Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of morbidity and death worldwide. Invasive coronary angiography is the most accurate technique for diagnosing CAD, but is invasive and costly. Hence, analytical methods such as machine learning and data mining techniques are becoming increasingly more popular. Although physicians need to know which arteries are stenotic, most of the researchers focus only on CAD detection and few studies have investigated stenosis of the right coronary artery (RCA), left circumflex (LCX) artery and left anterior descending (LAD) artery separately. Meanwhile, most of the datasets in this field are noisy (data uncertainty). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study conducted to address this important problem. This study uses the extension of the Z‐Alizadeh Sani dataset, containing 303 records with 54 features. A new feature selection algorithm is proposed in this work. Meanwhile, by discretization of data, we also handle the uncertainty in CAD prediction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study attempted to handle uncertainty in CAD prediction. Finally, the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to determine the hyper‐parameters of the support vector machine (SVM) kernels. We have achieved high accuracy for the stenosis diagnosis of each main coronary artery. The results of this study can aid the clinicians to validate their manual stenosis diagnosis of RCA, LCX and LAD coronary arteries.


TheGOstats package has extensive facilities for testing the association of Gene Ontology (GO) The Gene Ontology Consortium (2000) terms to genes in a gene list. You can test for both over and under representation of GO terms using either the standard Hypergeometric test or a conditional Hypergeometric test that uses the relationships among the GO terms for conditioning (similar to that presented in Alexa et al. (2006)). In this vignette we describe the preprocessing required to construct inputs for the main testing function, hyperGTest, the algorithms used, and the structure of the return value. We use a microarray data set (Chiaretti et al., 2004) from a clinical trial in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) to work an example analysis. In the ALL data, we focus on the patients with B-cell derived ALL, and in particular on comparing the group with ALL1/AF4 to those with no observed cytogenetic abnormalities. To get started, load the packages needed for this analysis:


A new approach for dynamic processor allocation in hypercube multicomputers which supports a multi-user environment is proposed. A dynamic binary tree is used for processor allocation along with an array of free lists. Two algorithms are proposed based on this approach, capable of efficiently handling cubic as well as noncubic allocation. Time complexities for both allocation and deallocation are shown to be polynomial, a significant improvement over the existing exponential and even super-exponential algorithms. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed strategies are best-fit strategies within their search space. Simulation results indicate that the proposed strategies outperform the existing ones in terms of parameters such as average delay in honoring a request, average allocation time, average deallocation time, and memory overhead. >


Major winning Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), such as VGGNet, ResNet, DenseNet, \etc, include tens to hundreds of millions of parameters, which impose considerable computation and memory overheads. This limits their practical usage in training and optimizing for real-world applications. On the contrary, light-weight architectures, such as SqueezeNet, are being proposed to address this issue. However, they mainly suffer from low accuracy, as they have compromised between the processing power and efficiency. These inefficiencies mostly stem from following an ad-hoc designing procedure. In this work, we discuss and propose several crucial design principles for an efficient architecture design and elaborate intuitions concerning different aspects of the design procedure. Furthermore, we introduce a new layer called {\it SAF-pooling} to improve the generalization power of the network while keeping it simple by choosing best features. Based on such principles, we propose a simple architecture called {\it SimpNet}. We empirically show that SimpNet provides a good trade-off between the computation/memory efficiency and the accuracy solely based on these primitive but crucial principles. SimpNet outperforms the deeper and more complex architectures such as VGGNet, ResNet, WideResidualNet \etc, on several well-known benchmarks, while having 2 to 25 times fewer number of parameters and operations. We obtain state-of-the-art results (in terms of a balance between the accuracy and the number of involved parameters) on standard datasets, such as CIFAR10, CIFAR100, MNIST and SVHN. The implementations are available at \href{url}{this https URL}.


Abstract : Numerical modeling of water-wave behavior has progressed rapidly in the last decade and is now generally recognized as a useful tool capable of providing solutions to many coastal problems. The U. S. Army, through various agencies, has sponsored development of two-dimensional numerical models for simulating long period wave behavior. Many of these models have included the advective terms in their formulation. Demonstrated in numerous papers throughout the literature, inclusion of advective effects can lead to instabilities in the solution. This fact was exemplified in the work of Sloss (1972) in his attempt to include these effects in storm surge simulation. The primary objective of this investigation was the assessment of the role of advective terms in the numerical simulation of long period, large amplitude wave behavior. A major effort in accomplishing this objective was the development of an appropriate representation of the non-linear terms in the difference equations of motion. To this end, a stabilizing correction, double sweep implicit scheme was encoded into an existing and extensively used hydrodynamic model, WIFM. The scheme manifested a high degree of stability in various numerical flume tests.


A Websters dictionary definition of the word 'animate' strikes to the heart of what animation is about - the illusion of life Giving life to a sequence of pictures is the purpose of animation. This has been practised for over a century and nowadays computers are being used to create animations faster and more accurately than ever before Animations are no longer restricted to 'funnies', but can also be models of real-life situations. These are based on data not images, and the final images are generated after the data has been processed for unambiguous visualization. By representing the data in three dimensions it can be viewed in any number of ways according to the wishes of the 'end' user.

RenderMan allows a scene to be viewed when defined m three dimensions. This can then be viewed as an animated sequence where special effects - such as the metamorphosis of objects (morphing) - may take place to provide a photorealistic animation. This thesis will examine how 3-D computer animation in general, and special effects such as morphing in particular, may be implemented using the RenderMan Interface specification and the RenderMan rendering program.


An exhibition of six artists - three British, three Spanish - developed as a collaborative project between Mariano de Blas and Blacklock, to examine relationships between Spanish and British contemporary painting. The title is derived from Madrid and London sharing the same (Greenwich) Meridian. The Spanish (Madrid) and British (London) artists were selected on the basis of their similarity of repute and complementary concerns.

Blacklock selected the British artists Noel Forster and Trevor Sutton, on the basis of their contribution to contemporary British abstract painting and their utilisation of formal language within painting. The selection was conditioned by the use of different conventions of pictorial space within the parameters of abstraction. This facilitated the means to compare Blacklock's own claims for the space within his paintings, further developed in the essay by Hugh Stoddart on the three British artists.


The kinematics and aerodynamics of flapping and gliding flight by the black skimmer were investigated to evaluate the significance of ground effect to the foraging and daily energy budget of skimmers. Ground effect is an increase in lift and decrease in drag of an aerofoil when close to the ground. The duration of upstroke and downstroke, the wing movements and the pronation/supination of the wings during flapping flight of the skimmer are similar to other birds. Wing-beat frequency was 3.1 s-1 and flight velocity was 9.1 m s-1. The wing stroke was markedly asymmetric, with the majority of the stroke occurring above the plane of the body. During skimming, wing beats are intermittent and of low amplitude; flight velocity is 10.3 m s-1. Induced power, parasite power and profile power of skimmers were calculated after Tucker (1973) in the absence of ground effect, and the glide angle and sink velocity were calculated for gliding skimmers. Ground effect was shown to markedly reduce induced power requirements, and hence total power requirement, of flapping flight, and reduce the glide angle and sink velocity during gliding. The hydrodynamic drag of the lower mandible was estimated to be 10-4 N, which is insignificant compared to the total aerodynamic drag (0.4 N). Ground effect was shown to markedly increase foraging efficiency and facilitate the attainment of a positive daily energy balance. The significance of ground effect to other flying vertebrates was discussed. Note: Department of Zoology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Republic of south Africa.


If you think Santa Claus came into the world sporting a red suit and a white beard, think again. Santa wasn't always the jolly, overweight, gift-giving fellow that we now know and love. He tried his hand at all sorts of different jobs, including postal worker, zookeeper, circus performer, and even chimney sweep, but each of these presented a problem that got in his way. It wasn't until he was lucky enough to meet a friendly bunch of elves that Santa found his true calling...and the job of his dreams. Stephen Krensky's understated text and S. D. Schindler's charming illustrations come together to create an imaginative and funny tale that proves even the best of us have to try, try again.


Ethanolic extracts from thirty Thai edible plants collected from Sa Keao province, Thailand, were screened for in vitro antiproliferative effect on HCT-116 human colon cancer cell line using cell titer 96 aqueous one solution cell proliferation assay. It was found that leaf extract of Crateva adansnii , fruit and leaf extracts of Ardisia elliptica , shoot extract of Colocasia esculenta , leaf extract of Cratoxylum fomosum , and leaf extract of Millettia leu- cantha exhibited antiproliferative activities. The fruit extract of Ardisia elliptica showed the highest antiproliferative activity. Ethanolic extract of the stems from C. fenestratum and its dichloromethane and aqueous fractions showed antiproliferative activity to human colorectal cancer cells (HCT-116) determined by cell growth assay. Berberine, one of the major alkaloid in the stems of C. fenestratum , also promoted antiproliferative effect. Extracts from the leaves of three Azadirachta species in Thailand, A. indica , A. indica var. siamensis , and A. excelsa , were reported to promote in vitro antioxidant effects determined by various methods. Ten Russula mushroom collected from northeastern part of Thailand were tested for in vitro antioxidant activities using photochemiluminescence assay for both lipid-soluble and water-soluble antioxidant capacities. R. medullata extract exhibited the highest antioxidant effects in both lipid-soluble and water-soluble models.


