability, and all the synchronizers in java.util.concurrent that are built with AQS benefit from this. 14.5. AbstractQueuedSynchronizer Most developers will probably never use AQS directly; the standard set of synchronizers covers a fairly wide range of situations. But seeing how the standard synchronizers are implemented can help clarify how they work. The basic operations that an AQS based synchronizer performs are some variants of acquire and release. Acquisition is the state dependent operation and can always block. With a lock or semaphore, the meaning of acquire is straightforward acquire the lock or a permit and the caller may have to wait until the synchronizer is in a state where that can happen. With CountDownLatch, acquire means "wait until the latch has reached its terminal state", and with FutureTask, it means "wait until the task has completed". Release is not a blocking operation; a release may allow threads blocked in acquire to proceed. For a class to be state dependent, it must have some state. AQS takes on |
Multimodal Mixed Reality Interfaces for Visualizing Digital Heritage | We have developed several digital heritage interfaces that utilize Web3D, virtual and augmented reality technologies for visualizing digital heritage in an interactive manner through the use of several different input devices. We propose in this paper an integration of these technologies to provide a novel multimodal mixed reality interface that facilitates the implementation of more interesting digital heritage exhibitions. With such exhibitions participants can switch dynamically between virtual web-based environments to indoor augmented reality environments as well as make use of various multimodal interaction techniques to better explore heritage information in the virtual museum. The museum visitor can potentially experience their digital heritage in the physical sense in the museum, then explore further through the web, visualize this heritage in the round (3D on the web), take that 3D artifact into the augmented reality domain (the real world) and explore it further using various multimodal interfaces. |
A polyhedral branch-and-cut approach to global optimization | A variety of nonlinear, including semidefinite, relaxations have been developed in recent years for nonconvex optimization problems. Their potential can be realized only if they can be solved with sufficient speed and reliability. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art nonlinear programming codes are significantly slower and numerically unstable compared to linear programming software. In this paper, we facilitate the reliable use of nonlinear convex relaxations in global optimization via a polyhedral branch-and-cut approach. Our algorithm exploits convexity, either identified automatically or supplied through a suitable modeling language construct, in order to generate polyhedral cutting planes and relaxations for multivariate nonconvex problems. We prove that, if the convexity of a univariate or multivariate function is apparent by decomposing it into convex subexpressions, our relaxation constructor automatically exploits this convexity in a manner that is much superior to developing polyhedral outer approximators for the original function. The convexity of functional expressions that are composed to form nonconvex expressions is also automatically exploited. Root-node relaxations are computed for 87 problems from globallib and minlplib, and detailed computational results are presented for globally solving 26 of these problems with BARON 7.2, which implements the proposed techniques. The use of cutting planes for these problems reduces root-node relaxation gaps by up to 100% and expedites the solution process, often by several orders of magnitude. |
Cujo: efficient detection and prevention of drive-by-download attacks | The JavaScript language is a core component of active and dynamic web content in the Internet today. Besides its great success in enhancing web applications, however, JavaScript provides the basis for so-called drive-by downloads---attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in web browsers and their extensions for unnoticeably downloading malicious software. Due to the diversity and frequent use of obfuscation in these attacks, static code analysis is largely ineffective in practice. While dynamic analysis and honeypots provide means to identify drive-by-download attacks, current approaches induce a significant overhead which renders immediate prevention of attacks intractable.
In this paper, we present Cujo, a system for automatic detection and prevention of drive-by-download attacks. Embedded in a web proxy, Cujo transparently inspects web pages and blocks delivery of malicious JavaScript code. Static and dynamic code features are extracted on-the-fly and analysed for malicious patterns using efficient techniques of machine learning. We demonstrate the efficacy of Cujo in different experiments, where it detects 94% of the drive-by downloads with few false alarms and a median run-time of 500 ms per web page---a quality that, to the best of our knowledge, has not been attained in previous work on detection of drive-by-download attacks. |
SLStudio: Open-source framework for real-time structured light | An open-source framework for real-time structured light is presented. It is called “SLStudio”, and enables real-time capture of metric depth images. The framework is modular, and extensible to support new algorithms for scene encoding/decoding, triangulation, and aquisition hardware. It is the aim that this software makes real-time 3D scene capture more widely accessible and serves as a foundation for new structured light scanners operating in real-time, e.g. 20 depth images per second and more. The use cases for such scanners are plentyfull, however due to the computational constraints, all public implementations so far are limited to offline processing. With “SLStudio”, we are making a platform available which enables researchers from many different fields to build application specific real time 3D scanners. The software is hosted at http://compute.dtu.dk/~jakw/slstudio. |
Progress in two-dimensional arrays for real-time volumetric imaging. | The design, fabrication, and evaluation of two dimensional array transducers for real-time volumetric imaging are described. The transducers we have previously described operated at frequencies below 3 MHz and were unwieldy to the operator because of the interconnect schemes used in connecting to the transducer handle. Several new transducers have been developed using new connection technology. A 40 x 40 = 1,600 element, 3.5 MHz array was fabricated with 256 transmit and 256 receive elements. A 60 x 60 = 3,600 element 5.0 MHz array was constructed with 248 transmit and 256 receive elements. An 80 x 80 = 6,400 element, 2.5 MHz array was fabricated with 256 transmit and 208receive elements. 2-D transducer arrays were also developed for volumetric scanning in an intra cardiac catheter, a 10 x 10 = 100 element 5.0 MHz forward-looking array and an 11 x 13 = 143 element 5.0 MHz side-scanning array. The-6dB fractional bandwidths for the different arrays varied from 50% to 63%, and the 50 omega insertion loss for all the transducers was about-64 dB. The transducers were used to generate real-time volumetric images in phantoms and in vivo using the Duke University real time volumetric imaging system, which is capable of generating multiple planes at any desired angle and depth within the pyramidal volume. |
Blinkering surveillance: Enabling video privacy through computer vision | In this paper we describe a technology for protecting privacy in video systems. The paper presents a review of privacy in video surveillance and describes how a computer vision approach to understanding the video can be used to represent “just enough” of the information contained in a video stream to allow video-based tasks (including both surveillance and other “person aware” applications) to be accomplished, while hiding superfluous details, particularly identity, that can contain privacyintrusive information. The technology has been implemented in the form of a privacy console that manages operator access to different versions of the video-derived data according to access control lists. We have also built PrivacyCam—a smart camera that produces a video stream with the privacy-intrusive information already removed. |
A methodology for the abstraction of design components from the software requirement specification to the object oriented system | The software developer's task begins with the procurement of project charter. This is a legal document containing details regarding the software requirement specification (SRS), cost and the schedule etc., of the project. The SRS of the organization is a text document incorporating the requirements of the organization. The software development of and information system is based on the SRS of the client organization. This paper attempts to abstracts design components (Object class name, Object methods, and its attributes. Actors and interfaces of actors) from software requirement specification. The objective of this paper is to develop a single semi automated methodology for the abstraction of different useable components from SRS, so that they can be transformed as model elements. To provide a semiotic environment for the design of model elements to the transformation of useable components. |
Coronary restenosis after sirolimus-eluting stent implantation: morphological description and mechanistic analysis from a consecutive series of cases. | BACKGROUND
We describe the clinical and morphological patterns of restenosis after sirolimus-eluting stent (SES) implantation.
METHODS AND RESULTS
From 121 patients with coronary angiography obtained >30 days after SES implantation, restenosis (diameter stenosis >50%) was identified in 19 patients and 20 lesions (located at the proximal 5-mm segment in 30% or within the stent in 70%). Residual dissection after the procedure or balloon trauma outside the stent was identified in 83% of the proximal edge lesions. Lesions within the stent were focal, and stent discontinuity was identified in some lesions evaluated by intravascular ultrasound.
CONCLUSIONS
Sirolimus-eluting stent edge restenosis is frequently associated with local trauma outside the stent. In-stent restenosis occurs as a localized lesion, commonly associated with a discontinuity in stent coverage. Local conditions instead of intrinsic drug-resistance to sirolimus are likely to play a major role in post-SES restenosis. |
Performance analysis of various machine learning-based approaches for detection and classification of lung cancer in humans | Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of death among all cancer-related diseases (Cancer Research UK in Cancer mortality for common cancers. http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/mortality/common-cancers-compared, 2017). It is primarily diagnosed by performing a scan analysis of the patient’s lung. This scan analysis could be of X-ray, CT scan, or MRI. Automated classification of lung cancer is one of the difficult tasks, attributing to the varying mechanisms used for imaging patient’s lungs. Image processing and machine learning approaches have shown a great potential for detection and classification of lung cancer. In this paper, we have demonstrated effective approach for detection and classification of lung cancer-related CT scan images into benign and malignant category. Proposed approach firstly processes these images using image processing techniques, and then further supervised learning algorithms are used for their classification. Here, we have extracted texture features along with statistical features and supplied various extracted features to classifiers. We have used seven different classifiers known as k-nearest neighbors classifier, support vector machine classifier, decision tree classifier, multinomial naive Bayes classifier, stochastic gradient descent classifier, random forest classifier, and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) classifier. We have used dataset of 15750 clinical images consisting of both 6910 benign and 8840 malignant lung cancer related images to train and test these classifiers. In the obtained results, it is found that accuracy of MLP classifier is higher with value of 88.55% in comparison with the other classifiers. |
We Are Family: Joint Pose Estimation of Multiple Persons | We present a novel multi-person pose estimation framework, which extends pictorial structures (PS) to explicitly model interactions between people and to estimate their poses jointly. Interactions are modeled as occlusions between people. First, we propose an occlusion probability predictor, based on the location of persons automatically detected in the image, and incorporate the predictions as occlusion priors into our multi-person PS model. Moreover, our model includes an inter-people exclusion penalty, preventing body parts from different people from occupying the same image region. Thanks to these elements, our model has a global view of the scene, resulting in better pose estimates in group photos, where several persons stand nearby and occlude each other. In a comprehensive evaluation on a new, challenging group photo datasets we demonstrate the benefits of our multi-person model over a state-of-the-art single-person pose estimator which treats each person independently. |
The British Rheumatoid Outcome Study Group (BROSG) randomised controlled trial to compare the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of aggressive versus symptomatic therapy in established rheumatoid arthritis. | OBJECTIVES
To examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of symptomatic versus aggressive treatment in patients with established, stable rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
DESIGN
A randomised observer-blinded controlled trial and economic evaluation with an initial assessment at randomisation and follow-ups at 12, 24 and 36 months.
SETTING
Five rheumatology centres in England. The 'symptomatic care' patients were managed predominantly in primary care with regular visits by a rheumatology specialist nurse. The 'aggressive care' patients were managed predominantly in the hospital setting.
PARTICIPANTS
Patients with RA for more than 5 years were screened in rheumatology clinics.
INTERVENTIONS
The symptomatic care patients were seen at home every 4 months by a rheumatology specialist nurse and annually by the rheumatologist. The aim of treatment was symptom control. The aggressive care patients were seen at least every 4 months in hospital. Their treatment was altered (following predefined algorithms) with the aim of suppressing both clinical and laboratory evidence of joint inflammation.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The main outcome measure was the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ). Others included the patient and physician global assessment, pain, tender and swollen joint counts, the erythrocyte sedimentation rate and the OSRA (Overall Status in Rheumatoid Arthritis) score. X-rays of the hands and feet were performed at the beginning and end of the study. The EQ-5D was used in the health economic evaluation. Comprehensive costs were also estimated and were combined with measures of outcome to examine between-group differences.
RESULTS
A total of 466 patients were recruited; 399 patients completed the 3 years of follow-up. There was a significant deterioration in physical function (HAQ) in both arms. There was no significant difference between the groups for any of the clinical outcome measures except the physician global assessment [adjusted mean difference 3.76 (95% CI 0.03 to 7.52)] and the OSRA disease activity component [adjusted mean difference 0.41 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.71)], both in favour of the aggressive arm. During the trial, second-line drug treatment was changed in 77.1% of the aggressive arm and 59.0% of the symptomatic arm. There were instances when the rheumatologist should have changed treatment but did not do so, usually because of mild disease activity. The symptomatic arm was associated with higher costs and higher quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). There was a net cost of 1517 Pounds Sterling per QALY gained for the symptomatic arm. Overall, the primary economic analysis and sensitivity analyses of the cost and QALY data indicate that symptomatic treatment is likely to be more cost-effective than aggressive treatment in 58-90% of cases.
