This paper presents a computational approach on predicting of hardness performances for Titanium Aluminium Nitride (TiA1N) coating process. A new application in predicting the hardness performances of TiA1N coatings using a method called Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is implemented. TiAlN coatings are usually used in high-speed machining due to its excellent properties in surface hardness and wear resistance. Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) magnetron sputtering process has been used to produce the TiA1N coatings. Based on the experimental dataset of previous work, the SVM and ANN model is used in predicting the hardness of TiA1N coatings. The influential factors of three coating process parameter namely substrate sputtering power, substrate bias voltage and substrate temperature were selected as input while the output parameter is the hardness. The results of proposed SVM and ANN models are compared to the experimental result and the hybrid RSM-Fuzzy model from previous work. The comparisons of SVM and ANN models against hybrid RSM-Fuzzy were based on predictive performances in order to obtain the most accurate model for prediction of hardness in TiA1N coating. In terms of predictive performance evaluation, four performances matrix were applied that are percentage error, mean square error (MSE), co-efficient determination (R 2 ) and model accuracy. The result has proved that the proposed SVM model shows the better result compared to the ANN and hybrid RSM-fuzzy model. The good performances of the results obtained by the SVM method shows that this method can be applied for prediction of hardness performances in TiA1N coating process with better predictive performances compared to ANN and hybrid RSM-Fuzzy.


Background: Brain abscess carries a high morbidity and mortality despite medical advances. In this paper, we present a single institution's experience with the surgical treatment of brain abscess. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 33 cases of intracranial abscess who underwent surgical treatment between January 2001 and December 2009. Patients were treated with aspiration through a single burr hole, open aspiration with ultrasound guidance, or complete abscess resection. The medical records were analyzed for demographics, clinical presentation, predisposing factors, imaging, microbiological investigations, treatment, and outcomes. Results: There were 26 male and 7 female patients, aged between 12 and 78 years. The most common predisposing factor was head trauma. Surgical excision of the abscess was performed in 22 patients, open aspiration in 9 patients, and burr-hole aspiration in 2 patients. Repeat surgical procedure was required in six patients. Mortality in this series was 21%. A favorable outcome (Glasgow outcome scale 4 and 5) was achieved in 54%. There was no significant correlation between outcome and age, predisposing factor, treatment modality, or culture results. Conclusions: In this series, most patients were treated with an open technique, either by surgical excision or open aspiration of brain abscess. An open technique may reduce the need for additional imaging, surgical treatment, and length of antibiotic therapy. In resource-limited settings, excision of brain abscess may play a more important role in patient management while maintaining favorable outcomes.


By looking for possible violation of the generalized second law, we might be able to find regions in the space of theories and states that do not allow holographic dual descriptions. We revisit three proposals for violation of the generalized second law in the simplest Higgs phase of gravity called ghost condensate. Two of them, (i) analogue of Penrose process and (ii) semiclassical heat flow, are based on Lorentz breaking effects, by which particles of different species can have different limits of speed. We show that processes in both (i) and (ii) are always slower than accretion of ghost condensate and cannot decrease the total entropy before the accretion increases the entropy. The other proposal is to use (iii) negative energy carried by excitations of ghost condensate. We prove an averaged null energy condition, which we conjecture prevents the proposal (iii) from violating the generalized second law in a coarse-grained sense.


Over the years, the healthcare industry has transformed from being hospital-centric to patient-centric. This shift is mainly due to the convergence of emergent technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT)-based healthcare, fifth generation (5G)-assisted networking, and data-driven analytics through artificial intelligence. The convergence, referred to as Healthcare 5.0, has improved healthcare services to support real-time analytics, user mobility, remote monitoring, and personalized user experience through decentralized applications. However, the medical supply chain systems and delivery operations among healthcare stakeholders suffer from limitations of harsh environmental conditions due to restricted zones, rough terrains, war-prone areas, poor road conditions, congested traffic, and remote locations. Thus, the Internet of Drones (IoD) is deployed in Healthcare 5.0 supply chains to streamline and expedite the medical delivery process through open channels (i.e. the Internet). However, the Internet is an open channel that is prone to malicious activities which can violate the privacy and confidentiality of patient data. Blockchain is a promising technology that can handle the security and reliability of drone delivery among untrusted open channels. Motivated by the aforementioned facts, we propose GaRuDa, a blockchain-based drone delivery scheme for Healthcare 5.0 applications. The proposed scheme integrates IoD and blockchain through 5G-enabled tactile Internet to facilitate low-latency responsive delivery of medical supplies that can be chronologically monitored and tracked among different stakeholders. We compared the proposed scheme with the traditional medical delivery scheme with payment gateways to demonstrate its effectiveness in terms of data storage, computation, and communication costs. The simulation results obtained show that the average transaction cost has been reduced by ≈ 44.56 percent, and 5G tactile Internet has a reduced latency of 0.051 ms compared to 18.3 ms in 4G LTE service. The average communication overheads have reduced by ≈ 67.34 percent compared to traditional 4G LTE and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing channels, which indicates the scheme's viability.


Factorization relations for rotational inelastic differential cross sections and transition probabilities for collisional excitation of rigid polyatomic targets are discussed within the sudden approximation for the special case of symmetric top molecules. The excitation of initially rotating spherical top molecules by electron impact at intermediate energies is studied in detail and the rotational rainbow structure is analysed.


In wireless communications sensitive data is frequently changed, requiring remote authentication. Remote authentication involves the submission of encrypted data, along with visual and audio cues (facial images/videos, human voice etc.). Nonetheless, malicious program and different attacks will cause serious issues, particularly in cases of remote examinations or interviewing. This paper proposes a sturdy authentication mechanism supported semantic segmentation, chaotic cryptography and knowledge concealment. Assuming that user X needs to be remotely documented, initially X's video object (VO) is mechanically segmental, employing a head and-body detector. Next, one amongst X's biometric signals is encrypted by a chaotic cipher. Subsequently the encrypted signal is inserted to the most vital riffle coefficients of the VO, victimization its Qualified Significant riffle Trees (QSWTs). QSWTs give invisibility and vital resistance against loss transmission and compression, conditions that area unit typical in wireless networks. Finally, the Inverse distinct riffle rework (IDWT) is applied to supply the stegno-object (SO). Experimental results, regarding: (a) security deserves of the planned cryptography theme, (b) strength to stegno-analytic attacks, to numerous transmission losses and JPEG compression ratios and (c) information measure potency measures, indicate the promising performance of the planned biometrics-based authentication theme.


A new extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) mode is discovered when a hexagonal Ag nanohole array is covered by a tilted Ag nanorod array. The resonant wavelength of this EOT mode red-shifts with respect to the normal EOT mode predicted by plasmon-grating coupling theory or dynamic scattering theory and increases linearly with the nanorod length. The structures also show strong polarization dependence; i.e., when the electric field (E-field) direction of the incident light is perpendicular to the long axis of the nanorods, only normal EOT spectrum is visible, but when the E-field is parallel to nanorod axis, the new mode appears. Our finite-difference-time-domain calculations confirm this finding and show that this new mode is due to the dipole radiation of the nanorods on top of the nanoholes. It is expected that other complicated unit cells of nanohole arrays could generate other new EOT modes and can be used to design new optical devices.


In the present work, the socio-economic essence and role of the institutional in the system of providing food aid to the needy population is investigated, the composition and functions of institutions, the mechanism of interaction between participants in the production, social, credit and financial and trade spheres are determined. The potential of the resource base and the institutional environment for the functioning of organizations within the region's internal food aid system has been assessed.A methodology for determining the resource potential of the region is proposed, based on an integrated approach that includes both an assessment of the possibility of self-sufficiency in the population's food supply and the potential of land resources for environmentally friendly production by involving unsuitable for intensive farming of soils; as well as the mechanism for increasing the production capacities of processing enterprises for food production and the approach in which the development vector is aimed at motivating land users to use saving technologies with tools of the state support system within the green box of WTO norms.
New approaches to establishing the interaction of food trade agents are substantiated, the essence of which is to change the architecture of the trade process, the introduction of production and logistics centers in the product chains. This will allow commodity producers, bypassing trade networks, to increase the amount of conditioned food that meets technological requirements; use the resources of transnational trade network structures in the interests of the region, develop the logistic potential, obtain a synergistic effect
The book addresses the complex problem of forming the infrastructure of domestic food aid to the population in the region: resource supply of food; restoration of fertility of degraded lands for the production of environmentally friendly food; state support of economic entities in the sphere of production and processing within the framework of the green box of WTO norms. It is proposed to introduce production and logistics centers into the composition of product chains; alternative forms of trade in food; form payment systems for targeted assistance to the population; use the resource of trade network structures in the development of the region's logistics potential.
 The publication is designed for employees of government and municipal government, infrastructure links of the food security system, social protection of the population
Keywords. food security for the needy population, a socially-oriented economy, an infrastructure for food aid to the population, organic farming, pilot projects,a "green WTO basket».


Rapid improvements in computing power have opened the way for desktop virtual reality trainers that incorporate realistic graphics and, in some cases, the sense of touch. Affordable commercial simulators, for instance, are now available for practising such tasks as threading flexible endoscopes down a virtual patient's throat or manipulating the long surgical instruments used in laparoscopy. Companies and universities are also developing systems that simulate more complex procedures, such as suturing tissue and inserting a catheter into a vein using laparoscopic tools. These VR trainers can be adjusted to the user, to pinpoint areas of weakness, and they can be used at any time, without the need for supervision. What's more, they prepare the student psychologically for surgical tasks, because complications can be simulated in a safe manner. They can also give objective scores of a student's ability. Indeed, studies show that computer based training simulations are at least as good as standard training methods.