The Graetz problem in a transpiration-cooled channel was analytically attacked so as to explore the developing temperature field due to a sudden change in wall temperature of the channel subject to an arbitrary distribution of the local mass flux over the porous wall. Analytical expressions for the developments of the thermal boundary layer thickness, wall temperature and Nusselt number were obtained for the thermal entrance region, assuming hydro-dynamically forced convective flow in a channel with a locally variable blowing mass flux. When the blowing mass flux is kept constant over the wall surface, the cooling by the coolant is less effective near the entrance, thus, exposing to danger of thermal damage. The present study reveals that the blowing mass flux graded inversely proportional to one third power of the axial distance is quite effective to keep the wall temperature uniform. Numerical calculations based on finite volume method were also carried out to verify the analysis. The findings from this study can be applied to possible thermal managements of heat generating stacks such as in EV batteries and PEMFC, in which temperature uniformity is essential for product longevity.


: This article provides an overview of the issues and effects of principle-centered health care within organized systems of care; portrays a comprehensive disease management framework for home health care; and offers virtual health management, telecommunications, and mobile computing strategies to enable health management enterprises to achieve health and outcomes maximization accountability demands in managed care.


Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN) have become a popular means of performing link prediction due to the high accuracy offered by them. However, scaling such link prediction into large graphs of billions of vertices and edges with rich types of attributes is a significant issue to be addressed due to the storage and computation limitations of the machines. In this paper we present a scalable link prediction approach which conducts GCN training and link prediction on top of a distributed graph database server called JasmineGraph. We partition graph data and persist them in multiple workers. We implement parallel graph node embedding generation using GraphSAGE algorithm in multiple workers. Our approach avoids facing performance bottlenecks in GCN training using an intelligent scheduling algorithm. We show our approach scales well with an increasing number of partitions (2,4,8, and 16) using four real world data sets called Twitter, Amazon, Reddit, and DBLP-V11. JasmineGraph was able to train a GCN from the largest dataset DBLP-V11 (> 9.3GB) in 11 hours and 40 minutes time using 16 workers on a single server while the original GraphSAGE implementation could not process it at all. The original GraphSAGE implementation processed the second largest dataset Reddit in 238 minutes while JasmineGraph took only 100 minutes on the same hardware with 16 workers leading to 2.4 times improved performance.


The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth is a world map in eight panels created in 1603 by the Ming dynasty military official Li Yingshi 李應試. The map is a variant of the known work by the Italian Jesuit savant Matteo Ricci and the scholar Li Zhizao 李之藻. This essay focuses on one copy of this 1603 world map, which was in the possession of the Manchus of the Later Jin state, the precursor of the Qing. This essay argues that the map was used in the Shenyang palace before 1644, the year when the Manchus conquered Beijing and established the Qing, China's last ruling imperial dynasty, and that it was inscribed with selective translations of the map's cosmological elements and place-names in a version of the Old Manchu script. The Map of Observing the Mysteries of the Heaven and Earth matters because it prompts us to rethink the process of knowledge circulation between China and early modern Europe. The map shows that the Manchus accessed and used the products of Western learning even before their conquest of China and sought to adapt them to their needs through translation.


This preliminary study considers a combined cycle configuration for aeroengines, whereby thermal energy from the exhaust of the gas turbine is partly recovered in order to obtain additional mechanical power. The waste heat recovery system is based on a closed thermodynamic bottoming cycle with supercritical car bon dioxide (scCO2) as working fluid, allowing to achieve a very high power density. As first step of the investigation a thermodynamic cycle analysis of the combined-cycle engine (CCE) is carried out. Results are compared to those of the intercooledrecuperative engine (IRE) configuration for the same operating conditions and calculated under the same modeling assumptions. The estimated nominal SFC of the proposed CCE configuration is approximately 20% lower compared to that of a conventional turbofan, and 6% lower than that of the IRE, if pressure drops in the heat exchangers are neglected. Such large gain justified further analysis, by including the preliminary sizing of main components. Once the sizing of heat exchangers is factored in, the thermodynamic benefit of the CCE is offset by the penalty due to the weight of the additional equipment. This is mainly caused by i) the space constraints of the turbofan nacelle, which strongly limit the recoverable thermal power, and ii) the lack of proper het exchanger technology for such a highly unconventional application. These issues, and the many other that need consideration, will be addressed in an upcoming research project encompassing a much wider scope involving new aircraft and propulsion system


Because there are many ways of structuring and managing a land development process, this research asks the question: What influence do different decision making approaches have on the built form of the Wellington waterfront redevelopment?  The form of the built environment is shaped by existing physical and economic conditions; the values of those involved in the planning and design of it; and, the activities of those who occupy it. However, the social structure and mechanisms of decision making (i.e. the governance) within the urban planning and design stages of the development process act as a filter for identifying and prioritizing factors that will have the greatest influence on the form. Because of the filter effect, this thesis argues the governance of a development process has observable effects on the built form of the associated development project.  A review of urban design, urban morphology, and land development literature identified related research on the governance-built form relationship. Studies in urban design and development processes have generally identified single, overall governance approaches for development projects and have not effectively identified relationships with the built form. Recent work in the field of urban morphology has more effectively identified relationships between governance practices and the evolution of the built environment; however, these studies have tended to treat governance as a single process rather than a sequence of different governance approaches. Therefore, this study examined the redevelopment of the Wellington waterfront to look for and identify the different governance approaches that were used over the study period and how these influenced the resulting built form.  To address the question of what effect different governance approaches had on the built form, the history of the redevelopment was analyzed in depth. Through analysis of written records, semi-structured interviews with participants involved in a variety of redevelopment related roles, and site visits, it was possible to characterize different governance approaches within the overall project and how these have influenced the form of the built environment. Triangulation of the three methods was used to provide a richer description of the redevelopment and improve confidence in the findings.  Between 1974 and 2012, Wellington transitioned through seven separate governance approaches, each having some influence on the form of the redevelopment. Each governance approach was marked by different driving values and forms of stakeholder involvement that affected the redevelopment. For example, periods dominated by top-down or corporate approaches resulted in larger and more internally focused buildings and building sites than periods with more inclusive governance arrangements.   Characterizing the governance approaches and their effects on the built form provided a useful tool for evaluating and understanding the development process and the evolution of the built form of the Wellington waterfront. This level of understanding of the different governance approaches and their influence on the built form has not been previously described in the literature. While the findings cannot be assumed to be descriptive of other development projects, they do identify patterns that should be investigated in other development contexts. The approach and findings from this thesis therefore contribute to the literature on the relationship between the processes and products of urban design, and the social structures of development processes.


The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) commissioned a project to explore issues around children harming animals. More than 1000 young people and 100 adults engaged with the research, which initially focussed on the way children and young people themselves make sense of harm towards animals, and then extended into a range of other areas. A critical evaluation of the literature informed a research design that included: questionnaires distributed to schools producing 841 returns from individual pupils; interviews with 10 young people; 28 group interviews involving a total of 270 young people; and individual interviews with many involved professionals. In addition, retrospective data was gathered from 25 adults regarding their early experiences of harming animals and on 276 children from a centre working with young children with behavioural problems, some of whom had harmed animals. Issues arising from this pilot study include the suggestion that children and young people harming animals is more widespread than generally accepted. The majority of all those contacted thought that future intervention should focus primarily on 'education', and the many teachers involved proposed Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Citizenship as the appropriate forum.This paper offers a brief summary of the main elements of the research process and outlines some of the emerging issues. A full account appears in the unpublished research report, (Piper et al. 2001 1 ). It is hoped this paper may stimulate further research, especially in the UK.


4 K Gifford-McMahon cryocoolers suffer from inherent temperature oscillations which can be a problem for certain attached electronic instrumentation. Sumitomo Heavy Industries has exploited the high volumetric specific heat of super-critical He to quell these oscillations (approx. 10 dB) by strongly thermally linking a separate vessel of He to the second stage; no significant thermal resistance is added between the payload and the working gas of the cryocooler. A noticeable effect of the helium damper is to increase the cool-down time of the second stage below 10 K. For the operation of niobium-based superconducting electronics (NbSCE), a common practice is to warm the circuits above the critical temperature (∼9 K) and then cool to the operating point in order to redistribute trapped magnetic fluxons, so for NbSCE users, the time to cool from 10 K is important. The gas in the helium damper is shared between a room-temperature buffer tank and the 2nd stage vessel, which are connected by a capillary tube. We show that the total cool-down time below 10 K can be substantially reduced by introducing a combination of thermal linkages between the cryocooler and the capillary tube and in-line relief valves, which control the He mass distribution between the warm canister and cold vessel. The time to reach operating temperature from the superconducting transition has been reduced to <25% of the time needed without these low-cost modifications.


This study investigates the association between auditors monitoring and dividend payout policy. The previous literature illustrate that there are two ways to mitigate the agency concern; One is through dividend payments while other way of mitigating agency concern is to improve auditors monitoring, which reduces the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders due to which the managers are forced to pay the dividends. The first way of mitigating the agency concern is called substitution model while the second way is called outcome model. In order to assess which of the model of mitigating agency concern is prevailing in Pakistan, study used the data of 140 listed firms from 2005 to 2010 and observed that there is a positive and significant association between auditor monitoring and dividend payouts. These results are indication of presence of outcome model. Moreover, these results are consistent with prior studies.