CONCLUSIONS
This trial showed no benefit of aggressive treatment in patients with stable established RA. However, it was difficult to persuade the rheumatologist and/or the patient to change treatment if the evidence of disease activity was minimal. Patients in the symptomatic arm were able to initiate changes of therapy when their symptoms deteriorated, without frequent hospital assessment. Approximately one-third of current clinic attenders with stable RA could be managed in a shared care setting with annual review by a rheumatologist and regular contact with a rheumatologist nurse. Further research is needed into disease progression and the use of biological agents, minimum disease activity level below which disease progression does not occur, cost-effectiveness through shared care modelling, the development of a robust and fail-safe system of primary-care based disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) monitoring, and predicting response to DMARDs. |
Estados, sociedade e cidadania: outcomes da mensagem hermética no contrato psicológico | Societies are intrinsically linked to the existence of States. If their development depends on the individual conduct of each citizen, it is with the States’ coherence, in the application of the political matrix, that better societies are built. The relationship is circular. Citizenship is constituted by the bond between an individual and a territorial and political entity. The new concept of citizenship that the European Union has been spreading, not only seeks to enhance and improve the assurance of economic and social rights but it also ensures that the citizen feels like a part of the European integration process. Among the written legal norms and the European Union’s guidelines, and their implementation by the Institution of Sovereignty, there is a subjective space in the relationship, whose interpretation differs from what is formally written in legal diplomas. In this kinetic gap, the relationship is driven by the psychosocial contract, being that the individual’s attitudes and behaviours result from perceptions based on an interpretative framework that each one creates about a certain reality. The current study mainly aims to discuss the austerity measures implemented in societies governed by the fundamental principles of a State of democratic right and by the principle of subsidiarity. We strictly follow the principles of objective hermeneutic interpretation applied to the documents produced by the European Union on citizenship. Citizenship cannot be a characteristic of only some nations. Nor can it be political rhetoric, with illusion intentions from Institutions which, in the empty exercise of duties assigned by Society, renounce the general will by stripping them from their fundamental rights, freedom and assurances. |
LIFE-CYCLE COST DESIGN OF DETERIORATING STRUCTURES | A lifetime optimization methodology for planning the inspection and repair of structures that deteriorate over time is introduced and illustrated through numerical examples. The optimization is based on minimizing the expected total life-cycle cost while maintaining an allowable lifetime reliability for the structure. This method incorporates: (a) the quality of inspection techniques with different detection capabilities; (b) all repair possibilities based on an event tree; (c) the effects of aging, deterior~ti~m: an~ subsequent. r~~air on structural reliability; and (d) the time value of money. The overall cost to be minimized Includes the initial cost and the costs of preventive maintenance, inspection, repair, and failure. The methodology is illustrated using the reinforced concrete T-girders from a highway bridge. An optimum inspection/repair strategy is deve~~ped for these girders that are deteriorating due to corrosion in an aggressive environment. The effect of cntlcal. pa rameters such as rate of corrosion, quality of the inspection technique, and the expected cost of structural fallure are all investigated, along with the effects of both uniform and nonuniform inspection time intervals. Ultimately, the reliability-based lifetime approach to developing an optimum inspection/repair strategy demonstrates the potential for cost savings and improved efficiency. INTRODUCTION The management of the nation's infrastructure is a vitally important function of government. The inspection and repair of the transportation network is needed for uninterrupted com merce and a functioning economy. With about 600,000 high way bridges in the national inventory, the maintenance of these structures alone represents a commitment of billions of dollars annually. In fact, the nation spends at least $5,000,000,000 per year for highway bridge design, construction, replacement, and rehabilitation (Status 1993). Given this huge investment along with an increasing scarcity of resources, it is essential that the funds be used as efficiently as possible. Highway bridges deteriorate over time and need mainte nance/inspection programs that detect damage, deterioration, loss of effective strength in members, missing fasteners, frac tures, and cracks. Bridge serviceability is highly dependent on the frequency and quality of these maintenance programs. Be cause the welfare of many people depends on the health of the highway system, it is important that these bridges be main tained and inspected routinely. An efficient bridge maintenance program requires careful planning base~ on potenti~ modes of failure of the structural elements, the history of major struc tural repairs done to the bridge, and, of course, the frequency and intensity of the applied loads. Effective maintenal1;ce/in spection can extend the life expectancy of a system while re ducing the possibility of costly failures in the future. In any bridge, there are many defects that may appear dur ing a projected service period, such as potholes in the deck, scour on the piers, or the deterioration of joints or bearings. Corrosion of steel reinforcement, initiated by high chloride concentrations in the concrete, is a serious cause of degrada tion in concrete structures (Ting 1989). The corrosion damage is revealed by the initiation and propagation of cracks, which can be detected and repaired by scheduled maintenance and inspection procedures. As a result, the reliability of corrosive 'Prof., Dept. of Civ., Envir., and Arch. Engrg., Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0428. 'Proj. Mgr., Chung-Shen Inst. of Sci. and Techno\., Taiwan, Republic of China; formerly, Grad. Student, Dept. of Civ., Envir., and Arch. Engrg., Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO. 'Grad. Siudent, Dept. of Civ., Envir., and Arch. Engrg., Univ. of Col orado. Boulder, CO. critical structures depends not only on the structural design, but also on the inspection and repair procedures. This paper proposes a method to optimize the lifetime inspection/repair strategy of corrosion-critical concrete struc tures based on the reliability of the structure and cost-effec tiveness. The method is applicable for any type of damage whose evolution can be modeled over time. The reliability based analysis of structures, with or without maintenance/in spection procedures, is attracting the increased attention of re searchers (Thoft-Christensen and Sr6rensen 1987; Mori and Ellingwood 1994a). The optimal lifetime inspection/repair strategy is obtained by minimizing the expected total life-cycle cost while satisfying the constraints on the allowable level of structural lifetime reliability in service. The expected total life cycle cost includes the initial cost and the costs of preventive maintenance, inspection, repair, and failure. MAINTENANCEIINSPECTION For many bridges, both preventive and repair maintenance are typically performed. Preventive or routine maintenance in cludes replacing small parts, patching concrete, repairing cracks, changing lubricants, and cleaning and painting expo~ed parts. The structure is kept in working condition by delaymg and mitigating the aging effects of wear, fatigue, and related phenomena. In contrast, repair maintenance m~gh~ inclu~e re placing a bearing, resurfacing a deck, or modlfymg. a girder. Repair maintenance tends to be less frequent, reqUlres more effort, is usually more costly, and results in a measurable in crease in reliability. A sample maintenance strategy is shown in Fig. 1, where T l , T2 , T3 , and T4 represent the times of repair maintenance, and effort is a generic quantity that reflects cost, amount of work performed, and benefit derived from the main tenance. While guidance for routine maintenance exists, many repair maintenance strategies are based on experience and local ~rac tice rather than on sound theoretical investigations. Mamte- |
Optical see-through head up displays' effect on depth judgments of real world objects | Recent research indicates that users consistently underestimate depth judgments to Augmented Reality (AR) graphics when viewed through optical see-through displays. However, to our knowledge, little work has examined how AR graphics may affect depth judgments of real world objects that have been overlaid or annotated with AR graphics. This study begins a preliminary analysis whether AR graphics have directional effects on users' depth perception of real-world objects, as might be experienced in vehicle driving scenarios (e.g., as viewed via an optical see-through head-up display or HUD). Twenty-four participants were asked to judge the depth of a physical pedestrian proxy figure moving towards them at a constant rate of 1 meter/second. Participants were shown an initial target location that varied in distance from 11 to 20 m and were then asked to press a button to indicate when the moving target was perceived to be at the previously specified target location. Each participant experienced three different display conditions: no AR visual display (control), a conformal AR graphic overlaid on the pedestrian via a HUD, and the same graphic presented on a tablet physically located on the pedestrian. Participants completed 10 trials (one for each target distance between 11 and 20 inclusive) per display condition for a total of 30 trials per participant. The judged distance from the correct location was recorded, and after each trial, participants' confidence in determining the correct distance was captured. Across all conditions, participants underestimated the distance of the physical object consistent with existing literature. Greater variability was observed in the accuracy of distance judgments under the AR HUD condition relative to the other two display conditions. In addition, participant confidence levels were considerably lower in the AR HUD condition. |
A novel 24-GHz series-fed patch antenna array for radar system | A novel 24-GHz patch series-fed antenna array is presented for radar system. It consists of an 8×8 transmitting antenna array and two 8×4 co-aperture receiving antenna arrays, which can not only achieve good suppression of side lobes and high aperture efficiency, but also avoid ambiguity in angle measurement. The simulated results show that the gains of the transmitting and the receiving antenna arrays are respectively 20.9dBi and 15.9dBi, while the suppressions of side lobes in two planes are both over 20dB. |
Designing for deeper learning in a blended computer science course for middle school students | ion, and testing. Figure 2 (which also shows this comparison data with college students) reveals a significant shift from naïve “computercentric” notions of computer scientists (“make/fix/study computer”) to a more sophisticated understanding of CS as a problem-solving discipline that uses the computer as a tool to solve real-world problems in many diverse fields. |
Gesture Recognition and Control Part 2 – Hand Gesture Recognition ( HGR ) System & Latest Upcoming Techniques | This Exploratory paper’s second part reveals the detail technological aspects of Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) System. It further explored HGR basic building blocks, its application areas and challenges it faces. The paper also provides literature review on latest upcoming techniques like – Point Grab, 3D Mouse and Sixth-Sense etc. The paper concluded with focus on major Application fields. |
Regionalisation of catchment model parameters | We simulate the water balance dynamics of 308 catchments in Austria using a lumped conceptual model involving 11 calibration parameters. We calibrate and verify the model for two non-overlapping 11-year periods of daily runoff data. A comparison of the calibrated parameter values of the two periods suggests that all parameters are associated with some uncertainty although the degree of uncertainty differs between the parameters. The regional patterns of the calibrated parameters can be interpreted based on hydrological process reasoning indicating that they are able to represent the regional or large-scale differences in the hydrological conditions. Catchment attributes explain some of the spatial parameter variability with coefficients of determination of up to R 1⁄4 0:27; but usually the R values are lower. Parameter uncertainty does not seem to cloud the relationship between calibrated parameters and catchment attributes to a significant extent as suggested by an optimised correlation analysis. The median Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies of simulating streamflow decrease from 0.67 to 0.63 when moving from the calibration to the verification period. This is a small decrease, which suggests that problems with overparameterisation of the model are unlikely. We then compare regionalisation methods for estimating the model parameters in ungauged catchments, in terms of the model performance. The best regionalisation methods are the use of the average parameters of immediate upstream and downstream (nested) neighbours and regionalisation by kriging. For the calibration period, the average decrease in the Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency, as a result of the regionalisation, is 0.10 which is about twice the decrease of moving from the calibration to the verification period. The methods based on multiple regressions with catchment attributes perform significantly poorer. Apparently, spatial proximity is a better surrogate of unknown controls on runoff dynamics than catchment attributes. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Grand Challenges in Sustainable Design and Construction | The world has experienced unprecedented urban growth in the last and current centuries. In 1800, only 3% of the world’s population lived in urban areas. It increased to 14 and 47% in 1900 and 2000, respectively. Since 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world population lives in the urban areas (Laski and Schellekens, 2007). In year 2003, United Nations estimated that by year 2030, up to five billion people will be living in urban areas, accounting for 61% of the world’s population. The ongoing migration to urban areas has massive environmental consequences. This condition of unprecedented shift from the countryside to cities has been influencing climate change, where urban areas account for up to 70% of the world greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are growing toward megacities with higher density urban planning, narrower urban corridors, and more high-rise urban structures. Increasing urbanization causes the deterioration of the urban environment, as the size of housing plots decreases, thus increasing densities and crowding out greeneries (Santamouris et al., 2001). Cities tend to record higher temperatures than their non-urbanized surroundings, a phenomenon known as urban heat island (UHI) (Oke, 1982; Jusuf et al., 2007). Earlier studies show strong relation between urban morphology and increasing air temperature within city centers. Urban structures absorb solar heat during the day and release it during the night. Densely built area tends to trap heat, which is released from urban structures into the urban environment, increasing urban air temperature compared to surrounding rural areas and causes UHI effect. UHI affects street level thermal comfort, health, environment quality, and may increase the urban energy demand. As the number of buildings and associated infrastructures increases drastically in order to cope with the increasing population in cities, tremendous resources are required for the construction, operation, and maintenance of these buildings. Design of these buildings become very crucial as the resources required in the subsequent operation and maintenance is highly dependent on the quality of such design (Macmillan, 2005). Over the years, there has been tremendous effort put in to design “Green Buildings,” with the key objective to make the buildings more sustainable by minimizing the utilization of resources in the construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings. Building systems such as air conditioning and lighting are energy guzzlers, which can consume more than 60% of the energy consumption in a typical commercial building. They can also impact the indoor environmental quality. Thus, energy efficiency of the systems is crucial. Selection ofmaterials, which can minimize the embodied energy and construction waste is also important. |