Recently, Self-Supervised Representation Learning (SSRL) has attracted much attention in the field of computer vision, speech, natural language processing (NLP), and recently, with other types of modalities, including time series from sensors. The popularity of self-supervised learning is driven by the fact that traditional models typically require a huge amount of well-annotated data for training. Acquiring annotated data can be a difficult and costly process. Self-supervised methods have been introduced to improve the efficiency of training data through discriminative pre-training of models using supervisory signals that have been freely obtained from the raw data. Unlike existing reviews of SSRL that have pre-dominately focused upon methods in the fields of CV or NLP for a single modality, we aim to provide the first comprehensive review of multimodal self-supervised learning methods for temporal data. To this end, we 1) provide a comprehensive categorization of existing SSRL methods, 2) introduce a generic pipeline by defining the key components of a SSRL framework, 3) compare existing models in terms of their objective function, network architecture and potential applications, and 4) review existing multimodal techniques in each category and various modalities. Finally, we present existing weaknesses and future opportunities. We believe our work develops a perspective on the requirements of SSRL in domains that utilise multimodal and/or temporal data


Objective:To evaluate the safety and efficacy of active site inactivated recombinant factor VIIa (FFR-rFVIIa) in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Design:Phase II, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-escalation trial. Setting:Forty-six intensive care units (ICU) in ten countries. Patients:All adult (≥18 years), mechanically ventilated patients with acute onset (within 48 hour) of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome were included. Interventions:Four sequential (in ascending order) treatment groups (cohorts) in single and multiple dosing strategies. Subjects were randomized in a 2:1 ratio to either FFR-rFVIIa or placebo within each cohort. Measurements and Results:Data were collected daily for 7 days and on days 14 and 28 for efficacy variables including hematology and coagulation parameters, plasma d-dimer levels, plasma interleukin-6 levels, vital signs, ventilator parameters, lung injury score, and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score. The study was discontinued prematurely by the Safety Committee based on statistical analysis of the mortality in cohort 3 (4 × 400 &mgr;g/kg), which suggested that, after adjusting for prognostic covariates, 28-day mortality was significantly higher in this cohort than in the placebo group and time to death was significantly shorter. A total of 214 patients (147 male) were included in the trial, mean age 59 years (range, 24–85 years). Overall, there were no significant differences in mortality rates in treated and placebo patients (36/144 deaths FFR-rFVIIa, 15/70 placebo). There was no treatment effect of FFR-rFVIIa on vital signs, blood chemistry parameters, hematology parameters, or amount of transfusion products required. There was a trend to increased bleeding with increasing FFR-rFVIIa dose. Conclusion:In this randomized double-blind, placebo- controlled, dose-escalation trial, FFR-rFVIIa had no beneficial effects on morbidity or outcome overall. The cohort of patients receiving 4 × 400 &mgr;g/kg of FFR-rFVIIa had increased mortality rates compared with placebo-treated patients, and there was a trend to increased risk of serious bleeding with increasing doses.


We present a case of lateral cervical cyst stressing the difficulties about the diagnosis. The international guidelines for the management of lateral neck cysts in the over 40s' age group are taken in consideration. Our case is a 74 years old male patient with a 6 month history of a cervical swelling. We consider this case rare for the age of patient and the absence of malignancy.


We study the effects of random fluctuations on quantum phase transitions by the energy gap analysis. For the infinite-ranged spin-glass models with a transverse field, we find that a strong sample-to-sample fluctuation effect leads to broad distributions of the energy gap. As a result, the linear, spin-glass, and nonlinear susceptibilities behave differently from each other. The power-law tail of the distribution implies a quantum Griffiths-like effect that could be observed in various random quantum systems. We also discuss the mechanisms of the phase transition in terms of the energy gap by comparing the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model and random energy model, which demonstrate the difference between the continuous and discontinuous phase transitions.


Many organizations of the current decade use the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) which is a standard for capturing business processes in the early phases of systems development. The mix of constructs found in BPMN makes it possible to create models with behavioral errors. Such errors are especially problematic at the levels of domain analysis and high-level systems design, because errors at these levels are among the hardest and most costly to correct. A methodology for monitoring the correctness and identification of the inherent properties of the process model is thus a desirable feature for modelling tools based on BPMN. Nevertheless, since prior studies have only examined issues related to semantic and functional model checking methods, there have been few researches that introduce and discuss the hidden properties and the behavioral relationships between the components of the model. In this paper, a robust architecture for business process property evaluation engine is proposed. This can be integrated with any Business Process Modeling framework to efficiently identify the isolated properties in the individual components of the model and visualize the runtime exceptions in the model. Evaluation of the proposed architecture with the help of the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) shows that using this property evaluation engine, a target system can be developed with less manpower, in less time, and with higher quality than previous methods. The property evaluation mechanism improves the earlier mode of business design and further recommends the business expert to convert the functionality into an optimized one. This is a new research dimension which paves way for the certainty of the easy maintenance and re-engineering of business processes in future.


According to the World Health Organization (WHO) prostate cancer is the second cause of cancer death in men worldwide [1,2]. Some advanced prostate cancers have well known symptoms. However non-cancerous diseases of the prostate, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) cause same symptoms. On the other hand, at very early stages, prostate cancer has no symptoms, the tumor dimension is quite small, and it is extremely difficult to detect it. If prostate cancer is detected at an early stage, it can be successfully cured by different methods. At the later stages, treatment or surgery has very low efficiency. Prostate cancer can often be found by measuring the amount of PSA in the blood. Most healthy men have levels under 4 nano-grams per milliliter (ng/mL) of blood. When prostate cancer develops, the PSA level usually goes above 4. However, for determination of the existence of cancer, some additional methods are used: for example: PSA velocity [3,4] and/or PSA density. Besides, measurement of the ratio of free to total PSA is additional tool in prostate cancer diagnosis [5]. However, the major drawback of PSA determination is its relative lack of specificity. The PSA level can also be increased by benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) a noncancerous enlargement of the prostate, prostatitis, etc.


Objectives: We investigated sleep-related deglutition in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). Methods: Deglutition during sleep was examined in 10 patients with a mean (±SD) age of 48 ± 11 years who had severe OSAHS (apnea-hypopnea index, 66.6 ± 17.6) via time-matched recordings of polysomnography and surface electromyography of the thyrohyoid and suprahyoid muscles. Results: During sleep, deglutition was episodic, and was absent for long periods. Deglutition did not occur during apnea or hypopnea periods. The mean number of swallows per hour during the total sleep time was 5.4 ± 3.1. The mean period of the longest absence of deglutition was 43.5 ± 14.7 minutes. Most deglutition occurred in association with respiratory electroencephalographic arousal after apnea or hypopnea. Approximately 70% of swallows were followed by inspiration. Deglutition was related to the sleep stage. The mean number of swallows per hour was 6.2 ± 6.1 during stage 1 sleep, 6.0 ± 3.4 during stage 2 sleep, 3.0 ± 5.2 during stage 3 sleep, and 0 during stage 4 sleep. The deeper the sleep stage, the lower the mean deglutition frequency. The mean number of swallows per hour was 4.5 ± 3.0 during rapid eye movement sleep. Conclusions: Deglutition was infrequent and displayed a unique pattern in patients with OSAHS during sleep.


The relation between cancer and metabolic disorders was recognized several decades ago, but the underlying mechanisms involved in cancer development and progression remain obscure. In the last years, many groups have been studying systemic adipose tissue markers in cancer patients. However, few consistent results were obtained. On the other hand, several studies revealed many aspects of adipose tissue physiology in obesity. Nowadays, it is recognized that excessive lipid uptake in adipocytes leads to hypertrophy and consequently to metabolic dysregulation, hypoxia, inflammation, impaired adipocytokine expression and angiogenesis, insulin resistance and macrophage recruitment. In obese patients, tumours commonly colocalize with excessive adipose tissue accumulation, and most of the features of hypertrophic adipose tissue are observed in cancer patients, namely breast and colon. This review aimed to summarize pathological adipose tissue alterations that may contribute to cancer aetiology and development. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In military operations, many units are mobile and equipped with relatively limited (wireless) communication means in terms of bandwidth and transmission range. Moreover, communications are potentially subject to interference, jamming, and unavailability (e.g., because of radio silence). In this paper we introduce a formal data model for communication impairments in a system that has distributed sources and users of information, and a corresponding mathematical model for the quality of information provisioning in the system. The models focus at policies for updating the information at the user side from the source. Both models have been implemented in a software tool and tested with an example scenario from army logistics. The interactive tool allows a network architect to choose proper dimensions for the communication links and networks, and to compare the quality of the information in the system under different update strategies


Objective Several studies have indicated that miR-15a, miR-15b and miR-16 may be the important regulators of apoptosis. Since attenuate apoptosis could protect myocardium and reduce infarction size, the present study was aimed to find out whether these miRNAs participate in regulating myocardial ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury. Methods Apoptosis in mice hearts subjected to I/R was detected by TUNEL assay in vivo, while flow cytometry analysis followed by Annexin V/PI double stain in vitro was used to detect apoptosis in cultured cardiomyocytes which were subjected to hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R). Taqman real-time quantitative PCR was used to confirm whether miR-15a/15b/16 were involved in the regulation of cardiac I/R and H/R. Results Compared to those of the controls, I/R or H/R induced apoptosis of cardiomyocytes was significantly increased both in vivo (24.4% ± 9.4% vs. 2.2% ± 1.9%, P < 0.01, n = 5) and in vitro (14.12% ± 0.92% vs. 2.22% ± 0.08%). The expression of miR-15a and miR-15b, but not miR-16, was increased in the mice I/R model, and the results were consistent in the H/R model. Conclusions Our data indicate miR-15 and miR-15b are up-regulated in response to cardiac I/R injury, therefore, down-regulation of miR-15a/b may be a promising strategy to reduce myocardial apoptosis induced by cardiac I/R injury.