Several audio-visual speech recognition models have been recently proposed which aim to improve the robustness over audio-only models in the presence of noise. However, almost all of them ignore the impact of the Lombard effect, i.e., the change in speaking style in noisy environments which aims to make speech more intelligible and affects both the acoustic characteristics of speech and the lip movements. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the Lombard effect in audio-visual speech recognition. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work which does so using end-to-end deep architectures and presents results on unseen speakers. Our results show that properly modelling Lombard speech is always beneficial. Even if a relatively small amount of Lombard speech is added to the training set then the performance in a real scenario, where noisy Lombard speech is present, can be significantly improved. We also show that the standard approach followed in the literature, where a model is trained and tested on noisy plain speech, provides a correct estimate of the video-only performance and slightly underestimates the audio-visual performance. In case of audio-only approaches, performance is overestimated for SNRs higher than -3dB and underestimated for lower SNRs.


Abstract In the Wadden Sea, shell repair frequency in the small gastropod Hydrobia ulvae varied from 2.8% to 11.2%. On tidal flats of the Mok, a small bay on the island of Texel, The Netherlands, in the Wadden Sea, higher repair frequencies varying from 11.8% to 41.8% were measured. The shelduck, Tadorna tadorna, a predator of Hydrobia, occurs here in densities far above average densities for the Wadden Sea. Shelducks ingest their prey whole and crush the shells of H. ulvae internally. Live specimens of H. ulvae were collected from shelduck feces. Those with intact operculum and only a damaged outer aperture rim of the shell were kept in aquaria and repaired their shell rapidly. This indicates that predators that ingest shelled prey can also leave repair scars on shells. Such scars, however, are indistinguishable from those resulting from failed predation by predators using such pre-ingestive shell breakage as decapod crustaceans.


Silicon Carbide based electronics remains the most suitable choice to replace silicon in power electronics. Especially in avionics SiC devices represent a reliable solution for reducing weight and size of aircraft power switching technology. However, some issues need to be solved to unleash the full potential of this kind of electronics. The most important challenge is related to the quality of the dielectric/SiC interface and to the techniques implemented to fabricate this interface. In this work, we investigate the morphological and electrical properties of low temperature dielectric films deposited on SiC substrate by using ECR-PECVD. To this end, we fabricated capacitors with silicon dioxide layer, deposited at low temperature, studying their performance with and without surface pretreatments and considering post-annealing effects at different temperatures and times.


Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) has been investigated as a method of sample preparation in environmental analysis. Using an experimental design approach the influence of operating variables (pressure, temperature and extraction time) on the recovery of seven phenols that have been slurry spiked on soil has been investigated. In every case, except 2-methylphenol, no variables were found to be significant within the limits investigated (pressure, 4–20 MPa; temperature, 30–70 °C; and extraction time, 5–25 min). ASE was compared with shake-flask extraction and found to give similar recoveries. The exception was 2,4-dimethylphenol which was not recovered by the shake-flask approach and was only poorly recovered using ASE (mean recovery, 24.5% with an RSD of 17.6%, based on 15 individual determinations). For shake-flask extraction the mean recoveries ranged from 70.3 to 116.1% with RSDs of 6.5 to 27.2% compared to ASE which gave mean recoveries from 73.8 to 90.2% and RSDs between 8.7 and 21.1%. It is expected that improvements in precision would be obtained using an automated ASE system. A cleaner UV chromatogram was obtained from the ASE extract. The feasibility of ASE in environmental analysis is demonstrated.


Low capsule set is a major factor limiting seed production in Eucalyptus globulus seed orchards. Trials were conducted in E. globulus seed orchards in Tasmania to identify the timing of capsule development and abortion, as well as the effect of pollination type, female tree, site, fertilisation, flower physical attributes, flower density, irrigation and weather events on capsule set and overall reproductive success. Controlled pollinations (CP), mass supplementary pollinations (MSP), open pollinations (OP) and un-pollinated controls (UP) were carried out at two orchard sites (Cambridge and Ridgley). Ramets of the same genotype differing in flower density and irrigation treatment were also compared for capsule set under MSP in three other experiments. No capsules were set in the UP, and capsule set was significantly lower following CP than OP and MSP. The genotypes at the lower altitude Cambridge site had a higher level of capsule set than the same genotypes pollinated at the Ridgley site. The major period of capsule abortion occurred between 20 and 80 days after pollination, coinciding with the period of capsule growth. There was a positive correlation between the number of fertilised ovules per aborted capsule and the length of time capsules were held on the tree. Flower physical attributes were found to correlate with reproductive success. Increased flower density had a negative impact on capsule set, as did irrigation. There was no clear evidence that weather events affected the rate of capsule abortion over the study period. Given that capsule abortion occurred during a period of fruit growth, that capsules with the lowest number of fertilised ovules aborted first and there is an impact from flower density and irrigation level, it is argued that fertilisation level and the level of resource competition are major factors determining capsule abortion.


Pick a better snack™, a multicomponent social marketing intervention to promote fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption, develops children's ability to ask their parents for F&V. This study's purpose was to understand this "pester power" from the child's perspective. Pester power is leveraging children's ability to convince their parents to purchase items in the store that they normally would not have considered buying. Focus groups were conducted with third-grade program participants (n = 30) and involved a traditional discussion format, a drawing activity, and role-playing. Most of the communication participants described involved straightforward requests, although a few children described behaviors such as whining. Most reported their parents responded affirmatively to requests, and some described a positive emotional response from parents. Parent denials were typically related to concerns about cost or the child not eating the item after purchase. Findings pointed to high self-efficacy and response efficacy among these children, although role-playing of effective asking strategies and addressing reasons why parents deny requests could enhance the program. Social marketing efforts including children should consider how pester power may play a role in moving adult behavior.


A unified constant-frequency integration (UCI) controller for a three-phase three-switch three-level rectifier (VIENNA) with unity-power-factor-correction is proposed. One advantage of the VIENNA rectifier is that the switch voltage stress is one half of the total output voltage so that MOSFETs can be used. The proposed control approach is based on one-cycle control and features great simplicity and reliability: all three phases will be power factor corrected using one integrator with reset along with several flips-flops, comparators and logic and linear components. It does not require multipliers to scale the current reference according to the output power level as used in many other control approaches. In addition, the input voltage sensor is eliminated. It employs constant switching frequency modulation that is desirable for industrial applications. The proposed controller can operate by sensing either the inductor currents or the switching currents. If the switching currents are sensed, the cost is further reduced because switching currents are easier to sense compared with inductor currents. The proposed approach is supported by experimental results.


Background: Modulating excessive airway neutrophilia might have beneficial effects in neutrophilic airway diseases. In humans the effects of CXCR2 antagonism are well characterized in peripheral blood and sputum, but there are no data on human bronchial mucosa. Methods: We conducted an exploratory, single centre, open-label, non-controlled, pilot study with oral twice daily (BD) administration of 45 mg AZD5069 (90 mg/day) over 4 weeks in patients with moderate persistent neutrophilic asthma. Co-primary endpoints were neutrophil cell counts in bronchial mucosa obtained via bronchoscopic biopsy, induced sputum, and blood. Secondary endpoints included ligands of CXCR2 (IL-8, GRO-α) in sputum supernatant and serum (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:NCT01890148). Results: 5 patients (mean age 47 years, 4 male patients; mean FEV1 83% pred., 65% neutrophils in sputum) were enrolled and 4 patients completed the study. There was a numeric decrease in neutrophil counts in mucosa, sputum and blood with a consecutive increase of IL-8 and GRO-α levels in sputum and serum. There was a total of 11 adverse events (AEs) of mild to moderate intensity with one AE being related to study treatment (low blood neutrophil counts resulting in withdrawal of the patient from study treatment). No serious AE occurred. Conclusion: CXCR2-antagonism seems to simultaneously reduce the number of neutrophils in all investigated compartments, which suggests that the reduction of sputum neutrophilia is due to a reduced entry of neutrophils to the lung rather than a retention in the mucosa.


: The carboxypeptidase A purified from goat pancreas has been found to have a molecular weight of 34,600 +/- 300. The enzyme is a zinc-protein and the molar ratio of zinc to enzyme protein is 1:1. Removal of zinc yields an inactive apocarboxypeptidase A. The loss of activity of the native enzyme and restoration of the activity of the apoenzyme run parallel with the zinc content of the protein, thus showing the essentiality of zinc for the enzymatic activity. The exact role of zinc in the enzyme catalysed hydrolysis of the acylpeptides has been investigated after preparing metallo proteins by substituting the zinc of carboxypeptidase A with Co2+, Mn2+, Ni2+, Fe2+, Cd2+, Hg2+, and Cu2+ and determining the kinetic parameters of such metalloproteins. These studies indicate that the metal ion is involved in both binding the substrate and polarising the peptide bond.


Super-resolution microscopy techniques, which overcome the diffraction limit of optical microscopy, are revolutionizing biological research by providing the ability to localize proteins within cells at nanometer resolution. Super-resolution localization microscopy (SRLM) is one of such techniques. It achieves nanometer resolution by randomly activating separate fluorophores and computationally determining their locations. While discoveries of cellular structures at nanometer resolution made recently demonstrated its potential, SRLM still faces several key technological challenges in image analysis. To overcome these challenges, we developed computational tools for analyzing and enhancing SRLM images to enable quantitative characterization and dynamic visualization of cellular processes. One of the computational tools we developed is an image quality assessment method, which directly quantifies the accuracy or precision of the geometry or structure of the SRLM image objects. Another computational tool we developed is an SRLM image segmentation method, which identifies the boundaries of SRLM image objects by kernel density-based method. We utilize correlative fluorescence and atomic force microscopy images to characterize and validate the accuracy of the segmentation method. We have also developed a new data aggregation method under a sliding-window scheme, which improves the temporal resolution to enhance the capability of SRLM imaging of live cells. Together, these computational image analysis techniques enable fundamental extensions of SRLM, which will be essential for quantitative analysis and characterization of dynamic cellular processes.