Assessing the wind energy potential locations in province of Semnan in Iran | In this study, the 3-h period measured wind speed data for years 2003–2007 at 10 m, 30 m and 40 m heights for one of the provinces of Iran. Semnan have been statistically analyzed to determine the potential of wind power generation. This paper presents the wind energy potential at five towns in the province – Biarjmand, Damghan, Garmsar, Semnan, and Shahrood. Extrapolation of the 10 m data, using the Power Law, has been used to determine the wind data at heights of 30 m and 40 m. From the primary evaluation and determining mean wind speed and also weibull distribution, it is found that Damghan has better potential for using wind energy in the province. Thus concentrated on Damghan town and its sites – Moalleman, Haddadeh and also Kahak of Garmsar (only had Meteorological stop) using a 10-min time step wind speed and wind direction data for three measured heights. Between these sites, Moalleman is selected for a more accurate and spacious analysis. The objective is to evaluate the most important characteristic of wind energy in the studied site. The statistical attitudes permit us to estimate the mean wind speed, the wind speed distribution function, the mean wind power density and the wind rose in the site at the height of 10 m, 30 m and 40 m. Some local phenomena are also considered in the characterization of the site. Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Applications of Graph Theory in Computer Science | Graphs are among the most ubiquitous models of both natural and human-made structures. They can be used to model many types of relations and process dynamics in computer science, physical, biological and social systems. Many problems of practical interest can be represented by graphs. In general graphs theory has a wide range of applications in diverse fields. This paper explores different elements involved in graph theory including graph representations using computer systems and graph-theoretic data structures such as list structure and matrix structure. The emphasis of this paper is on graph applications in computer science. To demonstrate the importance of graph theory in computer science, this article addresses most common applications for graph theory in computer science. These applications are presented especially to project the idea of graph theory and to demonstrate its importance in computer science. |
An Exploration of Emotional Intelligence of the Students of IIUI in Relation to Gender, Age and Academic Achievement | This correlational study was intended to examine the relationship of emotional intelligence (EI) with gender, age and academic achievement of students of International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI). In this study the predictor variable was emotional intelligence and criterion variable was academic achievement as measured by students’ Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA). Emotional intelligence was measured with the help of BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQi). The validity and reliability of EQi was measured and the instrument was found to be valid and highly internally consistent. Correlation analysis, regression analysis and t-test were performed to test the hypotheses. Results indicated a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. Emotional intelligence was found a significant predictor of academic achievement. No significant correlation was found between age and emotional intelligence. There was no difference in the mean EQi scores of male and female students except on stress management scale where male students scored higher than female students. |
Methylphenidate and memory: Dissociated effects in hyperactive children | Fourteen children with Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (ADD + H) were administered the psychostimulant methylphenidate in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Subjects were evaluated on a well-validated measure of verbal memory and learning with an experimental design comprised of four conditions: placebo and active drug at three doses. Positive memory effects were found in the drug conditions. Significant dose-response relationships were found, indicating enhanced learning from placebo to low to medium to high dose. However, there was a differential drug effect on the memory task; methylphenidate selectively enhanced storage and retrieval mechanisms without affecting immediate acquisition. |
Robust Subspace Clustering for Multi-View Data by Exploiting Correlation Consensus | More often than not, a multimedia data described by multiple features, such as color and shape features, can be naturally decomposed of multi-views. Since multi-views provide complementary information to each other, great endeavors have been dedicated by leveraging multiple views instead of a single view to achieve the better clustering performance. To effectively exploit data correlation consensus among multi-views, in this paper, we study subspace clustering for multi-view data while keeping individual views well encapsulated. For characterizing data correlations, we generate a similarity matrix in a way that high affinity values are assigned to data objects within the same subspace across views, while the correlations among data objects from distinct subspaces are minimized. Before generating this matrix, however, we should consider that multi-view data in practice might be corrupted by noise. The corrupted data will significantly downgrade clustering results. We first present a novel objective function coupled with an angular based regularizer. By minimizing this function, multiple sparse vectors are obtained for each data object as its multiple representations. In fact, these sparse vectors result from reaching data correlation consensus on all views. For tackling noise corruption, we present a sparsity-based approach that refines the angular-based data correlation. Using this approach, a more ideal data similarity matrix is generated for multi-view data. Spectral clustering is then applied to the similarity matrix to obtain the final subspace clustering. Extensive experiments have been conducted to validate the effectiveness of our proposed approach. |
Multicenter clinical assessment of the Raumedic Neurovent-P intracranial pressure sensor: a report by the BrainIT group. | OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate the robustness and zero-drift of an intracranial pressure sensor, Neurovent-P (Raumedic AG, Münchberg, Germany), when used in the clinical environment.
METHODS
A prospective multicenter trial, conforming to the International Organization for Standardization 14155 Standard, was conducted in 6 European BrainIT centers between July 2005 and December 2006. Ninety-nine catheters were used. The study was observational, followed by a centralized sensor bench test after catheter removal.
RESULTS
The mean recorded value before probe insertion was 0.17 +/- 1.1 mm Hg. Readings outside the range +/-1 mm Hg were recorded in only 3 centers on a total of 15 catheters. Complications were minimal and mainly related to the insertion bolt. The mean recorded pressure value at removal was 0.8 +/- 2.2 mm Hg. No relationship was identified between postremoval reading and length of monitoring. The postremoval bench test indicated the probability of a system failure, defined as a drift of more than 3 mm Hg, at a range between 12 and 17%.
CONCLUSION
The Neurovent-P catheter performed well in clinical use in terms of robustness. The majority of technical complications were associated with the bolt fixation technology. Adverse events were rare and clinically nonsignificant. Despite the earlier reported excellent bench test zero-drift rates, under the more demanding clinical conditions, zero-drift rate remains a concern with catheter tip strain gauge technology. This performance is similar, and not superior, to other intracranial pressure devices. |
Super-resolution 3D tracking and mapping | This paper proposes a new visual SLAM technique that not only integrates 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) pose and dense structure but also simultaneously integrates the colour information contained in the images over time. This involves developing an inverse model for creating a super-resolution map from many low resolution images. Contrary to classic super-resolution techniques, this is achieved here by taking into account full 3D translation and rotation within a dense localisation and mapping framework. This not only allows to take into account the full range of image deformations but also allows to propose a novel criteria for combining the low resolution images together based on the difference in resolution between different images in 6D space. Another originality of the proposed approach with respect to the current state of the art lies in the minimisation of both colour (RGB) and depth (D) errors, whilst competing approaches only minimise geometry. Several results are given showing that this technique runs in real-time (30Hz) and is able to map large scale environments in high-resolution whilst simultaneously improving the accuracy and robustness of the tracking. |
Assessing Metacognitive Awareness during Problem-Solving in a Kinetics and Homogeneous Reactor Design Course | Since practicing engineers are hired, retained, and rewarded for solving problems, engineering students should learn how to solve workplace problems . Therefore, we designed and implemented several problem-solving learning environments (PSLEs) for the junior course entitled Kinetics and Homogeneous Reactor Design at Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Metacognition has been shown to be important for the solution of more open-ended and wellstructured problems. Flavell 5 distinguished two characteristics of metacognition: knowledge of cognition (KC) and regulation of cognition (RC). In order to support student metacognitive processing while learning to solve kinetics and homogeneous reactor design problems, the instructor created a supportive social environment in the course and inserted a series of question prompts during PSLEs, as a form of coaching where the problem to be solved was represented as a case, and cases were used in various ways (worked examples, case studies, structural analogues, prior experiences, alternative perspectives, and simulations) as instructional supports. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) designed by Schraw and Dennison was utilized as a pre(first day of classes) post(last day of classes) test. MAI is a 52-item inventory to measure adults’ metacognitive awareness. Items are classified into eight subcomponents subsumed under two broader categories, KC and RC. Furthermore, in order to assess metacognitive awareness during problem-solving activities, students had to answer the corresponding problem as well as approximately 2-3 embedded problem-solving prompts (from Jonassen) and 4-6 embedded metacognitive prompts (from MAI). Results for the pre-post MAI exhibited a significant (p<0.05) increase in student metacognitive awareness. This increase was also noticed by means of the embedded MAI prompts while solving different kinds of problems (such as story problems, decision-making problems, troubleshooting, and design problems) throughout the course, in which students also improved the quality of their embedded problem-solving answers and corresponding grades. Promoting metacognitive awareness and skills could be a valuable method for improving learning and student performance during kinetics and homogeneous reactor design problemsolving, as has been previously reported for professional educators and dental hygiene students. |
Reinforcement Learning in First Person Shooter Games | Reinforcement learning (RL) is a popular machine learning technique that has many successes in learning how to play classic style games. Applying RL to first person shooter (FPS) games is an interesting area of research as it has the potential to create diverse behaviors without the need to implicitly code them. This paper investigates the tabular Sarsa (λ) RL algorithm applied to a purpose built FPS game. The first part of the research investigates using RL to learn bot controllers for the tasks of navigation, item collection, and combat individually. Results showed that the RL algorithm was able to learn a satisfactory strategy for navigation control, but not to the quality of the industry standard pathfinding algorithm. The combat controller performed well against a rule-based bot, indicating promising preliminary results for using RL in FPS games. The second part of the research used pretrained RL controllers and then combined them by a number of different methods to create a more generalized bot artificial intelligence (AI). The experimental results indicated that RL can be used in a generalized way to control a combination of tasks in FPS bots such as navigation, item collection, and combat. |
EVENODD: An Efficient Scheme for Tolerating Double Disk Failures in RAID Architectures | AbstructWe present a novel method, that we call EVENODD, for tolerating up to two disk failures in RAID architectures. EVENODD employs the addition of only two redundant disks and consists of simple exclusive-OR computations. This redundant storage is optimal, in the sense that two failed disks cannot be retrieved with less than two redundant disks. A major advantage of EVENODD is that it only requires parity hardware, which is typically present in standard RAID-5 controllers. Hence, EVENODD can be implemented on standard RAID-5 controllers without any hardware changes. The most commonly used scheme that employes optimal redundant storage (Le., two extra disks) is based on ReedSolomon (RS) error-correcting codes. This scheme requires computation over finite fields and results in a more complex implementation. For example, we show that the complexity of implementing EVENODD in a disk array with 15 disks is about 50% of the one required when using the RS scheme. The new scheme is not limited to RAID architectures: it can be used in any system requiring large symbols and relatively short codes, for instance, in multitrack magnetic recording. To this end, we also present a decoding algorithm for one column (track) in error. |
Marine pharmacology in 2000: antitumor and cytotoxic compounds. | During 2000, marine antitumor pharmacology research aimed at the discovery of novel antitumor agents was published in 85 peer-reviewed articles. The purpose of this article is to present a structured review of the antitumor and cytotoxic properties of 143 marine natural products, many of them novel compounds that belong to diverse structural classes, including polyketides, terpenes, steroids and peptides. The organisms yielding these bioactive compounds comprised a taxonomically diverse group of marine invertebrate animals, algae, fungi and bacteria. Antitumor pharmacological studies were conducted with 19 marine natural products in a number of experimental and clinical models that defined or further characterized their mechanisms of action. Potentially promising in vitro cytotoxicity data generated with murine and human tumor cell lines were reported for 124 novel marine chemicals with as yet undetermined mechanisms of action. Noteworthy is the fact that marine anticancer research clearly remains a multinational effort, involving researchers from Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the United States. Finally, this 2000 overview of the marine pharmacology literature highlights the fact that the discovery of novel marine antitumor agents continued at the same high level of research activity as during 1998 and 1999. |
Is preprocessing of text really worth your time for online comment classification? | A large proportion of online comments present on public domains are usually constructive, however a significant proportion are toxic in nature. The comments contain lot of typos which increases the number of features manifold, making the ML model difficult to train. Considering the fact that the data scientists spend approximately 80% of their time in collecting, cleaning and organizing their data [1], we explored how much effort should we invest in the preprocessing (transformation) of raw comments before feeding it to the state-of-the-art classification models. With the help of four models on Jigsaw toxic comment classification data, we demonstrated that the training of model without any transformation produce relatively decent model. Applying even basic transformations, in some cases, lead to worse performance and should be applied with caution. |