Cytological studies of the developing mycelium of Claviceps suggest that genetic uniformity may be obtained in strains derived from single spores.


A physical optics formulation of scattering by thin wire helices of finite and infinite extent is presented. The high frequency limit of the integral representation of the physical optics field is obtained by the saddle point technique and is shown to be identical to the field computed by the geometrical optics approximation. For thin wire helices of finite extent, the physical optics approximation to the current should be supplemented by current waves traveling along the wire that are excited by the discontinuities at the ends of the wire. This modified physical optics approach is found to be a useful approximation to compute scattering by nonresonant helices that have a larger pitch than approximately 5 wavelengths. A hybrid method composed of the modified physical optics technique and the method of moments is applied, for the degenerate case of a linear wire, in order to extend the region of validity to cover the resonant cases. The modified physical optics approach is typically 5–10 times faster than Galerkin's method, and most important, it provides physical insight into the scattering phenomenon.


Objective: To systematically assess the reporting of sample size calculation in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on rehabilitation interventions for mechanical low back pain. Data Sources: The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched through February 2015. Study Selection: We conducted an electronic database search for RCTs published from January 1, 1968 to February 28, 2015 and included in the Cochrane Systematic Reviews. Data Extraction: Two investigators independently used an ad hoc 6-item checklist derived from the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) 2010 statement recommendations to extract data on sample size calculation. The primary outcome was the proportion of RCTs that reported sample size calculation; the secondary outcome was the completeness of sample size analysis reporting. We also evaluated improvement in reporting of sample size calculation over time. Data Synthesis: Sample size calculation was reported in 80 (36.0%) of the 222 eligible RCTs included in 14 Cochrane Systematic Reviews. Only 13 (16.3%) of these RCT reports gave a complete description, and about half reported ≥4 of the 6 elements of sample size calculation (median, 4; interquartile range, 3-5). Completeness of reporting of sample size calculation improved from 1968 to 2013; since 2005, the number of RCTs reporting sample size calculation has increased compared with the number of RCTs not reporting it. Conclusions: Despite improvement, reporting of sample size calculation and power analysis remains inadequate, limiting the reader's ability to assess the quality and accuracy of rehabilitation studies. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 2016;97:1195-201


ABSTRACT A series aromatic polyimide (PI) membranes in the form of permselective films was synthesised from different dianhydrides with two diamine monomers for gallic acid (GA) measurement. The obtained PI films were examined by Spectroscopic techniques, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and thermal analysis techniques and then used to fabricate the selective films on the modified electrode. Because of their excellent film properties, as the permselective polymeric membranes were used for determination of GA in the presence of various interferences and real sample. The PI-1-modified Pt electrode showed a very high R-value (0.9935) and reproducibility for GA determination, as well as high selectivity. Graphical Abstract


MOTIVATION
A vast amount of information about human, animal and plant pathogens has been acquired, stored and displayed in varied formats through different resources, both electronically and otherwise. However, there is no community standard format for organizing this information or agreement on machine-readable format(s) for data exchange, thereby hampering interoperation efforts across information systems harboring such infectious disease data.

RESULTS
The Pathogen Information Markup Language (PIML) is a free, open, XML-based format for representing pathogen information. XSLT-based visual presentations of valid PIML documents were developed and can be accessed through the PathInfo website or as part of the interoperable web services federation known as ToolBus/PathPort. Currently, detailed PIML documents are available for 21 pathogens deemed of high priority with regard to public health and national biological defense. A dynamic query system allows simple queries as well as comparisons among these pathogens. Continuing efforts are being taken to include other groups' supporting PIML and to develop more PIML documents.

AVAILABILITY
All the PIML-related information is accessible from http://www.vbi.vt.edu/pathport/pathinfo/


To quantify how well natural language understanding models can capture consistency in a general conversation, we introduce the DialoguE COntradiction DEtection task (DECODE) and a new conversational dataset containing both human-human and human-bot contradictory dialogues. We then compare a structured utterance-based approach of using pre-trained Transformer models for contradiction detection with the typical unstructured approach. Results reveal that: (i) our newly collected dataset is notably more effective at providing supervision for the dialogue contradiction detection task than existing NLI data including those aimed to cover the dialogue domain; (ii) the structured utterance-based approach is more robust and transferable on both analysis and out-of-distribution dialogues than its unstructured counterpart. We also show that our best contradiction detection model correlates well with human judgements and further provide evidence for its usage in both automatically evaluating and improving the consistency of state-of-the-art generative chatbots.


Exactly solvable models play a distinguished role in physics, as they help us understand the behavior of strongly correlated, strongly coupled systems in the regimes where other methods fail. For a long time, the exact solvability was associated with (1+1)-dimensional systems, where powerful methods of integrability allow one to find the exact spectrum, to study thermodynamics and to compute correlation functions for a number of strongly interacting field theories. The AdS/CFT duality established a rigorous relationship between gauge fields and strings, and paved the way for applying the methods of integrability in four-dimensional gauge theories. The two-dimensional dynamics on the string worldsheet (dual to the fluctuating electric flux tube in a gauge theory) is in many cases integrable, which opens the avenue for applications of non-perturbative, integrability-based methods to four-dimensional gauge theories. The progress in understanding non-perturbative phenomena in gauge theories has been rapid in recent years, and required synergy of methods from exactly solvable models, gauge theories, strings and integrable systems. The program 'Exact Results in Gauge–String Dualities' took place at Nordita, Stockholm from 23 January to 17 February 2012 and brought together specialists with common interests in string theory, quantum field theory and exactly solvable models. Topics discussed during the program included: (i) exact results in the AdS/CFT correspondence, (ii) scattering amplitudes, (iii) supersymmetric gauge theories, and (iv) Bethe ansatz and exact solvability in quantum field theory and statistical systems. The articles by D Sorokin [1] and M de Leeuw et al [2] give an overview of the string-theory origins of integrability in gauge theories, and of the algebraic structures omnipresent in quantum integrable systems. The topics covered in these articles underpin the integrability approach to gauge--string dualities and lie at the heart of the integrability-based methods, which are being used to obtain exact non-perturbative results in gauge theories.


In order to understand the development of stem-cells into specialized mature cells it is necessary to study the growth of cells in culture. For this purpose it is very useful to have an efficient computerized cell tracking system. In this paper a prototype system for tracking neural stem cells in a sequence of images is described. The system is automatic as far as possible but in order to get as complete and correct tracking results as possible the user can interactively verify and correct the crucial starting segmentation of the first frame and inspect the final result and correct errors if nec-essary. All cells are classified into inactive, active, dividing and clustered cells. Different algorithms are used to deal with the different cell categories. A special backtracking step is used to automatically correct for some common errors that appear in the initial forward tracking process.


Neural pathway for visual information processing involves retina, lateral geniculate body, primary visual cortex, and higher visual cortical areas, all of which have been reported to be disordered either functionally or pathologically in Parkinson disease (PD). As elementary visual disorders, there have been studies that reported reduced contrast sensitivity for middle to high spatial frequencies and impaired blue color perception. Most of those studies suggested retina as the damaged cite that is responsible for the impairments, whereas some studies pointed to the possible cortical involvement. Impairments of higher visual functions also have been reported. In the dorsal stream, impairments of object localization, depth perception, and mental rotation have been reported. In the ventral stream, object perception and visual integration of objects have been found to be impaired. A meta-analysis study, however, concluded that although there may be impairments in higher order functions like attention and problem solving capacity there is no firm evidence for the impairments of higher visual functions. Neuroimaging studies have found a relationship between reduced metabolism centered in the parietal lobe and impaired performance in higher visual functions. Impaired identification of overlapping figures has been reported in dementia with Lewy bodies a disease that is akin to PD. Capacity to discriminate textured areas has been found to be damaged in PD. We conducted a FDG-PET study to explore the relationship between brain metabolism and perception of overlapping figures, perception of shapes defined by texture differences and perception of subjective contours in PD. It revealed that there is a correlation between reduced activation in lateral occipital complex and impaired performance for these tasks, suggesting some compromised ventral rout functions.


The Interrogator is a Prolog program that searches for security vulnerabilities in network protocols for automatic cryptographic key distribution. Given a formal specification of the protocol, it looks for message modification attacks that defeat the protocol objective. It is still under developement, but is has been able to rediscover a known vulnerability in a published protocol. It is implemented in LM-Prolog on a Lisp Machine, with a graphical user interface.