In several countries of central Europe, many modern residential buildings are braced by reinforced concrete (RC) and unreinforced masonry (URM) walls coupled with RC slabs. Such mixed constructions, in fact, behave better under seismic loading than buildings with URM walls alone. Similarly, the insertion of RC walls is a technique used to retrofit existing modern URM constructions that feature RC slabs, since both strength and displacement capacities of the repaired structure increase with respect to the un-retrofitted configuration. Although modern mixed RC-URM wall buildings are rather common, very little is known about their seismic behaviour and codes do not provide adequate design and assessment guidelines. Hence, the thesis focuses on four objectives: (1) to provide experimental data on the seismic behaviour of mixed RC-URM wall structures; (2) to formulate recommendations for setting up numerical models for structures with both RC and URM walls; (3) to develop a mechanical model that represents the interaction between RC and URM walls; (4) to propose a displacement-based seismic approach for the design of new mixed RC-URM wall structures and the retrofitting of URM wall buildings by adding RC walls or replacing URM walls with RC ones. An experimental investigation of two mixed RC-URM wall substructures leads to new findings with respect to the actual distribution of the reaction forces between RC and URM walls and gives insight into the displacement profile of mixed RC-URM wall structures. The results are used to validate two numerical strategies and recommendations for setting up models for structures with both RC and URM walls are formulated. A simple mechanical model, which takes into account the most important parameters influencing the seismic behaviour of mixed RC-URM wall structures, is proposed and validated. The model is based on the shear-flexure interaction as URM and RC walls display dominant shear and flexural deformations, respectively. In the last part of the thesis a displacement-based design approach for mixed RC-URM wall structures is developed. The design method is verified through inelastic time-history analyses (ITHA) of three-to-five-storey case study buildings. Comparison between the design values and the results from ITHA suggests that the design methodology controls the horizontal deflection of the structures, being almost linear over their height, and avoids concentrations of deformations in the bottom storey, a typical feature of URM wall structures. On the other hand, for the three-storey configurations, it was observed that the approach overestimates the maximum horizontal displacement.


This paper investigates whether stock markets view Chinese OMAs as increasing shareholder wealth. The subject is of interest given the influential role that the government plays in Chinese firms' overseas activities, and the fact that the government may have objectives other than maximization of shareholder wealth. We examine 145 OMAs by Chinese acquiring firms over the year 1994-2008. We find some evidence that markets positively responded to news of Chinese OMAs. However, we also find that markets responded less favorably after China implemented its Go Global policy encouraging overseas investment. We hypothesize two reasons for this: First, the expansion of OMAs under Go Global resulted in Chinese firms pursuing less attractive targets, on average. Second, Go Global re-directed investment towards industries having national strategic value but diminished profit value. Using a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition procedure, we find no evidence to support this latter hypothesis. Thus, to whatever extent strategic interests may motivate China's Go Global policy, it does not appear that their pursuit has come at the expense of shareholder wealth.


The paper deals with measurement of very small changes of the object position using speckle correlation method. An object translation is very often measured by deformation tensor components. Often used measuring method is based on direct contact with the object, which can be destructive. Presented contactless method uses statistical approach which means computation of the cross-correlation function of two speckle patterns recorded before and after object translation.


RNA transcripts after transcription elongation with T7 RNA polymerase in vitro were visualized by using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Fragment of pGEMEX linear DNA with the length of 1414 nucleotide pairs carrying promoter and terminator of bacteriophage T7 was used as DNA template for transcription. Immobilized on the mica (AFM substrate) RNA transcripts formed rod-like condensed structures with the length of 122 +/- 10 nm and characteristic aspect ratio ca. 4.5-5. Problems of RNA immobilization onto mica for subsequent visualization by AFM are discussed.


Abstract. Automatic generation of indoor navigable models is mostly based on 2D floor plans. However, in many cases the floor plans are out of date. Buildings are not always built according to their blue prints, interiors might change after a few years because of modified walls and doors, and furniture may be repositioned to the user's preferences. Therefore, new approaches for the quick recording of indoor environments should be investigated. This paper concentrates on laser scanning with a Mobile Laser Scanner (MLS) device. The MLS device stores a point cloud and its trajectory. If the MLS device is operated by a human, the trajectory contains information which can be used to distinguish different surfaces. In this paper a method is presented for the identification of walkable surfaces based on the analysis of the point cloud and the trajectory of the MLS scanner. This method consists of several steps. First, the point cloud is voxelized. Second, the trajectory is analysing and projecting to acquire seed voxels. Third, these seed voxels are generated into floor regions by the use of a region growing process. By identifying dynamic objects, doors and furniture, these floor regions can be modified so that each region represents a specific navigable space inside a building as a free navigable voxel space. By combining the point cloud and its corresponding trajectory, the walkable space can be identified for any type of building even if the interior is scanned during business hours.


This study determined whether accumulated liver and visceral lipid in yellow perch can be alleviated by feeding an appropriate starch source. We compared the growth performance, nutritional composition and health of yellow perch fed a control diet (no added starch) and three diets with corn, potato or wheat starch (200 g/kg diet) to replace an equal proportion of fishmeal in the control diet. Dietary starch led to increased bulk density, hardness and gelatinization levels of feed pellets compared with the control diet. At the end of an 8‐week feeding, all fish fed the test diets had similar growth rates (p > .05). However, the wheat starch diet resulted in significantly enlarged livers and increased accumulation of lipid in the liver, viscera and whole body (p < .05). This diet also caused significantly higher levels of fasting glucose, aspartate aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase activities in serum than the control diet. Liver cell diameters were larger, and Kupffer cell numbers were lower in the fish fed the wheat starch than those fed the control diet. Potato or corn starch had less impact on fish health and is considered to be an appropriate carbohydrate sources for yellow perch under the current testing conditions.


This study aims to describe a culture-based social studies learning model to foster student multiculturalism. Research and Development design was employed, with junior high school students in Sumedang Indonesia as the subjects of the research. The proposed model is a strategy for crafting a learning environment and experience that integrate culture as inevitable part of the learning process. The teaching materials encompass the diversity of Indonesian cultures. Culture-based learning steps manifest in multiculturalism class contracts, delivery of introductory materials, library inquiry, demonstration of cultural performance, modeling/guest teachers, and value clarification technique (VCT) cultural value analysis, material review and reflection of multiculturalism values. The model significantly influenced the development of student multiculturalism.


The application of natural products for treatment and prevention of various diseases is becoming more important. Not only antibacterial natural preparations are being developed, but also antiviral natural products are investigated. There are two main problems in such investigations: (i) special chemical analysis and data analysis methods have to be used, (ii) not only antiviral effect has to be taken into account, but also cytotoxic and other unwanted effects. In this work, a combination of separation methods (capillary electrophoresis and gas chromatography), spectrophotometric methods, data mining/data analysis methods (hierarchical clusterization, multidimensional scaling and classification and regression tree induction) for clarifying chemical attributes in cytotoxic plant extracts was applied. The selected plants belonged to families: (i) Lamiaceae, (ii) Asteraceae and (iii) Fabaceae. Most cytotoxic were Agastache foeniculum Pursh. Kuntze. and Salvia officinalis L. extracts. Least cytotoxic were Perilla frutescens L. and Satureja Montana L. extracts. The tendency of cytotoxic extracts having abundant concentrations of medium and low electrophoretic mobility cations was clarified.


Although females of numerous species possess genetically-based preferences for certain male traits and mate preferentially with males possessing these traits, recent theoretical and experimental evidence indicates that they may also copy (imitate) the mate choices of other females under certain circumstances. Such mate-choice copying is expected to be most prevalent when females have the opportunity to observe the mate choices of others and when mate choice is costly to females. One potential direct fitness cost of mate choice is increased individual risk of mortality due to predation. Here, we investigate for the first time the effect of increasing the apparent risk of predation on the tendency of females to copy die experimentally staged mate choice of another female. Using adult female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) originating from a Trinidadian population that experiences a relatively high fish predation pressure, we first establish that they possess a preference for the more brighdy colored of two simultaneously presented males in the absence of both mate-copying opportunity and an immediate threat of predation. However, most females reversed dieir initial mate preference when given an opportunity to copy the mate preference of another female in the absence of predation threat The proportion of females reversing their preference when given the opportunity to do so was not affected by increasing the apparent risk of (fish) predation. This result may be owing either to female guppies tending to copy the mate choice of others whenever the opportunity arises because the benefits of doing so accrue irrespective of the ambient risk of predation or to females choosing randomly between males with respect to their color pattern in the presence of the predator irrespective of mate-copying opportunity. These two explanations for die apparent lack of an effect of predation risk on mate-choice copying per se are both plausible but unfortunately could not be easily distinguished here. It may dius be possible, and interesting, that individual female guppies chose randomly between the available males in the presence of the predator but otherwise copied the choice of others when given the opportunity to do so.


Antipsychotic agents have been used commonly in the treatment of bipolar disorder. This article reviews the evolution of the use of antipsychotic agents and their role in the acute and maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder. The focus is on neuroleptic drugs, the atypical antipsychotic drugs (risperidone and clozapine), and two of the new atypical antipsychotic drugs that were recently approved.