Microglandular adenosis associated with triple-negative breast cancer is a neoplastic lesion of triple-negative phenotype harbouring TP53 somatic mutations. | Microglandular adenosis (MGA) is a rare proliferative lesion of the breast composed of small glands lacking myoepithelial cells and lined by S100-positive, oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative, progesterone receptor (PR)-negative, and HER2-negative epithelial cells. There is evidence to suggest that MGA may constitute a non-obligate precursor of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We sought to define the genomic landscape of pure MGA and of MGA, atypical MGA (AMGA) and associated TNBCs, and to determine whether synchronous MGA, AMGA, and TNBCs would be clonally related. Two pure MGAs and eight cases of MGA and/or AMGA associated with in situ or invasive TNBC were collected, microdissected, and subjected to massively parallel sequencing targeting all coding regions of 236 genes recurrently mutated in breast cancer or related to DNA repair. Pure MGAs lacked clonal non-synonymous somatic mutations and displayed limited copy number alterations (CNAs); conversely, all MGAs (n = 7) and AMGAs (n = 3) associated with TNBC harboured at least one somatic non-synonymous mutation (range 3-14 and 1-10, respectively). In all cases where TNBCs were analyzed, identical TP53 mutations and similar patterns of gene CNAs were found in the MGA and/or AMGA and in the associated TNBC. In the MGA/AMGA associated with TNBC lacking TP53 mutations, somatic mutations affecting PI3K pathway-related genes (eg PTEN, PIK3CA, and INPP4B) and tyrosine kinase receptor signalling-related genes (eg ERBB3 and FGFR2) were identified. At diagnosis, MGAs associated with TNBC were found to display subclonal populations, and clonal shifts in the progression from MGA to AMGA and/or to TNBC were observed. Our results demonstrate the heterogeneity of MGAs, and that MGAs associated with TNBC, but not necessarily pure MGAs, are genetically advanced, clonal, and neoplastic lesions harbouring recurrent mutations in TP53 and/or other cancer genes, supporting the notion that a subset of MGAs and AMGAs may constitute non-obligate precursors of TNBCs. |
A biomedical system based on hidden Markov model for diagnosis of the heart valve diseases | In this study, a biomedical diagnosis system for pattern recognition with normal and abnormal classes has been developed. First, feature extraction processing was made by using the Doppler Ultrasound. During feature extraction stage, Wavelet transforms and shorttime Fourier transform were used. As next step, wavelet entropy were applied to these features. In the classification stage, hidden Markov model (HMM) was used. To compute the correct classification rate of proposed HMM classifier, it was compared to ANN by using a data set containing 215 samples. In our experiments, specificity rate and sensitivity rates of proposed HMM classifier system with fuzzy C means (FCM)/K-means algorithms were found as 92% and 97.26% respectively. The present study shows that proper selection of the HMMs initial parameter values according to FCM/K-means algorithms improves the recognition rate of the proposed system which was also compared to our previous study named ANN. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Car-Park Management using Wireless Sensor Networks | A complete wireless sensor network solution for carpark management is presented in this paper. The system architecture and design are first detailed, followed by a description of the current working implementation, which is based on our DSYS25z sensing nodes. Results of a series of real experimental tests regarding connectivity, sensing and network performance are then discussed. The analysis of link characteristics in the car-park scenario shows unexpected reliability patterns which have a strong influence on MAC and routing protocol design. Two unexpected link reliability patterns are identified and documented. First, the presence of the objects (cars) being sensed can cause significant interference and degradation in communication performance. Second, link quality has a high temporal correlation but a low spatial correlation. From these observations we conclude that a) the construction and maintenance of a fixed topology is not useful and b) spatial rather than temporal message replicates can improve transport reliability |
Fast Eigenspace Approximation using Random Signals | We focus in this work on the estimation of the first k eigenvectors of any graph Laplacian using filtering of Gaussian random signals. We prove that we only need k such signals to be able to exactly recover as many of the smallest eigenvectors, regardless of the number of nodes in the graph. In addition, we address key issues in implementing the theoretical concepts in practice using accurate approximated methods. We also propose fast algorithms both for eigenspace approximation and for the determination of the kth smallest eigenvalue λk. The latter proves to be extremely efficient under the assumption of locally uniform distribution of the eigenvalue over the spectrum. Finally, we present experiments which show the validity of our method in practice and compare it to state-of-the-art methods for clustering and visualization both on synthetic smallscale datasets and larger real-world problems of millions of nodes. We show that our method allows a better scaling with the number of nodes than all previous methods while achieving an almost perfect reconstruction of the eigenspace formed by the first k eigenvectors. Keywords—Graph signal processing, low-rank reconstruction, partitionning, spectral graph theory, spectrum analysis, subspace approximation, visualization |
Neural Collaborative Filtering | In recent years, deep neural networks have yielded immense success on speech recognition, computer vision and natural language processing. However, the exploration of deep neural networks on recommender systems has received relatively less scrutiny. In this work, we strive to develop techniques based on neural networks to tackle the key problem in recommendation — collaborative filtering — on the basis of implicit feedback. Although some recent work has employed deep learning for recommendation, they primarily used it to model auxiliary information, such as textual descriptions of items and acoustic features of musics. When it comes to model the key factor in collaborative filtering — the interaction between user and item features, they still resorted to matrix factorization and applied an inner product on the latent features of users and items. By replacing the inner product with a neural architecture that can learn an arbitrary function from data, we present a general framework named NCF, short for Neural networkbased Collaborative Filtering. NCF is generic and can express and generalize matrix factorization under its framework. To supercharge NCF modelling with non-linearities, we propose to leverage a multi-layer perceptron to learn the user–item interaction function. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets show significant improvements of our proposed NCF framework over the state-of-the-art methods. Empirical evidence shows that using deeper layers of neural networks offers better recommendation performance. |
Forecasting Economic Time Series Using Targeted Predictors | This paper studies two refinements to the method of factor forecasting. First, we consider the method of quadratic principal components that allows the link function between the predictors and the factors to be non-linear. Second, the factors used in the forecasting equation are estimated in a way to take into account that the goal is to forecast a specific series. This is accomplished by applying the method of principal components to ‘targeted predictors’ selected using hard and soft thresholding rules. Our three main findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find improvements at all forecast horizons over the current diffusion index forecasts by estimating the factors using fewer but informative predictors. Allowing for non-linearity often leads to additional gains. Second, forecasting the volatile one month ahead inflation warrants a high degree of targeting to screen out the noisy predictors. A handful of variables, notably relating to housing starts and interest rates, are found to have systematic predictive power for inflation at all horizons. Third, the variables chosen as targeted predictors selected by both soft and hard thresholding changes with the forecast horizon and the sample period. Holding the set of predictors fixed as is the current practice of factor forecasting is unnecessarily restrictive. ∗Department of Economics, NYU, 269 Mercer St, New York, NY 10003 Email: [email protected]. †Department of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Email: [email protected] We would like to thank Jeremy Piger (discussant) and conference participants for helpful comments. We also acknowledge financial support from the NSF (grants SES-0137084, SES-0136923, SES-0549978) |
Effect of combination therapy with cimetidine and pirenzepine on plasma parathyroid hormone and calcitonin levels in hemodialyzed patients | In this study we evaluated the effects of an oral combination therapy with cimetidine and pirenzepine on plasma parathyroidhormone (PTH) and calcitonin (CT) levels in 24 patients on maintenance hemodialysis (mean age: 50 years; mean duration of dialysis treatment: 23 months). As compared to the pre-treatment plasma levels of PTH and CT, there were no significant changes of their plasma concentrations during a 4-week administration of 800 mg cimetidine or 100 mg pirenzepine daily, and the concentrations also did not change significantly during the following 4 weeks of combination therapy with cimetidine and pirenzepine in the above mentioned dosage. Serum concentrations of calcium and phosphate and the activity of the alkaline phosphatase showed no significant changes either. Therefore, we suggest that this therapeutic approach cannot be considered for the treatment of uremic hyperparathyroidism. |
Smart chemistry-based nanosized drug delivery systems for systemic applications: A comprehensive review. | This review focuses on the smart chemistry that has been utilized in developing polymer-based drug delivery systems over the past 10years. We provide a comprehensive overview of the different functional moieties and reducible linkages exploited in these systems, and outline their design, synthesis, and application from a therapeutic efficacy viewpoint. Furthermore, we highlight the next generation nanomedicine strategies based on this novel chemistry. |
An adaptive image steganographic scheme based on Noise Visibility Function and an optimal chaotic based encryption method | Steganography is the science of hiding secret message in an a ppropriate digital multimedia in such a way that the existence of the embedded message should be invisible to anyone apart from t he sender or the intended recipient. This paper presents an irreversible scheme for hiding a secret image in the cover image that is able to improve both the visual quality and the security of the stego-image while sti l providing a large embedding capacity. This is achieved by a hybrid steganography scheme incorporates Noise Visibility F unction (NVF) and an optimal chaotic based encryption scheme. In the embedding process, first to reduce the image distortion and to increase the embedding capacity, the payload of each region of the cover image is de termined dynamically according to NVF. NVF analyzes the local image properties to identify the complex areas where mo secret bits should be embedded. This ensures to maintain a high visual quality of the stego-image as wel l as a large embedding capacity. Second, the security of the secret image is brought about by an optimal chaotic based encrypti on scheme to transform the secret image into an encrypted image. Third, the optimal chaotic based encryption scheme is achieved by using a hybrid optimization of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (G A) which is allowing us to find an optimal secret key. The optimal secret key is able to encrypt the secret imag e so as the rate of changes after embedding process be decreased which results in increasing the quality of the stego-imag e. In the extracting process, the secret image can be extracted from the stego-image losslessly without referring to the original cover image. The experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme not only has the ability to achi eve a good trade-off between the payload and the stego-image quality, but also can resist against the statistics and i m ge processing attacks. |
AID induces intraclonal diversity and genomic damage in CD86+ chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells | The activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) mediates somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination of the Ig genes by directly deaminating cytosines to uracils. As AID causes a substantial amount of off-target mutations, its activity has been associated with lymphomagenesis and clonal evolution of B-cell malignancies. Although it has been shown that AID is expressed in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a clear analysis of in vivo AID activity in this B-cell malignancy remained elusive. In this study performed on primary human CLL samples, we report that, despite the presence of a dominant VDJ heavy chain region, a substantial intraclonal diversity was observed at VDJ as well as at IgM switch regions (Sμ), showing ongoing AID activity in vivo during disease progression. This AID-mediated heterogeneity was higher in CLL subclones expressing CD86, which we identified as the proliferative CLL fraction. Finally, CD86 expression correlated with shortened time to first treatment and increased γ-H2AX focus formation. Our data demonstrate that AID is active in CLL in vivo and thus, AID likely contributes to clonal evolution of CLL. |
Neural Joint Model for Transition-based Chinese Syntactic Analysis | We present neural network-based joint models for Chinese word segmentation, POS tagging and dependency parsing. Our models are the first neural approaches for fully joint Chinese analysis that is known to prevent the error propagation problem of pipeline models. Although word embeddings play a key role in dependency parsing, they cannot be applied directly to the joint task in the previous work. To address this problem, we propose embeddings of character strings, in addition to words. Experiments show that our models outperform existing systems in Chinese word segmentation and POS tagging, and perform preferable accuracies in dependency parsing. We also explore bi-LSTM models with fewer features. |
Decade-bandwidth planar balun using CPW-to-slotline transition for UHF applications | This paper presents an improved broadband balun using a coplanar-waveguide(CPW)-to-slotline field transformation. It operates at very wide frequency, and is of compact size since it does not depend on a resonant structure. The measured results show a passband of 200 MHz to 2 GHz, insertion loss less than 0.75 dB and a size of 20 mm × 14 mm. The amplitude imbalance is approximately 0.3 dB and the phase imbalance is less than 6o over the entire operation range. |
Rook Jumping Maze Generation for AI Education | Rook Jumping Maze design provides a number of good opportunities for experiential learning of AI concepts, including uninformed search, stochastic local search, machine learning, and objective/utility function design. In this paper we will define the maze and present a collection of exercises that allow exploration of several AI topics in the context of an engaging, fun, and unifying task. |
Associations between housing instability and food insecurity with health care access in low-income children. | OBJECTIVE
Homelessness and hunger are associated with poor health care access among children. Housing instability and food insecurity represent milder and more prevalent forms of homelessness and hunger. The aim of this study was to determine the association between housing instability and food insecurity with children's health care access and acute health care utilization.
METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 12,746 children from low-income households included in the 2002 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF). In multivariate models controlling for important covariates, we measured the association between housing instability and food insecurity with 3 health care access measures: 1) no usual source of care, 2) postponed medical care, and 3) postponed medications. We also measured 3 health care utilization measures: 1) not receiving the recommended number of well-child care visits, 2) increased emergency department visits, and 3) hospitalizations.
RESULTS
Our analysis showed that 29.5% of low-income children lived in households with housing instability and 39.0% with food insecurity. In multivariate logistic regression models, housing instability was independently associated with postponed medical care, postponed medications, and increased emergency department visits. Food insecurity was independently associated with no usual source of care, postponed medical care, postponed medications, and not receiving the recommended well-child care visits.