Shipyards, an architectural typology developed since the classical civilizations to build military or merchant vessels, found their greatest technological progress in the Middle Ages. Especially in the Mediterranean area, they were built with different techniques and materials, generating different characteristics related to the context in which they were grown. These architectures, which are examples of prosperous times for the medieval harbour towns, seemed obsolete a few decades ago regarding the original functions for which they were built. Today, they are partly in an evident degradation state and partly recovered. In a contemporary logic that provides for the reuse of places, by the characteristic industrial feature now disused, in new cultural centres and attractive poles for these cities, the constructive conformation as well as technologies and materials applied should be understood. Some of the most influential medieval dockyards in the Mediterranean basin were analyzed, considering the places in which they are based and the main constructive elements, with particular attention paid to the analysis of representative technological systems of the whole structure (i.e. piers, pillars and arcs; old wooden roofing systems; stone vaulted structures). The study aims to develop a comparative analysis in terms of morphology, materials and construction techniques of the elements that configure the aisles or lanes in which different boats were built, repaired or preserved or stored. The aim is to demonstrate that, despite the peculiarities of each site, in which the traditional building techniques linked to local materials were used, the medieval shipyard architectural type have evolved and consolidated in a homologous way in the whole Mediterranean area.


Abstract Enzyme cofactors play a major role in biocatalysis, as many enzymes require them to catalyze highly valuable reactions in organic synthesis. However, the cofactor recycling is often a hurdle to implement enzymes at the industrial level. The fabrication of heterogeneous biocatalysts co‐immobilizing phosphorylated cofactors (PLP, FAD+, and NAD+) and enzymes onto the same solid material is reported to perform chemical reactions without exogeneous addition of cofactors in aqueous media. In these self‐sufficient heterogeneous biocatalysts, the immobilized enzymes are catalytically active and the immobilized cofactors catalytically available and retained into the solid phase for several reaction cycles. Finally, we have applied a NAD+‐dependent heterogeneous biocatalyst to continuous flow asymmetric reduction of prochiral ketones, thus demonstrating the robustness of this approach for large scale biotransformations.


A diversity of research has demonstrated that, although all people will present with a reaction after a traumatic incident, only a minority will develop posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD (Allan, La Grange, Niehaus, Scheurkogel & Stein, 1998). A complex interaction of multiple preand posttrauma factors determines the response. Numerous studies have attempted to assess variables that make an individual more susceptible to developing PTSD. A number of factors were investigated including genetic (Eisen, Goldberg, Heath, Lyons, Nowak & Rise, 1993), family history (Breslau, Davis, Andreski & Peterson, 1991), individual personality (Schurr, Friedman & Rosenberg, 1993), past history of trauma (Zaidi & Foy, 1994) and life events (McFarlane, 1989). A number of studies have identified posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an important issue in various South African groups (Kaminer, Seedat, Lockhat & Stein 2000; Marais, De Villiers, Möller & Stein, 1999).


Abstract : The Petite Amateur Navy Satellite (PANSAT) is a communications satellite being developed at the Naval Postgraduate School by the Space Systems Academic Group. This thesis is the result of an investigation into all aspects of the project. Research, analyses, and recommendations were concentrated in the areas of engineering design, testing, orbital operations, and organization and management. The study identified the upcoming Shuttle to Mir flights as providing the most attractive orbital parameters for PANSAT operations. A systems analysis was conducted that attempted to develop and prioritize engineering design issues requiring more thorough investigation. The chief problem area discovered by this analysis was in the power production aspect of the Electrical Power System (EPS). PANSAT was determined to have a negative power margin under certain conditions, and an even lower power margin than previously believed under most conditions. It is recommended that the project make satellite development its principal objective (over education) to maximize the likelihood of success. Student participation in the project is the single greatest asset of the project, and it remains largely untapped.. Re-organizing the project to increase student involvement, within the constraints of the Space Systems curricula, will improve efficiency by easing extraneous requirements on an over-tasked engineering staff, and thereby improve overall productivity. Systems analysis, Project management, Small satellites, PANSAT, Systems engineering, Systems management.


Time synchronization among sensor devices connected through non-deterministic media is a fundamental requirement for sensor fusion and other distributed tasks that need a common time reference. In many of the time synchronization methods existing in literature, the estimation of the relation between pairs of clocks is a core concept; moreover, in applications that do not have general connectivity among its devices but a simple pairwise topology, such as embedded systems, mobile robots or home automation, two-clock synchronization is actually the basic form of the time estimation problem. In these kinds of applications, especially for critical ones, not only the quality of the estimation of the relation between two clocks is important, but also the bounds the methods provide for the estimated values, and their computational effort (since many are small systems). In this paper, we characterize, with a thorough parameterization, the possible scenarios where two-clock synchronization is to be solved, and then conduct a rigorous statistical study of both scenarios and methods. The study is based on exhaustive simulations run in a super-computer. Our aim is to provide a sound basis to select the best clock synchronization algorithm depending on the application requirements and characteristics, and also to deduce which ones of these characteristics are most relevant, in general, when solving the problem. For our comparisons we have considered several representative methods for clock synchronization according to a novel taxonomy that we also propose in the paper, and in particular, a few geometrical ones that have special desirable characteristics for the two-clock problem. We illustrate the method selection procedure with practical use-cases of sensory systems where two-clock synchronization is essential.


Background:Despite growing demand for nursing and home health care as the US population ages, compensation levels in the low-skill nursing labor market that provides the bulk of long-term care remain quite low. The challenge facing providers of long-term care is that Medicaid reimbursement rates for nursing home and home health care severely restrict the wage growth that is necessary to attract workers, resulting in high turnover and labor shortages. Almost half of US states have responded by enacting "pass-through" provisions in their Medicaid programs, channeling additional long-term care funding directly to compensation of lower-skill nursing workers. Objectives:We test the effect of Medicaid wage pass-through programs on hourly wages for direct care workers. Research Design:We estimate several specifications of wage models using employment data from the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation for nursing, home health, and personal care aides. The effect of pass-through programs is identified by an indicator variable for states with programs; 20 states adopted pass-throughs during the sample period. Results:Workers in states with pass-through programs earn as much as 12% more per hour than workers in other states after those programs are implemented. Conclusions:Medicaid wage pass-through programs appear to be a viable policy option for raising compensation levels of direct care workers, with an eye toward improving recruitment and retention in long-term care settings.


This paper presents design of a proprietary master-slave topology communication protocol based in Power Line Communication technology, thus using the electrical grid as its communication channel. Said protocol uses half-duplex and broadcast transmission and was implemented over a measurement system composed of a hub and three remote electric meters; this system is capable of individualizing electrical consumption measurements obtained for each one of the MTUs. Measurement devices were designed to operate at a 115 Vrms - 60 Hz phase voltage, allowing the measurement of loads of up to 1400W; the hub is able to visualize energy consumption of up to 99.99 kWh.


BACKGROUND
Cancer pain is usually managed by oncologists, occasionally with input from specialists in hospice and palliative medicine (PLM) or pain medicine (PMD). We evaluated the knowledge of cancer pain management in these three specialty groups.

METHODS
Eight vignettes depicting challenging scenarios of patients with poorly controlled pain were developed; each had five or six treatment choices. Respondents indicated choices likely to be safe and efficacious as "true" and choices likely to be unsafe or inefficacious as "false." Two questionnaires were created, each with four vignettes. Three anonymous mailings targeted geographically representative U.S. samples of 570 oncologists, 266 PMD specialists, and 280 PLM specialists, each randomly assigned one version of the questionnaire. Vignette scores were normalized to a 0-100 numeric rating scale (NRS); a score of 50 indicates that the number of correct choices equals the number of incorrect choices (consistent with guessing).

RESULTS
Overall response rate was 49% (oncologists, 39%; PMD specialists, 48%; and PLM specialists, 70%). Average vignette score ranges were 53.2-66.5, 45.6-65.6, and 50.8-72.0 for oncologists, PMD specialists, and PLM specialists, respectively. Oncologists scored lower than PLM specialists on both questionnaires and lower than PMD specialists on one. On a 0-10 NRS, oncologists rated their ability to manage pain highly (median 7, with an interquartile range [IQR] of 5-8). Lower ratings were assigned to pain-related training in medical school (median 3, with an IQR of 2-5) and residency/fellowship (median 5, with an IQR of 4-7). Oncologists older than 46-47 years rated their training lower than younger oncologists.

CONCLUSION
These data suggest that oncologists and other medical specialists who manage cancer pain have knowledge deficiencies in cancer pain management. These gaps help clarify the need for pain management education.


In recent years buckling procedures for the correction of retinal detachment have achieved a large measure of acceptance and success. However, drainage of subretinal fluid has often been a perplexing and complicated process, sometimes fraught with great hazards. 1 These include choroidal hemorrhage, formation of new retinal holes, incarceration of retina and vitreous into the drainage site, and the development of massive retinal folds. It is desirable, therefore, to be able to achieve the beneficial effects of a "buckle" without drainage of subretinal fluid. In suitable cases this frequently can be achieved through the utilization of a Custodis polyviol implant. 2,3 However, a considerable volume of polyviol implant is essential. Often, when it is sewn into place, marked elevations in intraocular pressure result. Corneal edema and temporary closure of the central retinal artery are the unwanted results. It is then essential to perform repeated paracenteses or to wait a rather


I offer an overview of the relevance of the notion of divine revelation to the methodology of the sciences. The notion of revelation is to be considered in the framework of a well-formed philosophical theory. In such a theory, the theological notion of revelation is important as well, because as a historically evolving notion it has contributed, in its own fashion, to the formation of other sciences. The method the notion of revelation entails is instructive for the methodological presuppositions of the sciences. Most importantly, the dynamism given in the notion of revelation to produce genuine newness – ad intra as well as ad extra – appears to be the decisive methodological factor defining scientific methodology. I also reflect on the importance of various forms of knowledge – apodicticity, certainty and probability – as they appear in the notion of revelation and define scientific forms of knowledge in a historical as well as logical fashion. Finally, I show the place of the methodological discussion in an overall view of revelation as a well-formed philosophical theory.