This paper proposes the localization scheme using ultrasonic beacons in a multi-block workspace. Indoor localization schemes using ultrasonic sensors have been widely studied due to their cheap price and high accuracy. However, ultrasonic sensors are susceptible to environmental noises from their propagation characteristics. On account of their decay phenomena when they are transmitted over a long distance, ultrasonic sensors are not suitable for application in large indoor environments. To overcome these shortages of ultrasonic sensors while emphasizing their advantages, a multi-block approach has been proposed by dividing the indoor space into several blocks with multiple beacons in each block. This approach, however, is hard to divide into several blocks when beacons are not installed in a certain pattern, and in case of having newly installed beacons, all blocks placement is reconstructed. Therefore, this paper proposes a real time localization scheme to estimate the position of mobile robot without effecting beacons placement. Beacon scheduling algorithm has been developed to select the optimal beacons according to robot position and beacon arrangement for the mobile robot navigation. The performance of the proposed localization system is verified through simulations and real experiments.


Abstract Background There is a positive cross-sectional relationship between alcohol-related proactive dietary restriction to feel the effects of alcohol faster (APDR) and binge drinking, a health and safety issue impacting college students. Objective: To examine: 1) the longitudinal predictive ability of varying levels of APDR on binge drinking frequency; and 1a) the strength of the relationship between varying levels of APDR and binge drinking frequency during freshman year of college (n = 1,149). Methods Ordinal logistic regression was used to model the relationship between APDR and binge drinking frequency. Results Main findings suggest APDR of students who reported eating less than usual (low APDR) prior to drinking to feel the effects of alcohol faster was a significant predictor of binge drinking frequency (1.27 (95% CI, 0.06 to 0.42), Wald χ 2 (1) = 8.46, p=.009) at baseline, but not at 7-month follow-up (1.02 (95% CI, −0.18 to 0.23), Wald χ 2 (1) = .51, p=.83). APDR for students who reported skipping one or more meals (high APDR) to feel the effects of alcohol faster was not a significant predictor of binge drinking frequency at baseline nor at 7-month follow-up. Conclusion Low APDR is a significant predictor of binge drinking frequency that is established early in the first semester of college with no significant change occurring in binge drinking frequency over the course of students' freshman year at 7-month follow-up. Campus health professionals are urged to emphasize the detrimental health effects of low APDR early in the first semester of college.


Self-compassion is an adaptive way of relating to the self when considering personal inadequacies or difficult life circumstances. However, prior research has only examined self-compassion among adults. The current study examined self-compassion among adolescents (N = 235; Mage = 15.2) and included a sample of young adults as a comparison group (N = 287; Mage = 21.1). Results indicated that self-compassion was strongly associated with well-being among adolescents as well as adults. In addition, family and cognitive factors were identified as predictors of individual differences in self-compassion. Finally, self-compassion was found to partially mediate the link between family/cognitive factors and well-being. Findings suggest that self-compassion may be an effective intervention target for teens suffering from negative self-views.


The occurrence of adverse weather exacerbates traffic flow conditions, often leading to severe traffic congestions. Many studies have been conducted based on field-collected data to obtain the effects of weather on traffic flow characteristics. However, there is a limitation for filed data-based studies, in that weather conditions and traffic conditions are both noncontrollable and nonrepeatable, making it difficult to comprehensively assess the influence of weather conditions, especially the rare extreme weather conditions, on traffic flow characteristics. This paper proposes to assess these effects with the combination of driving simulator and traffic simulation. A driving simulator can collect driving behavior by conducting weather-related driving simulation experiments, while a microscopic traffic simulation program can evaluate the changes in traffic flow characteristics by inputting driving behavior parameters coming from the driving simulator. The proposed method can overcome the limitation of the field data-based approach. In this paper, the structure of the assessment platform is introduced at first. Then a verification experiment is conducted to measure the influences of adverse weather conditions on traffic flow characteristics. The verification experiment results show that the influences of adverse weather on traffic flow characteristics have consistent tendencies with outcomes from previous research and demonstrate that the method is practicable for the analysis of the influence of weather on traffic flow characteristics. This paper provides a practical way to analyze the influence of weather on traffic flow from driving behavior's point of view.


A widely used approach to avoid network intrusion is SNORT, an open source network intrusion detection system (NIDS). This work describes SPP- NIDS, a architecture for intrusion detection supporting SNORT rules. SPP-NIDS is attractive to real-world network intrusion detection, due to its scalability, flexibility and performance features. A parameterizable cluster of simple processors provides system scalability. Hardware NIDSs described in the literature often employ hardwired comparators to verify if the incoming network traffic has data potentially containing intrusion attacks. Such NIDSs must be re-synthesized when a new set of rules is available, which happens frequently. In SPP-NIDS, the rule set defining network intrusion patterns is stored in RAM, enabling its straightforward upgrade. The proposed system, when implemented in a 2-million gate FPGA is able to work at a 100 Mbps network data rate, using the complete set of SNORT rules. If more performance is required, it suffices to scale the system, by adding extra processors.


Date Presented 4/17/2015 Disability status places youth at risk of not only repeated victimization but also isolation from community life. Evaluating and addressing violence in the lives of youth with disabilities (YWD) can enhance our profession's ability to address barriers to participation and to maximize independent living outcomes of clients.


An event-history analysis of ten rural villages in Spain from 1750 to 1949 indicates that the likelihood of parents having additional children was influenced by the number of their surviving children and the children's sex composition. Parents whose children had a low survival rate had more children than parents whose children generally survived. Exclusively having daughters during the pre-transitional period also reflected, to a limited degree, the likelihood of new conception. The results suggest that some families adapted their reproductive behavior to their desired objectives. In the pre-transitional period, as well as during the transition itself, decisions to control or encourage fertility often appear to have been based on family size and composition.


We sought to evaluate the impact of C-reactive protein (CRP) levels on in-stent restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention.The plasma level of CRP is considered a risk predictor for cardiovascular diseases. However, the relationship between CRP and in-stent restenosis has been a matter of controversy. Meta-analysis reduces variability and better evaluates the correlation.We performed a systemic search for literature published in March 2008 and earlier, using MEDLINE(R), the Cochrane clinical trials database, and EMBASE(R). We also scanned relevant reference lists and hand-searched all review articles or abstracts from conference reports on this topic. Of the 245 studies that we initially searched, we chose 9 prospective observational studies (1,062 patients).Overall, CRP concentration was higher in patients who experienced in-stent restenosis. The weighted mean difference in CRP levels between the patients with in-stent restenosis and those without was 1.67, and the Z-score for overall effect was 2.12 (P=0.03). Our subgroup analysis that compared patients with stable and unstable angina showed a weighted mean difference in the CRP levels of 2.22 between the patients with and without in-stent restenosis, and the Z-score for overall effect was 2.23 (P=0.03) in 5 studies of unstable-angina patients. There was no significance in 4 studies of stable-angina patients.In spite of significant heterogeneity across the studies, our meta-analysis suggests that preprocedurally elevated levels of CRP are associated with greater in-stent restenosis after stenting and that this impact appears more prominent in unstable-angina patients.


The Open University with the assistance of Operation Days Work of Norway has launched in 2005, a certificate programme on Agriculture for Sustainable Livelihood. This is a follow up programme of the Rural Communication Project that was completed in 2004, undertaken by the Rural Research Unit (RRU) of OUSL and COL, which identified technologies that are of immediate relevance to the rural poor. The ability of the rural people to adapt technologies to suit their needs was demonstrated.

RRU decided to embark on a programme for the rural youth using a combination of distance learning methods and learning by doing. Norwegian Operation Day's Work approved the concept of taking technology to underserved distant regions to empower youth to seek livelihoods in their own situation instead of migrating to the urban areas .

The Open University began the programme, operating five rural study centres in remote locations catering to 90 students, supported by five animators. The programme is conducted in Sinhala and Tamil using printed material supported by work done using local resources. The main activities chosen by the students address rural food needs and value addition to agricultural produce. On completion of the students' projects , in March 2006, the students will be awarded a certificate in Agriculture for Sustainable Livelihood.

Plans are afoot to expand the programme to two more centres from this year. In the coming years emphasis will be paid to meeting energy needs, as it has been identified as a crucial constraint that hampers rural development.


We examined at-risk, problem, or pathological gambling co-occurrence with frequency of past-year alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use; depressive symptoms; and arrest history. Data included the responses of over 3,000 individuals who participated in a 2006 telephone survey designed to understand the extent of at-risk, problem, and pathological gambling; comorbidity levels with substance use; mental health; and social problems among Southwestern U.S. residents. Data were analyzed with multinomial and bivariate logistic regression. Respondents at risk for problem gambling were more likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana than those respondents not at risk. Pathological gamblers were no more or less likely to consume alcohol or tobacco than were non-gamblers or those not at risk. A dose-response relationship existed between degree of gambling problems and depressive symptoms and arrest history. Interventions for at-risk or problem gamblers need to include substance use treatment, and the phenomenon of low levels of substance use among pathological gamblers needs further exploration.


