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Sample records for planck lfi end-to-end

  1. LFI 30 and 44 GHz receivers Back-End Modules

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Artal, E; Aja, B; Fuente, M L de la; Pascual, J P; Mediavilla, A; Martinez-Gonzalez, E; Pradell, L; Paco, P de; Bara, M; Blanco, E; GarcIa, E; Davis, R; Kettle, D; Roddis, N; Wilkinson, A; Bersanelli, M; Mennella, A; Tomasi, M; Butler, R C; Cuttaia, F

    2009-01-01

    The 30 and 44 GHz Back End Modules (BEM) for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument are broadband receivers (20% relative bandwidth) working at room temperature. The signals coming from the Front End Module are amplified, band pass filtered and finally converted to DC by a detector diode. Each receiver has two identical branches following the differential scheme of the Planck radiometers. The BEM design is based on MMIC Low Noise Amplifiers using GaAs P-HEMT devices, microstrip filters and Schottky diode detectors. Their manufacturing development has included elegant breadboard prototypes and finally qualification and flight model units. Electrical, mechanical and environmental tests were carried out for the characterization and verification of the manufactured BEMs. A description of the 30 and 44 GHz Back End Modules of Planck-LFI radiometers is given, with details of the tests done to determine their electrical and environmental performances. The electrical performances of the 30 and 44 GHz Back End Modules: frequency response, effective bandwidth, equivalent noise temperature, 1/f noise and linearity are presented.

  2. In-flight calibration and verification of the Planck-LFI instrument

    OpenAIRE

    Gregorio, Anna; Cuttaia, Francesco; Mennella, Aniello; Bersanelli, Marco; Maris, Michele; Meinhold, Peter; Sandri, Maura; Terenzi, Luca; Tomasi, Maurizio; Villa, Fabrizio; Frailis, Marco; Morgante, Gianluca; Pearson, Dave; Zacchei, Andrea; Battaglia, Paola

    2013-01-01

    In this paper we discuss the Planck-LFI in-flight calibration campaign. After a brief overview of the ground test campaigns, we describe in detail the calibration and performance verification (CPV) phase, carried out in space during and just after the cool-down of LFI. We discuss in detail the functionality verification, the tuning of the front-end and warm electronics, the preliminary performance assessment and the thermal susceptibility tests. The logic, sequence, goals and results of the i...

  3. Planck 2015 results. V. LFI calibration

    CERN Document Server

    Ade, P.A.R.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Banday, A.J.; Barreiro, R.B.; Bartolo, N.; Battaglia, P.; Battaner, E.; Benabed, K.; Benoit, A.; Benoit-Levy, A.; Bernard, J.P.; Bersanelli, M.; Bielewicz, P.; Bock, J.J.; Bonaldi, A.; Bonavera, L.; Bond, J.R.; Borrill, J.; Bouchet, F.R.; Bucher, M.; Burigana, C.; Butler, R.C.; Calabrese, E.; Cardoso, J.F.; Catalano, A.; Chamballu, A.; Christensen, P.R.; Colombi, S.; Colombo, L.P.L.; Crill, B.P.; Curto, A.; Cuttaia, F.; Danese, L.; Davies, R.D.; Davis, R.J.; de Bernardis, P.; de Rosa, A.; de Zotti, G.; Delabrouille, J.; Dickinson, C.; Diego, J.M.; Dole, H.; Donzelli, S.; Dore, O.; Douspis, M.; Ducout, A.; Dupac, X.; Efstathiou, G.; Elsner, F.; Ensslin, T.A.; Eriksen, H.K.; Fergusson, J.; Finelli, F.; Forni, O.; Frailis, M.; Franceschi, E.; Frejsel, A.; Galeotta, S.; Galli, S.; Ganga, K.; Giard, M.; Giraud-Heraud, Y.; Gjerlow, E.; Gonzalez-Nuevo, J.; Gorski, K.M.; Gratton, S.; Gregorio, A.; Gruppuso, A.; Hansen, F.K.; Hanson, D.; Harrison, D.L.; Henrot-Versille, S.; Herranz, D.; Hildebrandt, S.R.; Hivon, E.; Hobson, M.; Holmes, W.A.; Hornstrup, A.; Hovest, W.; Huffenberger, K.M.; Hurier, G.; Jaffe, A.H.; Jaffe, T.R.; Juvela, M.; Keihanen, E.; Keskitalo, R.; Kisner, T.S.; Knoche, J.; Krachmalnicoff, N.; Kunz, M.; Kurki-Suonio, H.; Lagache, G.; Lahteenmaki, A.; Lamarre, J.M.; Lasenby, A.; Lattanzi, M.; Lawrence, C.R.; Leahy, J.P.; Leonardi, R.; Lesgourgues, J.; Levrier, F.; Liguori, M.; Lilje, P.B.; Linden-Vornle, M.; Lopez-Caniego, M.; Lubin, P.M.; Macias-Perez, J.F.; Maggio, G.; Maino, D.; Mandolesi, N.; Mangilli, A.; Maris, M.; Martin, P.G.; Martinez-Gonzalez, E.; Masi, S.; Matarrese, S.; McGehee, P.; Meinhold, P.R.; Melchiorri, A.; Mendes, L.; Mennella, A.; Migliaccio, M.; Mitra, S.; Montier, L.; Morgante, G.; Mortlock, D.; Moss, A.; Munshi, D.; Murphy, J.A.; Naselsky, P.; Nati, F.; Natoli, P.; Netterfield, C.B.; Norgaard-Nielsen, H.U.; Novikov, D.; Novikov, I.; Paci, F.; Pagano, L.; Pajot, F.; Paoletti, D.; Partridge, B.; Pasian, F.; Patanchon, G.; Pearson, T.J.; Peel, M.; Perdereau, O.; Perotto, L.; Perrotta, F.; Pettorino, V.; Piacentini, F.; Pierpaoli, E.; Pietrobon, D.; Pointecouteau, E.; Polenta, G.; Pratt, G.W.; Prezeau, G.; Prunet, S.; Puget, J.L.; Rachen, J.P.; Rebolo, R.; Reinecke, M.; Remazeilles, M.; Renzi, A.; Rocha, G.; Romelli, E.; Rosset, C.; Rossetti, M.; Roudier, G.; Rubino-Martin, J.A.; Rusholme, B.; Sandri, M.; Santos, D.; Savelainen, M.; Scott, D.; Seiffert, M.D.; Shellard, E.P.S.; Spencer, L.D.; Stolyarov, V.; Sutton, D.; Suur-Uski, A.S.; Sygnet, J.F.; Tauber, J.A.; Tavagnacco, D.; Terenzi, L.; Toffolatti, L.; Tomasi, M.; Tristram, M.; Tucci, M.; Tuovinen, J.; Turler, M.; Umana, G.; Valenziano, L.; Valiviita, J.; Van Tent, B.; Vassallo, T.; Vielva, P.; Villa, F.; Wade, L.A.; Wandelt, B.D.; Watson, R.; Wehus, I.K.; Wilkinson, A.; Yvon, D.; Zacchei, A.; Zonca, A.

    2016-01-01

    We present a description of the pipeline used to calibrate the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) timelines into thermodynamic temperatures for the Planck 2015 data release, covering 4 years of uninterrupted operations. As in the 2013 data release, our calibrator is provided by the spin-synchronous modulation of the CMB dipole, exploiting both the orbital and solar components. Our 2015 LFI analysis provides an independent Solar dipole estimate in excellent agreement with that of HFI and within $1\\sigma$ (0.3 % in amplitude) of the WMAP value. This 0.3 % shift in the peak-to-peak dipole temperature from WMAP and a global overhaul of the iterative calibration code increases the overall level of the LFI maps by 0.45 % (30 GHz), 0.64 % (44 GHz), and 0.82 % (70 GHz) in temperature with respect to the 2013 Planck data release, thus reducing the discrepancy with the power spectrum measured by WMAP. We estimate that the LFI calibration uncertainty is at the level of 0.20 % for the 70 GHz map, 0.26 % for the 44 GHz...

  4. Planck 2015 results: V. LFI calibration

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ade, P. A R; Aghanim, N.; Ashdown, M.

    2016-01-01

    We present a description of the pipeline used to calibrate the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) timelines into thermodynamic temperatures for the Planck 2015 data release, covering four years of uninterrupted operations. As in the 2013 data release, our calibrator is provided by the spin-syn...

  5. Planck 2015 results: VI. LFI mapmaking

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ade, P. A R; Aghanim, N.; Ashdown, M.

    2016-01-01

    This paper describes the mapmaking procedure applied to Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data. The mapmaking step takes as input the calibrated timelines and pointing information. The main products are sky maps of I, Q, and U Stokes components. For the first time, we present polarization maps...... at LFI frequencies. The mapmaking algorithm is based on a destriping technique, which is enhanced with a noise prior. The Galactic region is masked to reduce errors arising from bandpass mismatch and high signal gradients. We apply horn-uniform radiometer weights to reduce the effects of beam...

  6. Planck 2015 results: III. LFI systematic uncertainties

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ade, P. A R; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.

    2016-01-01

    We present the current accounting of systematic effect uncertainties for the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) that are relevant to the 2015 release of the Planck cosmological results, showing the robustness and consistency of our data set, especially for polarization analysis. We use two complement...

  7. Planck 2015 results. VI. LFI mapmaking

    CERN Document Server

    Ade, P.A.R.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Banday, A.J.; Barreiro, R.B.; Bartolo, N.; Battaner, E.; Benabed, K.; Benoît, A.; Benoit-Lévy, A.; Bernard, J.-P.; Bersanelli, M.; Bielewicz, P.; Bonaldi, A.; Bonavera, L.; Bond, J.R.; Borrill, J.; Bouchet, F.R.; Bucher, M.; Burigana, C.; Butler, R.C.; Calabrese, E.; Cardoso, J.-F.; Catalano, A.; Chamballu, A.; Chary, R.-R.; Christensen, P.R.; Colombi, S.; Colombo, L.P.L.; Crill, B.P.; Curto, A.; Cuttaia, F.; Danese, L.; Davies, R.D.; Davis, R.J.; de Bernardis, P.; de Rosa, A.; de Zotti, G.; Delabrouille, J.; Dickinson, C.; Diego, J.M.; Dole, H.; Donzelli, S.; Doré, O.; Douspis, M.; Ducout, A.; Dupac, X.; Efstathiou, G.; Elsner, F.; Enßlin, T.A.; Eriksen, H.K.; Fergusson, J.; Finelli, F.; Forni, O.; Frailis, M.; Franceschi, E.; Frejsel, A.; Galeotta, S.; Galli, S.; Ganga, K.; Giard, M.; Giraud-Héraud, Y.; Gjerløw, E.; González-Nuevo, J.; Górski, K.M.; Gratton, S.; Gregorio, A.; Gruppuso, A.; Hansen, F.K.; Hanson, D.; Harrison, D.L.; Henrot-Versillé, S.; Herranz, D.; Hildebrandt, S.R.; Hivon, E.; Hobson, M.; Holmes, W.A.; Hornstrup, A.; Hovest, W.; Huffenberger, K.M.; Hurier, G.; Jaffe, A.H.; Jaffe, T.R.; Juvela, M.; Keihänen}, E.; Keskitalo, R.; Kiiveri, K.; Kisner, T.S.; Knoche, J.; Kunz, M.; Kurki-Suonio, H.; Lähteenmäki, A.; Lamarre, J.-M.; Lasenby, A.; Lattanzi, M.; Lawrence, C.R.; Leahy, J.P.; Leonardi, R.; Lesgourgues, J.; Levrier, F.; Liguori, M.; Lilje, P.B.; Linden-Vørnle, M.; Lindholm, V.; López-Caniego, M.; Lubin, P.M.; Macías-Pérez, J.F.; Maggio, G.; Maino, D.; Mandolesi, N.; Mangilli, A.; Martin, P.G.; Martínez-González, E.; Masi, S.; Matarrese, S.; Mazzotta, P.; McGehee, P.; Meinhold, P.R.; Melchiorri, A.; Mendes, L.; Mennella, A.; Migliaccio, M.; Mitra, S.; Montier, L.; Morgante, G.; Mortlock, D.; Moss, A.; Munshi, D.; Murphy, J.A.; Naselsky, P.; Nati, F.; Natoli, P.; Netterfield, C.B.; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H.U.; Novikov, D.; Novikov, I.; Paci, F.; Pagano, L.; Paoletti, D.; Partridge, B.; Pasian, F.; Patanchon, G.; Pearson, T.J.; Perdereau, O.; Perotto, L.; Perrotta, F.; Pettorino, V.; Pierpaoli, E.; Pietrobon, D.; Pointecouteau, E.; Polenta, G.; Pratt, G.W.; Prézeau, G.; Prunet, S.; Puget, J.-L.; Rachen, J.P.; Rebolo, R.; Reinecke, M.; Remazeilles, M.; Renzi, A.; Rocha, G.; Rosset, C.; Rossetti, M.; Roudier, G.; Rubiño-Martín, J.A.; Rusholme, B.; Sandri, M.; Santos, D.; Savelainen, M.; Scott, D.; Seiffert, M.D.; Shellard, E.P.S.; Spencer, L.D.; Stolyarov, V.; Stompor, R.; Sutton, D.; Suur-Uski, A.-S.; Sygnet, J.-F.; Tauber, J.A.; Terenzi, L.; Toffolatti, L.; Tomasi, M.; Tristram, M.; Tucci, M.; Tuovinen, J.; Valenziano, L.; Valiviita, J.; Van Tent, B.; Vassallo, T.; Vielva, P.; Villa, F.; Wade, L.A.; Wandelt, B.D.; Watson, R.; Wehus, I.K.; Yvon, D.; Zacchei, A.

    2016-01-01

    This paper describes the mapmaking procedure applied to Planck LFI (Low Frequency Instrument) data. The mapmaking step takes as input the calibrated timelines and pointing information. The main products are sky maps of $I,Q$, and $U$ Stokes components. For the first time, we present polarization maps at LFI frequencies. The mapmaking algorithm is based on a destriping technique, enhanced with a noise prior. The Galactic region is masked to reduce errors arising from bandpass mismatch and high signal gradients. We apply horn-uniform radiometer weights to reduce effects of beam shape mismatch. The algorithm is the same as used for the 2013 release, apart from small changes in parameter settings. We validate the procedure through simulations. Special emphasis is put on the control of systematics, which is particularly important for accurate polarization analysis. We also produce low-resolution versions of the maps, and corresponding noise covariance matrices. These serve as input in later analysis steps and para...

  8. Off-line radiometric analysis of Planck-LFI data

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tomasi, M; Mennella, A; Bersanelli, M [Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano (Italy); Galeotta, S; Maris, M [LFI-DPC INAF-OATs, Via Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste (Italy); Lowe, S R [Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL (United Kingdom); Mendes, L [Planck Science Office, European Space Agency, ESAC, P.O. box 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Canada, Madrid (Spain); Leonardi, R; Meinhold, P [Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9530 (United States); Villa, F; Sandri, M; Cuttaia, F; Terenzi, L; Valenziano, L; Butler, R C [INAF-IASF Bologna, Via Gobetti, 101, 40129, Bologna (Italy); Cappellini, B [INAF-IASF Milano, Via E. Bassini 15, 20133 Milano (Italy); Gregorio, A [Department of Physics, University of Trieste, Via Valerio, 2 Trieste I-34127 (Italy); Salmon, M J [Departamento de IngenierIa de Comunicaciones, Universidad de Cantabria, Avenida de los Castros s/n. 39005 Santander (Spain); Binko, P [ISDC Data Centre for Astrophysics, University of Geneva, ch. d' Ecogia 16, 1290 Versoix (Switzerland); D' Arcangelo, O, E-mail: tomasi@lambrate.inaf.i [IFP-CNR, Via Cozzi 53, Milano (Italy)

    2009-12-15

    The Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) is an array of 22 pseudo-correlation radiometers on-board the Planck satellite to measure temperature and polarization anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in three frequency bands (30, 44 and 70 GHz). To calibrate and verify the performances of the LFI, a software suite named LIFE has been developed. Its aims are to provide a common platform to use for analyzing the results of the tests performed on the single components of the instrument (RCAs, Radiometric Chain Assemblies) and on the integrated Radiometric Array Assembly (RAA). Moreover, its analysis tools are designed to be used during the flight as well to produce periodic reports on the status of the instrument. The LIFE suite has been developed using a multi-layered, cross-platform approach. It implements a number of analysis modules written in RSI IDL, each accessing the data through a portable and heavily optimized library of functions written in C and C++. One of the most important features of LIFE is its ability to run the same data analysis codes both using ground test data and real flight data as input. The LIFE software suite has been successfully used during the RCA/RAA tests and the Planck Integrated System Tests. Moreover, the software has also passed the verification for its in-flight use during the System Operations Verification Tests, held in October 2008.