We consider the problem of finding a single-path intra-domain routing for time-varying traffic. We characterize the traffic variations by a finite set of traffic profiles with given non-zero fractions of occurrence. Our goal is to optimize the average performance over all of these traffic profiles. We solve the optimal multi-path version of this problem using linear programming and develop heuristic single-path solutions using randomized rounding and iterated rounding. We analyze our single-path heuristic (finding the optimal single-path routing is NP-hard), and prove that the randomized rounding algorithm has a worst case performance bound of O(log(KN)/log(log(KN))) compared to the optimal multi-path routing with a high probability, where K is the number of traffic profiles, and N the number of nodes in the network. Further, our simulations show the iterated rounding heuristics perform close to the optimal multi-path routing on a wide range of measured ISP topologies, in both the average and the worst-case. Overall, these results are extremely positive since they show that in a wide-range of practical situations, it is not necessary to deploy multi-path routing; instead, an appropriately computed single-path routing is sufficient to provide good performance.


In 1914 Abel, Rowntree and Turner1reported on the physiologic effects in dogs of bleeding, removing the plasma and returning the corpuscles after washing with Locke's solution. Such a process was appropriately designated "plasmaphaeresis," and it was shown by these authors and by Turner, Marshall and Lamson2that it could be carried to a very considerable extent with entire recovery of the experimental animal. The technic presented in these articles required the use of herudin for prevention of blood coagulation, and positive evidence was secured that the German preparation of herudin then on the market had toxic properties of high order.3While the authors in question have offered a number of suggestions as to the possible practical use of plasmaphaeresis, the difficulty of the maneuver, coupled with the impossibility of using herudin, seems to have prevented its clinical employment. In the course of experiments designed to disclose the toxic elements


To describe and compare the oral health behaviors of preschool children with and without cerebral palsy (CP), and to assess the oral health knowledge and attitudes of their primary caregivers (PCGs). Seventy-two preschool children with CP were recruited from 23 Special Child Care Centers in Hong Kong. An age- (±3 months) and gender-matched sample of children from mainstream preschools was recruited as a "control group." Assessment of children's oral health behaviors and the PCGs' oral health knowledge and attitudes was conducted using questionnaires. Preschool children with CP were less likely to have ever attended a dentist (p < 0.05). Tooth brushing frequency was similar between the two groups (p > 0.05), but PCGs of children with CP more frequently reported provision of tooth brushing assistance to their children (p < 0.001). PCGs in both groups had similar oral health knowledge and attitudes (p > 0.05). Difference in oral health behaviors existed between preschool children with and without CP. PCGs of children with and without CP had similar oral health knowledge and attitudes.


The combustion of AP/HTPB laminate propellants is investigated theoretically. Numerical computations are based on finite-rate chemistry with simplified kinetics and a free surface. Both pure and oxygenated binders (loaded with fine AP) are considered. The model shows the ability to qualitatively predict relative protrusion and recession of AP and binder as well as diffusion flame shape. The results show that fine-AP loading has a pronounced effect on the surface and flame structure. The addition of fine AP shows the predominance of a premixed flame over the diffusion flame, which persists over a range of laminate thickness from 100 to 600 (jm. The surface profile is also modified toward a recession of the binder with respect to AP as the width increases. The binder surface remains relatively flat (unlike the case of pure binder, which protrudes noticeably), and burns ahead of the AP, which lags behind at the pressures simulated (10 to 30 atm).


This study tested the hypothesis that exercise-induced oxidative stress is caused by free radical-mediated damage to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) which can be prevented following ascorbate prophylaxis. Hyperfine coupling constants (HCC) of α-phenyl-tert-butylnitrone (PBN)-adducts were measured via room temperature electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy in the venous blood of 12 subjects at rest and following maximal exercise during a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial and compared to those observed following room-air incubation (2 h at 37°C) of L-α-phosphatidycholine, linoleic acid, α-linolenic acid and arachidonic acid. All adducts exhibited similar HCC [aN 13.6 Gauss (G) and aβH 1.8 G] with the exception of L-α-phosphatidycholine [aN1=13.4 G, aβH1=1.6 G (37%) and aN2=14.9 G, aβH2=0.3 G (63%)] consistent with the trapping of lipid-derived alkoxyl and oleate radicals, respectively. Ascorbate pre-treatment ablated radical formation in both systems. These findings identify circulating PUFA as a potential source of secondary radicals that are capable of initiating oxidative stress in the exercising human.


The stability of annular electromagnetic pumps (EMPs) is investigated through 3D direct numerical simulations. When induction effects dominate dissipative processes, linear induction EMPs become unstable and lead to non-axisymmetric states relatively different from what was predicted by previous theoretical models. We show that the 3D destabilization of the flow is deeply connected to the axisymmetric state, and always appears as a secondary bifurcation from a locally stalled flow, even if the applied magnetic field is axisymmetric. Finally, we model a configuration aiming to optimize the efficiency of the pump, by imposing electrical currents on both sides (inner and outer cylinders) of the pump. This configuration increases the efficiency of the pump, but generates a complex dynamics, associated to periodic oscillation of a large vortex flow localized in the active region of the pump. Finally, we demonstrate the existence of an upper bound on the efficiency of such electromagnetic pump, which can never exceed 50%.


Conjugate gradient method is an efficient method in solving problems with unconstrained optimization, which is especially efficient in dealing with large dimension. In light of the conjugate character of conjugate gradient method and the fact that the strength or weakness of an algorithm is more or less determined by the step size and the search direction of the algorithm, a mixed conjugate gradient method is proposed based on Hestenes-stiefel Algorithms and Dai-yuan Algorithms in this paper. We prove it can ensure the convergence under a new line search .


Extracellularly expressed anti-hen egg lysozyme single-chain antibody fragments (scFv) produced by Aspergillus awamori were recovered using filtering centrifugation. Two filtering centrifuges with 0.5- and 30-L capacities were used to represent laboratory- and pilot-scale equipment, respectively. Critical regime analysis using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique provided information about the local energy dissipation rates in both units. Experimental data indicated loss of scFv activity for energy dissipation rates above about 2.0 x 10(4) W kg(-1). This loss of activity increased in the presence of gas-liquid interfaces during filtering centrifugation. An ultra scaledown filtering centrifuge with a maximum working volume of 35 mL was designed to mimic the operating conditions identified by the critical regime analysis for the laboratory- and pilot-plant-scale units. The recovered scFv activity levels and the separation performance of the three units were comparable when operated at equal maximum energy dissipation rates.


Background and objectives Macroautophagy is a major catabolic pathway that plays a key role in cellular homeostasis. Macroautophagy has been recently implicated in shaping the innate and adaptive immune responses via cytokine secretion and antigen presentation in various diseases. However the contribution of the pathway to autoimmune arthritis is still not established. Our aim was to address the role of macroautophagy in the adaptive immune response during antigen induced arthritis (AIA), using mice that are deficient in macroautophagy in their dendritic cells. Materials and methods CD11c-Cre mice (C57BL/6), were crossed with Atg5flox/flox mice (C57BL/6) resulting in the complete abolishment of a functional autophagy pathway in dendritic cells (DC/ATG5-/-). For AIA, mice were immunised with methylated BSA (mBSA) and CFA. Monoarthritis was induced at day 21. At day 28 animals were sacrificed. For histological scoring knees sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin and toluidine blue. T cell function was monitored by cytokine production and CFSE staining. For in vitro analysis, bone marrow derived dendritic cells (BMDC) were treated with TLR ligands. Cytokines production was quantified by ELISA, and co-stimulatory molecule expression analysed by flow cytometry. Results Our results identified autophagy as a negative regulator of the inflammatory response during AIA. Indeed we found that in the absence of autophagy in dendritic cells AIA was more severe correlating with an enhanced Th1/Th17 response. Histological analysis showed an enhanced inflammatory score, due to enhanced cartilage destruction and bone erosion in (DC/ATG5-/-) mice. Interestingly, the Th1/Th17 response in DC/ATG5-/- mice was significantly increased. Indeed lymph node cell cultures showed enhanced CD4 T cell proliferation with increased INF-gamma and IL-17 production. This was observed both in an antigen specific manner from ex vivo treatment with mBSA or with CD3/CD28 treatment. In vitro analysis showed that in response to TLR activation DC/ATG5-/- has enhanced IL-1B production, and higher expression of co-stimulatory molecules. Conclusions Autophagy deficiency in dendritic cells exacerbates the Th1/Th17 inflammatory response in the AIA model, resulting in increased cartilage destruction and bone erosion. The precise in vivo mechanism behind this regulation is under investigation; however this might be in part due to enhanced IL-1β production and increased co-stimulatory molecule expression on antigen presenting cells.


Grammaticalization as standardly conceived is a change whereby an item develops from a lexical to a grammatical or functional meaning, or from being less to more grammatical. In this article we show that this can only be part of the story; for a full account we need to understand the syntactic structures into which grammaticalizing elements fit and how they too develop. To achieve this end we consider in detail the history of definiteness marking within the noun phrase in North Germanic, and in particular in Faroese. We show how this change requires us to distinguish between projecting and nonprojecting categories, and how a category can emerge over time and only subsequently develop into a head with its own associated functional projection. The necessary structure, rather than being intrinsic to an aprioristic universal grammar, grows over time as part of the grammaticalization process. We suggest that this in turn argues for a parallel correspondence theory of grammar such as the one adopted here, lexical-functional grammar , in which different dimensions of linguistic structure can change at different rates.