Spatial and Temporal Cues in Statistical Cross Situdational Learning Roy Seo Indiana University Damian Fricker Indiana University Chen Yu Indiana University Abstract: Discovering the link between words and objects is necessary for language learning. Cross-situational learning is that in order to learn word to referent mappings, learners track statistical possibility across ambiguous trials between words and objects. Learners may also track additional cues to reference such as consistent spatial locations and temporal contiguity. We hypothesized that associative learning is best when both cues are available and poorest when neither cues are available. To examine the effects of these cues, subjects will be given each of the four possible cue combinations. In conditions with spatial and temporal cues, 4 objects will be presented their fixed locations and 4 words will be played such that the first word was the last word in the previous trials instead of random orders. Also,analysis the association between learning data and eye-gaze fixation patterns will give us a window to continuously measure what takes place with the cues.


In today's world authentication plays a vital role. The most common method used for authentication is textual password. There are various limitations for textual passwords, they are exposed to shoulder surfing attack however strong textual passwords are tough to memorize. Shoulder surfing and hotspot attack are two main problems in graphical passwords. So as an alternative Graphical Passwords are introduced to resist the Shoulder surfing attack. In order to address the above mentioned attacks the new scheme highlights cued click point (CCP), Using graphical password as input and grid lines for image point verification. The objective of this system is to provide security using normal login and graphical password. This system can be used in the field such as banking application, military application, civilians, forensic labs, etc.


The financial assets that are subject to major European financial legislation (i.e. (designated types of) financial instruments) have traditionally been defined in a largely exemplary and circular manner. The recent proliferation of 'non-traditional' financial assets, such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, is increasingly challenging the viability of these pragmatic financial asset definitions. Through the analysis of the technologies and functionalities underpinning non-traditional financial assets, legal scholarship has aimed to categorize novel assets within the existing framework of financial asset definitions. Although a solid understanding of e.g. distributed ledger applications and cryptography appears a prerequisite for future policy and legislative interventions, contemporary European financial legislation is mostly indifferent to the technologies on which financial assets may be wired. Categorizations based on the purposes that non-traditional assets may serve (i.e. payment, utility, and investment) are more relevant to financial law, but suffer from subjectivity because they depend on the asset usage by the asset holder. Against this backdrop, this paper proposes a novel systematization of non-traditional assets that is based upon the conceptual substructure of the assets within scope of European financial legislation. More specifically, this paper submits that, irrespective of underlying technologies and functionalities, all assets that are subject to major European financial legislation have a conceptual common denominator: they entail the liability of an entity and, hence, have intrinsic value. The proposed categorization singles out a well-defined group of novel financial assets that is not subject to European financial law (i.e. assets that only have extrinsic value). Different from functionality- and technology-based categorizations, the suggested approach allows to eradicate ambiguities and potential overinclusiveness of functionality-based categorizations of non-traditional assets. By exploring the conceptual common denominator of the financial assets that are subject to European financial legislation, this paper aims to foster debate on the circular and exemplary character of financial asset definitions in European financial legislation in general and the relation of these definitions to novel types of financial assets in particular.


In this Closer Look, we examine the tensions between corporate culture, financial incentives, and employee conduct as illustrated by the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal. In 2016, Wells Fargo admitted that employees had opened as many as 2 million accounts without customer authorization over a five-year period. We discuss the factors that contributed to the scandal, the repercussions for the bank, and its response. We ask:• How did the company's incentive system contribute to the scandal?• Would the system have worked better if coupled with additional metrics or controls?• What systems should have been put in place to identify and escalate potential problems earlier?• What steps should senior management have taken to better contain the fallout?• Is an inside or outside CEO successor better positioned to help the bank recover?• How do you maximize the positive contribution that incentives make to culture while minimizing potentially negative outcomes?The Stanford Closer Look series is a collection of short case studies through which we explore topics, issues, and controversies in corporate governance and executive leadership. In each study, we take a targeted look at a specific issue that is relevant to the current debate on governance and explain why it is so important. Larcker and Tayan are co-authors of the books "Corporate Governance Matters" and "A Real Look at Real World Corporate Governance."


In a recent epidemiologic risk assessment on late health effects of patients treated with radioactive iodine (RAI), organ/tissue doses of the patients were estimated based on iodine-131 S values derived from the reference computational phantoms of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). However, the use of the S values based on the reference phantoms may lead to significant biases in the estimated doses of patients whose body sizes (height and weight) are significantly different from the reference body sizes. To fill this critical gap, we established a comprehensive dataset of body-size-dependent iodine-131 S values (rT ← thyroid) for 30 radiosensitive target organs/tissues by performing Monte Carlo dose calculations coupled with a total of 212 adult male and female computational phantoms in different heights and weights. We observed that the S values tend to decrease with increasing body height; for example, the S value (gonads ← thyroid) of the 160 cm male phantom is about 3 times higher than that of the 190 cm male phantom at the 70 kg weight. We also observed that the S values tend to decrease with increasing body weight for some organs/tissues; for example, the S value (skin ← thyroid) of the 45 kg female phantom is about two times higher than that of the 130 kg female phantom at the 160 cm height. For other organs/tissues, which are relatively far from the thyroid, in contrast, the S values tend to increase with increasing body weight; for example, the S value (bladder ← thyroid) of the 45 kg female phantom is about 2 times lower than that of the 130 kg female phantom. Overall, the majority of the body-size-dependent S values deviated to within 25% from those of the reference phantoms. We believe that the use of body-size-dependent S values in dose reconstructions should help quantify the dosimetric uncertainty in epidemiologic investigations of RAI-treated patients.


Background: Thermal injury is associated with anatomic, physiologic, endocrinologic, and immunologic alterations, which require specialized care. Advances in medical care have changed the principal cause of death in burn patients from burn shock to wound sepsis. An intervention that has drastically changed this outlook is early excision and primary closure of wounds. We used insulin for glycemic control and attenuating systemic inflammation. Materials and Methods: Patients admitted to S. C. B Medical College hospital were divided into 2 groups of 34 each: control group (n = 34) which did not receive insulin and study group (n = 34) which received insulin. Serum C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, albumin white blood cell, and blood cultures were done every 7th day. Results: Albumin levels decreased over 7 days followed by gradual recovery which was faster in the study group. CRP levels rose and attained its peak by day 14, then declined. CRP peak in the study group was found to be lower than control. Fibrinogen levels showed identical trend as CRP. Leukocytosis was higher in control compared to study group. Blood culture positive was higher in control compared to study group; Pseudomonas and Candida were most common organisms, but study group patients were resistant to Candida. Out of 29 deceased patients, 55% were from control group. Conclusions: Insulin administration in severely burned patients has demonstrated benefits among various parameters. In critically ill burn injury patients, obtaining tight glycemic control with intensive insulin therapy was shown to reduce morbidity and mortality.


The original motivation for the study of hook length polynomials was to find a combinatorial proof for a hook length formula for binary trees given by Postnikov, as well as a proof for a hook length polynomial formula conjectured by Lascoux. In this paper, we define the hook length polynomial for plane forests of a given degree sequence type and show that it can be factored into a product of linear forms. Some other enumerative results on forests are also given.


This is a review of the work done at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the past decade on development of the coupled oscillator technology in phased array applications to spacecraft telecommunications. First, some historical background is provided to set the work in context. However, this is by no means intended to be a comprehensive review of all work in this area. Rather, the focus is on the JPL contribution with some mention of other work which provided either insight or motivation. In the mid 1990s, R. A. York, and collaborators proposed that an array of mutually injection locked electronic oscillators could provide appropriately phased signals to the radiating elements of an array antenna such that the radiated beam could be steered merely by tuning the end or perimeter oscillators of the array. York, et al. also proposed a receiving system based on such oscillator arrays in which the oscillators provide properly phased local oscillator signals to be mixed with the signals received by the array elements to remove the phase due to angle of arrival of the incident wave. These concepts were viewed as a promising simplification of the beam steering control system that could result in significant cost, mass, and prime power reduction and were therefore attractive for possible space application. The initial work at JPL was largely theoretical and, in collaboration with York and Maccarini, Pogorzelski developed a linearized formulation of the analysis of such arrays that provided considerable insight into the dynamic behavior of the aperture phase as a function of oscillator tuning. The key results (and limitations) of this theoretical work and their implications for array performance are reviewed here. Subsequently, several experimental arrays were designed, fabricated, and tested. These arrays are described and the salient experimental results are outlined. The body of work described has brought JPL from mere awareness of the concept a decade ago, through development of several experimental transmitters and receivers based on the concept, to the brink of a current effort to integrate the transmit and receive functions in a single unit to be developed for future fight application


The incidence of lung cancer has been increasing in the recent years. Bronchial cytology using Papanicolaou society of cytopathology (PSC) system is an effective method for triaging patients. The present study attempts to evaluate the bronchial cytological diagnosis with histopathological correlation of lung lesions. Aims: i. To study the cytological features of lung lesions. ii. To assess the sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy of bronchial cytology of lung lesions in comparison with histopathology. Settings and Design: Prospective study at the tertiary care hospital. Methods and Material: It included 63 cases of lung lesions, evaluated using the PSC system for reporting respiratory cytology. The cytological diagnosis was correlated with the final histopathological diagnosis. The study was conducted between January 2019 and June 2020. Statistical Analysis Used: SPSS 20.0 software. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and diagnostic accuracy of bronchial cytology was 60%, 89%, 90%, 58.62%, and 71.42%, respectively. Conclusions: Bronchial cytology including bronchial wash, bronchial brush, endobronchial ultrasound/transbronchial needle aspiration, and computerized tomography-guided fine needle aspiration cytology can be used to increase the sensitivity and specificity for definitive diagnosis and better management.