  9. Off-line radiometric analysis of Planck-LFI data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tomasi, M; Mennella, A; Bersanelli, M; Galeotta, S; Maris, M; Lowe, S R; Mendes, L; Leonardi, R; Meinhold, P; Villa, F; Sandri, M; Cuttaia, F; Terenzi, L; Valenziano, L; Butler, R C; Cappellini, B; Gregorio, A; Salmon, M J; Binko, P; D'Arcangelo, O

    2009-01-01

    The Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) is an array of 22 pseudo-correlation radiometers on-board the Planck satellite to measure temperature and polarization anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in three frequency bands (30, 44 and 70 GHz). To calibrate and verify the performances of the LFI, a software suite named LIFE has been developed. Its aims are to provide a common platform to use for analyzing the results of the tests performed on the single components of the instrument (RCAs, Radiometric Chain Assemblies) and on the integrated Radiometric Array Assembly (RAA). Moreover, its analysis tools are designed to be used during the flight as well to produce periodic reports on the status of the instrument. The LIFE suite has been developed using a multi-layered, cross-platform approach. It implements a number of analysis modules written in RSI IDL, each accessing the data through a portable and heavily optimized library of functions written in C and C++. One of the most important features of LIFE is its ability to run the same data analysis codes both using ground test data and real flight data as input. The LIFE software suite has been successfully used during the RCA/RAA tests and the Planck Integrated System Tests. Moreover, the software has also passed the verification for its in-flight use during the System Operations Verification Tests, held in October 2008.

  10. The Planck-LFI Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly

    Science.gov (United States)

    Herreros, J. M.; Gómez, M. F.; Rebolo, R.; Chulani, H.; Rubiño-Martin, J. A.; Hildebrandt, S. R.; Bersanelli, M.; Butler, R. C.; Miccolis, M.; Peña, A.; Pereira, M.; Torrero, F.; Franceschet, C.; López, M.; Alcalá, C.

    2009-12-01

    The Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly (REBA) is the control and data processing on board computer of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) of the Planck mission (ESA). The REBA was designed and built incorporating state of the art processors, communication interfaces and real time operating system software in order to meet the scientific performance of the LFI. We present a technical summary of the REBA, including a physical, functional, electrical, mechanical and thermal description. Aspects of the design and development, the assembly, the integration and the verification of the equipment are provided. A brief description of the LFI on board software is given including the Low-Level Software and the main functionalities and architecture of the Application Software. The compressor module, which has been developed as an independent product, later integrated in the application, is also described in this paper. Two identical engineering models EM and AVM, the engineering qualification model EQM, the flight model FM and flight spare have been manufactured and tested. Low-level and Application software have been developed. Verification activities demonstrated that the REBA hardware and software fulfil all the specifications and perform as required for flight operation.

  11. The Planck-LFI Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Herreros, J M; Gomez, M F; Rebolo, R; Chulani, H; Rubino-Martin, J A; Hildebrandt, S R; Bersanelli, M; Franceschet, C; Butler, R C; Miccolis, M; Pena, A; Pereira, M; Torrero, F; Lopez, M; Alcala, C

    2009-01-01

    The Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly (REBA) is the control and data processing on board computer of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) of the Planck mission (ESA). The REBA was designed and built incorporating state of the art processors, communication interfaces and real time operating system software in order to meet the scientific performance of the LFI. We present a technical summary of the REBA, including a physical, functional, electrical, mechanical and thermal description. Aspects of the design and development, the assembly, the integration and the verification of the equipment are provided. A brief description of the LFI on board software is given including the Low-Level Software and the main functionalities and architecture of the Application Software. The compressor module, which has been developed as an independent product, later integrated in the application, is also described in this paper. Two identical engineering models EM and AVM, the engineering qualification model EQM, the flight model FM and flight spare have been manufactured and tested. Low-level and Application software have been developed. Verification activities demonstrated that the REBA hardware and software fulfil all the specifications and perform as required for flight operation.

  12. The Planck-LFI Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Herreros, J M; Gomez, M F; Rebolo, R; Chulani, H; Rubino-Martin, J A; Hildebrandt, S R [Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain); Bersanelli, M; Franceschet, C [Universita di Milano, Dipartamento di Fisica, Via G. Celoria 16, 20133 Milano (Italy); Butler, R C [INAF-IASF Bologna, Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna (Italy); Miccolis, M [Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A., IUEL - Scientific Instruments, S.S. Padana Superiore 290, 20090 Vimodrone (Italy); Pena, A; Pereira, M; Torrero, F; Lopez, M; Alcala, C, E-mail: rrl@iac.e [EADS Astrium CRISA, C/Torres Quevedo, 9, 28760 Tres Cantos (Spain)

    2009-12-15

    The Radiometer Electronics Box Assembly (REBA) is the control and data processing on board computer of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) of the Planck mission (ESA). The REBA was designed and built incorporating state of the art processors, communication interfaces and real time operating system software in order to meet the scientific performance of the LFI. We present a technical summary of the REBA, including a physical, functional, electrical, mechanical and thermal description. Aspects of the design and development, the assembly, the integration and the verification of the equipment are provided. A brief description of the LFI on board software is given including the Low-Level Software and the main functionalities and architecture of the Application Software. The compressor module, which has been developed as an independent product, later integrated in the application, is also described in this paper. Two identical engineering models EM and AVM, the engineering qualification model EQM, the flight model FM and flight spare have been manufactured and tested. Low-level and Application software have been developed. Verification activities demonstrated that the REBA hardware and software fulfil all the specifications and perform as required for flight operation.

  13. Optimization of Planck-LFI on-board data handling

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Maris, M; Galeotta, S; Frailis, M; Zacchei, A; Fogliani, S; Gasparo, F [INAF-OATs, Via G.B. Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste (Italy); Tomasi, M; Bersanelli, M [Universita di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, Via G. Celoria 16, 20133 Milano (Italy); Miccolis, M [Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A., S.S. Padana Superiore 290, 20090 Vimodrone (Italy); Hildebrandt, S; Chulani, H; Gomez, F [Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), C/o Via Lactea, s/n E38205 - La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain); Rohlfs, R; Morisset, N; Binko, P [ISDC Data Centre for Astrophysics, University of Geneva, ch. d' Ecogia 16, 1290 Versoix (Switzerland); Burigana, C; Butler, R C; Cuttaia, F; Franceschi, E [INAF-IASF Bologna, Via P. Gobetti, 101, 40129 Bologna (Italy); D' Arcangelo, O, E-mail: maris@oats.inaf.i [IFP-CNR, via Cozzi 53, 20125 Milano (Italy)

    2009-12-15

    To asses stability against 1/f noise, the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) on-board the Planck mission will acquire data at a rate much higher than the data rate allowed by the science telemetry bandwith of 35.5 Kbps. The data are processed by an on-board pipeline, followed on-ground by a decoding and reconstruction step, to reduce the volume of data to a level compatible with the bandwidth while minimizing the loss of information. This paper illustrates the on-board processing of the scientific data used by Planck/LFI to fit the allowed data-rate, an intrinsecally lossy process which distorts the signal in a manner which depends on a set of five free parameters (N{sub aver}, r{sub 1}, r{sub 2}, q, O) for each of the 44 LFI detectors. The paper quantifies the level of distortion introduced by the on-board processing as a function of these parameters. It describes the method of tuning the on-board processing chain to cope with the limited bandwidth while keeping to a minimum the signal distortion. Tuning is sensitive to the statistics of the signal and has to be constantly adapted during flight. The tuning procedure is based on a optimization algorithm applied to unprocessed and uncompressed raw data provided either by simulations, pre-launch tests or data taken in flight from LFI operating in a special diagnostic acquisition mode. All the needed optimization steps are performed by an automated tool, OCA2, which simulates the on-board processing, explores the space of possible combinations of parameters, and produces a set of statistical indicators, among them: the compression rate C{sub r} and the processing noise epsilon{sub Q}. For Planck/LFI it is required that C{sub r} = 2.4 while, as for other systematics, epsilon{sub Q} would have to be less than 10% of rms of the instrumental white noise. An analytical model is developed that is able to extract most of the relevant information on the processing errors and the compression rate as a function of the signal

  14. The Planck Satellite LFI and the Microwave Background: Importance of the 4 K Reference Targets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robitaille P.-M.

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available Armed with 4 K reference targets, the Planck satellite low frequency instrument (LFI is intended to map the microwave anisotropies of the sky from the second Lagrange point, L2. Recently, the complete design and pre-flight testing of these 4 K targets has been published (Valenziano L. et al., JINST 4, 2009, T12006. The receiver chain of the LFI is based on a pseudo-correlation architecture. Consequently, the presence of a 3 K microwave background signal at L2 can be established, if the 4 K reference targets function as intended. Conversely, demonstration that the targets are unable to provide the desired emission implies that the 3 K signal cannot exist, at this location. Careful study reveals that only the second scenario can be valid. This analysis thereby provides firm evidence that the monopole of the microwave background, as initially detected by Penzias and Wilson, is being produced by the Earth itself.

  15. The Planck Satellite LFI and the Microwave Background: Importance of the 4K Reference Targets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robitaille P.-M.

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available Armed with ~4K reference targets, the Planck satellite low frequency instrument (LFI is intended to map the microwave anisotropies of the sky from the second Lagrange point, L2. Recently, the complete design and pre-flight testing of these ~4K targets has been published (Valenziano L. et al., JINST 4, 2009, T12006. The receiver chain of the LFI is based on a pseudo-correlation architecture. Consequently, the presence of a ~3K microwave background signal at L2 can be established, if the ~4K reference targets function as intended. Conversely, demonstration that the targets are unable to provide the desired emission implies that the ~3K signal cannot exist, at this location. Careful study reveals that only the second scenario can be valid. This analysis thereby provides firm evidence that the monopole of the microwave background, as initially detected by Penzias and Wilson, is being produced by the Earth itself.

  16. Planck satellite to be presented to media

    Science.gov (United States)

    2007-01-01

    Planck will make the most accurate maps yet of the microwave background radiation that fills space. It will be sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree and will map the full sky in nine wavelengths. The immediate outcome of the Big Bang and the initial conditions for the evolution in the universe’s structure are the primary target of this important mission. From the results, a great deal more will be learnt not only about the nature and amount of dark matter, the ‘missing mass’ of the universe, but also about the nature of dark energy and the expansion of the universe itself. To address such challenging objectives, Planck will need to operate at very low, stable temperatures. Once in space, its detectors will have to be cooled to temperature levels close to absolute zero (-273.15ºC), ranging from -253ºC to only a few tenths of a degree above absolute zero. The Planck spacecraft thus has to be a marvel of cryotechnology. After integration, Planck will start a series of tests that will continue into early-2008. It will be launched by end-July 2008 in a dual-launch configuration with Herschel, ESA’s mission to study the formation of galaxies, stars and planetary systems in the infrared. Interested media are invited to fill in the reply form below. Note to editors The Planck spacecraft was built by AAS Cannes, the prime contractor, leading a consortium of industrial partners with the AAS industry branch in Turin, Italy, responsible for the satellite’s service module. ESA and the Danish National Space Centre (Copenhagen, Denmark) are responsible for the hardware provision of Planck’s telescope mirrors, manufactured by EADS Astrium (Friedrichshafen, Germany). AAS Cannes is also responsible for the payload module, the platform that hosts the telescope and the two onboard instruments, HFI and LFI. The instruments themselves are being supplied by a consortium of scientists and institutes led by the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale

  17. Planck early results. V. The Low Frequency Instrument data processing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poutanen, T.; Lähteenmäki, A.; León-Tavares, J.

    2011-01-01

    We describe the processing of data from the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) used in production of the Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalogue (ERCSC). In particular, we discuss the steps involved in reducing the data from telemetry packets to cleaned, calibrated, time-ordered data (TOD) and ...... statistical uncertainties on LFI and Planck products are also produced. Main beams are estimated down to the ≈ -10dB level using Jupiter transits, which are also used for geometrical calibration of the focal plane. © ESO, 2011....

  18. Planck 2013 results. II. The Low Frequency Instrument data processing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.; Arnaud, M.

    2013-01-01

    We describe the data processing pipeline of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data processing centre (DPC) to create and characterize full-sky maps based on the first 15.5 months of operations at 30, 44, and 70 GHz. In particular, we discuss the various steps involved in reducing the data......) is employed to combine radiometric data and pointing information into sky maps, minimizing the variance of correlated noise. Noise covariance matrices, required to compute statistical uncertainties on LFI and Planck products, are also produced. Main beams are estimated down to the approximate to-20 dB level...

  19. Planck 2013 results. V. LFI calibration

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Planck Collaboration,; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.

    2014-01-01

    We discuss the methods employed to photometrically calibrate the data acquired by the Low Frequency Instrument on Planck. Our calibration is based on the Solar Dipole, caused by motion of the Solar System with respect to the CMB rest frame, which provides a signal of a few mK with the same spectr...