Design methods for paraunitary matrices from complete orthogonal sets of idempotents and related matrix structures are presented. These include techniques for designing non-separable multidimensional paraunitary matrices. Properties of the structures are obtained and proofs given. Paraunitary matrices play a central role in signal processing, in particular in the areas of filterbanks and wavelets.


The localization of parvalbumin, calbindin D-28k and calretinin have been investigated in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (d lgn) of the rat at the light and electron microscopical level. Parvalbumin and calretinin positive sites are restricted to nerve fibres, whereas calbindin is present in fibres as well as in nerve cells showing morphological characteristics of interneurons. Ultrastructurally parvalbumin immunoreactivity is found in large terminals surrounded by glial lamellae containing round vesicles and making asymmetric contacts on dendrites. These morphological characteristics are typical for retinal endings of type 2a. Another kind of parvalbumin positive presynaptic terminals are seen on the surface of unstained nerve cell bodies and features symmetrical contacts. We conclude that this type represents axonal terminals of GABAergic neurons of the thalamic reticular nucleus. Calbindin positive nerve cells in the d lgn occur in the latero-dorsal part and according to morphological characteristics, belong to interneurons. Calbindin positive nerve cells receive synaptic terminals deriving from different kind of unstained presynaptic profiles. Calretinin immunoreactivity is localized in small to medium sized presynaptic endings with round vesicles, pale mitochondria and Gray-type 1 contacts on dendrites of relay- and interneurons. Some calretinin positive terminals are located in triads or in complex encapsulated regions. Therefore we identify calretinin positive terminals as the retinal inputs of type 2b. Our results demonstrate the expression of the three calcium binding proteins in morphologically, physiologically and biochemically different structures within the d lgn of the rat. The distribution differs from that found in the d lgn of the cat or monkey.


Rift Valley fever (RVFV) is a major phlebovirus-induced epizootic disease of domestic animals (primarily cattle and sheep) in Africa. No therapies for the disease are known. A related phlebovirus, Punta Toro virus (PTV), has been adapted to induce an RVFV-like disease in C57BL/6 mice. This PTV infection has been used as a model for RVFV because it is reasonably safe and does not require high-level biologic containment. The infection model has been used to study the potential role of immunomodulating substances as therapies. A spectrum of immunomodulators has been studied; those immunomodulators most capable of preventing death and other disease manifestations are ampligen, bropirimine, poly (ICLC), AM-3, P-136, and 7-thia-8-oxoguanosine. An immunologic parameter common to all these substances has been their ability to induce interferon. Timing studies have indicated that these active substances may be administered therapeutically as well as prophylactically to inhibit markedly the progress of the disease. Further work is needed in the development of these materials for use in treating viral infections in domestic animals. As a next step, studies need to be run to compare the immunologic profiles induced by each substance in domestic animals and in mice.


OBJECTIVE
Remifentanil is a selective mu-opioid agonist with a context-sensitive half-time of 3 to 5 minutes, independent of dose or administration duration. Other desirable effects include decreased cerebral metabolism and intracranial pressure (ICP) with minimal cerebral perfusion pressure changes. We present six cases illustrating indications for the use of remifentanil in the neurosurgical intensive care unit.

METHODS
Patients received bolus doses of remifentanil of 0.05 to 1.0 microg/kg, followed by continuous infusions of 0.03 to 0.26 microg/kg/min, titrated to effect. When infusions were discontinued for neurological examinations, another bolus dose preceded infusion reinstitution. Indications for the use of remifentanil included mean arterial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure decreases with the use of other agents (e.g., codeine or propofol) for ICP control, elevated ICP that was refractory to propofol/mannitol treatment, agitation that was unresponsive to standard therapies, and coughing that caused ICP increases after subarachnoid hemorrhage.

RESULTS
Three patients experienced spontaneous intracranial bleeding (two cases of subarachnoid hemorrhage and one case of intraventricular hemorrhage), and three patients exhibited severe traumatic subdural hemorrhage. All patients recovered from the effects of remifentanil within 3 minutes after discontinuation of infusion, which allowed frequent rapid neurological assessments. Procedures for pulmonary toilet (i.e., endotracheal suctioning, postural drainage, and bronchoscopy) were performed without deleterious ICP increases or mean arterial pressure or cerebral perfusion pressure decreases during remifentanil infusions.

CONCLUSION
The ultrashort duration of action of remifentanil allowed easy performance of frequent neurological examinations in the neurosurgical intensive care unit. No patient experienced deleterious hemodynamic or neurological effects as a result of remifentanil use.


Underwater acoustic channels, influenced by time-varying, space-varying, frequency-varying, and multipath effects, pose significant interference challenges to underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) signals, especially in non-cooperative scenarios. The task of modulating and identifying distorted signals faces huge challenges. Although traditional modulation recognition methods can be useful in the radio field, they often prove inadequate in underwater environments. This paper introduces a modulation recognition system for recognizing UWAC signals based on higher-order cumulants and deep learning. The system achieves blind recognition of received UWAC signals even under non-cooperative conditions. Higher-order cumulants are employed due to their excellent noise resistance, enabling the differentiation of OFDM signals from PSK and FSK signals. Additionally, the high-order spectra differences among signals are utilized for the intra-class recognition of PSK and FSK signals. Both simulation and lake test results substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


This article analyzes the formation of women's and gender studies as an interdisciplinary academic field. The author draws on comparative case studies of three early-adopter women's studies departments from historical records and interviews with faculty members. Existing research on disciplinary formation focuses on the way practitioners forge institutional niches for new academic programs but not on sustained analysis of knowledge-making processes. Research on processes of knowledge construction focuses on established research situations, such as physics labs or literary seminars, as opposed to newly emerging fields and fields with politicized origins. The author combines institutional and practice-oriented approaches to explain the formation of knowledge-making agendas in new interdisciplinary research fields. In the case of women's and gender studies, practitioners' strategies for promoting the growth of their programs corresponded with the kinds of knowledge that they produced. In the period of adoption in the 1970s, scholars across the three units defined the intellectual goals of women's studies similarly in working to redress the lack of research on women in existing disciplines and to analyze social problems affecting contemporary women's lives. Each program acquired institutional stability, which involved the negotiation of budgeted faculty hires in specific research areas and the development of degree programs. Over time, practitioners at each program justified the continued existence of women's studies programs by claiming expertise in a diverse range of topics relating to human gender and sexual experience and by constituting their academic programs in relation to local intellectual agendas.


Municipal and household-level determinants for Indonesian children out of school are studied using multilevel analysis of 221,392 children in 136,182 households in 497 municipalities. The higher the poverty rate and public education expenditure per capita, the higher the likelihood that children drop out. However, a high(er) mean of municipality education expenditure significantly reduces children's likelihood to never attend school while a high(er) poverty rate significantly increases the likelihood that children will never attend school. At the household level, expenditure, spending on education, and head of household's educational background have a significant effect on reducing the number of children out of school.


In this essay, I examine the philosophical, political, and economic aspects of privacy in the Internet Age and argue that a socialist theory of privacy is the most suited for the contemporary privacy issues of the Internet. In section 2, I examine classic theories of privacy and argue that a Restricted Access/Limited Control theory offers the best framework and should be refined as a socialist theory of privacy. In section 3, I assess this theory in the context of the Internet Age, using Internet cookies and data mining as primary examples. In section 4, I describe the economic goals of a socialist theory of privacy and contrast them to liberal privacy notions. In Section 5, I review current and proposed privacy policies in the United States and give recommendations on revising them to support a socialist theory of privacy. In Section 6, I conclude that a socialist theory of privacy defines moral and economic goals that align with what is best for society as a whole and that, although our current policies are not working towards these goals, there is a glimmer of hope with the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.


Background: Software engineering are courses comprising various project types, including simple assignments completed in supervised settings and more complex tasks undertaken independently by students, without the oversight of a constant teacher or lab assistant. The imperative need arises for a comprehensive assessment framework to validate the fulfillment of learning objectives and facilitate the measurement of student outcomes, particularly in computer science and software engineering. This leads to the delineation of an appropriate assessment structure and pattern.
Objective: This study aimed to acquire the expertise required for assessing student performance in computer science and software engineering courses.
Methods: A comprehensive literature review spanning from 2012 to October 2021 was conducted, resulting in the identification of 20 papers addressing the assessment framework in software engineering and computer science courses. Specific inclusion and exclusion criteria were meticulously applied in two rounds of assessment to identify the most pertinent studies for this investigation.
Results: The results showed multiple methods for assessing software engineering and computer science courses, including the Assessment Matrix, Automatic Assessment, CDIO, Cooperative Thinking, formative and summative assessment, Game, Generative Learning Robot, NIMSAD, SECAT, Self-assessment and Peer-assessment, SonarQube Tools, WRENCH, and SEP-CyLE.
Conclusion: The evaluation framework for software engineering and computer science courses required further refinement, ultimately leading to the selection of the most suitable technique, known as learning framework.
Keywords: Computer science course, Software engineering course, Student assessment, Systematic literature review


Abstract. The improvement of the Solar and Wind short-term forecasting represents a critical goal for the weather prediction community and is of great importance for a better estimation of power production from solar and wind farms. In this work we analyze the performance of two deterministic models operational at ISAC-CNR for the prediction of short-wave irradiance and wind speed, at two experimental sites in southern Italy. A post-processing technique, i.e the multi-model, is adopted to improve the performance of the two mesoscale models. The results show that the multi-model approach produces a significant error reduction with respect to the forecast of each model. The error is reduced up to 20  % of the model errors, depending on the parameter and forecasting time.