Market segmentation offers several strategic and tactical advantages to marketers. Hierarchical and non-hierarchical segmentation methods have several weaknesses but remain widely applied in tourism studies. Alternative segmentation methods such as fuzzy, mixture models, and Bagged Clustering are relatively less popular. In this study, we propose a novel method, the Bagged Fuzzy C–Means (BFCM) algorithm, for segmenting tourism markets. A sample of 328 Chinese travellers revealed the existence of four segments (Admirers, Enthusiasts, Moderates, and Apathetics) of perceived images for Western Europe. BFCM is able to identify stable clusters, inheriting this feature from Bagged clustering method. Furthermore, fuzzy allocation allows to idetify travellers whose profiles match with more than one cluster. Destination marketers need to proactively manage the image of Western Europe to attract the increasingly discerning Chinese traveller. Information provision and on-line presence strategies will be critical for destination success.


What can we picture solely from a clip of speech? Previous research has shown the possibility of directly inferring the appearance of a person's face by listening to a voice. However, within human speech lies not only the biometric identity signal but also the identity-irrelevant information such as the talking content. Our goal is to extract as much information from a clip of speech as possible. In particular, we aim at not only inferring the face of a person but also animating it. Our key insight is to synchronize audio and visual representations from two perspectives in a style-based generative framework. Specifically, contrastive learning is leveraged to map both the identity and speech content information within the speech to visual representation spaces. Furthermore, the identity space is strengthened with class centroids. Through curriculum learning, the style-based generator is capable of automatically balancing the information from the two latent spaces. Extensive experiments show that our approach encourages better speech-identity correlation learning while generating vivid faces whose identities are consistent with given speech samples. Moreover, by leveraging the same model, these inferred faces can be driven to talk by the audio.


As teacher educators, we have used Twitter with the goal of jumpstarting the professional learning networks and teacher identity development of students in our courses and programs. Our use of Twitter has evolved over time and can inform the work of other teacher educators. In this article, we offer examples of the benefits of incorporating Twitter in teacher education. We describe some of the common challenges we have experienced at our two institutions and across multiple semesters of use. Based on our collective experiences, we offer recommendations to others who are using or are considering using Twitter with preservice teachers.


The recent expanding rat population is causing severe economic losses and diseases in human. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the antifertility effects of Andrographis paniculata (AP) methanol extract on the weight of testis, sexual behaviour, fertility, sperm quality and serum testosterone level in treated male rats compared with control rats. A total of 21 adult male rats Sprague-Dawley aged 12 weeks were divided into three groups; control group (distilled water), low dose group (800 mg/kg) and high dose group (1600 mg/kg) of AP methanol extracts given orally for 24 days. Body and testis weight, sexual behaviour test, fertility test, sperm quality and serum testosterone level were measured. Oral administration of AP methanol extract showed a significant decrease in testis weight, number of mountings, number of fetuses, sperm count, sperm motility and serum testosterone levels for all treatment group as compared with the control group, whereas mortality showed a significant increase. Observation on testis histology of treatment group exhibited features of degeneration in Sertoli cells and germinal cells in the seminiferous tubules, followed by the shrinkage of Leydig cells as compared with the control group, which showed characteristics of normal spermatogenesis. In conclusion, AP methanol extract exhibited antifertility effects in male rats, suggesting that AP is a potential herb to be applied as rodenticide.


Introduction: Students spend about 6 hours a day. Ergonomic properties of school bag including bag weight, bag type, carrying method and bag size in relation to the students anthropometric dimensions are among the important causes of musculoskeletal pain and discomfort in students. In this study we assessed the effect of training on reduction of the symptoms and ergonomic correction of the school bag. Methods: 109 students in the 6th grade entered the study. Musculoskeletal complaints, ergonomic properties of school bag, and its carrying method were assessed before and after a training intervention. P-values less than 0.05 considered significant. Data analysis was performed with SPSS software using Student T-test, Paired T test and chi square test for variables with normal distribution and Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test for variables without normal distribution. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to test the normality of the variables. Results: Bag weight was decreased significantly from 3.41 ± 0.48 kg before training to 2.60 ± 0.86 kg after training (P < 0.01). School bag carrying time was decreased significantly after training (P < 0.01). Frequency of using ergonomic bag was not significantly changed after intervention (P = 0.96). Conclusions: Our training program about ergonomic modification of school bag was effective specially on the lowering the bag weight, but not on bag ergonomics; this reduction in the bag weight resulted in the reduction of the neck, shoulder, and back pain.


The Two-tiered sensor network model has been widely adopted because of its storage and energy saving benefits, where storage node serves as an intermediate tier between sensors and sink for storing and processing queries. Storage node may contain vital data; we should recognize that they are vulnerable to attack. Therefore, we assume that storage nodes are not trustworthy but the sink is completely trustworthy. Here we propose SafeQ, protocols that prevents attackers from gaining information from both sensor collected data and sink issued queries .A SafeQ uses a novel technique to encode both data and queries such that a storage node can correctly process encoded queries over encoded data without knowing their values to privacy. We have two schemes to preserve integrity, they are- one using Merkle hash trees and another using a new data structure called neighborhood chains to generate integrity verification information so that sink can verify whether the result of the query contains exactly the data items that satisfy the query. For improving performance, we have an optimization technique using bloom filters to reduce the communication cost between sensors and storage nodes.


: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as important regulators of cancer-cell biological processes. Previous studies have shown that miR-766 plays an important role in a variety of biological processes in various human cancers. However, the underlying mechanism of miR-766 in colorectal cancer (CRC) cells remains unclear. In this study, we investigated miR-766's role in CRC cell proliferation. Polymerase chain reaction results showed that miR-766 expression was significantly upregulated in CRC tissues and cells. Ectopic expression of miR-766 promoted cell growth and anchorage-independent growth in CRC cells. Bioinformatic analysis predicted SOX6, a potential target of miR-766, acting as a tumor suppressor. Luciferase reporter assay results demonstrated that miR-766 directly bound to the 3 ′ -untranslated region of SOX6. Overexpression of miR-766 suppressed SOX6 expression, resulting in the downregulation of p21 and upregulation of cyclin D1. In a further experiment, SOX6-silenced SW480 cells transfected with miR-766 promoted cell growth, suggesting that downregulation of SOX6 was required for miR-766-induced CRC cell proliferation. Taken together, these results sug-gested that miR-766 represents an onco-miRNA and participates in the development of CRC by modulating SOX6 expression.


Synthetic jet actuators (SJA) are emerging in various engineering applications, from flow separation and noise control in aviation to thermal management of electronics. A SJA oscillates a flexible membrane inside a cavity connected to a nozzle producing vortices. A complex interaction between the cavity pressure field and the driving electronics can make it difficult to predict performance. A reduced-order model (ROM) has been developed to predict the performance of SJAs. This paper applies this model to a canonical configuration with applications in flow control and electronics cooling, consisting of a single SJA with a rectangular orifice, emanating perpendicular to the surface. The practical implementation of the ROM to estimate the relationship between cavity pressure and jet velocity, jet velocity and diaphragm deflection and applied driving voltage is explained in detail. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are used to assess the reliability of the reduced-order model. The CFD model itself has been validated with experimental measurements. The effect of orifice aspect ratio on the ROM parameters has been discussed. Findings indicate that the ROM is capable of predicting the SJA performance for a wide range of operating conditions (in terms of frequency and amplitude).


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
The chemokine receptor CXCR3, involved in chemotaxis, is expressed on normal and malignant B cells and plasma cells. Recent data suggest that CXCR3-binding chemokines may also regulate proliferation and survival in endothelial cells through the interaction with two distinct isoforms of CXCR3 (CXCR3-A and CXCR3-B).

DESIGN AND METHODS
We evaluated the potential expression of CXCR3 isoforms in myeloma cells, also investigating whether CXCR3 expression is affected by cell cycle and apoptosis. Furthermore, we assessed the effect of CXCR3 activation on myeloma cell proliferation and survival.

RESULTS
We found that CXCR3 is widely expressed on human myeloma cell lines and freshly purified myeloma cells. The presence of both CXCR3 isoforms, CXCR3-A and CXCR3-B, was observed in myeloma cells with different ratios of expression. Interestingly, we found that CXCR3 expression in myeloma cell was cell cycle dependent and that myeloma growth factors inhibited CXCR3 expression in myeloma cells. On the other hand, we found that FAS (CD95)-mediated apoptosis up-regulated CXCR3 expression. A similar behavior was observed for the CXCR3-binding chemokines. Finally we found that the activation of CXCR3 on myeloma cells by CXCL10/IP-10 partially blunted FAS-mediated apoptosis in myeloma cells that express CXCR3-A and that high concentrations of CXCL10/IP-10 inhibit myeloma cell proliferation. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS Our data indicate that myeloma cells express the CXCR3 system with patterns correlated to cell cycle and apoptosis and that CXCR3 activation may affect myeloma cell survival and proliferation.