  20. Planck 2013 results. V. LFI calibration

    CERN Document Server

    Aghanim, N; Arnaud, M; Ashdown, M; Atrio-Barandela, F; Aumont, J; Baccigalupi, C; Banday, A J; Barreiro, R B; Battaner, E; Benabed, K; Benoît, A; Benoit-Lévy, A; Bernard, J -P; Bersanelli, M; Bielewicz, P; Bobin, J; Bock, J J; Bonaldi, A; Bonavera, L; Bond, J R; Borrill, J; Bouchet, F R; Bridges, M; Bucher, M; Burigana, C; Butler, R C; Cappellini, B; Cardoso, J -F; Catalano, A; Chamballu, A; Chen, X; Chiang, L -Y; Christensen, P R; Church, S; Colombi, S; Colombo, L P L; Crill, B P; Curto, A; Cuttaia, F; Danese, L; Davies, R D; Davis, R J; de Bernardis, P; de Rosa, A; de Zotti, G; Delabrouille, J; Dickinson, C; Diego, J M; Dole, H; Donzelli, S; Doré, O; Douspis, M; Dupac, X; Efstathiou, G; Enßlin, T A; Eriksen, H K; Finelli, F; Forni, O; Frailis, M; Franceschi, E; Gaier, T C; Galeotta, S; Ganga, K; Giard, M; Giardino, G; Giraud-Héraud, Y; Gjerløw, E; González-Nuevo, J; Górski, K M; Gratton, S; Gregorio, A; Gruppuso, A; Hansen, F K; Hanson, D; Harrison, D; Henrot-Versillé, S; Hernández-Monteagudo, C; Herranz, D; Hildebrandt, S R; Hivon, E; Hobson, M; Holmes, W A; Hornstrup, A; Hovest, W; Huffenberger, K M; Jaffe, T R; Jaffe, A H; Jewell, J; Jones, W C; Juvela, M; Kangaslahti, P; Keihänen, E; Keskitalo, R; Kisner, T S; Knoche, J; Knox, L; Kunz, M; Kurki-Suonio, H; Lagache, G; Lähteenmäki, A; Lamarre, J -M; Lasenby, A; Laureijs, R J; Lawrence, C R; Leach, S; Leahy, J P; Leonardi, R; Lesgourgues, J; Liguori, M; Lilje, P B; Linden-Vørnle, M; López-Caniego, M; Lubin, P M; Macías-Pérez, J F; Maino, D; Mandolesi, N; Maris, M; Marshall, D J; Martin, P G; Martínez-González, E; Masi, S; Matarrese, S; Matthai, F; Mazzotta, P; Meinhold, P R; Melchiorri, A; Mendes, L; Mennella, A; Migliaccio, M; Mitra, S; Moneti, A; Montier, L; Morgante, G; Mortlock, D; Moss, A; Munshi, D; Naselsky, P; Natoli, P; Netterfield, C B; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H U; Novikov, D; Novikov, I; O'Dwyer, I J; Osborne, S; Paci, F; Pagano, L; Paladini, R; Paoletti, D; Partridge, B; Pasian, F; Patanchon, G; Pearson, D; Peel, M; Perdereau, O; Perotto, L; Perrotta, F; Pierpaoli, E; Pietrobon, D; Plaszczynski, S; Pointecouteau, E; Polenta, G; Ponthieu, N; Popa, L; Poutanen, T; Pratt, G W; Prézeau, G; Prunet, S; Puget, J -L; Rachen, J P; Rebolo, R; Reinecke, M; Remazeilles, M; Ricciardi, S; Riller, T; Rocha, G; Rosset, C; Rossetti, M; Roudier, G; Rubiño-Martín, J A; Rusholme, B; Sandri, M; Santos, D; Scott, D; Seiffert, M D; Shellard, E P S; Spencer, L D; Starck, J -L; Stolyarov, V; Stompor, R; Sureau, F; Sutton, D; Suur-Uski, A -S; Sygnet, J -F; Tauber, J A; Tavagnacco, D; Terenzi, L; Toffolatti, L; Tomasi, M; Tristram, M; Tucci, M; Tuovinen, J; Türler, M; Umana, G; Valenziano, L; Valiviita, J; Van Tent, B; Varis, J; Vielva, P; Villa, F; Vittorio, N; Wade, L A; Wandelt, B D; Watson, R; Wilkinson, A; Yvon, D; Zacchei, A; Zonca, A

    2014-01-01

    We discuss the methods employed to photometrically calibrate the data acquired by the Low Frequency Instrument on Planck. Our calibration is based on a combination of the Orbital Dipole plus the Solar Dipole, caused respectively by the motion of the Planck spacecraft with respect to the Sun and by motion of the Solar System with respect to the CMB rest frame. The latter provides a signal of a few mK with the same spectrum as the CMB anisotropies and is visible throughout the mission. In this data release we rely on the characterization of the Solar Dipole as measured by WMAP. We also present preliminary results (at 44GHz only) on the study of the Orbital Dipole, which agree with the WMAP value of the Solar System speed within our uncertainties. We compute the calibration constant for each radiometer roughly once per hour, in order to keep track of changes in the detectors' gain. Since non-idealities in the optical response of the beams proved to be important, we implemented a fast convolution algorithm which ...

  1. End to End Travel

    Data.gov (United States)

    US Agency for International Development — E2 Solutions is a web based end-to-end travel management tool that includes paperless travel authorization and voucher document submissions, document approval...

  2. Planck 2013 results. III. LFI systematic uncertainties

    CERN Document Server

    Aghanim, N; Arnaud, M; Ashdown, M; Atrio-Barandela, F; Aumont, J; Baccigalupi, C; Banday, A J; Barreiro, R B; Battaner, E; Benabed, K; Benoît, A; Benoit-Lévy, A; Bernard, J -P; Bersanelli, M; Bielewicz, P; Bobin, J; Bock, J J; Bonaldi, A; Bonavera, L; Bond, J R; Borrill, J; Bouchet, F R; Bridges, M; Bucher, M; Burigana, C; Butler, R C; Cardoso, J -F; Catalano, A; Chamballu, A; Chiang, L -Y; Christensen, P R; Church, S; Colombi, S; Colombo, L P L; Crill, B P; Cruz, M; Curto, A; Cuttaia, F; Danese, L; Davies, R D; Davis, R J; de Bernardis, P; de Rosa, A; de Zotti, G; Delabrouille, J; Dick, J; Dickinson, C; Diego, J M; Dole, H; Donzelli, S; Doré, O; Douspis, M; Dupac, X; Efstathiou, G; Enßlin, T A; Eriksen, H K; Finelli, F; Forni, O; Frailis, M; Franceschi, E; Gaier, T C; Galeotta, S; Ganga, K; Giard, M; Giraud-Héraud, Y; Gjerløw, E; González-Nuevo, J; Górski, K M; Gratton, S; Gregorio, A; Gruppuso, A; Hansen, F K; Hanson, D; Harrison, D; Henrot-Versillé, S; Hernández-Monteagudo, C; Herranz, D; Hildebrandt, S R; Hivon, E; Hobson, M; Holmes, W A; Hornstrup, A; Hovest, W; Huffenberger, K M; Jaffe, T R; Jaffe, A H; Jewell, J; Jones, W C; Juvela, M; Kangaslahti, P; Keihänen, E; Keskitalo, R; Kiiveri, K; Kisner, T S; Knoche, J; Knox, L; Kunz, M; Kurki-Suonio, H; Lagache, G; Lähteenmäki, A; Lamarre, J -M; Lasenby, A; Laureijs, R J; Lawrence, C R; Leahy, J P; Leonardi, R; Lesgourgues, J; Liguori, M; Lilje, P B; Lindholm, V; Linden-Vørnle, M; López-Caniego, M; Lubin, P M; Macías-Pérez, J F; Maino, D; Mandolesi, N; Maris, M; Marshall, D J; Martin, P G; Martínez-González, E; Masi, S; Matarrese, S; Matthai, F; Mazzotta, P; Meinhold, P R; Melchiorri, A; Mendes, L; Mennella, A; Migliaccio, M; Mitra, S; Moneti, A; Montier, L; Morgante, G; Mortlock, D; Moss, A; Munshi, D; Naselsky, P; Natoli, P; Netterfield, C B; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H U; Novikov, D; Novikov, I; O'Dwyer, I J; Osborne, S; Paci, F; Pagano, L; Paladini, R; Paoletti, D; Partridge, B; Pasian, F; Patanchon, G; Pearson, D; Peel, M; Perdereau, O; Perotto, L; Perrotta, F; Pierpaoli, E; Pietrobon, D; Plaszczynski, S; Platania, P; Pointecouteau, E; Polenta, G; Ponthieu, N; Popa, L; Poutanen, T; Pratt, G W; Prézeau, G; Prunet, S; Puget, J -L; Rachen, J P; Rebolo, R; Reinecke, M; Remazeilles, M; Ricciardi, S; Riller, T; Rocha, G; Rosset, C; Rossetti, M; Roudier, G; Rubiño-Martín, J A; Rusholme, B; Sandri, M; Santos, D; Scott, D; Seiffert, M D; Shellard, E P S; Spencer, L D; Starck, J -L; Stolyarov, V; Stompor, R; Sureau, F; Sutton, D; Suur-Uski, A -S; Sygnet, J -F; Tauber, J A; Tavagnacco, D; Terenzi, L; Toffolatti, L; Tomasi, M; Tristram, M; Tucci, M; Tuovinen, J; Türler, M; Umana, G; Valenziano, L; Valiviita, J; Van Tent, B; Varis, J; Vielva, P; Villa, F; Vittorio, N; Wade, L A; Wandelt, B D; Watson, R; Wilkinson, A; Yvon, D; Zacchei, A; Zonca, A

    2014-01-01

    We present the current estimate of instrumental and systematic effect uncertainties for the Planck-Low Frequency Instrument relevant to the first release of the Planck cosmological results. We give an overview of the main effects and of the tools and methods applied to assess residuals in maps and power spectra. We also present an overall budget of known systematic effect uncertainties, which are dominated sidelobe straylight pick-up and imperfect calibration. However, even these two effects are at least two orders of magnitude weaker than the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations as measured in terms of the angular temperature power spectrum. A residual signal above the noise level is present in the multipole range $\\ell<20$, most notably at 30 GHz, and is likely caused by residual Galactic straylight contamination. Current analysis aims to further reduce the level of spurious signals in the data and to improve the systematic effects modelling, in particular with respect to straylight and calibra...

  3. End-to-side and end-to-end anastomoses give similar results in cervical oesophagogastrostomy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pierie, J P; De Graaf, P W; Poen, H; Van Der Tweel, I; Obertop, H

    1995-12-01

    To find out if there were any differences in healing between end-to-end and end-to-side anastomoses for oesophagogastrostomy. Open study with historical controls. University hospital, The Netherlands. 28 patients with end-to-end and 90 patients with end-to-side anastomoses after transhiatal oesophagectomy and partial gastrectomy for cancer of the oesophagus or oesophagogastric junction, with gastric tube reconstruction and cervical anastomosis. Leak and stricture rates, and the number of dilatations needed to relieve dysphagia. There were no significant differences in leak rates (end-to-end 4/28, 14%, and end-to-side 13/90, 14%) or anastomotic strictures (end-to-end 9/28, 32%, and end-to-side 26/90, 29%). The median number of dilatations needed to relieve dysphagia was 7 (1-33) after end-to-end and 9 (1-113) after end-to-side oesophagogastrostomy. There were no differences between the two methods of suture of cervical oesophagogastrostomy when leakage, stricture, and number of dilatations were used as criteria of good healing.

  4. Planck 2013 results. IV. Low Frequency Instrument beams and window functions

    CERN Document Server

    Aghanim, N; Arnaud, M; Ashdown, M; Atrio-Barandela, F; Aumont, J; Baccigalupi, C; Banday, A J; Barreiro, R B; Battaner, E; Benabed, K; Benoît, A; Benoit-Lévy, A; Bernard, J -P; Bersanelli, M; Bielewicz, P; Bobin, J; Bock, J J; Bonaldi, A; Bond, J R; Borrill, J; Bouchet, F R; Bridges, M; Bucher, M; Burigana, C; Butler, R C; Cardoso, J -F; Catalano, A; Chamballu, A; Chiang, L -Y; Christensen, P R; Church, S; Colombi, S; Colombo, L P L; Crill, B P; Curto, A; Cuttaia, F; Danese, L; Davies, R D; Davis, R J; de Bernardis, P; de Rosa, A; de Zotti, G; Delabrouille, J; Dickinson, C; Diego, J M; Dole, H; Donzelli, S; Doré, O; Douspis, M; Dupac, X; Efstathiou, G; Enßlin, T A; Eriksen, H K; Finelli, F; Forni, O; Frailis, M; Franceschi, E; Gaier, T C; Galeotta, S; Ganga, K; Giard, M; Giraud-Héraud, Y; González-Nuevo, J; Górski, K M; Gratton, S; Gregorio, A; Gruppuso, A; Hansen, F K; Hanson, D; Harrison, D; Henrot-Versillé, S; Hernández-Monteagudo, C; Herranz, D; Hildebrandt, S R; Hivon, E; Hobson, M; Holmes, W A; Hornstrup, A; Hovest, W; Huffenberger, K M; Jaffe, T R; Jaffe, A H; Jewell, J; Jones, W C; Juvela, M; Kangaslahti, P; Keihänen, E; Keskitalo, R; Kiiveri, K; Kisner, T S; Knoche, J; Knox, L; Kunz, M; Kurki-Suonio, H; Lagache, G; Lähteenmäki, A; Lamarre, J -M; Lasenby, A; Laureijs, R J; Lawrence, C R; Leahy, J P; Leonardi, R; Lesgourgues, J; Liguori, M; Lilje, P B; Lindholm, V; Linden-Vørnle, M; López-Caniego, M; Lubin, P M; Macías-Pérez, J F; Maino, D; Mandolesi, N; Maris, M; Marshall, D J; Martin, P G; Martínez-González, E; Masi, S; Matarrese, S; Matthai, F; Mazzotta, P; Meinhold, P R; Melchiorri, A; Mendes, L; Mennella, A; Migliaccio, M; Mitra, S; Moneti, A; Montier, L; Morgante, G; Mortlock, D; Moss, A; Munshi, D; Naselsky, P; Natoli, P; Netterfield, C B; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H U; Novikov, D; Novikov, I; O'Dwyer, I J; Osborne, S; Paci, F; Pagano, L; Paoletti, D; Partridge, B; Pasian, F; Patanchon, G; Perdereau, O; Perotto, L; Perrotta, F; Pierpaoli, E; Pietrobon, D; Plaszczynski, S; Platania, P; Pointecouteau, E; Polenta, G; Ponthieu, N; Popa, L; Poutanen, T; Pratt, G W; Prézeau, G; Prunet, S; Puget, J -L; Rachen, J P; Rebolo, R; Reinecke, M; Remazeilles, M; Ricciardi, S; Riller, T; Rocha, G; Rosset, C; Roudier, G; Rubiño-Martín, J A; Rusholme, B; Sandri, M; Santos, D; Scott, D; Seiffert, M D; Shellard, E P S; Spencer, L D; Starck, J -L; Stolyarov, V; Stompor, R; Sureau, F; Sutton, D; Suur-Uski, A -S; Sygnet, J -F; Tauber, J A; Tavagnacco, D; Terenzi, L; Toffolatti, L; Tomasi, M; Tristram, M; Tucci, M; Tuovinen, J; Türler, M; Umana, G; Valenziano, L; Valiviita, J; Van Tent, B; Varis, J; Vielva, P; Villa, F; Vittorio, N; Wade, L A; Wandelt, B D; Zacchei, A; Zonca, A

    2014-01-01

    This paper presents the characterization of the in-flight beams, the beam window functions and the associated uncertainties for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). Knowledge of the beam profiles is necessary for determining the transfer function to go from the observed to the actual sky anisotropy power spectrum. The main beam distortions affect the beam window function, complicating the reconstruction of the anisotropy power spectrum at high multipoles, whereas the sidelobes affect the low and intermediate multipoles. The in-flight assessment of the LFI main beams relies on the measurements performed during Jupiter observations. By stacking the data from multiple Jupiter transits, the main beam profiles are measured down to -20 dB at 30 and 44 GHz, and down to -25 dB at 70 GHz. The main beam solid angles are determined to better than 0.2% at each LFI frequency band. The Planck pre-launch optical model is conveniently tuned to characterize the main beams independently of any noise effects. This approac...

  5. Standardizing an End-to-end Accounting Service

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greenberg, Edward; Kazz, Greg

    2006-01-01

    Currently there are no space system standards available for space agencies to accomplish end-to-end accounting. Such a standard does not exist for spacecraft operations nor for tracing the relationship between the mission planning activities, the command sequences designed to perform those activities, the commands formulated to initiate those activities and the mission data and specifically the mission data products created by those activities. In order for space agencies to cross-support one another for data accountability/data tracing and for inter agency spacecraft to interoperate with each other, an international CCSDS standard for end-to-end data accountability/tracing needs to be developed. We will first describe the end-to-end accounting service model and functionality that supports the service. This model will describe how science plans that are ultimately transformed into commands can be associated with the telemetry products generated as a result of their execution. Moreover, the interaction between end-to-end accounting and service management will be explored. Finally, we will show how the standard end-to-end accounting service can be applied to a real life flight project i.e., the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project.