CONCLUSION
Families that experience housing instability and food insecurity, without necessarily experiencing homelessness or hunger, have compromised ability to receive adequate health care for their children. Policy makers should consider improving programs that decrease housing instability and food insecurity, and clinicians should consider screening for housing instability and food insecurity so as to provide comprehensive care. |
Genetic Basis of Brain Malformations. | Malformations of cortical development (MCD) represent a major cause of developmental disabilities, severe epilepsy, and reproductive disadvantage. Genes that have been associated to MCD are mainly involved in cell proliferation and specification, neuronal migration, and late cortical organization. Lissencephaly-pachygyria-severe band heterotopia are diffuse neuronal migration disorders causing severe global neurological impairment. Abnormalities of the LIS1, DCX, ARX, RELN, VLDLR, ACTB, ACTG1, TUBG1, KIF5C, KIF2A, and CDK5 genes have been associated with these malformations. More recent studies have also established a relationship between lissencephaly, with or without associated microcephaly, corpus callosum dysgenesis as well as cerebellar hypoplasia, and at times, a morphological pattern consistent with polymicrogyria with mutations of several genes (TUBA1A, TUBA8, TUBB, TUBB2B, TUBB3, and DYNC1H1), regulating the synthesis and function of microtubule and centrosome key components and hence defined as tubulinopathies. MCD only affecting subsets of neurons, such as mild subcortical band heterotopia and periventricular heterotopia, have been associated with abnormalities of the DCX, FLN1A, and ARFGEF2 genes and cause neurological and cognitive impairment that vary from severe to mild deficits. Polymicrogyria results from abnormal late cortical organization and is inconstantly associated with abnormal neuronal migration. Localized polymicrogyria has been associated with anatomo-specific deficits, including disorders of language and higher cognition. Polymicrogyria is genetically heterogeneous, and only in a small minority of patients, a definite genetic cause has been identified. Megalencephaly with normal cortex or polymicrogyria by MRI imaging, hemimegalencephaly and focal cortical dysplasia can all result from mutations in genes of the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway. Postzygotic mutations have been described for most MCD and can be limited to the dysplastic tissue in the less diffuse forms. |
Smart parking systems: A survey | Not finding a parking space for you sometimes is indeed a critical issue. The number of vehicles is also increasing daily adding to the parking vows at public places. Cities noticed that their drivers had real problems to find a parking space easily especially during peak hours, the difficulty roots from not knowing where the parking spaces are available at the given time. Even if this is known, many vehicles may pursue a small number of parking spaces which in turn leads to traffic congestion. The traffic on roads and parking space has been an area of concern in majority of cities. So, parking monitoring is an important solution. To avoid these problems, recently many new technologies have been developed that help in solving the parking problems to a great extent. Firstly, this paper gives an overview about the concept of smart parking system, their categories and different functionalities. Then we present the latest developments in parking infrastructures. We describe the technologies around parking availability monitoring, parking reservation and dynamic pricing and see how they are utilized in different settings. In addition, a theoretical comparison is presented to show advantages and drawbacks of each different smart parking system to discuss results and open directions for future research. |
Learning to classify e-mail | In this paper we study supervised and semi-supervised classification of e-mails. We consider two tasks: filing e-mails into folders and spam e-mail filtering. Firstly, in a supervised learning setting, we investigate the use of random forest for automatic e-mail filing into folders and spam e-mail filtering. We show that random forest is a good choice for these tasks as it runs fast on large and high dimensional databases, is easy to tune and is highly accurate, outperforming popular algorithms such as decision trees, support vector machines and naïve Bayes. We introduce a new accurate feature selector with linear time complexity. Secondly, we examine the applicability of the semi-supervised co-training paradigm for spam e-mail filtering by employing random forests, support vector machines, decision tree and naïve Bayes as base classifiers. The study shows that a classifier trained on a small set of labelled examples can be successfully boosted using unlabelled examples to accuracy rate of only 5% lower than a classifier trained on all labelled examples. We investigate the performance of co-training with one natural feature split and show that in the domain of spam e-mail filtering it can be as competitive as co-training with two natural feature splits. |
Computational Complexity and the Function-Structure-Environment Loop of the Brain | At present, the brain is viewed primarily as a biological computer. But, crucially, the plasticity of the brain’s structure leads it to vary in functionally significant ways across individuals. Understanding the brain necessitates an understanding of the range of such variation. For example, the number of neurons in the brain and its finer structures impose inherent limitations on the functionality it can realize. The relationship between such quantitative limits on the resources available and the computations that are feasible with such resources is the subject of study in computational complexity theory. Computational complexity is a potentially useful conceptual framework because it enables the meaningful study of the family of possible structures as a whole—the study of “the brain,” as opposed to some particular brain. The language of computational complexity also provides a means of formally capturing capabilities of the brain, which may otherwise be philosophically thorny. |
Orbital granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener granulomatosis): clinical and pathologic findings. | The pathology of granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), formerly Wegener granulomatosis, typically features a granulomatous and sometimes necrotizing vasculitis targeting the respiratory tract and kidneys. However, orbital involvement occurs in up to 60% of patients and is frequently the first or only clinical presentation in patients with systemic or limited forms of GPA. Orbital GPA can cause significant morbidity and potentially lead to complete loss of vision and permanent facial deformity. Fortunately, GPA is highly responsive to medical treatment with corticosteroids combined with cyclophosphamide or, more recently, rituximab. Therefore, it is imperative for this disease to be accurately diagnosed on orbital biopsy and distinguished from other histologically similar orbital lesions. Herein, we review the clinical and pathologic findings of orbital GPA, focusing on the differentiation of this disease from other inflammatory orbital lesions. |
The Smart Car Parking System Based on Iot Commanded by Android Application | Parking the car is one of the difficult task that we are facing in our day to day life. The main issue is providing the sufficient parking system. Now a days it is very hard to find the availability of parking slots. The various places(public) that is shopping mall, cinema hall etc finds it difficult to search the available parking area. This calls for the situations of an Smart car parking system which is based on IoT and commanded by Android application which are equipped with IR sensors and microcontroller (arduinouno).In this paper a small prototype of smart car parking system which is based on IoT is implemented. The paper proposed a system that the user will automatically find the parking space throught an android application via server. In addition to this we can say that the its a new way of communication between humans and the things with the help of new technology based on IoT. |
Integrating Computational Thinking with K-12 Science Education - A Theoretical Framework | Computational thinking (CT) draws on concepts that are fundamental to computing and computer science, however, as an approach, it includes practices, such as problem representation, abstraction, decomposition, simulation, verification, and prediction that are also central to modelling, reasoning, and problem solving in many scientific and mathematical disciplines. Recently, arguments have been made in favour of integrating programming and CT with K-12 curricula. In this paper, we present a theoretical investigation of key issues that need to be considered for integrating CT with K-12 science. We identify the synergies between programming and CT on one hand, and scientific expertise on the other. We then present a critical review of literature on educational computing, and propose a set of guidelines for designing learning environments in science that can jointly foster the development of computational thinking with scientific expertise. Finally, we describe the design of a learning environment that supports CT through modelling and simulation to help middle school students learn physics and biology. |
Numerical rating scale for self-report of pain intensity in children and adolescents: recent progress and further questions. | Until very recently there has been an anomaly in the assessment of the intensity of pediatric pain. The most commonly used self-report scale is the one that, up to now, has had the smallest amount of supportive research. This scale, the numerical rating scale (NRS), is administered by asking patients to say a number, usually from 0 to 10, to express the intensity of their pain. Compared with well-known published scales such as the Faces Pain Scale – Revised, Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale, Oucher, Coloured Analogue Scale, and Pieces of Hurt, the NRS has the great advantage of requiring only a verbal interaction between the clinician and child, without the necessity for paper or plastic materials which can raise concerns about purchase, storage, distribution, and infection control. The NRS is well established with adults (Dworkin et al., 2005). However, very few studies before 2009 have reported using the NRS with children and adolescents, or have provided data supporting the use of this scale. Stinson et al. (2006), in their landmark systematic review of self-report measures, wrote: |
Dietary intake of phosphorus flame retardants (PFRs) using Swedish food market basket estimations. | The occurrence of eight phosphorus flame retardants (PFRs) was investigated in 53 composite food samples from 12 food categories, collected in 2015 for a Swedish food market basket study. 2-ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate (EHDPHP), detected in most food categories, had the highest median concentrations (9 ng/g ww, pastries). It was followed by triphenyl phosphate (TPHP) (2.6 ng/g ww, fats/oils), tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCIPP) (1.0 ng/g ww, fats/oils), tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) (1.0 ng/g ww, fats/oils), and tris(1-chloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TCIPP) (0.80 ng/g ww, pastries). Tris(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate (TEHP), tri-n-butyl phosphate (TNBP), and tris(2-butoxyethyl) phosphate (TBOEP) were not detected in the analyzed food samples. The major contributor to the total dietary intake was EHDPHP (57%), and the food categories which contributed the most to the total intake of PFRs were processed food, such as cereals (26%), pastries (10%), sugar/sweets (11%), and beverages (17%). The daily per capita intake of PFRs (TCEP, TPHP, EHDPHP, TDCIPP, TCIPP) from food ranged from 406 to 3266 ng/day (or 6-49 ng/kg bw/day), lower than the health-based reference doses. This is the first study reporting PFR intakes from other food categories than fish (here accounting for 3%). Our results suggest that the estimated human dietary exposure to PFRs may be equally important to the ingestion of dust. |
Bag-of-Visual-Words Based on Clonal Selection Algorithm for SAR Image Classification | Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image classification involves two crucial issues: suitable feature representation technique and effective pattern classification methodology. Here, we concentrate on the first issue. By exploiting a famous image feature processing strategy, Bag-of-Visual-Words (BOV) in image semantic analysis and the artificial immune systems (AIS)'s abilities of learning and adaptability to solve complicated problems, we present a novel and effective image representation method for SAR image classification. In BOV, an effective fused feature sets for local feature representation are first formulated, which are viewed as the low-level features in it. After that, clonal selection algorithm (CSA) in AIS is introduced to optimize the prediction error of k-fold cross-validation for getting more suitable visual words from the low-level features. Finally, the BOV features are represented by the learned visual words for subsequent pattern classification. Compared with the other four algorithms, the proposed algorithm obtains more satisfactory and cogent classification experimental results. |
Maximum Correntropy Unscented Kalman Filter for Spacecraft Relative State Estimation | A new algorithm called maximum correntropy unscented Kalman filter (MCUKF) is proposed and applied to relative state estimation in space communication networks. As is well known, the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) provides an efficient tool to solve the non-linear state estimate problem. However, the UKF usually plays well in Gaussian noises. Its performance may deteriorate substantially in the presence of non-Gaussian noises, especially when the measurements are disturbed by some heavy-tailed impulsive noises. By making use of the maximum correntropy criterion (MCC), the proposed algorithm can enhance the robustness of UKF against impulsive noises. In the MCUKF, the unscented transformation (UT) is applied to obtain a predicted state estimation and covariance matrix, and a nonlinear regression method with the MCC cost is then used to reformulate the measurement information. Finally, the UT is adopted to the measurement equation to obtain the filter state and covariance matrix. Illustrative examples demonstrate the superior performance of the new algorithm. |
Reply to comment Reply to criticism of the ‘ Orch OR qubit ’ – ‘ Orchestrated objective reduction ’ is scientifically justified | The critical commentary by Reimers et al. [1] regarding the Penrose–Hameroff theory of ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’) is largely uninformed and basically incorrect, as they solely criticize non-existent features of Orch OR, and ignore (1) actual Orch OR features, (2) supportive evidence, and (3) previous answers to their objections (Section 5.6 in our review [2]). Here we respond point-by-point to the issues they raise. |
COINVENT: Towards a Computational Concept Invention Theory | We aim to develop a computationally feasible, cognitivelyinspired, formal model of concept invention, drawing on Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of conceptual blending, and grounding it on a sound mathematical theory of concepts. Conceptual blending, although successfully applied to describing combinational creativity in a varied number of fields, has barely been used at all for implementing creative computational systems, mainly due to the lack of sufficiently precise mathematical characterisations thereof. The model we will define will be based on Goguen’s proposal of a Unified Concept Theory, and will draw from interdisciplinary research results from cognitive science, artificial intelligence, formal methods and computational creativity. To validate our model, we will implement a proof of concept of an autonomous computational creative system that will be evaluated in two testbed scenarios: mathematical reasoning and melodic harmonisation. We envisage that the results of this project will be significant for gaining a deeper scientific understanding of creativity, for fostering the synergy between understanding and enhancing human creativity, and for developing new technologies for autonomous creative systems. |
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry for Assessing Wenchuan Earthquake (2008) Deforestation in the Sichuan Giant Panda Site | Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been an unparalleled tool in cloudy and rainy regions as it allows observations throughout the year because of its all-weather, all-day operation capability. In this paper, the influence of Wenchuan Earthquake on the Sichuan Giant Panda habitats was evaluated for the first time using SAR interferometry and combining data from C-band Envisat ASAR and L-band ALOS PALSAR data. Coherence analysis based on the zero-point shifting indicated that the deforestation process was significant, particularly in habitats along the Min River approaching the epicenter after the natural disaster, and as interpreted by the vegetation deterioration from landslides, avalanches and debris flows. Experiments demonstrated that C-band Envisat ASAR data were sensitive to vegetation, resulting in an underestimation of deforestation; in contrast, L-band PALSAR data were capable of evaluating the deforestation process owing to a better penetration and the significant coherence gain on damaged forest areas. The percentage of damaged forest estimated by PALSAR decreased from 20.66% to 17.34% during 2009–2010, implying an approximate 3% recovery rate of forests in the earthquake OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2014, 6 6284 impacted areas. This study proves that long-wavelength SAR interferometry is promising for rapid assessment of disaster-induced deforestation, particularly in regions where the optical acquisition is constrained. |