We report the first gigahertz clocked decoy-protocol quantum key distribution (QKD) system, with a record secure key rate of 1.02 Mbit/s over a fibre distance of 20 km and 10.1 kbit/s over 100 km.


The shaken baby syndrome is a clearly definable medical condition. It requires integration of specific clinical management and community intervention in an interdisciplinary fashion.


I am frequently asked to recommend books that cover some of the more fashionable methods of data analysis but that have been written for nonstatisticians. In responding I often find it necessary to turn to books intended for social rather than medical scientists because, though their quality may be mixed, there seem to be so many more of them and they are generally pitched at an appropriate level. A quick scan of the contents pages of Event History Analysis by Kazuo Yagamuchi immediately suggests it as a book that promises to fulfil such a role. There is an introductory chapter that describes and defines hazard, survivor and likelihood functions and also gives an appropriately prominent discussion of censoring. There are a couple of chapters on discrete time models using logistic regression and another using log-linear models. There are two chapters on Cox models, the second involving time dependent covariates. Finally, a chapter with odds and ends thought useful to consider before 'getting one's own research started'. The chapters have a largely consistent structure being divided into 'Methods and models, Application, Concluding remarks and Problems'. Perhaps the single greatest strength of this book is that the appplications are generally complete, with a full description of how to prepare the input data and how to get SAS or SPSS, programs that are not renowned for their abilities with event history data, to do the analysis. It also gives some details of how


Equations to obtain equivalent rectangular stress-block parameters for unconfined and confined concrete are derived for rapid (hand) analysis and design purposes. To overcome a shortcoming of existing commonly used stress-strain models that are not easy to integrate, a new stress-strain model is proposed and validated for a wide range of concrete strengths and confining stresses. The efficacy of the equivalent rectangular stress-block parameters is demonstrated for hand calculations in predicting key moment-curvature results for a confined concrete column. Results are compared with those obtained from a computational fiber-element analysis using the proposed stress-strain model and another widely used existing model; good agreement between the two is observed.


Among the five goals of peer-to-peer security, file authenticity and fair trading have attracted the most attention. Reputation and incentive are two traditional systems to deal with file authenticity and fair trading problems, respectively. In this paper, we propose a multilevel reputation system which also serves as the base of an incentive system. By introducing the concept of reputation level to a reputation system, we solve the Load Balance problem of peer-to-peer security perfectly. It also helps to prevent the occurrence of Collusion and Cold-Start problems with two proposed reputation level computation schemes, which are Level Up Reputation Computation (LURC) scheme and Level Keeping Reputation Computation (LKRC) scheme. A central reputation level computation and access control enforcement agent called Central Computation and Enforcement Agent (CCEA) is introduced too, which maintains or raises each peer's reputation level according to its periodic contribution to other peers in the network. We also propose a bootstrap process for our multilevel reputation system in a peer-to-peer network that has all the peers in the lowest reputation level at the very beginning.


Power is considered to be as major concern in today's technology. Several research works are carried in order to minimize the usage of electric power. In this paper, an efficient automated power saving system was designed using Spartan-6 FPGA for minimizing the power wastage in educational institutions. Mostly, the students forget to switch off the electrical appliances, when they leaving out of classroom. The power wastage can be completely eliminated by using this Automated Power Saving System. The system is developed by VHDL and it is implemented using Wipro Mission10x UTLP Board.


THE conversazione held on 9 July to mark the quater-centenary of the birth of Galileo is described on page 119. The usual conversaziones were held on 7 May and 22 October at which the following exhibits were shown. The strength and fracture of metals was the subject of three exhibits. It is known that the strength of metals is far below its theoretical limit due to the presence of dislocations in the crystal structure. All strengthening processes introduce barriers to dislocation movement but many of these reduce ductility and make metals brittle. The British Iron and Steel Research Association demonstrated how modern physical metallurgical research is indicating new ways in which steel can be strengthened without impairment of ductility or toughness. Miss J. M. Silcock of the Central Electricity Research Laboratories and Mr W. J. Tunstall of the Cavendish Laboratory arranged an exhibit showing stacking fault precipitation in austenitic stainless steels. Electron microscopy has shown that stacking faults appear and grow during the precipitation of carbides in certain austenitic steels. Systematic observations coupled with new calculations have established the nature of the associated partial dislocations and have led to the conclusion that the faults are extrinsic. The Chemistry, Physics and Metallurgy Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment arranged an exhibit on the fracture of metals. Various forms of fracture were exhibited and research observations and tentative conclusions of the causes of fracture were made known.


This case study reveals how parents perceive their involvements and expectations of their children's academic achievements. The primary purpose of this study is to explore parental involvement in the academic achievement of primary students in Nigerian schools and to assess parental involvement at the Primary School level and how it enhances academic achievement. The researcher chooses the qualitative research method for this study and makes use of Semi-structured interviews to collect data on the first-hand experiences of two international post-graduate (PG) students at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The major finding of this study is parental involvement with their children. The Parents went to school to communicate with the class teacher and also they assisted with their children's homework at their residential premises. Parents had high expectations of their children's academic achievement in the class. There were some differences in the way the two parents were involved in the academic work of their children. This is because of some causes such as lack of time, new subject matter and distance to the schools. The findings of this study have implications mostly for teachers, teacher educators and educational decision-makers.


A new London—Eyring—Polanyi—Sato potential energy surface is employed in this work to study the stereo properties of the O(3P) + CH4 → H + CH3O reaction in its rovibrationally ground state using the quasiclassical trajectory method (QCT). Our calculations are performed at a range of collision energies, Ec = 1.5 eV∼ 3.5 eV, and the excitation function obtained by the QCT method accords well with the experimental data. The product rotational polarization is calculated, and the product shows a strong rotational polarization in the centre-of-mass coordinate system. The orientation of the product rotational angular momenta is sensitive to the increase in collision energy, and the alignment of the product rotational angular momenta shows some of the properties of the heavy heavy—light mass combination reactions. In the isotopic substituted reaction study, when the H atoms in methane are replaced by D atoms, the rotational polarization is obviously reduced. The polarization-dependent differential cross section is also studied by this QCT calculation to provide detailed information about the rotational alignment and orientation of the product.


The wetting phenomena of thin film growth are studied with the Monte Carlo method in a lattice gas model. Results for the phase diagram are compared with earlier Mean Field, Renormalisation Group and Monte Carlo studies. Considering the thickness and smoothness of the wetting film new insight is found mainly for the layering transitions. Namely, the effect of the substrate is not directly seen in the coverage, but in the mean square deviation of the coverage. It is also found that wetting and prewetting have no profound difference in the case of the lattice gas model.


Multiobjective control problems have been the object of much attention in the past few years, since they allow for handling multiple, perhaps conflicting, performance specifications and model uncertainty. One of the earliest multiobjective problems is the mixed control problem, which can be motivated as a nominal optimal control problem subject to robust stability constraints. This problem has proven to be surprisingly difficult to solve, and at this time no closed-form solutions are available. Moreover, it has been shown that except in some trivial cases, the optimal controller is infinite-dimensional. In this paper, we propose a solution to general continuous-time mixed problems, based upon constructing a family of approximating problems, obtained by solving an equivalent discrete-time problem. Each of these approximations can be solved efficiently, and the resulting controllers converge strongly in the topology to the optimal solution.


In the framework of the Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team (TARGET) project, we developed a new electrical method for the temperature measurement of HEMTs and performed several unique studies on the self-heating effects in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. This method, in combination with transient interferometric mapping (TIM), provides a fundamental understanding of the heat propagation in a transient state of HEMTs. The AlGaN/GaN/Si HEMT thermal resistance was determined to be ~70 K/W after 400 ns from the start of a pulse, and the heating time constant was ~200 ns. Our experimental methods were further applied on multifinger high-power AlGaN/GaN/sapphire HEMTs. The TIM method indicates that the airbridge structure serves as a cooler, removing approximately 10% of the heat energy. In the next study we used TIM and the micro-Raman technique to quantify thermal boundary resistance (TBR) between different wafer materials and GaN epi-structure. We found TBR to be ~7 × 10−8 m2K/W for GaN/Si and ~1.2 × 10−7 m2K/W for GaN/SiC interfaces. The role of TBR at the GaN/sapphire interface was found to be less important.


Potato is one of the important crops grown in mid and high altitude areas of Ethiopia. Several potato genotypes have been introduced in different parts of this region. However, the stability and performance of these genotypes is not yet assessed. Therefore, a study to determine the effect of genotype, environment and their interaction for tuber yield and identify stable potato genotypes was conducted using eight potato genotypes in rainfed production season of years 2010 and 2011 at five potato growing locations in the region. Among the testing locations, the superior mean tuber yield (25.43 t/ha) was obtained at Adet while the inferior (13.89 t/ha) was at Injibara. Similarly, among the genotypes CIP- 396004.337 gave the highest mean tuber yield (25.66 t/ha), while CIP-395011.2 gave the lowest (17.78 t/ha). Combined ANOVA indicated that the main effect due to environments, genotypes and genotype by environment interaction were highly significant. The contribution of E, G and GEI to the total variation in tuber yield was about 47.11%, 8.83% and 44.07%, respectively. The GEI was further partitioned using GGE biplot model. The first two principal components obtained by singular value decomposition of the centered data of tuber yield explained 71.26% of the total variability caused by (G+GE). Out of these variations PC1 and PC2 accounted 51.24 and 20.02% variability, respectively. GGE biplot view of this study identified Serinka as ideal testing location and CIP- 396004.337 as ideal genotype for Amhara region in Ethiopia.