Theoretical perspectives from the field of entrepreneurship can be used to examine entrepreneurs' intention to use IT innovations. This study collected 412 completed survey responses from entrepreneurs and used structural equation modelling to test the proposed technology acceptance decision model. The results showed the significant effect of perceived desirability, perceived feasibility and performance expectancy as the salient antecedents of intention to adopt and use IT innovation. This study examined the effect of external factors which prevent or facilitate the adoption and use of new technology. The moderating effect of the propensity to act is examined and the results indicated that when the individual propensity to act is high, taking action becomes more desirable and feasible. This study revealed that, in the current IS environment, individuals adopt and use a new system due to the attractiveness of the system and perceived feasibility, which are derived from intrinsic interest and affective beliefs. KEYWORDS Entrepreneurial Potential Model, IT Innovation, Precipitating Events, Technology Adoption Decision


Large-scale sandstone intrusions are well known from the North Sea and the Faroe-Shetland basins. Similar examples have recently been documented using high-quality 3D seismic volumes from sedimentary basins in the Barents Sea and the Lower Congo Basin. A previously unknown set of sandstone intrusions was recently discovered using high-quality 3D seismic data from the northern San Joaquin Valley. In all cases the host sediments are deepwater mudstones, ranging from siliceous oozes to hemipelagic muds. Some of the host mudstones are polygonally faulted and some are not. Together, these examples demonstrate that sandstone intrusions are important components of deepwater successions across the globe. In the North Sea, the intrusions form high-quality oil reservoirs with volumes of tens to hundreds of million cubic metres, porosities of 0.2-0.4 and permeabilities of several Darcy. We conclude that sandstone intrusions are likely to be an overlooked and potentially prolific play in many deepwater successions around the world.


ABSTRACT In recent years, whole-cell-based screens for novel small molecule inhibitors active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in culture followed by the whole-genome sequencing of spontaneous resistant mutants have identified multiple chemical scaffolds thought to kill the bacterium through the inactivation of the mycolic acid transporter, MmpL3. Consistent with the fact that MmpL3 is required for the formation of the mycobacterial outer membrane, we have conclusively shown in this study, using conditionally regulated knockdown mutants, that mmpL3 is required for the replication and viability of M. tuberculosis, both under standard laboratory growth conditions and during the acute and chronic phases of infection in mice. Speaking for the vulnerability of this target, silencing mmpL3 had a rapid bactericidal effect on actively replicating cells in vitro and reduced by 3 to 5 logs in less than 4 weeks the bacterial loads of acutely and chronically infected mouse lungs, respectively. Depletion of MmpL3 further rendered M. tuberculosis hypersusceptible to MmpL3 inhibitors. The exquisite vulnerability of MmpL3 at all stages of the infection establishes this transporter as an attractive new target with the potential to improve and shorten current drug-susceptible and drug-resistant tuberculosis chemotherapies.


A five-year field study was conducted in order to identify and test plant species suitable as undersown nitrogen (N) catch crops. With the aim of maximizing the catch crop effect against N leaching loss, the main focus was on identifying species with deeper rooting than ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.), which is typically used for this purpose. More than 20 species from 9 plant families were studied as undersown catch crops in spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). The root and shoot biomass production, N uptake, carbon (C) to N ratio, root distribution, rooting depth, and reduction of soil nitrate-N (NO3-N) were measured, and observations of general performance as undersown catch crops were made. During barley growth only small differences in root growth among the catch crops was observed. Later, during autumn, striking differences in root growth appeared, and while ryegrass had few roots below 0.8 m (31.5 in) depth, a number of species showed high root intensities in the soil layer from 0.8 to 1.6 m (31.5 to 63.0 in). Dyer's woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) and viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare L.) showed high root intensities even at 1.6 to 2.4 m (63.0 to 94.5 in). The measured differences in root growth were significantly related to the ability of the different species to deplete soil NO3-N from deeper soil layers. Dyer's woad, which was the most efficient, reduced soil NO3-N content in November to 15 kg N ha−1 (13 lb N ac−1) in the 0 to 2.5 m (0 to 98.4 in) soil layer compared to 53 kg N ha−1 (47 lb N ac−1) under ryegrass and 62 kg N ha−1 (55 lb N ac−1) without a catch crop, and most of this difference occurred below 1 m (39.4 in) depth. There were many other differences among the species in terms of growth, N uptake, root/shoot ratio, and C/N ratio—differences that may be of interest for their use as catch crops for N management. One major effect was that legumes took up far more N than the other species and also produced more biomass than most others. However, none of the four legumes were among the deep-rooted species identified; they were among the shallowest rooted species with a root distribution close to that of ryegrass.


In this paper I seek to clarify the role of narrative in personal unity. Examining the narrative self-constitution view developed by Marya Schechtman, I use a case of radical personal change to identify a tension in the account. The tension arises because a narrative can be regarded either to capture a continuing agent with a loosely coherent, consistent self-conception – or to unify over change and inconsistency. Two possible ways of responding, by distinguishing senses of identity or distinguishing identity and autonomy, are examined, but I argue that neither precisely maps this tension. I then develop a distinction between two ways in which narrative can unify: through "bottom-up" processes related to the connection between agency and self-conception; and "top-down" processes related to self-interpretative activity. The account provides ways to resolve some criticisms of narrative theories of identity, in particular in better accounting for the role of repudiated characteristics in narrative identity.


Most flaviviruses are transmitted between hosts by arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes. Since therapeutics or vaccines are lacking for most mosquito-borne diseases, reducing the mosquito vector competence is an effective way to decrease disease burden. ABSTRACT Zika virus (ZIKV; Flaviviridae) is a devastating virus transmitted to humans by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. The interaction of the virus with the mosquito vector is poorly known. The double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-mediated interruption or activation of immunity-related genes in the Toll, IMD, JAK-STAT, and short interfering RNA (siRNA) pathways did not affect ZIKV infection in A. aegypti. Transcriptome-based analysis indicated that most immunity-related genes were upregulated in response to ZIKV infection, including leucine-rich immune protein (LRIM) genes. Further, there was a significant increment in the ZIKV load in LRIM9-, LRIM10A-, and LIRM10B-silenced A. aegypti, suggesting their function in modulating viral infection. Further, gene function enrichment analysis revealed that viral infection increased global ribosomal activity. Silencing of RpL23 and RpL27, two ribosomal large subunit genes, increased mosquito resistance to ZIKV infection. In vitro fat body culture assay revealed that the expression of RpL23 and RpL27 was responsive to the Juvenile hormone (JH) signaling pathway. These two genes were transcriptionally regulated by JH and its receptor methoprene-tolerant (Met) complex. Silencing of Met also inhibited ZIKV infection in A. aegypti. This suggests that ZIKV enhances ribosomal activity through JH regulation to promote infection in mosquitoes. Together, these data reveal A. aegypti immune responses to ZIKV and suggest a control strategy that reduces ZIKV transmission by modulating host factors. IMPORTANCE Most flaviviruses are transmitted between hosts by arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes. Since therapeutics or vaccines are lacking for most mosquito-borne diseases, reducing the mosquito vector competence is an effective way to decrease disease burden. We used high-throughput sequencing technology to study the interaction between mosquito Aedes aegypti and ZIKV. Leucine-rich immune protein (LRIM) genes were involved in the defense in response to viral infection. In addition, RNA interference (RNAi) silencing of RpL23 and RpL27, two JH-regulated ribosomal large subunit genes, suppressed ZIKV infection in A. aegypti. These results suggest a novel control strategy that could block the transmission of ZIKV.


Breast cancer is a potentially deadly disease affecting one in eight women. With the trend toward minimally invasive therapies for breast cancer, such as breast conserving therapies, sentinel node biopsies, and early treatments of radiation and chemotherapy, life expectancy after breast cancer has increased. However, pain after breast cancer surgery is a major problem and women undergoing mastectomy and breast reconstruction experience postoperative pain syndromes in approximately one-half of all cases. Patients post mastectomy and breast reconstruction can suffer from acute nociceptive pain and chronic neuropathic pain syndromes. Several preventative measures to control acute post operative pain and chronic pain states such as post mastectomy pain and phantom pain have been tried. This review focuses on the recent research done to control acute and chronic pain in patients receiving minimally invasive therapies for breast cancer, such as breast conserving therapies of mastectomies and breast reconstruction, sentinel node biopsies, and early treatments of radiation and chemotherapy.


Mg scrap is notorious for the high cost and serious pollution of its recycling process due to the good wettability and similar density of Mg melt to its solid inclusions. To support the sustainable growth of Mg industry and application, intensive effort has been contributed to the development high efficiency, flux-free purification techniques for Mg scrap recycling. In the present study, the purification of Mg scrap melt via filtration was theoretically analyzed by multi-phase fluid hydrodynamics. The relationships between the nozzle size in the filtration medium, melt penetrating-through speed and other filtration parameters were formulated. To provide a guideline to filtration engineering, the influence of processing parameters on the filtering efficiency were discussed.


Abstract Monte Carlo simulation is widely used in emission tomography, in order to assess image reconstruction algorithms and correction techniques, for system optimization, and study the parameters affecting the system performance. In the current study, the performance of the IRI-microPET system was simulated using the GATE Monte Carlo code and a number of performance parameters, including spatial resolution, scatter fraction, sensitivity, RMS contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio, evaluated and compared to the corresponding measured values. The results showed an excellent agreement between simulated and measured data: The experimental and simulated spatial resolutions (radial) for 18F in the center of the AFOV were 1.81 mm and 1.65 mm, respectively. The difference between the experimental and simulated sensitivities of the system was <7%. Simulated and experimental scatter fractions differed less than 9% for the mouse phantom in different timing windows. The validation study of the image quality indicated a good agreement in RMS contrast and signal-to-noise ratio. Also, system performance was compared with the two available commercial scanners which were simulated using GATE code. In conclusion, the assessment of the Monte Carlo modeling of the IRI-microPET system reveals that the GATE code is a flexible and accurate tool for describing the response of an animal PET system.