Seismotectonics Considered Artificial Neural Network Earthquake Prediction in Northeast Seismic Region of China | It is well known that earthquakes are a regional event, strongly controlled by local geological structures and circumstances. Reducing the research area can reduce the influence of other irrelevant seismotectonics. A new sub regiondividing scheme, considering the seismotectonics influence, was applied for the artificial neural network (ANN) earthquake prediction model in the northeast seismic region of China (NSRC). The improved set of input parameters and prediction time duration are also discussed in this work. The new dividing scheme improved the prediction accuracy for different prediction time frames. Three different research regions were analyzed as an earthquake data source for the ANN model under different prediction time duration frames. The results show: (1) dividing the research region into smaller subregions can improve the prediction accuracies in NSRC, (2) larger research regions need shorter prediction durations to obtain better performance, (3) different areas have different sets of input parameters in NSRC, and (4) the dividing scheme, considering the seismotectonics frame of the region, yields better results. |
Visual Object Recognition | The visual recognition problem is central to computer vision research. From robotics to information retrieval, many desired applications demand the ability to identify and localize categories, places, and objects. This tutorial overviews computer vision algorithms for visual object recognition and image classification. We introduce primary representations and learning approaches, with an emphasis on recent advances in the field. The target audience consists of researchers or students working in AI, robotics, or vision who would like to understand what methods and representations are available for these problems. This lecture summarizes what is and isn’t possible to do reliably today, and overviews key concepts that could be employed in systems requiring visual categorization. |
Explore/Exploit Schemes for Web Content Optimization | We propose novel multi-armed bandit (explore/exploit) schemes to maximize total clicks on a content module published regularly on Yahoo! Intuitively, one can ``explore'' each candidate item by displaying it to a small fraction of user visits to estimate the item's click-through rate (CTR), and then ``exploit'' high CTR items in order to maximize clicks. While bandit methods that seek to find the optimal trade-off between explore and exploit have been studied for decades, existing solutions are not satisfactory for web content publishing applications where dynamic set of items with short lifetimes, delayed feedback and non-stationary reward (CTR) distributions are typical. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian solution and extend several existing schemes to our setting. Through extensive evaluation with nine bandit schemes, we show that our Bayesian solution is uniformly better in several scenarios. We also study the empirical characteristics of our schemes and provide useful insights on the strengths and weaknesses of each. Finally, we validate our results with a ``side-by-side'' comparison of schemes through live experiments conducted on a random sample of real user visits to Yahoo! |
Virtual O(a.) corrections to the inclusive decay b + S? ) | We present in detail the calculation of the O(as) virtual corrections to the matrix element for b + s-y. Besides the one-loop virtual corrections of the electromagnetic and color dipole operators 07 and 08, we include the important two-loop contribution of the four-Fermi operator 02. By applying the Mellin-Barnes representation to certain internal propagators, the result of the two-loop diagrams is obtained analytically as an expansion in rnc/m6. These results are then combined with existing O(a, ) Bremsstrahlung corrections in order to obtain the inclusive rate for B + X~y. The new contributions drastically reduce the large renormalization scale dependence of the leading logarithmic result. Thus a very precise Standard Model prediction for this inclusive process will become possible once also the corrections to the Wilson coefficients are available. |
Chiral tensor particles in the early Universe | The status of the chiral tensor particles in the extended electroweak model, their experimental constraints, signatures and the possibilities for their detection at the new colliders are reviewed. The characteristic interactions of the chiral tensor particles in the early Universe plasma and the corresponding period of their cosmological influence is determined. The dynamical cosmological effect, namely the speeding of the Friedmann expansion due to the density increase caused by the introduction of the new particles, is evaluated.
It is shown that the existence of the chiral tensor particles is allowed from cosmological considerations and welcomed by the particle physics phenomenology. |
QoS-aware Network Operating System for software defined networking with Generalized OpenFlows | OpenFlow switching and Network Operating System (NOX) have been proposed to support new conceptual networking trials for fine-grained control and visibility. The OpenFlow is expected to provide multi-layer networking with switching capability of Ethernet, MPLS, and IP routing. NOX provides logically centralized access to high-level network abstraction and exerts control over the network by installing flow entries in OpenFlow compatible switches. The NOX, however, is missing the necessary functions for QoS-guaranteed software defined networking (SDN) service provisioning on carrier grade provider Internet, such as QoS-aware virtual network embedding, end-to-end network QoS assessment, and collaborations among control elements in other domain network. In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware Network Operating System (QNOX) for SDN with Generalized OpenFlows. The functional modules and operations of QNOX for QoS-aware SDN service provisioning with the major components (e.g., service element (SE), control element (CE), management element (ME), and cognitive knowledge element (CKE)) are explained in detail. The current status of prototype implementation and performances are explained. The scalability of the QNOX is also analyzed to confirm that the proposed framework can be applied for carrier grade large scale provider Internet1. |
Diagnosing Aortic Valve Stenosis by Parameter Extraction of Heart Sound Signals | The objective of this study was to develop an automatic signal analysis system for heart sound diagnosis. This should support the general practitioner in discovering aortic valve stenoses at an early stage to avoid or decrease the number of surgical interventions. The applied analysis method is based on classification of heart sound signals utilising parameter extraction. From the wavelet decomposition of a representative heart cycle as well as from the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and the Wavelet Transform (WT) spectra new time series were derived. In several segments, parameters were extracted and analysed. In addition, features of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the raw signal were examined. In this study, 206 patients were enrolled, 159 with no heart valve disease or any other heart valve disease but aortic valve stenosis and 47 suffering from aortic valve stenosis in a mild, moderate or severe stage. To separate the groups, a linear discriminant function analysis was applied leading to a reduced parameter set. The introduced two classification stage (CS) system for automatic detection of aortic valve stenoses achieves a high sensitivity of 100% for moderate and severe aortic valve stenosis and a sensitivity of 75% for mild aortic valve stenosis. A specificity of 93.7% for patients without aortic valve stenosis is provided. The developed method is robust, cost effective and easy to use, and could, therefore, be a suitable method to diagnose aortic valve stenosis by general practitioners. |
Drug drug interaction extraction from biomedical literature using syntax convolutional neural network | MOTIVATION
Detecting drug-drug interaction (DDI) has become a vital part of public health safety. Therefore, using text mining techniques to extract DDIs from biomedical literature has received great attentions. However, this research is still at an early stage and its performance has much room to improve.
RESULTS
In this article, we present a syntax convolutional neural network (SCNN) based DDI extraction method. In this method, a novel word embedding, syntax word embedding, is proposed to employ the syntactic information of a sentence. Then the position and part of speech features are introduced to extend the embedding of each word. Later, auto-encoder is introduced to encode the traditional bag-of-words feature (sparse 0-1 vector) as the dense real value vector. Finally, a combination of embedding-based convolutional features and traditional features are fed to the softmax classifier to extract DDIs from biomedical literature. Experimental results on the DDIExtraction 2013 corpus show that SCNN obtains a better performance (an F-score of 0.686) than other state-of-the-art methods.
AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION
The source code is available for academic use at http://202.118.75.18:8080/DDI/SCNN-DDI.zip CONTACT: [email protected] information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. |
Incidental gallbladder cancer at cholecystectomy: when should the surgeon be suspicious? | BACKGROUND
Preoperative predictors of incidental gallbladder cancer (iGBC) have been poorly defined despite the frequency with which cholecystectomy is performed. The objective of this study was to define the incidence of and consider risk factors for iGBC at cholecystectomy.
METHODS
The American College of Surgeons-National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database (2005-2009) was used to identify all patients who underwent cholecystectomy (N = 91,260). Patients with an International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, diagnosis of gallbladder malignancy who underwent a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC; n = 80,924) or open cholecystectomy (OC; n = 10,336) alone were included.
RESULTS
The incidence of iGBC was 0.19% (n = 170) for all cholecystectomy cases, but 0.05% at LC, 0.60% at LC converted to OC (P < 0.001 vs LC), and 1.13% at OC (P < 0.001 vs others). Patients undergoing OC were 17.3 times more likely to have iGBC than LC patients. Age 65 years or older, Asian or African American race, ASA (American Society of Anesthesiologists) class 3 or more, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, weight loss more than 10%, alkaline phosphatase levels 120 units/L or more, and albumin levels 3.6 g/dL or less were associated with iGBC. Multiple logistic regression identified having an OC, age 65 years or older, Asian or African American race, an elevated alkaline phosphatase level, and female sex as independent risk factors. Patients with 1, 2, 3, and 4 of these factors had a 6.3-, 16.7-, 30.0-, and 47.4-fold risk of iGBC, respectively, from a zero-risk factor baseline of 0.03%.
CONCLUSIONS
Surgeons' suspicion for GBC should be heightened when they are performing or converting from LC to OC and when patients are older, Asian or African American, female, and have an elevated alkaline phosphatase level. |
SCUC With Hourly Demand Response Considering Intertemporal Load Characteristics | In this paper, the hourly demand response (DR) is incorporated into security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) for economic and security purposes. SCUC considers fixed and responsive loads. Unlike fixed hourly loads, responsive loads are modeled with their intertemporal characteristics. The responsive loads linked to hourly market prices can be curtailed or shifted to other operating hours. The study results show that DR could shave the peak load, reduce the system operating cost, reduce fuel consumptions and carbon footprints, and reduce the transmission congestion by reshaping the hourly load profile. Numerical simulations in this paper exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed approach. |
A Privacy Preservation Model for Facebook-Style Social Network Systems | Recent years have seen unprecedented growth in the popularity of social network systems, with Facebook being an archetypical example. The access control paradigm behind the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook is distinctly different from such existing access control paradigms as Discretionary Access Control, Role-Based Access Control, Capability Systems, and Trust Management Systems. This work takes a first step in deepening the understanding of this access control paradigm, by proposing an access control model that formalizes and generalizes the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook. The model can be instantiated into a family of Facebook-style social network systems, each with a recognizably different access control mechanism, so that Facebook is but one instantiation of the model. We also demonstrate that the model can be instantiated to express policies that are not currently supported by Facebook but possess rich and natural social significance. This work thus delineates the design space of privacy preservation mechanisms for Facebook-style social network systems, and lays out a formal framework for policy analysis in these systems. |
Radio Resource Allocation in Multiuser Distributed Antenna Systems | The distributed antenna system (DAS) is a promising system to provide high data rate transmissions in wireless communications. So far, most researches in the performance analysis for the DAS have been focused on single-user cases. This paper aims to investigate and present an optimal resource allocation scheme in downlink multiuser DASs. Different from the resource allocation in a conventional cellular system, the resource allocation in the multiuser DAS must consider multiple channel conditions of the transmission links between multiple remote antenna unites (RAUs) and any user, which increases the complexity of the resource allocation. In order to provide insights in the multiuser DAS, the effect of the number of RAUs used to communicate with each user is investigated extensively. In addition to power allocation, subcarrier allocation and bit allocation are studied in the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) DAS. To reduce the complexity of the resource allocation in the downlink multiuser DAS, the chunk allocation technique is adopted by grouping a set of contiguous subcarriers into one chunk and allocating resources chunk by chunk to users and an equivalent channel fading factor per subcarrier for a user is proposed to represent the combined channel gain from multiple RAUs to the user. The numerical results show that by using the proposed resource allocation method, each user only needs to be connected to a few RAUs, depending on the location of the user. |
Brand Personality ’ s Influence on the Purchase Intention : A Mobile Marketing Case | This study underlines the value of the brand personality and its influence on consumer’s decision making, through relational variables. An empirical study, in which 380 participants have received an SMS ad, confirms that brand personality does actually influence brand trust, brand attachment and brand commitment. The levels of brand sensitivity and involvement have also an impact on the brand personality and on its related variables. |
Comments on the scalar-tensor representation of nonlocally corrected gravity | The scalar-tensor representation of some simple nonlocally modified Einstein models is considered. Some special solutions of the vacuum background equations were obtained that indicate nonequivalence of the models under consideration in the scalar-tensor description and in the initial one. |
Poor mental health in Ghana: who is at risk? | BACKGROUND
Poor mental health is a leading cause of disability worldwide with considerable negative impacts, particularly in low-income countries. Nevertheless, empirical evidence on its national prevalence in low-income countries, particularly in Africa, is limited. Additionally, researchers and policy makers are now calling for empirical investigations of the association between empowerment and poor mental health among women. We therefore sought to estimate the national prevalence of poor mental health in Ghana, explore its correlates on a national level, and examine associations between empowerment and poor mental health among women.
METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in Ghana in 2009-2010. Interviews were conducted face-to-face with participants (N = 9,524 for overall sample; n = 3,007 for women in relationships). We used the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) to measure psychological distress and assessed women's attitudes about their roles in decision-making, attitudes towards intimate partner violence, partner control, and partner abuse. We used weighted multivariable multinomial regression models to determine the factors independently associated with experiencing psychological distress for our overall sample and for women in relationships.
RESULTS
Overall, 18.7% of the sample reported either moderate (11.7%) or severe (7.0%) psychological distress. The prevalence of psychological distress was higher among women than men. Overall, the prevalence of psychological distress differed by gender, marital status, education, wealth, region, health and religion, but not by age or urban/rural location. Women who reported having experienced physical abuse, increased partner control, and who were more accepting of women's disempowerment had greater likelihoods of psychological distress (P-values < 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS
Psychological distress is substantial among both men and women in Ghana, with nearly 20% having moderate or severe psychological distress, an estimate higher than those found among South African (16%) or Australian (11%) adults. Women who are disempowered in the context of intimate relationships may be particularly vulnerable to psychological distress. Results identify populations to be targeted by interventions aiming to improve mental health. |
Techniques for extraction and isolation of natural products: a comprehensive review | Natural medicines were the only option for the prevention and treatment of human diseases for thousands of years. Natural products are important sources for drug development. The amounts of bioactive natural products in natural medicines are always fairly low. Today, it is very crucial to develop effective and selective methods for the extraction and isolation of those bioactive natural products. This paper intends to provide a comprehensive view of a variety of methods used in the extraction and isolation of natural products. This paper also presents the advantage, disadvantage and practical examples of conventional and modern techniques involved in natural products research. |
Computational Curiosity (A Book Draft) | This book discusses computational curiosity, from the psychology of curiosity to the computational models of curiosity, and then showcases several interesting applications of computational curiosity. A brief overview of the book is given as follows. Chapter 1 discusses the underpinnings of curiosity in human beings, including the major categories of curiosity, curiosity-related emotions and behaviors, and the benefits of curiosity. Chapter 2 reviews the arousal theories of curiosity in psychology and summarizes a general two-step process model for computational curiosity. Base on the perspective of the two-step process model, Chapter 3 reviews and analyzes some of the traditional computational models of curiosity. Chapter 4 introduces a novel generic computational model of curiosity, which is developed based on the arousal theories of curiosity. After the discussion of computational models of curiosity, we outline the important applications where computational curiosity may bring significant impacts in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 discusses the application of the generic computational model of curiosity in a machine learning framework. Chapter 7 discusses the application of the generic computational model of curiosity in a recommender system. In Chapter 8 and Chapter 9, the generic computational model of curiosity is studied in two types of pedagogical agents. In Chapter 8, a curious peer learner is studied. It is a non-player character that aims to provide a believable virtual learning environment for users. In Chapter 9, a curious learning companion is studied. It aims to enhance users' learning experience through providing meaningful interactions with them. Chapter 10 discusses open questions in the research field of computation curiosity. |
Face-to-face collaborative learning supported by mobile phones | The use of handheld computers in educational contexts has increased considerably in recent years and their value as a teaching tool has been confirmed by many positive experiences, particular within collaborative learning systems (MCSCL). The cost of the devices has hindered widespread use in schools, however, and cell phones have emerged as an attractive alternative. To test the functionality of cell phones as a platform for collaborative educational activities, the authors adapted an existing PDA application for use on cell phones equipped with Wi-Fi. This article examines the problems of developing applications for this alternative technology and reports on a usability analysis of a collaborative classroom activity for teaching physics. The results confirm the viability of the cell phone platform, with due account taken of the device’s processing, network and interface limitations. With an appropriate design, users quickly master the technology, though a certain decline in efficiency relative to PDAs was observed. This work was partially funded by FONDECYT-CONICYT grant No. 1080100 |
School-based mindfulness instruction for urban male youth: a small randomized controlled trial. | OBJECTIVES
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has been shown to improve mental health and reduce stress in a variety of adult populations. Here, we explore the effects of a school-based MBSR program for young urban males.
PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS
In fall 2009, 7th and 8th graders at a small school for low-income urban boys were randomly assigned to 12-session programs of MBSR or health education (Healthy Topics-HT). Data were collected at baseline, post-program, and three-month follow-up on psychological functioning; sleep; and salivary cortisol, a physiologic measure of stress.
RESULTS
Forty-one (22 MBSR and 19 HT) of the 42 eligible boys participated, of whom 95% were African American, with a mean age of 12.5 years. Following the programs, MBSR boys had less anxiety (p=0.01), less rumination (p=0.02), and showed a trend for less negative coping (p=0.06) than HT boys. Comparing baseline with post-program, cortisol levels increased during the academic terms for HT participants at a trend level (p=0.07) but remained constant for MBSR participants (p=0.33).
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, MBSR participants showed less anxiety, improved coping, and a possible attenuation of cortisol response to academic stress, when compared with HT participants. These results suggest that MBSR improves psychological functioning among urban male youth. |
Cutaneous Sinus Tracts of Odontogenic Origin: Two Case Reports. | BACKGROUND
Cutaneous odontogenic fistulas or sinus tracts are frequently misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, leading to unnecessary procedures and patient suffering. An understanding of the draining of cutaneous sinus tracts will lead to more appropriate treatment. Most cases respond to conservative, nonsurgical root canal therapy. Our objective is to report 2 cases of cutaneous sinus tract secondary to chronic periapical dental infection that were recently observed at our hospital.
METHODS
We present 2 cases of recurrent suppurative facial lesions that were initially misdiagnosed and treated with oral antibiotics without response.
RESULTS
Clinical findings included palpable facial nodules with drainage, palpable intraoral cords, and poor dentition with gingivitis; radiologic examination showed a periapical disease process consistent with dental sinus tracts. Both of the cases were referred to the maxillofacial department, where the cyst and nonrestorable teeth were extracted.
CONCLUSION
Because patients with cutaneous facial sinus tracts of dental origin often do not have obvious dental symptoms, a possible dental etiology may be overlooked. If dental origin is suspected, the diagnosis is easily confirmed by dental examination and dental roentgenograms of the involved area. Early correct diagnosis, based on radiologic evidence of a periapical root infection and treatment of these lesions can help prevent unnecessary and ineffective antibiotic therapy or surgical treatment, reducing the possibility of further complications such as sepsis and osteomyelitis. |
Object Recognition-Based Second Language Learning Educational Robot System for Chinese Preschool Children | Research in psychology, pedagogy, and physiology has shown that learning a second language will be a great benefit to preschool children. Compared with adults, children have more advantages in learning, such as better pronunciation and intonation. However, because of children’s inattention, the effects of the second language education in many preschools are not ideal in China. To make children learn the second language effectively, it should be integrated into their daily lives and in line with their interests. In this paper, an educational robot system with object recognition technology is introduced, which aims to provide innovative second language learning services for preschool children in China. The proposed system combines object recognition and projection with English teaching and makes objects in daily life more interesting with projected animation to attract children’s attention. On the projection screen, children can interact with a robot by touch or movement and can easily trigger more interactive effects. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, we conducted an experiment, and the results showed that the system can improve the language learning efficiency for the Chinese preschool children by interacting with objects under proper guidance. |
Online RGB-D gesture recognition with extreme learning machines | Gesture recognition is needed in many applications such as human-computer interaction and sign language recognition. The challenges of building an actual recognition system do not lie only in reaching an acceptable recognition accuracy but also with requirements for fast online processing. In this paper, we propose a method for online gesture recognition using RGB-D data from a Kinect sensor. Frame-level features are extracted from RGB frames and the skeletal model obtained from the depth data, and then classified by multiple extreme learning machines. The outputs from the classifiers are aggregated to provide the final classification results for the gestures. We test our method on the ChaLearn multi-modal gesture challenge data. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the method can perform effective multi-class gesture recognition in real-time. |
The nature of feelings: evolutionary and neurobiological origins | Feelings are mental experiences of body states. They signify physiological need (for example, hunger), tissue injury (for example, pain), optimal function (for example, well-being), threats to the organism (for example, fear or anger) or specific social interactions (for example, compassion, gratitude or love). Feelings constitute a crucial component of the mechanisms of life regulation, from simple to complex. Their neural substrates can be found at all levels of the nervous system, from individual neurons to subcortical nuclei and cortical regions. |
Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic comparison of two doses of calcium folinate combined with continuous fluorouracil infusion in patients with advanced colorectal cancer | The optimum dose of calcium folinate (leucovorin) as modulator of fluorouracil has not been defined yet. We conducted a randomized trial to compare the pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics of two doses of calcium folinate. 16 patients with advanced colorectal cancer were treated with 650 mg/m2/d fluorouracil as 5 day continuous infusion and randomized to receive either 20 mg/m2 or 100 mg/m2 calcium folinate as short infusion twice daily. The two diastereoisomers of calcium folinate were analyzed separately by chiral HPLC to account for differences in their pharmacokinetics. The pharmacokinetics of fluorouracil was not affected by folinate dosing. Total clearance of the active (6S)-diastereoisomer was found to be lower after the higher dose of folinate which can be explained by nonlinear metabolism. The incidence of treatment‐induced mucositis significantly increased with (6S)‐folinate exposure, whereas fluorouracil exposure was not related to this type of toxicity. In conclusion, exposure to folinate is more important for toxicity in this regimen than fluorouracil pharmacokinetics. Therefore, monitoring of fluorouracil plasma levels is not useful in this combination. Our results show that folinate dose should be carefully selected. Lower doses of folinate might be preferred because of less toxicity compared to higher doses. |
Team-oriented, project-based instruction in a new mechatronics course | The design of a new course in mechatronics is described, which will serve as the focal point of a wider curriculum development effort to integrate the teaching of mechatronic principles throughout the relevant engineering curricula at the University of Detroit Mercy, USA. The course has a balanced combination of theory and application and seeks to impart competencies that are in great demand in the automotive industry, as well as in other engineering sectors. One of the prominent and innovative features of the course is that it is structured around instructional activities that are predominantly team-oriented and project-based. |
Metrics for human driving of multiple robots | A goal of human-robot interaction is to expand the capability of human beings so that they can control multiple robots simultaneously. This provides leverage for human attention beyond single robot interaction. The number of such robots that can be operated is called the fan-out of a human-robot team. We define the concepts of neglect-tolerance as a measure of autonomy and interaction-effort as a measure of required human attention. A model for fan-out is presented that predicts a human's ability to control multiple robots. We validate this model using robot simulations and user studies. Using the validated model we demonstrate enhanced task performance on physical robots as predicted by the model. |
LVRT Capability of DFIG-Based WECS Under Asymmetrical Grid Fault Condition | In this paper, the low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) capability of the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind energy conversion system in the asymmetrical grid fault situation is analyzed, and the control scheme for the system is proposed to follow the requirements defined by the grid codes. As analyzed in the paper, the control efforts of the negative-sequence current are much higher than that of the positive-sequence current for the DFIG. As a result, the control capability of the DFIG restrained by the dc-link voltage will degenerate for the fault type with higher negative-sequence voltage component and 2φ fault turns out to be the most serious scenario for the LVRT problem. When the fault location is close to the grid connection point, the DFIG may be out of control resulting in non-ride-through zones. In the worst circumstance when LVRT can succeed, the maximal positive-sequence reactive current supplied by the DFIG is around 0.4 pu, which coordinates with the present grid code. Increasing the power rating of the rotor-side converter can improve the LVRT capability of the DFIG but induce additional costs. Based on the analysis, an LVRT scheme for the DFIG is also proposed by taking account of the code requirements and the control capability of the converters. As verified by the simulation and experimental results, the scheme can promise the DFIG to supply the defined positive-sequence reactive current to support the power grid and mitigate the oscillations in the generator torque and dc-link voltage, which improves the reliability of the wind farm and the power system. |
OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT ACTIVITIES OF THE EUROPEAN EGS SOULTZ PROJECT : FROM EXPLORATION TO ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION | This paper reports a multinational approach to develop an Enhanced Geothermal System reservoir (EGS) in Europe. The pilot site is located at the French-German border in Soultz-sous-Forêts, France. Over two decades research and development have been carried out with French, German and Swiss governmental and European funding. The on-going Soultz project is now very close to the end of the pilot plant phase (2009). Then, a geothermal power plant constructing phase started in 2007 with the building of an ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) plant having a net power capacity of 1,5MWe. Surface equipments (turbine, air cooling system, heat exchanger) as well as two different types of downhole pumps were installed respectively on surface and in the production wells. Finally, we present the main milestones about the EGS reservoir and the ongoing activities about this experimental power plant. |
[Effects of a home-based exercise program for patients with stomach cancer receiving oral chemotherapy after surgery]. | PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of a home based exercise program for patients with stomach cancer who were undergoing oral chemotherapy.