  6. Planck 2015 results. IV. Low Frequency Instrument beams and window functions

    CERN Document Server

    Ade, P.A.R.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Banday, A.J.; Barreiro, R.B.; Bartolo, N.; Battaner, E.; Benabed, K.; Benoît, A.; Benoit-Lévy, A.; Bernard, J.-P.; Bersanelli, M.; Bielewicz, P.; Bock, J.J.; Bonaldi, A.; Bonavera, L.; Bond, J.R.; Borrill, J.; Bouchet, F.R.; Bucher, M.; Burigana, C.; Butler, R.C.; Calabrese, E.; Cardoso, J.-F.; Catalano, A.; Chamballu, A.; Christensen, P.R.; Colombi, S.; Colombo, L.P.L.; Crill, B.P.; Curto, A.; Cuttaia, F.; Danese, L.; Davies, R.D.; Davis, R.J.; de Bernardis, P.; de Rosa, A.; de Zotti, G.; Delabrouille, J.; Dickinson, C.; Diego, J.M.; Dole, H.; Donzelli, S.; Doré, O.; Douspis, M.; Ducout, A.; Dupac, X.; Efstathiou, G.; Elsner, F.; Enßlin, T.A.; Eriksen, H.K.; Fergusson, J.; Finelli, F.; Forni, O.; Frailis, M.; Franceschi, E.; Frejsel, A.; Galeotta, S.; Galli, S.; Ganga, K.; Giard, M.; Giraud-Héraud, Y.; Gjerløw, E.; González-Nuevo, J.; Górski, K.M.; Gratton, S.; Gregorio, A.; Gruppuso, A.; Hansen, F.K.; Hanson, D.; Harrison, D.L.; Henrot-Versillé, S.; Herranz, D.; Hildebrandt, S.R.; Hivon, E.; Hobson, M.; Holmes, W.A.; Hornstrup, A.; Hovest, W.; Huffenberger, K.M.; Hurier, G.; Jaffe, A.H.; Jaffe, T.R.; Juvela, M.; Keihänen, E.; Keskitalo, R.; Kiiveri, K.; Kisner, T.S.; Knoche, J.; Kunz, M.; Kurki-Suonio, H.; Lähteenmäki, A.; Lamarre, J.-M.; Lasenby, A.; Lattanzi, M.; Lawrence, C.R.; Leahy, J.P.; Leonardi, R.; Lesgourgues, J.; Levrier, F.; Liguori, M.; Lilje, P.B.; Linden-Vørnle, M.; Lindholm, V.; López-Caniego, M.; Lubin, P.M.; Macías-Pérez, J.F.; Maggio, G.; Maino, D.; Mandolesi, N.; Mangilli, A.; Maris, M.; Martin, P.G.; Martínez-González, E.; Masi, S.; Matarrese, S.; Mazzotta, P.; McGehee, P.; Meinhold, P.R.; Melchiorri, A.; Mendes, L.; Mennella, A.; Migliaccio, M.; Mitra, S.; Montier, L.; Morgante, G.; Mortlock, D.; Moss, A.; Munshi, D.; Murphy, J.A.; Naselsky, P.; Nati, F.; Natoli, P.; Netterfield, C.B.; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H.U.; Novikov, D.; Novikov, I.; Paci, F.; Pagano, L.; Paoletti, D.; Partridge, B.; Pasian, F.; Patanchon, G.; Pearson, T.J.; Perdereau, O.; Perotto, L.; Perrotta, F.; Pettorino, V.; Piacentini, F.; Pierpaoli, E.; Pietrobon, D.; Pointecouteau, E.; Polenta, G.; Pratt, G.W.; Prézeau, G.; Prunet, S.; Puget, J.-L.; Rachen, J.P.; Rebolo, R.; Reinecke, M.; Remazeilles, M.; Renzi, A.; Rocha, G.; Rosset, C.; Rossetti, M.; Roudier, G.; Rubiño-Martín, J.A.; Rusholme, B.; Sandri}, M.; Santos, D.; Savelainen, M.; Scott, D.; Seiffert, M.D.; Shellard, E.P.S.; Spencer, L.D.; Stolyarov, V.; Sutton, D.; Suur-Uski, A.-S.; Sygnet, J.-F.; Tauber, J.A.; Terenzi, L.; Toffolatti, L.; Tomasi, M.; Tristram, M.; Tucci, M.; Tuovinen, J.; Umana, G.; Valenziano, L.; Valiviita, J.; Van Tent, B.; Vassallo, T.; Vielva, P.; Villa, F.; Wade, L.A.; Wandelt, B.D.; Watson, R.; Wehus, I.K.; Yvon, D.; Zacchei, A.

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents the characterization of the in-flight beams, the beam window functions, and the associated uncertainties for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). The structure of the paper is similar to that presented in the 2013 Planck release; the main differences concern the beam normalization and the delivery of the window functions to be used for polarization analysis. The in-flight assessment of the LFI main beams relies on measurements performed during observations of Jupiter. By stacking data from seven Jupiter transits, the main beam profiles are measured down to -25 dB at 30 and 44 GHz, and down to -30 dB at 70 GHz. The agreement between the simulated beams and the measured beams is confirmed to be better than 1% at each LFI frequency band (within the 20 dB contour from the peak, the rms values are: 0.1% at 30 and 70 GHz; 0.2% at 44 GHz). Simulated polarized beams are used for the computation of the effective beam window functions. The error budget for the window functions is estimated fro...

  7. OISI dynamic end-to-end modeling tool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kersten, Michael; Weidler, Alexander; Wilhelm, Rainer; Johann, Ulrich A.; Szerdahelyi, Laszlo

    2000-07-01

    The OISI Dynamic end-to-end modeling tool is tailored to end-to-end modeling and dynamic simulation of Earth- and space-based actively controlled optical instruments such as e.g. optical stellar interferometers. `End-to-end modeling' is meant to denote the feature that the overall model comprises besides optical sub-models also structural, sensor, actuator, controller and disturbance sub-models influencing the optical transmission, so that the system- level instrument performance due to disturbances and active optics can be simulated. This tool has been developed to support performance analysis and prediction as well as control loop design and fine-tuning for OISI, Germany's preparatory program for optical/infrared spaceborne interferometry initiated in 1994 by Dornier Satellitensysteme GmbH in Friedrichshafen.

  8. Planck 2015 results. II. Low Frequency Instrument data processing

    CERN Document Server

    Ade, P.A.R.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Ballardini, M.; Banday, A.J.; Barreiro, R.B.; Bartolo, N.; Basak, S.; Battaglia, P.; Battaner, E.; Benabed, K.; Benoît, A.; Benoit-Lévy, A.; Bernard, J.-P.; Bersanelli, M.; Bielewicz, P.; Bock, J.J.; Bonaldi, A.; Bonavera, L.; Bond, J.R.; Borrill, J.; Bouchet, F.R.; Bucher, M.; Burigana, C.; Butler, R.C.; Calabrese, E.; Cardoso, J.-F.; Castex, G.; Catalano, A.; Chamballu, A.; Christensen, P.R.; Colombi, S.; Colombo, L.P.L.; Crill, B.P.; Curto, A.; Cuttaia, F.; Danese, L.; Davies, R.D.; Davis, R.J.; de Bernardis, P.; de Rosa, A.; de Zotti, G.; Delabrouille, J.; Dickinson, C.; Diego, J.M.; Dole, H.; Donzelli, S.; Doré, O.; Douspis, M.; Ducout, A.; Dupac, X.; Efstathiou, G.; Elsner, F.; Enßlin, T.A.; Eriksen, H.K.; Fergusson, J.; Finelli, F.; Forni, O.; Frailis, M.; Franceschet, C.; Franceschi, E.; Frejsel, A.; Galeotta, S.; Galli, S.; Ganga, K.; Giard, M.; Giraud-Héraud, Y.; Gjerløw, E.; González-Nuevo, J.; Górski, K.M.; Gratton, S.; Gregorio, A.; Gruppuso, A.; Hansen, F.K.; Hanson, D.; Harrison, D.L.; Henrot-Versillé, S.; Herranz, D.; Hildebrandt, S.R.; Hivon, E.; Hobson, M.; Holmes, W.A.; Hornstrup, A.; Hovest, W.; Huffenberger, K.M.; Hurier, G.; Jaffe, A.H.; Jaffe, T.R.; Juvela, M.; Keihänen, E.; Keskitalo, R.; Kiiveri, K.; Kisner, T.S.; Knoche, J.; Krachmalnicoff, N.; Kunz, M.; Kurki-Suonio, H.; Lagache, G.; Lähteenmäki, A.; Lamarre, J.-M.; Lasenby, A.; Lattanzi, M.; Lawrence, C.R.; Leahy, J.P.; Leonardi, R.; Lesgourgues, J.; Levrier, F.; Liguori, M.; Lilje, P.B.; Linden-Vørnle, M.; Lindholm, V.; López-Caniego, M.; Lubin, P.M.; Macías-Pérez, J.F.; Maggio, G.; Maino, D.; Mandolesi, N.; Mangilli, A.; Maris, M.; Martin, P.G.; Martínez-González, E.; Masi, S.; Matarrese, S.; Mazzotta, P.; McGehee, P.; Meinhold, P.R.; Melchiorri, A.; Mendes, L.; Mennella, A.; Migliaccio, M.; Mitra, S.; Montier, L.; Morgante, G.; Morisset, N.; Mortlock, D.; Moss, A.; Munshi, D.; Murphy, J.A.; Naselsky, P.; Nati, F.; Natoli, P.; Netterfield, C.B.; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H.U.; Novikov, D.; Novikov, I.; Oppermann, N.; Paci, F.; Pagano, L.; Paoletti, D.; Partridge, B.; Pasian, F.; Patanchon, G.; Pearson, T.J.; Peel, M.; Perdereau, O.; Perotto, L.; Perrotta, F.; Pettorino, V.; Piacentini, F.; Pierpaoli, E.; Pietrobon, D.; Pointecouteau, E.; Polenta, G.; Pratt, G.W.; Prézeau, G.; Prunet, S.; Puget, J.-L.; Rachen, J.P.; Rebolo, R.; Reinecke, M.; Remazeilles, M.; Renzi, A.; Rocha, G.; Romelli, E.; Rosset, C.; Rossetti, M.; Roudier, G.; Rubiño-Martín, J.A.; Rusholme, B.; Sandri, M.; Santos, D.; Savelainen, M.; Scott, D.; Seiffert, M.D.; Shellard, E.P.S.; Spencer, L.D.; Stolyarov, V.; Sutton, D.; Suur-Uski, A.-S.; Sygnet, J.-F.; Tauber, J.A.; Tavagnacco, D.; Terenzi, L.; Toffolatti, L.; Tomasi, M.; Tristram, M.; Tucci, M.; Tuovinen, J.; Türler, M.; Umana, G.; Valenziano, L.; Valiviita, J.; Van Tent, B.; Vassallo, T.; Vielva, P.; Villa, F.; Wade, L.A.; Wandelt, B.D.; Watson, R.; Wehus, I.K.; Wilkinson, A.; Yvon, D.; Zacchei, A.

    2016-01-01

    We present an updated description of the Planck Low Frequency (LFI) data processing pipeline, associated with the 2015 data release. We point out the places in which our results and methods have remained unchanged since the 2013 paper and we highlight the changes made for the 2015 release, describing the products (especially timelines) and the ways in which they were obtained. We demonstrate that the pipeline is self-consistent (principally based on simulations) and report all null tests. We refer to other related papers where more detailed descriptions on the LFI data processing pipeline may be found if needed.

  9. A Bayes Theory-Based Modeling Algorithm to End-to-end Network Traffic

    OpenAIRE

    Zhao Hong-hao; Meng Fan-bo; Zhao Si-wen; Zhao Si-hang; Lu Yi

    2016-01-01

    Recently, network traffic has exponentially increasing due to all kind of applications, such as mobile Internet, smart cities, smart transportations, Internet of things, and so on. the end-to-end network traffic becomes more important for traffic engineering. Usually end-to-end traffic estimation is highly difficult. This paper proposes a Bayes theory-based method to model the end-to-end network traffic. Firstly, the end-to-end network traffic is described as a independent identically distrib...

  10. A Bayes Theory-Based Modeling Algorithm to End-to-end Network Traffic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhao Hong-hao

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Recently, network traffic has exponentially increasing due to all kind of applications, such as mobile Internet, smart cities, smart transportations, Internet of things, and so on. the end-to-end network traffic becomes more important for traffic engineering. Usually end-to-end traffic estimation is highly difficult. This paper proposes a Bayes theory-based method to model the end-to-end network traffic. Firstly, the end-to-end network traffic is described as a independent identically distributed normal process. Then the Bases theory is used to characterize the end-to-end network traffic. By calculating the parameters, the model is determined correctly. Simulation results show that our approach is feasible and effective.

  11. Planck 2015 results: II. Low Frequency Instrument data processings

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ade, P. A R; Aghanim, N.; Ashdown, M.

    2016-01-01

    We present an updated description of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data processing pipeline, associated with the 2015 data release. We point out the places where our results and methods have remained unchanged since the 2013 paper and we highlight the changes made for the 2015 release...

  12. Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters

    CERN Document Server

    Ade, P.A.R.; Arnaud, M.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Banday, A.J.; Barreiro, R.B.; Bartlett, J.G.; Bartolo, N.; Battaner, E.; Battye, R.; Benabed, K.; Benoit, A.; Benoit-Levy, A.; Bernard, J.P.; Bersanelli, M.; Bielewicz, P.; Bonaldi, A.; Bonavera, L.; Bond, J.R.; Borrill, J.; Bouchet, F.R.; Boulanger, F.; Bucher, M.; Burigana, C.; Butler, R.C.; Calabrese, E.; Cardoso, J.F.; Catalano, A.; Challinor, A.; Chamballu, A.; Chary, R.R.; Chiang, H.C.; Chluba, J.; Christensen, P.R.; Church, S.; Clements, D.L.; Colombi, S.; Colombo, L.P.L.; Combet, C.; Coulais, A.; Crill, B.P.; Curto, A.; Cuttaia, F.; Danese, L.; Davies, R.D.; Davis, R.J.; de Bernardis, P.; de Rosa, A.; de Zotti, G.; Delabrouille, J.; Desert, F.X.; Di Valentino, E.; Dickinson, C.; Diego, J.M.; Dolag, K.; Dole, H.; Donzelli, S.; Dore, O.; Douspis, M.; Ducout, A.; Dunkley, J.; Dupac, X.; Efstathiou, G.; Elsner, F.; Ensslin, T.A.; Eriksen, H.K.; Farhang, M.; Fergusson, J.; Finelli, F.; Forni, O.; Frailis, M.; Fraisse, A.A.; Franceschi, E.; Frejsel, A.; Galeotta, S.; Galli, S.; Ganga, K.; Gauthier, C.; Gerbino, M.; Ghosh, T.; Giard, M.; Giraud-Heraud, Y.; Giusarma, E.; Gjerlow, E.; Gonzalez-Nuevo, J.; Gorski, K.M.; Gratton, S.; Gregorio, A.; Gruppuso, A.; Gudmundsson, J.E.; Hamann, J.; Hansen, F.K.; Hanson, D.; Harrison, D.L.; Helou, G.; Henrot-Versille, S.; Hernandez-Monteagudo, C.; Herranz, D.; Hildebrandt, S.R.; Hivon, E.; Hobson, M.; Holmes, W.A.; Hornstrup, A.; Hovest, W.; Huang, Z.; Huffenberger, K.M.; Hurier, G.; Jaffe, A.H.; Jaffe, T.R.; Jones, W.C.; Juvela, M.; Keihanen, E.; Keskitalo, R.; Kisner, T.S.; Kneissl, R.; Knoche, J.; Knox, L.; Kunz, M.; Kurki-Suonio, H.; Lagache, G.; Lahteenmaki, A.; Lamarre, J.M.; Lasenby, A.; Lattanzi, M.; Lawrence, C.R.; Leahy, J.P.; Leonardi, R.; Lesgourgues, J.; Levrier, F.; Lewis, A.; Liguori, M.; Lilje, P.B.; Linden-Vornle, M.; Lopez-Caniego, M.; Lubin, P.M.; Macias-Perez, J.F.; Maggio, G.; Mandolesi, N.; Mangilli, A.; Marchini, A.; Martin, P.G.; Martinelli, M.; Martinez-Gonzalez, E.; Masi, S.; Matarrese, S.; Mazzotta, P.; McGehee, P.; Meinhold, P.R.; Melchiorri, A.; Melin, J.B.; Mendes, L.; Mennella, A.; Migliaccio, M.; Millea, M.; Mitra, S.; Miville-Deschenes, M.A.; Moneti, A.; Montier, L.; Morgante, G.; Mortlock, D.; Moss, A.; Munshi, D.; Murphy, J.A.; Naselsky, P.; Nati, F.; Natoli, P.; Netterfield, C.B.; Norgaard-Nielsen, H.U.; Noviello, F.; Novikov, D.; Novikov, I.; Oxborrow, C.A.; Paci, F.; Pagano, L.; Pajot, F.; Paladini, R.; Paoletti, D.; Partridge, B.; Pasian, F.; Patanchon, G.; Pearson, T.J.; Perdereau, O.; Perotto, L.; Perrotta, F.; Pettorino, V.; Piacentini, F.; Piat, M.; Pierpaoli, E.; Pietrobon, D.; Plaszczynski, S.; Pointecouteau, E.; Polenta, G.; Popa, L.; Pratt, G.W.; Prezeau, G.; Prunet, S.; Puget, J.L.; Rachen, J.P.; Reach, W.T.; Rebolo, R.; Reinecke, M.; Remazeilles, M.; Renault, C.; Renzi, A.; Ristorcelli, I.; Rocha, G.; Rosset, C.; Rossetti, M.; Roudier, G.; d'Orfeuil, B.Rouille; Rowan-Robinson, M.; Rubino-Martin, J.A.; Rusholme, B.; Said, N.; Salvatelli, V.; Salvati, L.; Sandri, M.; Santos, D.; Savelainen, M.; Savini, G.; Scott, D.; Seiffert, M.D.; Serra, P.; Shellard, E.P.S.; Spencer, L.D.; Spinelli, M.; Stolyarov, V.; Stompor, R.; Sudiwala, R.; Sunyaev, R.; Sutton, D.; Suur-Uski, A.S.; Sygnet, J.F.; Tauber, J.A.; Terenzi, L.; Toffolatti, L.; Tomasi, M.; Tristram, M.; Trombetti, T.; Tucci, M.; Tuovinen, J.; Turler, M.; Umana, G.; Valenziano, L.; Valiviita, J.; Van Tent, B.; Vielva, P.; Villa, F.; Wade, L.A.; Wandelt, B.D.; Wehus, I.K.; White, M.; White, S.D.M.; Wilkinson, A.; Yvon, D.; Zacchei, A.; Zonca, A.