This study set out to compare the suitability of five current side impact test dummies to simulate that of a 50th percentile Post Mortem Human Subject (PMHS) in a far-side impact crash configuration. A number of comparative crash tests were undertaken, involving a 50% PMHS and four current side impact crash test dummies (BioSID, a BioSID with a lumbar spine modification, EuroSID, and WorldSID) using the ECE95 test procedure at 65km/h. Crash test data were collected from full-scale crash tests conducted using a Holden Commodore fitted with a 50% Post Mortem Human Subject (PMHS) and a BioSID and WorldSID test dummy in the driver seat. Additional crash test data were obtained using a similar full-scale validated sled test setup. The results demonstrate that the current WorldSID prototype and a BioSID dummy with a modified lumbar spine unit can provide reasonable simulations of occupant kinematics and injuries to help advance vehicle countermeasures. Further work is required to test the robustness and generality of these findings for improved far-side impact protection.


This paper provides a detailed interpretation of a little-known yet extraordinary painting from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Christ in a Landscape by Jan Swart van Groningen (ca. 1530–1540). This work is a perfect illustration of the importance of the popular Christian metaphor of the "Book of Nature" in early modern art, especially in the Reformed circles to which Swart likely belonged. Beyond offering an explanation for the presence of some strange aspects of the landscape (a snail, shells and colored pearls, unicorns, rocks with anthropomorphic features, etc.), the article explores the ways in which the elements of the landscape engaged the viewer in a hermeneutic process, a process of interpretation and reflection on the mysteries of nature and faith. The painting is a meditation on kenosis – the dual nature of Christ as both divine and human, and thus belonging to Nature just like the most insignificant of its creatures.


firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract Purpose of reseach . This article is devoted to overcoming ladder flight by the jumping robot when moving up. At the same time it is important to make jumps with such length and height which allows overcoming an obstacle with minimum energy and time spent. So it is necessary to determine an optimal variant of jumps implementation for overcoming ladder flight by two specified criteria. Methods. Numerical methods of modeling in specially developed program complex are used to study movement of the robot. Hit theory is used to describe device contact interaction with flight's steps. Methods of multimass system dynamics is used for dispersal and flight modeling. Results. Numerical modeling of device's movement at jumps series on ladder flight is done. Energy and time dependences spent for overcoming flights are received. Optimizing charts are also constructed. These charts allow to group options of jumps series from I to VII zones in the process of removal from optimum zone I. It is also stated that optimal variant is at which one jump is carried out on the greatest possible number of steps irrespectively from number of jumps. It is also stated that there is a jump on one step during the other jumps. Conclusion. The study results can be applied at the development of jumping robot's movement system. It helps the device to realize overcoming ladder flights optimum from the point of view of spent energy and time. Acknowledgements: the Work was done in the framework of RFBR project № 18-31-00075. Conflict of interest. The authors declare the absence of obvious and potential conflicts of interest related to publication of


This book describes and analyses the mechanisms put in place by government to promote cross-community relations in N. Ireland. It does so against the backdrop of recent political changes within the Province and particularly within the Protestant community there. The fieldwork aspects of this book broadly cover the period 1994-9. During that time, the policy and programmes under consideration here coincided with several significant changes in the political and civil backdrop of Northern Ireland. What follows is an attempt to represent some of the contexts in which Community Relations (CR) policy has operated during this period. Arguably the most significant event at the outset of this phase was the declaration of cease-fires from both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries. Potentialities for progress in the area of Community Relations Programmes were now presented and it is fair to say that District Council CR programmes recognised this. Conversely, the bombing at Canary Wharf in London in August 1996, which indicated the end of the IRA cease-fire, inhibited progress. The summer of 1996 perhaps represented a pivotal moment in community relations in the province. The deep divisions engendered by the civil unrest that met the Orange Order march down Garvaghy Road in Portadown signalled a polarisation at grassroots level. Subsequent trends within vox pop and Omnibus surveys suggest the level of estrangement that was being experienced. Respondents were asked, 'Thinking of Catholics, do you think there is a lot of prejudice against them in Northern Ireland these days?' 15 per cent of Catholics said 'hardly any'; 30 per cent of Protestants said 'hardly any'. Following Drumcree, by January 1997, the polarisation was evident - only 6 per cent of Catholics felt that there was any prejudice against them, compared with 20 per cent of Protestants.


BACKGROUND
Evidence from controlled clinical trials indicates that use of a transdermal nicotine patch improves abstinence rates up to a year after initial smoking cessation. Whether these results can be generalized to the general population has not been extensively investigated.

PURPOSE
We sought to determine what characteristics of smokers trying to quit are associated with nicotine patch use in the general population and whether there is evidence that patch use promotes successful smoking cessation.

METHODS
As part of the 1993 California Tobacco Survey, 3281 respondents who had attempted to quit smoking cigarettes within the last year were asked whether they had used a prescribed medication to help them quit smoking and, if so, what type of medication it was. They were also asked whether they used other assistance.

RESULTS
Compared with nonusers, patch users (nearly 11% of quitters) were more likely to be female, white or Asian, middle-aged, and to smoke more heavily. Many people relapsed to smoking while they were still using a patch. However, no evidence suggested that the patch was addictive. Use of a nicotine patch did not result in a statistically significant difference in abstinence rates among those who did not also use some other form of assistance (logrank test, P = .466). It did make a statistically significant difference when used in combination with another aid (logrank test, P = .017). At 6 months, abstinence rates were 15% for those without other forms of assistance whether or not they used a patch, 10.9% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.1-16.8) for those with other assistance who did not use a patch, and 18.8% (95% CI = 5.7-31.8) for those with other assistance who did use a patch.

CONCLUSIONS
The nicotine patch appears to be an important aid to smokers who want to quit, primarily when used as an adjuvant to other forms of assistance.

IMPLICATIONS
Further studies are needed to determine what factors are associated with quitting success among patch users.


The adopted Project Management (PM) process and management tool can determine the success or failure of a project. Academia and industry have developed many tools, techniques, and methods to assist the PM process. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) aggregates a set of PM practices widely used in industry and academia. Based on the literature on the area, some gaps remain, such as the lack of tools helping the PM learning process, i.e., an issue related to the adequacy of a web-based tool in educational contexts. This study aims to introduce an educational approach based on problem-based learning and a novel educational tool covering all the knowledge areas of PMBOK®, namely Silver Bullet, that contributes to the PM process in educational contexts and supports our approach. To evaluate Silver Bullet, we conducted two empirical studies involving undergraduate students as subjects using problem-based learning in a software project manager: a quasi-experiment and a case study. We conclude that the Silver Bullet helps project managers in classroom environments by reducing the effort inherent in a PM execution process. Besides, some improvements in scoping the teaching-learning process are observed, such as activity verification, lessons learned board and log registers. Thus, we present relevant findings directing ongoing improvement.


Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely used in many tasks, but training CNNs is time consuming and energy hungry. Using the low-bit integer format has been proved promising for speeding up and improving the energy efficiency of CNN inference, while CNN training can hardly benefit from such a technique because of the following challenges: 1) the integer data format cannot meet the requirements of the data dynamic range in training, resulting in the accuracy drop; 2) the floating-point data format keeps sizeable dynamic range with much more exponent bits, thus using it results in higher accumulation power than using the integer data format; and 3) there are some specially designed data formats (e.g., with group-wise scaling) that have the potential to deal with the former two problems but common hardware platforms cannot support them efficiently. To tackle all these challenges and make the training phase of CNNs benefit from the low-bit format, we propose a low-bit training framework for CNNs to pursue a better tradeoff between accuracy and energy efficiency: 1) we adopt element-wise scaling to increase the dynamic range of data representation, which significantly reduces the quantization error; 2) group-wise scaling with hardware friendly factor format is designed to reduce the element-wise exponent bits without degrading the accuracy; and 3) we design the customized hardware unit that implements the low-bit tensor convolution arithmetic with our multilevel scaling data format. Experiments show that our framework achieves a superior tradeoff between the accuracy and the bit-width than previous low-bit training studies. For training various models on CIFAR-10, using 1-bit mantissa and 2-bit exponent is adequate to keep the accuracy loss within 1%. On larger datasets like ImageNet, using 4-bit mantissa and 2-bit exponent is adequate. Through the energy consumption simulation of the whole network, we can see that training a variety of models with our framework could achieve $4.9\times $ – $10.2\times $ higher energy efficiency than full-precision arithmetic.


Using a new simple technique that is well tolerated and rapid for assessing anal sphincter functions in pediatric patients with fecal incontinence and constipation, 86 patients with varying degrees of anorectal dysfunction were tested. A microtip pressure transducer was used for recording anal sphincter responses to rectal balloon distension. Results were obtained within 15 to 30 minutes. In 17 patients, the internal anal sphincter showed no response or positive spike to balloon distension, consistent with the manometric diagnosis of aganglionic megacolon. These findings were confirmed by absence of ganglion cells on rectal biopsy. Sixty-nine children had normal internal sphincter relaxation to rectal distension. Ganglion cells were present in nine biopsy specimens. In the remaining 60 patients, no further workup of aganglionosis was necessary. There were no falsepositive or false-negative results. This technique has proved to be effective for initial evaluation of infants and children with constipation and encopresis.