METHODS
The home-based exercise program was developed from the study findings of Winningham (1990) and data from the Korea Athletic Promotion Association (2007). The home-based exercise program consisted of 8 weeks of individual exercise education and exercise adherence strategy. Participants were 24 patients with stomach cancer who were undergoing oral chemotherapy following surgery in 2007 or 2008 at a university hospital in Seoul. Patients were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (11) or control group (13). The effects of the home-based exercise program were measured by level of cancer related fatigue, NK cell ratio, anxiety, and quality of life. Data were analyzed using SPSS/WIN 13.0 version.
RESULTS
The degree of cancer related fatigue and anxiety in the experimental group decreased compared to the control group. The NK cell ratio and the degree of quality of life of experimental group increased while that of the control group decreased.
CONCLUSION
This study result indicate the importance of exercise and provide empirical evidence for continuation of safe exercise for patients with cancer during their chemotherapy. |
Highly Linear mm-Wave CMOS Power Amplifier | A Ka-band highly linear power amplifier (PA) is implemented in 28-nm bulk CMOS technology. Using a deep class-AB PA topology with appropriate harmonic control circuit, highly linear and efficient PAs are designed at millimeter-wave band. This PA architecture provides a linear PA operation close to the saturated power. Also elaborated harmonic tuning and neutralization techniques are used to further improve the transistor gain and stability. A two-stack PA is designed for higher gain and output power than a common source (CS) PA. Additionally, average power tracking (APT) is applied to further reduce the power consumption at a low power operation and, hence, extend battery life. Both the PAs are tested with two different signals at 28.5 GHz; they are fully loaded long-term evolution (LTE) signal with 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), a 7.5-dB peakto-average power ratio (PAPR), and a 20-MHz bandwidth (BW), and a wireless LAN (WLAN) signal with 64-QAM, a 10.8-dB PAPR, and an 80-MHz BW. The CS/two-stack PAs achieve power-added efficiency (PAE) of 27%/25%, error vector magnitude (EVM) of 5.17%/3.19%, and adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLRE-UTRA) of -33/-33 dBc, respectively, with an average output power of 11/14.6 dBm for the LTE signal. For the WLAN signal, the CS/2-stack PAs achieve the PAE of 16.5%/17.3%, and an EVM of 4.27%/4.21%, respectively, at an average output power of 6.8/11 dBm. |
Question Answering in TREC | Traditional text retrieval systems return a ranked list of documents in response to a user's request. While a ranked list of documents can be an appropriate response for the user, frequently it is not. Usually it would be better for the system to provide the answer itself instead of requiring the user to search for the answer in a set of documents. The Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) is sponsoring a question answering "track" to foster research on the problem of retrieving answers rather than document lists.TREC is a workshop series sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Defense [7]. The purpose of the conference series is to encourage research on text retrieval for realistic applications by providing large test collections, uniform scoring procedures, and a forum for organizations interested in comparing results. The conference has focused primarily on the traditional IR problem of retrieving a ranked list of documents in response to a statement of information need, but has also included other tasks, called tracks, that focus on new areas or particularly difficult aspects of information retrieval. A question answering track was introduced in TREC-8 1999. The track has generated wide-spread interest in the QA problem [2, 3, 4], and has documented significant improvements in question answering system effectiveness in its two-year history.This paper provides a brief summary of the findings of the TREC question answering track to date and discusses the future directions of the track. The paper is extracted from a fuller description of the track given in "The TREC Question Answering Track" [8]. Complete details about the TREC question answering track can be found in the TREC proceedings. |
Cave deposits and sedimentary processes in Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Mallorca, Western Mediterranean) | In the above mentioned papers different types of sediments and genetic processes have been described as being the dominant mechanisms in producing the allochthonous in fillings that were carried into the caves mainly through surface entrances. The most frequent types are reddish-brown fine sediments mostly transported into the cave by surface runoff as in the case of Cova des Coll or Cova Genovesa (Gràcia et al., 2003, 2005), or by eolian processes as in the case of Cova de s’Ònix (Ginés et al., 2007), Cova de sa Font (Egozcue, 1971), Cova de sa Bassa Blanca (Ginés & Ginés, 1974), among others, or mixed eolian and runoff deposits as is the case of Galeria del Tragus in Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Fornós et al., 2010). Autogenic processes have also been suggested for Cova de sa Gleda (Gràcia et al., 2007) and in the PirataPont-Piqueta system (Gràcia et al., 2006; Fornós et INTRODUCTION |
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the efficacy and safety of vortioxetine 10 mg and 20 mg in adults with major depressive disorder. | CONTEXT
Vortioxetine (Lu AA21004) is an antidepressant with a mechanism of action thought to be related to a combination of 2 pharmacologic actions: direct modulation of several receptors and inhibition of the serotonin transporter.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the efficacy of vortioxetine 10 and 20 mg once daily in outpatients with major depressive disorder.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
This 8-week, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study was conducted from July 2010 to January 2012 among adults with a primary diagnosis of recurrent major depressive disorder (DSM-IV-TR).
INTERVENTION
Eligible subjects were randomized in 1:1:1 ratio to 1 of 3 treatment arms: vortioxetine 10 mg, vortioxetine 20 mg, or placebo once daily for 8 weeks. Subjects who completed the 8-week trial entered a 2-week blinded discontinuation period to assess potential discontinuation symptoms.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
The primary endpoint was the least squares mean change in Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) total score from baseline. Key secondary outcomes were analyzed in the following prespecified sequential order: MADRS response (≥ 50% decrease from baseline in total score), Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement score, change from baseline in MADRS total score in subjects with baseline Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale score ≥ 20, MADRS remission (total score ≤ 10), and change from baseline in Sheehan Disability Scale total score (all at week 8).
RESULTS
A total of 462 subjects were randomized to placebo (n = 157), vortioxetine 10 mg (n = 155), and vortioxetine 20 mg (n = 150). Mean (SE) reductions from baseline in MADRS total score (week 8) were -10.77 (± 0.807), -12.96 (± 0.832), and -14.41 (± 0.845) for the placebo, vortioxetine 10 mg (P = .058 vs placebo), and vortioxetine 20 mg (P = .002 vs placebo) groups. MADRS response/remission was achieved in 28.4%/14.2%, 33.8%/21.4%, and 39.2%/22.3% of subjects, respectively, in the 3 groups. Only MADRS response for vortioxetine 20 mg significantly separated from placebo (P = .044). Treatment was well tolerated, with the most frequently reported adverse events consisting of nausea, headache, diarrhea, and dizziness.
CONCLUSIONS
Vortioxetine 20 mg significantly reduced MADRS total score at 8 weeks in this study population. Overall, vortioxetine was well tolerated in this study.
TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01163266. |
Phenomenology and Cognitive Linguistics | The purpose of this chapter is to describe some similarities, as well as differences, between theoretical proposals emanating from the tradition of phenomenology and the currently popular approach to language and cognition known as cognitive linguistics (hence CL). This is a rather demanding and potentially controversial topic. For one thing, neither CL nor phenomenology constitute monolithic theories, and are actually rife with internal controversies. This forces me to make certain “schematizations”, since it is impossible to deal with the complexity of these debates in the space here allotted. |
Behavioural interventions for HIV positive prevention in developing countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. | OBJECTIVE
To assess the evidence for a differential effect of positive prevention interventions among individuals infected and not infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in developing countries, and to assess the effectiveness of interventions targeted specifically at people living with HIV.
METHODS
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of papers on positive prevention behavioural interventions in developing countries published between January 1990 and December 2006. Standardized methods of searching and data abstraction were used. Pooled effect sizes were calculated using random effects models.
FINDINGS
Nineteen studies met the inclusion criteria. In meta-analysis, behavioural interventions had a stronger impact on condom use among HIV-positive (HIV+) individuals (odds ratio, OR: 3.61; 95% confidence interval, CI: 2.61-4.99) than among HIV-negative individuals (OR: 1.32; 95% CI: 0.77-2.26). Interventions specifically targeting HIV+ individuals also showed a positive effect on condom use (OR: 7.84; 95% CI: 2.82-21.79), which was particularly strong among HIV-serodiscordant couples (OR: 67.38; 95% CI: 36.17-125.52). Interventions included in this review were limited both in scope (most were HIV counselling and testing interventions) and in target populations (most were conducted among heterosexual adults or HIV-serodiscordant couples).
CONCLUSION
Current evidence suggests that interventions targeting people living with HIV in developing countries increase condom use, especially among HIV-serodiscordant couples. Comprehensive positive prevention interventions targeting diverse populations and covering a range of intervention modalities are needed to keep HIV+ individuals physically and mentally healthy, prevent transmission of HIV infection and increase the agency and involvement of people living with HIV. |
The impact of cost, technology acceptance and employees' satisfaction on the effectiveness of the electronic customer relationship management systems | Internet technology enables companies to capture new customers, track their performances and online behavior, and customize communications, products, services, and prices. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an important concept to maintain competitiveness at e-commerce. The issue of electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM) has increasingly become the identification of the success of the CRM implementation. The E-CRM has emerged as one of the most prominent information system that enables organizations to contact customers and collect, store and analyze customer data in order to provide a comprehensive view of their customers. Organization can obtain competitive advantages from increase effectiveness of the E-CRM. This research proposes determining the effective factors (cost, technology acceptance and employees’ satisfaction) for the effectiveness of the E-CRM. The structural equation modeling technique was used to evaluate the causal model and to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement model. The results of gathered data from 210 employees of the East Azerbaijan Tax Administration in iran is indicated that the impact of the technology acceptance on organization performance begins with infrastructure capability, ease of use, and E-learning systems, and the complementarity between these factors positively influences the effectiveness of the E-CRM. The results also indicated that the customer costs positively affects on the customer relationship performance, which consequently leads to improvements of the effectiveness of the E-CRM in organization. Our findings show that each of cost, technology acceptance and satisfaction employee plays an important role toward in effectiveness of |
Cross-situational coping with peer and family stressors in adolescent offspring of depressed parents. | Offspring of depressed parents are faced with significant interpersonal stress both within their families and in peer relationships. The present study examined parent and self-reports of adolescents' coping in response to family and peer stressors in 73 adolescent children of parents with a history of depression. Correlational analyses indicated that adolescents were moderately consistent in the coping strategies used with peer stress and family stress. Mean levels of coping were similar across situations, as adolescents reported greater use of secondary control coping (i.e., acceptance, distraction) than primary control coping (i.e., problem solving, emotional expression) or disengagement coping (i.e., avoidance) with both types of stress. Regression analyses indicated that fewer symptoms of self-reported anxiety/depression and aggression were related to using secondary control coping strategies in response to family stress and primary control coping in response to peer stress. Implications for understanding the characteristics of effective coping with stress related to living with a depressed parent are highlighted. |
Approximate graph edit distance computation by means of bipartite graph matching | In recent years, the use of graph based object representation has gained popularity. Simultaneously, graph edit distance emerged as a powerful and flexible graph matching paradigm that can be used to address different tasks in pattern recognition, machine learning, and data mining. The key advantages of graph edit distance are its high degree of flexibility, which makes it applicable to any type of graph, and the fact that one can integrate domain specific knowledge about object similarity by means of specific edit cost functions. Its computational complexity, however, is exponential in the number of nodes of the involved graphs. Consequently, exact graph edit distance is feasible for graphs of rather small size only. In the present paper we introduce a novel algorithm which allows us to approximately, or suboptimally, compute edit distance in a substantially faster way. The proposed algorithm considers only local, rather than global, edge structure during the optimization process. In experiments on different datasets we demonstrate a substantial speed-up of our proposed method over two reference systems. Moreover, it is emprically verified that the accuracy of the suboptimal distance remains sufficiently accurate for various pattern recognition applications. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Biology of Bone Tissue: Structure, Function, and Factors That Influence Bone Cells | Bone tissue is continuously remodeled through the concerted actions of bone cells, which include bone resorption by osteoclasts and bone formation by osteoblasts, whereas osteocytes act as mechanosensors and orchestrators of the bone remodeling process. This process is under the control of local (e.g., growth factors and cytokines) and systemic (e.g., calcitonin and estrogens) factors that all together contribute for bone homeostasis. An imbalance between bone resorption and formation can result in bone diseases including osteoporosis. Recently, it has been recognized that, during bone remodeling, there are an intricate communication among bone cells. For instance, the coupling from bone resorption to bone formation is achieved by interaction between osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Moreover, osteocytes produce factors that influence osteoblast and osteoclast activities, whereas osteocyte apoptosis is followed by osteoclastic bone resorption. The increasing knowledge about the structure and functions of bone cells contributed to a better understanding of bone biology. It has been suggested that there is a complex communication between bone cells and other organs, indicating the dynamic nature of bone tissue. In this review, we discuss the current data about the structure and functions of bone cells and the factors that influence bone remodeling. |
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