    2016-01-01

    We present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB. These data are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology. From the Planck temperature and lensing data, for this cosmology we find a Hubble constant, H0= (67.8 +/- 0.9) km/s/Mpc, a matter density parameter Omega_m = 0.308 +/- 0.012 and a scalar spectral index with n_s = 0.968 +/- 0.006. (We quote 68% errors on measured parameters and 95% limits on other parameters.) Combined with Planck temperature and lensing data, Planck LFI polarization measurements lead to a reionization optical depth of tau = 0.066 +/- 0.016. Combining Planck with other astrophysical data we find N_ eff = 3.15 +/- 0.23 for the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom and the sum of neutrino masses is constrained to < 0.23 eV. Spatial curvature is found to be |Omega_K| < 0.005. For LCDM we find a limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r <0.11 consistent with the B-mode constraints fr...

  13. End-to-End Security for Personal Telehealth

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Koster, R.P.; Asim, M.; Petkovic, M.

    2011-01-01

    Personal telehealth is in rapid development with innovative emerging applications like disease management. With personal telehealth people participate in their own care supported by an open distributed system with health services. This poses new end-to-end security and privacy challenges. In this

  14. Cyberinfrastructure for End-to-End Environmental Explorations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Merwade, V.; Kumar, S.; Song, C.; Zhao, L.; Govindaraju, R.; Niyogi, D.

    2007-12-01

    The design and implementation of a cyberinfrastructure for End-to-End Environmental Exploration (C4E4) is presented. The C4E4 framework addresses the need for an integrated data/computation platform for studying broad environmental impacts by combining heterogeneous data resources with state-of-the-art modeling and visualization tools. With Purdue being a TeraGrid Resource Provider, C4E4 builds on top of the Purdue TeraGrid data management system and Grid resources, and integrates them through a service-oriented workflow system. It allows researchers to construct environmental workflows for data discovery, access, transformation, modeling, and visualization. Using the C4E4 framework, we have implemented an end-to-end SWAT simulation and analysis workflow that connects our TeraGrid data and computation resources. It enables researchers to conduct comprehensive studies on the impact of land management practices in the St. Joseph watershed using data from various sources in hydrologic, atmospheric, agricultural, and other related disciplines.

  15. CHEETAH: circuit-switched high-speed end-to-end transport architecture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veeraraghavan, Malathi; Zheng, Xuan; Lee, Hyuk; Gardner, M.; Feng, Wuchun

    2003-10-01

    Leveraging the dominance of Ethernet in LANs and SONET/SDH in MANs and WANs, we propose a service called CHEETAH (Circuit-switched High-speed End-to-End Transport ArcHitecture). The service concept is to provide end hosts with high-speed, end-to-end circuit connectivity on a call-by-call shared basis, where a "circuit" consists of Ethernet segments at the ends that are mapped into Ethernet-over-SONET long-distance circuits. This paper focuses on the file-transfer application for such circuits. For this application, the CHEETAH service is proposed as an add-on to the primary Internet access service already in place for enterprise hosts. This allows an end host that is sending a file to first attempt setting up an end-to-end Ethernet/EoS circuit, and if rejected, fall back to the TCP/IP path. If the circuit setup is successful, the end host will enjoy a much shorter file-transfer delay than on the TCP/IP path. To determine the conditions under which an end host with access to the CHEETAH service should attempt circuit setup, we analyze mean file-transfer delays as a function of call blocking probability in the circuit-switched network, probability of packet loss in the IP network, round-trip times, link rates, and so on.

  16. Planck 2013 results. IV. Low Frequency Instrument beams and window functions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Planck Collaboration,; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.

    2014-01-01

    This paper presents the characterization of the in-flight beams, the beam window functions and the associated errors for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). Knowledge of the beam profiles is the key to determining their imprint on the transfer function from the observed to the actual sky a...

  17. Planck 2013 results. IV. Low Frequency Instrument beams and window functions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Planck Collaboration,; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents the characterization of the in-flight beams, the beam window functions and the associated errors for the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). Knowledge of the beam profiles is the key to determining their imprint on the transfer function from the observed to the actual sky a...

  18. Comparison of Direct Side-to-End and End-to-End Hypoglossal-Facial Anastomosis for Facial Nerve Repair.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samii, Madjid; Alimohamadi, Maysam; Khouzani, Reza Karimi; Rashid, Masoud Rafizadeh; Gerganov, Venelin

    2015-08-01

    The hypoglossal facial anastomosis (HFA) is the gold standard for facial reanimation in patients with severe facial nerve palsy. The major drawbacks of the classic HFA technique are lingual morbidities due to hypoglossal nerve transection. The side-to-end HFA is a modification of the classic technique with fewer tongue-related morbidities. In this study we compared the outcome of the classic end-to-end and the direct side-to-end HFA surgeries performed at our center in regards to the facial reanimation success rate and tongue-related morbidities. Twenty-six successive cases of HFA were enrolled. In 9 of them end-to-end anastomoses were performed, and 17 had direct side-to-end anastomoses. The House-Brackmann (HB) and Pitty and Tator (PT) scales were used to document surgical outcome. The hemiglossal atrophy, swallowing, and hypoglossal nerve function were assessed at follow-up. The original pathology was vestibular schwannoma in 15, meningioma in 4, brain stem glioma in 4, and other pathologies in 3. The mean interval between facial palsy and HFA was 18 months (range: 0-60). The median follow-up period was 20 months. The PT grade at follow-up was worse in patients with a longer interval from facial palsy and HFA (P value: 0.041). The lesion type was the only other factor that affected PT grade (the best results in vestibular schwannoma and the worst in the other pathologies group, P value: 0.038). The recovery period for facial tonicity was longer in patients with radiation therapy before HFA (13.5 vs. 8.5 months) and those with a longer than 2-year interval from facial palsy to HFA (13.5 vs. 8.5 months). Although no significant difference between the side-to-end and the end-to-end groups was seen in terms of facial nerve functional recovery, patients from the side-to-end group had a significantly lower rate of lingual morbidities (tongue hemiatrophy: 100% vs. 5.8%, swallowing difficulty: 55% vs. 11.7%, speech disorder 33% vs. 0%). With the side-to-end HFA

  19. Measurements and analysis of end-to-end Internet dynamics

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Paxson, Vern [Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Computer Science Division

    1997-04-01

    Accurately characterizing end-to-end Internet dynamics - the performance that a user actually obtains from the lengthy series of network links that comprise a path through the Internet - is exceptionally difficult, due to the network`s immense heterogeneity. At the heart of this work is a `measurement framework` in which a number of sites around the Internet host a specialized measurement service. By coordinating `probes` between pairs of these sites one can measure end-to-end behavior along O(N2) paths for a framework consisting of N sites. Consequently, one obtains a superlinear scaling that allows measuring a rich cross-section of Internet behavior without requiring huge numbers of observation points. 37 sites participated in this study, allowing the author to measure more than 1,000 distinct Internet paths. The first part of this work looks at the behavior of end-to-end routing: the series of routers over which a connection`s packets travel. Based on 40,000 measurements made using this framework, the author analyzes: routing `pathologies` such as loops, outages, and flutter; the stability of routes over time; and the symmetry of routing along the two directions of an end-to-end path. The author finds that pathologies increased significantly over the course of 1995 and that Internet paths are heavily dominated by a single route. The second part of this work studies end-to-end Internet packet dynamics. The author analyzes 20,000 TCP transfers of 100 Kbyte each to investigate the performance of both the TCP endpoints and the Internet paths. The measurements used for this part of the study are much richer than those for the first part, but require a great degree of attention to issues of calibration, which are addressed by applying self-consistency checks to the measurements whenever possible. The author finds that packet filters are capable of a wide range of measurement errors, some of which, if undetected, can significantly taint subsequent analysis.

  20. Planck Early Results: The thermal performance of Planck

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ade, P. A. R.; Aghanim, N.; Arnaud, M.

    2011-01-01

    The performance of the Planck instruments in space is enabled by their low operating temperatures, 20K for LFI and 0.1K for HFI, achieved through a combination of passive radiative cooling and three active mechanical coolers. Active coolers were chosen to minimize straylight on the detectors...... and to maximize lifetime. The scientific requirement for very broad frequency led to two detector technologies with widely dierent temperature and cooling needs. This made use of a helium cryostat, as used by previous cryogenic space missions (IRAS, COBE, ISO, SPITZER, AKARI), infeasible. Radiative cooling...... is provided by three V-groove radiators and a large telescope bae. The active coolers are a hydrogen sorption cooler (cooled in space to operating conditions...

  1. End-Users, Front Ends and Librarians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bourne, Donna E.

    1989-01-01

    The increase in end-user searching, the advantages and limitations of front ends, and the role of the librarian in end-user searching are discussed. It is argued that librarians need to recognize that front ends can be of benefit to themselves and patrons, and to assume the role of advisors and educators for end-users. (37 references) (CLB)

  2. Planck early results. III. First assessment of the Low Frequency Instrument in-flight performance

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poutanen, T.; Lähteenmäki, A.; León-Tavares, J.

    2011-01-01

    The scientific performance of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) after one year of in-orbit operation is presented. We describe the main optical parameters and discuss photometric calibration, white noise sensitivity, and noise properties. A preliminary evaluation of the impact of the main...

  3. Automatic provisioning of end-to-end QoS into the home

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Skoldström, Pontus; Nelis, Jelle

    2011-01-01

    Due to a growing number of high bandwidth applications today (such as HDTV), and an increasing amount of network and cloud based applications, service providers need to pay attention to QoS in their networks. We believe there is a need for an end-to-end approach reaching into the home as well....... The Home Gateway (HG) as a key component of the home network is crucial for enabling the end-to-end solutions. UPnP-QoS has been proposed as an inhome solution for resource reservations. In this paper we assess a solution for automatic QoS reservations, on behalf of non-UPnP-QoS aware applications....... Additionally we focus on an integrated end-to-end solution, combining GMPLS-based reservations in e.g., access/metro and UPnP-QoS based reservation in the home network....

  4. End-to-end tests using alanine dosimetry in scanned proton beams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carlino, A.; Gouldstone, C.; Kragl, G.; Traneus, E.; Marrale, M.; Vatnitsky, S.; Stock, M.; Palmans, H.

    2018-03-01

    This paper describes end-to-end test procedures as the last fundamental step of medical commissioning before starting clinical operation of the MedAustron synchrotron-based pencil beam scanning (PBS) therapy facility with protons. One in-house homogeneous phantom and two anthropomorphic heterogeneous (head and pelvis) phantoms were used for end-to-end tests at MedAustron. The phantoms were equipped with alanine detectors, radiochromic films and ionization chambers. The correction for the ‘quenching’ effect of alanine pellets was implemented in the Monte Carlo platform of the evaluation version of RayStation TPS. During the end-to-end tests, the phantoms were transferred through the workflow like real patients to simulate the entire clinical workflow: immobilization, imaging, treatment planning and dose delivery. Different clinical scenarios of increasing complexity were simulated: delivery of a single beam, two oblique beams without and with range shifter. In addition to the dose comparison in the plastic phantoms the dose obtained from alanine pellet readings was compared with the dose determined with the Farmer ionization chamber in water. A consistent systematic deviation of about 2% was found between alanine dosimetry and the ionization chamber dosimetry in water and plastic materials. Acceptable agreement of planned and delivered doses was observed together with consistent and reproducible results of the end-to-end testing performed with different dosimetric techniques (alanine detectors, ionization chambers and EBT3 radiochromic films). The results confirmed the adequate implementation and integration of the new PBS technology at MedAustron. This work demonstrates that alanine pellets are suitable detectors for end-to-end tests in proton beam therapy and the developed procedures with customized anthropomorphic phantoms can be used to support implementation of PBS technology in clinical practice.

  5. Influence of suture technique and suture material selection on the mechanics of end-to-end and end-to-side anastomoses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baumgartner, N; Dobrin, P B; Morasch, M; Dong, Q S; Mrkvicka, R

    1996-05-01

    Experiments were performed in dogs to evaluate the mechanics of 26 end-to-end and 42 end-to-side artery-vein graft anastomoses constructed with continuous polypropylene sutures (Surgilene; Davis & Geck, Division of American Cyanamid Co., Danbury, Conn.), continuous polybutester sutures (Novafil; Davis & Geck), and interrupted stitches with either suture material. After construction, the grafts and adjoining arteries were excised, mounted in vitro at in situ length, filled with a dilute barium sulfate suspension, and pressurized in 25 mm Hg steps up to 200 mm Hg. Radiographs were obtained at each pressure. The computed cross-sectional areas of the anastomoses were compared with those of the native arteries at corresponding pressures. Results showed that for the end-to-end anastomoses at 100 mm Hg the cross-sectional areas of the continuous Surgilene anastomoses were 70% of the native artery cross-sectional areas, the cross-sectional areas of the continuous Novafil anastomoses were 90% of the native artery cross-sectional areas, and the cross-sectional areas of the interrupted anastomoses were 107% of the native artery cross-sectional areas (p anastomoses demonstrated no differences in cross-sectional areas or compliance for the three suture techniques. This suggests that, unlike with end-to-end anastomoses, when constructing an end-to-side anastomosis in patients any of the three suture techniques may be acceptable.

  6. End-to-End Availability Analysis of IMS-Based Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kamyod, Chayapol; Nielsen, Rasmus Hjorth; Prasad, Neeli R.

    2013-01-01

    Generation Networks (NGNs). In this paper, an end-to-end availability model is proposed and evaluated using a combination of Reliability Block Diagrams (RBD) and a proposed five-state Markov model. The overall availability for intra- and inter domain communication in IMS is analyzed, and the state...

  7. Utilizing Domain Knowledge in End-to-End Audio Processing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tax, Tycho; Antich, Jose Luis Diez; Purwins, Hendrik

    2017-01-01

    to learn the commonly-used log-scaled mel-spectrogram transformation. Secondly, we demonstrate that upon initializing the first layers of an end-to-end CNN classifier with the learned transformation, convergence and performance on the ESC-50 environmental sound classification dataset are similar to a CNN......-based model trained on the highly pre-processed log-scaled mel-spectrogram features....

  8. End-to-end System Performance Simulation: A Data-Centric Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guillaume, Arnaud; Laffitte de Petit, Jean-Luc; Auberger, Xavier

    2013-08-01

    In the early times of space industry, the feasibility of Earth observation missions was directly driven by what could be achieved by the satellite. It was clear to everyone that the ground segment would be able to deal with the small amount of data sent by the payload. Over the years, the amounts of data processed by the spacecrafts have been increasing drastically, leading to put more and more constraints on the ground segment performances - and in particular on timeliness. Nowadays, many space systems require high data throughputs and short response times, with information coming from multiple sources and involving complex algorithms. It has become necessary to perform thorough end-to-end analyses of the full system in order to optimise its cost and efficiency, but even sometimes to assess the feasibility of the mission. This paper presents a novel framework developed by Astrium Satellites in order to meet these needs of timeliness evaluation and optimisation. This framework, named ETOS (for “End-to-end Timeliness Optimisation of Space systems”), provides a modelling process with associated tools, models and GUIs. These are integrated thanks to a common data model and suitable adapters, with the aim of building suitable space systems simulators of the full end-to-end chain. A big challenge of such environment is to integrate heterogeneous tools (each one being well-adapted to part of the chain) into a relevant timeliness simulation.

  9. System of end-to-end symmetric database encryption

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galushka, V. V.; Aydinyan, A. R.; Tsvetkova, O. L.; Fathi, V. A.; Fathi, D. V.

    2018-05-01

    The article is devoted to the actual problem of protecting databases from information leakage, which is performed while bypassing access control mechanisms. To solve this problem, it is proposed to use end-to-end data encryption, implemented at the end nodes of an interaction of the information system components using one of the symmetric cryptographic algorithms. For this purpose, a key management method designed for use in a multi-user system based on the distributed key representation model, part of which is stored in the database, and the other part is obtained by converting the user's password, has been developed and described. In this case, the key is calculated immediately before the cryptographic transformations and is not stored in the memory after the completion of these transformations. Algorithms for registering and authorizing a user, as well as changing his password, have been described, and the methods for calculating parts of a key when performing these operations have been provided.

  10. Means-end chains - A means to which end?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Grunert, Klaus G.

    2010-01-01

    This paper describes the development of the means-end chain concept in consumer behaviour research, starting from the original proposal by Gutman in 1982. A lack of theoretical development - as opposed to a refinement of methodology - is argued to by the main reason why the concept, after....... This reinterpretation leads to three goals for research that could establish means-end chains as a useful theoretical concept in consumer behaviour research....

  11. STS/DBS power subsystem end-to-end stability margin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Devaux, R. N.; Vattimo, R. J.; Peck, S. R.; Baker, W. E.

    Attention is given to a full-up end-to-end subsystem stability test which was performed with a flight solar array providing power to a fully operational spacecraft. The solar array simulator is described, and a comparison is made between test results obtained with the simulator and those obtained with the actual array. It is concluded that stability testing with a fully integrated spacecraft is necessary to ensure that all elements have been adequately modeled.

  12. End-to-End Operations in the ELT Era

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hainaut, O. R.; Bierwirth, T.; Brillant, S.; Mieske, S.; Patat, F.; Rejkuba, M.; Romaniello, M.; Sterzik, M.

    2018-03-01

    The Data Flow System is the infrastructure on which Very Large Telescope (VLT) observations are performed at the Observatory, before and after the observations themselves take place. Since its original conception in the late 1990s, it has evolved to accommodate new observing modes and new instruments on La Silla and Paranal. Several updates and upgrades are needed to overcome its obsolescence and to integrate requirements from the new instruments from the community and, of course, from ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will be integrated into Paranal's operations. We describe the end-to-end operations and the resulting roadmap guiding their further development.

  13. Optimizing End-to-End Big Data Transfers over Terabits Network Infrastructure

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Youngjae; Vallee, Geoffroy R.; Lee, Sangkeun; Shipman, Galen M.

    2016-01-01

    While future terabit networks hold the promise of significantly improving big-data motion among geographically distributed data centers, significant challenges must be overcome even on today's 100 gigabit networks to realize end-to-end performance. Multiple bottlenecks exist along the end-to-end path from source to sink, for instance, the data storage infrastructure at both the source and sink and its interplay with the wide-area network are increasingly the bottleneck to achieving high performance. In this study, we identify the issues that lead to congestion on the path of an end-to-end data transfer in the terabit network environment, and we present a new bulk data movement framework for terabit networks, called LADS. LADS exploits the underlying storage layout at each endpoint to maximize throughput without negatively impacting the performance of shared storage resources for other users. LADS also uses the Common Communication Interface (CCI) in lieu of the sockets interface to benefit from hardware-level zero-copy, and operating system bypass capabilities when available. It can further improve data transfer performance under congestion on the end systems using buffering at the source using flash storage. With our evaluations, we show that LADS can avoid congested storage elements within the shared storage resource, improving input/output bandwidth, and data transfer rates across the high speed networks. We also investigate the performance degradation problems of LADS due to I/O contention on the parallel file system (PFS), when multiple LADS tools share the PFS. We design and evaluate a meta-scheduler to coordinate multiple I/O streams while sharing the PFS, to minimize the I/O contention on the PFS. Finally, with our evaluations, we observe that LADS with meta-scheduling can further improve the performance by up to 14 percent relative to LADS without meta-scheduling.

  14. Development of a Dynamic, End-to-End Free Piston Stirling Convertor Model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Regan, Timothy F.; Gerber, Scott S.; Roth, Mary Ellen

    2003-01-01

    A dynamic model for a free-piston Stirling convertor is being developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The model is an end-to-end system model that includes the cycle thermodynamics, the dynamics, and electrical aspects of the system. The subsystems of interest are the heat source, the springs, the moving masses, the linear alternator, the controller and the end-user load. The envisioned use of the model will be in evaluating how changes in a subsystem could affect the operation of the convertor. The model under development will speed the evaluation of improvements to a subsystem and aid in determining areas in which most significant improvements may be found. One of the first uses of the end-to-end model will be in the development of controller architectures. Another related area is in evaluating changes to details in the linear alternator.

  15. Experimental demonstration of software defined data center optical networks with Tbps end-to-end tunability

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Yongli; Zhang, Jie; Ji, Yuefeng; Li, Hui; Wang, Huitao; Ge, Chao

    2015-10-01

    The end-to-end tunability is important to provision elastic channel for the burst traffic of data center optical networks. Then, how to complete the end-to-end tunability based on elastic optical networks? Software defined networking (SDN) based end-to-end tunability solution is proposed for software defined data center optical networks, and the protocol extension and implementation procedure are designed accordingly. For the first time, the flexible grid all optical networks with Tbps end-to-end tunable transport and switch system have been online demonstrated for data center interconnection, which are controlled by OpenDayLight (ODL) based controller. The performance of the end-to-end tunable transport and switch system has been evaluated with wavelength number tuning, bit rate tuning, and transmit power tuning procedure.

  16. End-to-end network models encompassing terrestrial, wireless, and satellite components

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boyarko, Chandler L.; Britton, John S.; Flores, Phil E.; Lambert, Charles B.; Pendzick, John M.; Ryan, Christopher M.; Shankman, Gordon L.; Williams, Ramon P.

    2004-08-01

    Development of network models that reflect true end-to-end architectures such as the Transformational Communications Architecture need to encompass terrestrial, wireless and satellite component to truly represent all of the complexities in a world wide communications network. Use of best-in-class tools including OPNET, Satellite Tool Kit (STK), Popkin System Architect and their well known XML-friendly definitions, such as OPNET Modeler's Data Type Description (DTD), or socket-based data transfer modules, such as STK/Connect, enable the sharing of data between applications for more rapid development of end-to-end system architectures and a more complete system design. By sharing the results of and integrating best-in-class tools we are able to (1) promote sharing of data, (2) enhance the fidelity of our results and (3) allow network and application performance to be viewed in the context of the entire enterprise and its processes.

  17. Apparatus and method for applying an end plug to a fuel rod tube end

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rieben, S.L.; Wylie, M.E.

    1987-01-01

    An apparatus is described for applying an end plug to a hollow end of a nuclear fuel rod tube, comprising: support means mounted for reciprocal movement between remote and adjacent positions relative to a nuclear fuel rod tube end to which an end plug is to be applied; guide means supported on the support means for movement; and drive means coupled to the support means and being actuatable for movement between retracted and extended positions for reciprocally moving the support means between its respective remote and adjacent positions. A method for applying an end plug to a hollow end of a nuclear fuel rod tube is also described

  18. Building dialogue POMDPs from expert dialogues an end-to-end approach

    CERN Document Server

    Chinaei, Hamidreza

    2016-01-01

    This book discusses the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework applied in dialogue systems. It presents POMDP as a formal framework to represent uncertainty explicitly while supporting automated policy solving. The authors propose and implement an end-to-end learning approach for dialogue POMDP model components. Starting from scratch, they present the state, the transition model, the observation model and then finally the reward model from unannotated and noisy dialogues. These altogether form a significant set of contributions that can potentially inspire substantial further work. This concise manuscript is written in a simple language, full of illustrative examples, figures, and tables. Provides insights on building dialogue systems to be applied in real domain Illustrates learning dialogue POMDP model components from unannotated dialogues in a concise format Introduces an end-to-end approach that makes use of unannotated and noisy dialogue for learning each component of dialogue POM...

  19. End-to-end delay analysis in wireless sensor networks with service vacation

    KAUST Repository

    Alabdulmohsin, Ibrahim; Hyadi, Amal; Afify, Laila H.; Shihada, Basem

    2014-01-01

    In this paper, a delay-sensitive multi-hop wireless sensor network is considered, employing an M/G/1 with vacations framework. Sensors transmit measurements to a predefined data sink subject to maximum end-to-end delay constraint. In order to prolong the battery lifetime, a sleeping scheme is adopted throughout the network nodes. The objective of our proposed framework is to present an expression for maximum hop-count as well as an approximate expression of the probability of blocking at the sink node upon violating certain end-to-end delay threshold. Using numerical simulations, we validate the proposed analytical model and demonstrate that the blocking probability of the system for various vacation time distributions matches the simulation results.

  20. End-to-end delay analysis in wireless sensor networks with service vacation

    KAUST Repository

    Alabdulmohsin, Ibrahim

    2014-04-01

    In this paper, a delay-sensitive multi-hop wireless sensor network is considered, employing an M/G/1 with vacations framework. Sensors transmit measurements to a predefined data sink subject to maximum end-to-end delay constraint. In order to prolong the battery lifetime, a sleeping scheme is adopted throughout the network nodes. The objective of our proposed framework is to present an expression for maximum hop-count as well as an approximate expression of the probability of blocking at the sink node upon violating certain end-to-end delay threshold. Using numerical simulations, we validate the proposed analytical model and demonstrate that the blocking probability of the system for various vacation time distributions matches the simulation results.

  1. End-to-end Configuration of Wireless Realtime Communication over Heterogeneous Protocols

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Malinowsky, B.; Grønbæk, Jesper; Schwefel, Hans-Peter

    2015-01-01

    This paper describes a wireless real-time communication system design using two Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocols. Messages are subject to prioritization and queuing. For this interoperation scenario, we show a method for end-to-end configuration of protocols and queue sizes. Such co...

  2. End-to-End Delay Model for Train Messaging over Public Land Mobile Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Franco Mazzenga

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Modern train control systems rely on a dedicated radio network for train to ground communications. A number of possible alternatives have been analysed to adopt the European Rail Traffic Management System/European Train Control System (ERTMS/ETCS control system on local/regional lines to improve transport capacity. Among them, a communication system based on public networks (cellular&satellite provides an interesting, effective and alternative solution to proprietary and expensive radio networks. To analyse performance of this solution, it is necessary to model the end-to-end delay and message loss to fully characterize the message transfer process from train to ground and vice versa. Starting from the results of a railway test campaign over a 300 km railway line for a cumulative 12,000 traveled km in 21 days, in this paper, we derive a statistical model for the end-to-end delay required for delivering messages. In particular, we propose a two states model allowing for reproducing the main behavioral characteristics of the end-to-end delay as observed experimentally. Model formulation has been derived after deep analysis of the recorded experimental data. When it is applied to model a realistic scenario, it allows for explicitly accounting for radio coverage characteristics, the received power level, the handover points along the line and for the serving radio technology. As an example, the proposed model is used to generate the end-to-end delay profile in a realistic scenario.

  3. End-to-end plasma bubble PIC simulations on GPUs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Germaschewski, Kai; Fox, William; Matteucci, Jackson; Bhattacharjee, Amitava

    2017-10-01

    Accelerator technologies play a crucial role in eventually achieving exascale computing capabilities. The current and upcoming leadership machines at ORNL (Titan and Summit) employ Nvidia GPUs, which provide vast computational power but also need specifically adapted computational kernels to fully exploit them. In this work, we will show end-to-end particle-in-cell simulations of the formation, evolution and coalescence of laser-generated plasma bubbles. This work showcases the GPU capabilities of the PSC particle-in-cell code, which has been adapted for this problem to support particle injection, a heating operator and a collision operator on GPUs.

  4. Model outputs - Developing end-to-end models of the Gulf of California

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the northern Gulf of California, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  5. Coupling of a single quantum emitter to end-to-end aligned silver nanowires

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kumar, Shailesh; Huck, Alexander; Chen, Yuntian

    2013-01-01

    We report on the observation of coupling a single nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in a nanodiamond crystal to a propagating plasmonic mode of silver nanowires. The nanocrystal is placed either near the apex of a single silver nanowire or in the gap between two end-to-end aligned silver nanowires. We...

  6. End-to-End Flow Control for Visual-Haptic Communication under Bandwidth Change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yashiro, Daisuke; Tian, Dapeng; Yakoh, Takahiro

    This paper proposes an end-to-end flow controller for visual-haptic communication. A visual-haptic communication system transmits non-real-time packets, which contain large-size visual data, and real-time packets, which contain small-size haptic data. When the transmission rate of visual data exceeds the communication bandwidth, the visual-haptic communication system becomes unstable owing to buffer overflow. To solve this problem, an end-to-end flow controller is proposed. This controller determines the optimal transmission rate of visual data on the basis of the traffic conditions, which are estimated by the packets for haptic communication. Experimental results confirm that in the proposed method, a short packet-sending interval and a short delay are achieved under bandwidth change, and thus, high-precision visual-haptic communication is realized.

  7. AN ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION END TO END QUALITY OF SERVICE ON 3G TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORK

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cahya Lukito

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available End to End Quality of Service is a way to provide data package service in a telecommunication network that based on Right Price, Right Service Level, and Right Quality. The goal of this research is to analyze the impact of End to End QoS use on 3G telecommunication network for voice service and data. This research uses an analysis method by doing the application on the lab. The result that is achieved in this research shows that End to End QoS is very influental to the Service Level Agreement to the users of the telecommunication service.Keywords: End to End Qos, SLA, Diffserv

  8. Reversible end-to-end assembly of gold nanorods using a disulfide-modified polypeptide

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Walker, David A; Gupta, Vinay K

    2008-01-01

    Directing the self-assembly of colloidal particles into nanostructures is of great interest in nanotechnology. Here, reversible end-to-end assembly of gold nanorods (GNR) is induced by pH-dependent changes in the secondary conformation of a disulfide-modified poly(L-glutamic acid) (SSPLGA). The disulfide anchoring group drives chemisorption of the polyacid onto the end of the gold nanorods in an ethanolic solution. A layer of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) is adsorbed on the positively charged, surfactant-stabilized GNR to screen the surfactant bilayer charge and provide stability for dispersion of the GNR in ethanol. For comparison, irreversible end-to-end assembly using a bidentate ligand, namely 1,6-hexanedithiol, is also performed. Characterization of the modified GNR and its end-to-end linking behavior using SSPLGA and hexanedithiol is performed using dynamic light scattering (DLS), UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Experimental results show that, in a colloidal solution of GNR-SSPLGA at a pH∼3.5, where the PLGA is in an α-helical conformation, the modified GNR self-assemble into one-dimensional nanostructures. The linking behavior can be reversed by increasing the pH (>8.5) to drive the conformation of the polypeptide to a random coil and this reversal with pH occurs rapidly within minutes. Cycling the pH multiple times between low and high pH values can be used to drive the formation of the nanostructures of the GNR and disperse them in solution.

  9. End to end adaptive congestion control in TCP/IP networks

    CERN Document Server

    Houmkozlis, Christos N

    2012-01-01

    This book provides an adaptive control theory perspective on designing congestion controls for packet-switching networks. Relevant to a wide range of disciplines and industries, including the music industry, computers, image trading, and virtual groups, the text extensively discusses source oriented, or end to end, congestion control algorithms. The book empowers readers with clear understanding of the characteristics of packet-switching networks and their effects on system stability and performance. It provides schemes capable of controlling congestion and fairness and presents real-world app

  10. Testing Application (End-to-End Performance of Networks With EFT Traffic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vlatko Lipovac

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper studies how end-to-end application peiformance(of Electronic Financial Transaction traffic, in particulardepends on the actual protocol stacks, operating systemsand network transmission rates. With this respect, the respectivesimulation tests of peiformance of TCP and UDP protocolsrunning on various operating systems, ranging from Windows,Sun Solmis, to Linux have been implemented, and thedifferences in peiformance addressed focusing on throughputand response time.

  11. End-to-end learning for digital hologram reconstruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Zhimin; Zuo, Si; Lam, Edmund Y.

    2018-02-01

    Digital holography is a well-known method to perform three-dimensional imaging by recording the light wavefront information originating from the object. Not only the intensity, but also the phase distribution of the wavefront can then be computed from the recorded hologram in the numerical reconstruction process. However, the reconstructions via the traditional methods suffer from various artifacts caused by twin-image, zero-order term, and noise from image sensors. Here we demonstrate that an end-to-end deep neural network (DNN) can learn to perform both intensity and phase recovery directly from an intensity-only hologram. We experimentally show that the artifacts can be effectively suppressed. Meanwhile, our network doesn't need any preprocessing for initialization, and is comparably fast to train and test, in comparison with the recently published learning-based method. In addition, we validate that the performance improvement can be achieved by introducing a prior on sparsity.

  12. Advanced Camera Image Cropping Approach for CNN-Based End-to-End Controls on Sustainable Computing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yunsick Sung

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Recent research on deep learning has been applied to a diversity of fields. In particular, numerous studies have been conducted on self-driving vehicles using end-to-end approaches based on images captured by a single camera. End-to-end controls learn the output vectors of output devices directly from the input vectors of available input devices. In other words, an end-to-end approach learns not by analyzing the meaning of input vectors, but by extracting optimal output vectors based on input vectors. Generally, when end-to-end control is applied to self-driving vehicles, the steering wheel and pedals are controlled autonomously by learning from the images captured by a camera. However, high-resolution images captured from a car cannot be directly used as inputs to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs owing to memory limitations; the image size needs to be efficiently reduced. Therefore, it is necessary to extract features from captured images automatically and to generate input images by merging the parts of the images that contain the extracted features. This paper proposes a learning method for end-to-end control that generates input images for CNNs by extracting road parts from input images, identifying the edges of the extracted road parts, and merging the parts of the images that contain the detected edges. In addition, a CNN model for end-to-end control is introduced. Experiments involving the Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS, a sustainable computing environment for cars, confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method for self-driving by comparing the accumulated difference in the angle of the steering wheel in the images generated by it with those of resized images containing the entire captured area and cropped images containing only a part of the captured area. The results showed that the proposed method reduced the accumulated difference by 0.839% and 0.850% compared to those yielded by the resized images and cropped images

  13. QoS Modeling for End-to-End Performance Evaluation over Networks with Wireless Access

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gómez Gerardo

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS model for assessing the performance of data services over networks with wireless access. The proposed model deals with performance degradation across protocol layers using a bottom-up strategy, starting with the physical layer and moving on up to the application layer. This approach makes it possible to analytically assess performance at different layers, thereby facilitating a possible end-to-end optimization process. As a representative case, a scenario where a set of mobile terminals connected to a streaming server through an IP access node has been studied. UDP, TCP, and the new TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC protocols were analyzed at the transport layer. The radio interface consisted of a variable-rate multiuser and multichannel subsystem, including retransmissions and adaptive modulation and coding. The proposed analytical QoS model was validated on a real-time emulator of an end-to-end network with wireless access and proved to be very useful for the purposes of service performance estimation and optimization.

  14. Circular myotomy as an aid to resection and end-to-end anastomosis of the esophagus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Attum, A A; Hankins, J R; Ngangana, J; McLaughlin, J S

    1979-08-01

    Segments ranging from 40 to 70% of the thoracic esophagus were resected in 80 mongrel dogs. End-to-end anastomosis was effected after circular myotomy either proximal or distal, or both proximal and distal, to the anastomosis. Among dogs undergoing resection of 60% of the esophagus, distal myotomy enabled 6 of 8 animals to survive, and combined proximal and distal myotomy permitted 8 of 10 to survive. Cineesophagography was performed in a majority of the 50 surviving animals and showed no appreciable delay of peristalsis at the myotomy sites. When these sites were examined at postmortem examination up to 13 months after operation, 1 dog showed a small diverticulum but none showed dilatation or stricture. It is concluded that circular myotomy holds real promise as a means of extending the clinical application of esophageal resection with end-to-end anastomosis.

  15. Increasing operations profitability using an end-to-end, wireless internet, gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M. [Northrock Resources Ltd., AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [zed.i solutions, inc., Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2004-10-01

    Implementation by Northrock Resources Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unocal Corporation, of a fully integrated end-to-end gas measurement and production analysis system, is discussed. The system, dubbed Smart-Alek(TM), utilizes public wireless communications and a web browser only delivery system to provide seamless well visibility to a desk-top computer. Smart-Alek(TM) is an example of a new type of end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement system, known as FINE(TM), which is an acronym for Field Intelligence Network and End-User Interface. The system delivers easy-to-use, complete, reliable and cost effective production information, far more effective than is possible to obtain with conventional SCADA technology. By installing the system, Northrock was able to increase gas volumes with more accurate electronic flow measurement in place of mechanical charts, with very low technical maintenance, and at a reduced operating cost. It is emphasized that deploying the technology alone will produce only partial benefits; to realize full benefits it is also essential to change grass roots operating practices, aiming at timely decision-making at the field level. 5 refs., 5 figs.

  16. Kinetics of end-to-end collision in short single-stranded nucleic acids.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xiaojuan; Nau, Werner M

    2004-01-28

    A novel fluorescence-based method, which entails contact quenching of the long-lived fluorescent state of 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]-oct-2-ene (DBO), was employed to measure the kinetics of end-to-end collision in short single-stranded oligodeoxyribonucleotides of the type 5'-DBO-(X)n-dG with X = dA, dC, dT, or dU and n = 2 or 4. The fluorophore was covalently attached to the 5' end and dG was introduced as an efficient intrinsic quencher at the 3' terminus. The end-to-end collision rates, which can be directly related to the efficiency of intramolecular fluorescence quenching, ranged from 0.1 to 9.0 x 10(6) s(-1). They were strongly dependent on the strand length, the base sequence, as well as the temperature. Oligonucleotides containing dA in the backbone displayed much slower collision rates and significantly higher positive activation energies than strands composed of pyrimidine bases, suggesting a higher intrinsic rigidity of oligoadenylate. Comparison of the measured collision rates in short single-stranded oligodeoxyribonucleotides with the previously reported kinetics of hairpin formation indicates that the intramolecular collision is significantly faster than the nucleation step of hairpin closing. This is consistent with the configurational diffusion model suggested by Ansari et al. (Ansari, A.; Kuznetsov, S. V.; Shen, Y. Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2001, 98, 7771-7776), in which the formation of misfolded loops is thought to slow hairpin formation.

  17. Outcome of end-to-end urethroplasty in post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hussain, Akbar; Pansota, Mudassar Saeed; Rasool, Mumtaz; Tabassum, Shafqat Ali; Ahmad, Iftikhar; Saleem, Muhammad Shahzad

    2013-04-01

    To determine the outcome of delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty in blind post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra at our setup. Case series. Department of Urology and Renal Transplantation, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College/Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur, from January 2009 to June 2011. Adult patients with completely obliterated post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra ≤ 2 cm were included in the study. Patients with post-prostatectomy (TUR-P, TVP) stricture, stricture more than 2 cm in size or patients of stricture with neurogenic bladder and patients with any perineal disease were excluded from the study. Retrograde urethrogram and voiding cysto-urethrogram was done in every patient to assess stricture length and location. Stricture excision and delayed end-to-end anastomosis of urethra with spatulation was performed in every patient. Minimum followup period was 6 months and maximum 18 months. There were 26 cases with road traffic accident (indirect) and 14 had history of fall/direct trauma to perineum or urethra. Majority of the patients (57.5%) were between 16 to 30 years of age. Twelve (30.0%) patients developed complications postoperatively. Early complications of wound infection occurred in 01 (2.5%) patient. Late complications were seen in 11 (27.5%) patients i.e. stricture recurrence in 7 (17.5%), erectile dysfunction in 2 (5.0%), urethrocutaneous fistula and urinary incontinence in one patient (2.5%) each. Success rate was 70.0% initially and 87.5% overall. Delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty is an effective procedure for traumatic posterior urethral strictures with success rate of about 87.5%.

  18. Analytical Framework for End-to-End Delay Based on Unidirectional Highway Scenario

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aslinda Hassan

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available In a sparse vehicular ad hoc network, a vehicle normally employs a carry and forward approach, where it holds the message it wants to transmit until the vehicle meets other vehicles or roadside units. A number of analyses in the literature have been done to investigate the time delay when packets are being carried by vehicles on both unidirectional and bidirectional highways. However, these analyses are focusing on the delay between either two disconnected vehicles or two disconnected vehicle clusters. Furthermore, majority of the analyses only concentrate on the expected value of the end-to-end delay when the carry and forward approach is used. Using regression analysis, we establish the distribution model for the time delay between two disconnected vehicle clusters as an exponential distribution. Consequently, a distribution is newly derived to represent the number of clusters on a highway using a vehicular traffic model. From there, we are able to formulate end-to-end delay model which extends the time delay model for two disconnected vehicle clusters to multiple disconnected clusters on a unidirectional highway. The analytical results obtained from the analytical model are then validated through simulation results.

  19. SPoRT - An End-to-End R2O Activity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jedlovec, Gary J.

    2009-01-01

    Established in 2002 to demonstrate the weather and forecasting application of real-time EOS measurements, the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) program has grown to be an end-to-end research to operations activity focused on the use of advanced NASA modeling and data assimilation approaches, nowcasting techniques, and unique high-resolution multispectral observational data applications from EOS satellites to improve short-term weather forecasts on a regional and local scale. SPoRT currently partners with several universities and other government agencies for access to real-time data and products, and works collaboratively with them and operational end users at 13 WFOs to develop and test the new products and capabilities in a "test-bed" mode. The test-bed simulates key aspects of the operational environment without putting constraints on the forecaster workload. Products and capabilities which show utility in the test-bed environment are then transitioned experimentally into the operational environment for further evaluation and assessment. SPoRT focuses on a suite of data and products from MODIS, AMSR-E, and AIRS on the NASA Terra and Aqua satellites, and total lightning measurements from ground-based networks. Some of the observations are assimilated into or used with various versions of the WRF model to provide supplemental forecast guidance to operational end users. SPoRT is enhancing partnerships with NOAA / NESDIS for new product development and data access to exploit the remote sensing capabilities of instruments on the NPOESS satellites to address short term weather forecasting problems. The VIIRS and CrIS instruments on the NPP and follow-on NPOESS satellites provide similar observing capabilities to the MODIS and AIRS instruments on Terra and Aqua. SPoRT will be transitioning existing and new capabilities into the AWIIPS II environment to continue the continuity of its activities.

  20. End-to-end operations at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory

    Science.gov (United States)

    Radziwill, Nicole M.

    2008-07-01

    In 2006 NRAO launched a formal organization, the Office of End to End Operations (OEO), to broaden access to its instruments (VLA/EVLA, VLBA, GBT and ALMA) in the most cost-effective ways possible. The VLA, VLBA and GBT are mature instruments, and the EVLA and ALMA are currently under construction, which presents unique challenges for integrating software across the Observatory. This article 1) provides a survey of the new developments over the past year, and those planned for the next year, 2) describes the business model used to deliver many of these services, and 3) discusses the management models being applied to ensure continuous innovation in operations, while preserving the flexibility and autonomy of telescope software development groups.

  1. Outcome of end-to-end urethroplasty in post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hussain, A.; Pansota, M. S.; Rasool, M.; Tabassum, S. A.; Ahmad, I.; Saleem, M. S.

    2013-01-01

    Objective: To determine the outcome of delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty in blind post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra at our setup. Study Design: Case series. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Urology and Renal Transplantation, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College/ Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur, from January 2009 to June 2011. Methodology: Adult patients with completely obliterated post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra 2 cm/sup 2/ were included in the study. Patients with post-prostatectomy (TUR-P, TVP) stricture, stricture more than 2 cm in size or patients of stricture with neurogenic bladder and patients with any perineal disease were excluded from the study. Retrograde urethrogram and voiding cysto-urethrogram was done in every patient to assess stricture length and location. Stricture excision and delayed end-to-end anastomosis of urethra with spatulation was performed in every patient. Minimum followup period was 6 months and maximum 18 months. Results: There were 26 cases with road traffic accident (indirect) and 14 had history of fall/direct trauma to perineum or urethra. Majority of the patients (57.5%) were between 16 to 30 years of age. Twelve (30.0%) patients developed complications postoperatively. Early complications of wound infection occurred in 01 (2.5%) patient. Late complications were seen in 11 (27.5%) patients i.e. stricture recurrence in 7 (17.5%), erectile dysfunction in 2 (5.0%), urethrocutaneous fistula and urinary incontinence in one patient (2.5%) each. Success rate was 70.0% initially and 87.5% overall. Conclusion: Delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty is an effective procedure for traumatic posterior urethral strictures with success rate of about 87.5%. (author)

  2. Outcome of end-to-end urethroplasty in post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hussain, A.; Pansota, M. S.; Rasool, M.; Tabassum, S. A.; Ahmad, I.; Saleem, M. S. [Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur (Pakistan). Dept. of Urology

    2013-04-15

    Objective: To determine the outcome of delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty in blind post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra at our setup. Study Design: Case series. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Urology and Renal Transplantation, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College/ Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Bahawalpur, from January 2009 to June 2011. Methodology: Adult patients with completely obliterated post-traumatic stricture of posterior urethra 2 cm/sup 2/ were included in the study. Patients with post-prostatectomy (TUR-P, TVP) stricture, stricture more than 2 cm in size or patients of stricture with neurogenic bladder and patients with any perineal disease were excluded from the study. Retrograde urethrogram and voiding cysto-urethrogram was done in every patient to assess stricture length and location. Stricture excision and delayed end-to-end anastomosis of urethra with spatulation was performed in every patient. Minimum followup period was 6 months and maximum 18 months. Results: There were 26 cases with road traffic accident (indirect) and 14 had history of fall/direct trauma to perineum or urethra. Majority of the patients (57.5%) were between 16 to 30 years of age. Twelve (30.0%) patients developed complications postoperatively. Early complications of wound infection occurred in 01 (2.5%) patient. Late complications were seen in 11 (27.5%) patients i.e. stricture recurrence in 7 (17.5%), erectile dysfunction in 2 (5.0%), urethrocutaneous fistula and urinary incontinence in one patient (2.5%) each. Success rate was 70.0% initially and 87.5% overall. Conclusion: Delayed end-to-end anastomotic urethroplasty is an effective procedure for traumatic posterior urethral strictures with success rate of about 87.5%. (author)

  3. QoC-based Optimization of End-to-End M-Health Data Delivery Services

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Widya, I.A.; van Beijnum, Bernhard J.F.; Salden, Alfons

    2006-01-01

    This paper addresses how Quality of Context (QoC) can be used to optimize end-to-end mobile healthcare (m-health) data delivery services in the presence of alternative delivery paths, which is quite common in a pervasive computing and communication environment. We propose min-max-plus based

  4. Designing EEG Neurofeedback Procedures to Enhance Open-Ended versus Closed-Ended Creative Potentials

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Wei-Lun; Shih, Yi-Ling

    2016-01-01

    Recent empirical evidence demonstrated that open-ended creativity (which refers to creativity measures that require various and numerous responses, such as divergent thinking) correlated with alpha brain wave activation, whereas closed-ended creativity (which refers to creativity measures that ask for one final correct answer, such as insight…

  5. Physical oceanography - Developing end-to-end models of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the California Current LME, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  6. Hybrid monitoring scheme for end-to-end performance enhancement of multicast-based real-time media

    Science.gov (United States)

    Park, Ju-Won; Kim, JongWon

    2004-10-01

    As real-time media applications based on IP multicast networks spread widely, end-to-end QoS (quality of service) provisioning for these applications have become very important. To guarantee the end-to-end QoS of multi-party media applications, it is essential to monitor the time-varying status of both network metrics (i.e., delay, jitter and loss) and system metrics (i.e., CPU and memory utilization). In this paper, targeting the multicast-enabled AG (Access Grid) a next-generation group collaboration tool based on multi-party media services, the applicability of hybrid monitoring scheme that combines active and passive monitoring is investigated. The active monitoring measures network-layer metrics (i.e., network condition) with probe packets while the passive monitoring checks both application-layer metrics (i.e., user traffic condition by analyzing RTCP packets) and system metrics. By comparing these hybrid results, we attempt to pinpoint the causes of performance degradation and explore corresponding reactions to improve the end-to-end performance. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid monitoring can provide useful information to coordinate the performance improvement of multi-party real-time media applications.

  7. Lower end fitting debris collector and end cap spacer grid

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bryan, W.J.

    1990-01-01

    This patent describes a nuclear reactor having fuel assemblies including an upper end fitting and spaced nuclear fuel rod spacer grids for supporting and spacing a plurality of elongated nuclear fuel rods. Each includes a hollow active portion of nuclear fuel filled cladding intermediate the rod ends and tapering end cap of solid material with a circumferential groove on the rod end which first encounters reactor coolant flow, a lower end filtering debris collector and end cap spacer grid for capturing and retaining deleterious debris carried by reactor coolant before it enters the active region of a fuel assembly and creates fuel rod cladding damage

  8. Plugger guide for aligning an end plug and a fuel rod tube end

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Klapper, K.K.; Boatwright, D.A.

    1987-01-01

    A pin driving tool is described for inserting or removing pins from teeth on a digging means, comprising: fuel rod tube toward an end plug for application of the end plug into the tube end, the apparatus comprising: (a) a guide housing having an elongated central longitudinal bore with one end for receiving the end plug and an opposite end for receiving the fuel rod tube end; (b) sets of rolling elements disposed in the housing at axially spaced positions along and about the bore thereof. The rolling elements in each set are positioned in fixed relation with respect to one another to receive the fuel rod tube end therebetween and align the tube end with the end plug as the tube end is moved through the bore and into engagement with the end plug; and (c) retaining means disposed adjacent to the open end of the housing bore for engaging the end plug so as to maintain it in a stationary seated position at the one end of the housing bore

  9. Open-ended education

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nørgård, Rikke Toft; Paaskesen, Rikke Berggreen

    2016-01-01

    THE ARTICLE DESCRIBES OPEN-ENDED EDUCATION FOR 21ST CENTURY LEARNING AS THE COMING TOGETHER OF OPEN-ENDED TECHNOLOGY, OPEN-ENDED PROJECTS, AND OPEN-ENDED INSTITUTIONS IN WAYS THAT FOSTER AND PROMOTE FUTURE EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP IN SOCIETY. THROUGH THE CASE OF THE CODING PIRATES FUTURE ISLAND......, THE ARTICLE DEMONSTRATES HOW OPEN-ENDED EDUCATION CAN BE PRACTICED TO FOSTER AND PROMOTE TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGINATION, ENTERPRISING, AND PARTICIPATION. THIS PRACTICE IS THEN DEVELOPED INTO A THEORETICAL MODEL FOR THE CONCEPT OF OPEN-ENDED EDUCATION AS A WAY OF AND FRAMEWORK FOR PRACTICING FUTURE EDUCATION FOR 21......ST CENTURY LEARNING WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES. THE ARTICLE PRESENTS AN ANSWER TO THE CALL FOR 21ST CENTURY LEARNING AS THOROUGHLY COLLABORATIVE, COMMUNICATIVE, CREATIVE, AND CRITICALLY REFLECTIVE THROUGH THE CASE AND THE CONCEPT OF OPEN-ENDED EDUCATION. IT OUTLINES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS CALL...

  10. Screening California Current fishery management scenarios using the Atlantis end-to-end ecosystem model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaplan, Isaac C.; Horne, Peter J.; Levin, Phillip S.

    2012-09-01

    End-to-end marine ecosystem models link climate and oceanography to the food web and human activities. These models can be used as forecasting tools, to strategically evaluate management options and to support ecosystem-based management. Here we report the results of such forecasts in the California Current, using an Atlantis end-to-end model. We worked collaboratively with fishery managers at NOAA’s regional offices and staff at the National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS) to explore the impact of fishery policies on management objectives at different spatial scales, from single Marine Sanctuaries to the entire Northern California Current. In addition to examining Status Quo management, we explored the consequences of several gear switching and spatial management scenarios. Of the scenarios that involved large scale management changes, no single scenario maximized all performance metrics. Any policy choice would involve trade-offs between stakeholder groups and policy goals. For example, a coast-wide 25% gear shift from trawl to pot or longline appeared to be one possible compromise between an increase in spatial management (which sacrificed revenue) and scenarios such as the one consolidating bottom impacts to deeper areas (which did not perform substantially differently from Status Quo). Judged on a coast-wide scale, most of the scenarios that involved minor or local management changes (e.g. within Monterey Bay NMS only) yielded results similar to Status Quo. When impacts did occur in these cases, they often involved local interactions that were difficult to predict a priori based solely on fishing patterns. However, judged on the local scale, deviation from Status Quo did emerge, particularly for metrics related to stationary species or variables (i.e. habitat and local metrics of landed value or bycatch). We also found that isolated management actions within Monterey Bay NMS would cause local fishers to pay a cost for conservation, in terms of reductions in landed

  11. Financing the End-to-end Supply Chain: A Reference Guide to Supply Chain Finance

    OpenAIRE

    Templar, Simon; Hofmann, Erik; Findlay, Charles

    2016-01-01

    Financing the End to End Supply Chain provides readers with a real insight into the increasingly important area of supply chain finance. It demonstrates the importance of the strategic relationship between the physical supply of goods and services and the associated financial flows. The book provides a clear introduction, demonstrating the importance of the strategic relationship between supply chain and financial communities within an organization. It contains vital information on how supply...

  12. End-to-End Airplane Detection Using Transfer Learning in Remote Sensing Images

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhong Chen

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Airplane detection in remote sensing images remains a challenging problem due to the complexity of backgrounds. In recent years, with the development of deep learning, object detection has also obtained great breakthroughs. For object detection tasks in natural images, such as the PASCAL (Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning VOC (Visual Object Classes Challenge, the major trend of current development is to use a large amount of labeled classification data to pre-train the deep neural network as a base network, and then use a small amount of annotated detection data to fine-tune the network for detection. In this paper, we use object detection technology based on deep learning for airplane detection in remote sensing images. In addition to using some characteristics of remote sensing images, some new data augmentation techniques have been proposed. We also use transfer learning and adopt a single deep convolutional neural network and limited training samples to implement end-to-end trainable airplane detection. Classification and positioning are no longer divided into multistage tasks; end-to-end detection attempts to combine them for optimization, which ensures an optimal solution for the final stage. In our experiment, we use remote sensing images of airports collected from Google Earth. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is highly accurate and meaningful for remote sensing object detection.

  13. Network analysis on skype end-to-end video quality

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Exarchakos, Georgios; Druda, Luca; Menkovski, Vlado; Liotta, Antonio

    2015-01-01

    Purpose – This paper aims to argue on the efficiency of Quality of Service (QoS)-based adaptive streamingwith regards to perceived quality Quality of Experience (QoE). Although QoS parameters are extensivelyused even by high-end adaptive streaming algorithms, achieved QoE fails to justify their use

  14. Modeling and simulation of satellite subsystems for end-to-end spacecraft modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schum, William K.; Doolittle, Christina M.; Boyarko, George A.

    2006-05-01

    During the past ten years, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been simultaneously developing high-fidelity spacecraft payload models as well as a robust distributed simulation environment for modeling spacecraft subsystems. Much of this research has occurred in the Distributed Architecture Simulation Laboratory (DASL). AFRL developers working in the DASL have effectively combined satellite power, attitude pointing, and communication link analysis subsystem models with robust satellite sensor models to create a first-order end-to-end satellite simulation capability. The merging of these two simulation areas has advanced the field of spacecraft simulation, design, and analysis, and enabled more in-depth mission and satellite utility analyses. A core capability of the DASL is the support of a variety of modeling and analysis efforts, ranging from physics and engineering-level modeling to mission and campaign-level analysis. The flexibility and agility of this simulation architecture will be used to support space mission analysis, military utility analysis, and various integrated exercises with other military and space organizations via direct integration, or through DOD standards such as Distributed Interaction Simulation. This paper discusses the results and lessons learned in modeling satellite communication link analysis, power, and attitude control subsystems for an end-to-end satellite simulation. It also discusses how these spacecraft subsystem simulations feed into and support military utility and space mission analyses.

  15. Providing end-to-end QoS for multimedia applications in 3G wireless networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Katherine; Rangarajan, Samapth; Siddiqui, M. A.; Paul, Sanjoy

    2003-11-01

    As the usage of wireless packet data services increases, wireless carriers today are faced with the challenge of offering multimedia applications with QoS requirements within current 3G data networks. End-to-end QoS requires support at the application, network, link and medium access control (MAC) layers. We discuss existing CDMA2000 network architecture and show its shortcomings that prevent supporting multiple classes of traffic at the Radio Access Network (RAN). We then propose changes in RAN within the standards framework that enable support for multiple traffic classes. In addition, we discuss how Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can be augmented with QoS signaling for supporting end-to-end QoS. We also review state of the art scheduling algorithms at the base station and provide possible extensions to these algorithms to support different classes of traffic as well as different classes of users.

  16. End-to-End Adversarial Retinal Image Synthesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costa, Pedro; Galdran, Adrian; Meyer, Maria Ines; Niemeijer, Meindert; Abramoff, Michael; Mendonca, Ana Maria; Campilho, Aurelio

    2018-03-01

    In medical image analysis applications, the availability of the large amounts of annotated data is becoming increasingly critical. However, annotated medical data is often scarce and costly to obtain. In this paper, we address the problem of synthesizing retinal color images by applying recent techniques based on adversarial learning. In this setting, a generative model is trained to maximize a loss function provided by a second model attempting to classify its output into real or synthetic. In particular, we propose to implement an adversarial autoencoder for the task of retinal vessel network synthesis. We use the generated vessel trees as an intermediate stage for the generation of color retinal images, which is accomplished with a generative adversarial network. Both models require the optimization of almost everywhere differentiable loss functions, which allows us to train them jointly. The resulting model offers an end-to-end retinal image synthesis system capable of generating as many retinal images as the user requires, with their corresponding vessel networks, by sampling from a simple probability distribution that we impose to the associated latent space. We show that the learned latent space contains a well-defined semantic structure, implying that we can perform calculations in the space of retinal images, e.g., smoothly interpolating new data points between two retinal images. Visual and quantitative results demonstrate that the synthesized images are substantially different from those in the training set, while being also anatomically consistent and displaying a reasonable visual quality.

  17. Flexible End2End Workflow Automation of Hit-Discovery Research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holzmüller-Laue, Silke; Göde, Bernd; Thurow, Kerstin

    2014-08-01

    The article considers a new approach of more complex laboratory automation at the workflow layer. The authors purpose the automation of end2end workflows. The combination of all relevant subprocesses-whether automated or manually performed, independently, and in which organizational unit-results in end2end processes that include all result dependencies. The end2end approach focuses on not only the classical experiments in synthesis or screening, but also on auxiliary processes such as the production and storage of chemicals, cell culturing, and maintenance as well as preparatory activities and analyses of experiments. Furthermore, the connection of control flow and data flow in the same process model leads to reducing of effort of the data transfer between the involved systems, including the necessary data transformations. This end2end laboratory automation can be realized effectively with the modern methods of business process management (BPM). This approach is based on a new standardization of the process-modeling notation Business Process Model and Notation 2.0. In drug discovery, several scientific disciplines act together with manifold modern methods, technologies, and a wide range of automated instruments for the discovery and design of target-based drugs. The article discusses the novel BPM-based automation concept with an implemented example of a high-throughput screening of previously synthesized compound libraries. © 2014 Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening.

  18. Mechanics of spatulated end-to-end artery-to-vein anastomoses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morasch, M D; Dobrin, P B; Dong, Q S; Mrkvicka, R

    1998-01-01

    It previously has been shown that in straight end-to-end artery-to-vein anastomoses, maximum dimensions are obtained with an interrupted suture line. Nearly equivalent dimensions are obtained with a continuous compliant polybutester suture (Novafil), and the smallest dimensions are obtained with a continuous noncompliant polypropylene suture (Surgilene). The present study was undertaken to examine these suture techniques in a spatulated or beveled anastomosis in living dogs. Anastomoses were constructed using continuous 6-0 polypropylene (Surgilene), continuous 6-0 polybutester (Novafil), or interrupted 6-0 polypropylene or polybutester. Thirty minutes after construction, the artery, vein, and beveled anastomoses were excised, restored to in situ length and pressurized with the lumen filled with a dilute suspension of barium sulfate. High resolution radiographs were obtained at 25 mmHg pressure increments up to 200 mmHg. Dimensions and compliance were determined from the radiographic images. Results showed that, unlike straight artery-to-vein anastomoses, there were no differences in the dimensions or compliance of spatulated anastomoses with continuous Surgilene, continuous Novafil, or interrupted suture techniques. Therefore a continuous suture technique is acceptable when constructing spatulated artery-to-vein anastomoses in patients.

  19. Sleep/wake scheduling scheme for minimizing end-to-end delay in multi-hop wireless sensor networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Madani Sajjad

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract We present a sleep/wake schedule protocol for minimizing end-to-end delay for event driven multi-hop wireless sensor networks. In contrast to generic sleep/wake scheduling schemes, our proposed algorithm performs scheduling that is dependent on traffic loads. Nodes adapt their sleep/wake schedule based on traffic loads in response to three important factors, (a the distance of the node from the sink node, (b the importance of the node's location from connectivity's perspective, and (c if the node is in the proximity where an event occurs. Using these heuristics, the proposed scheme reduces end-to-end delay and maximizes the throughput by minimizing the congestion at nodes having heavy traffic load. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol, by comparing its performance with S-MAC and Anycast protocols. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol has significantly reduced the end-to-end delay, as well as has improved the other QoS parameters, like average energy per packet, average delay, packet loss ratio, throughput, and coverage lifetime.

  20. End-to-end self-assembly of gold nanorods in isopropanol solution: experimental and theoretical studies

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gordel, M., E-mail: marta.gordel@pwr.edu.pl [Wrocław University of Technology, Advanced Materials Engineering and Modelling Group, Faculty of Chemistry (Poland); Piela, K., E-mail: katarzyna.piela@pwr.edu.pl [Wrocław University of Technology, Department of Physical and Quantum Chemistry (Poland); Kołkowski, R. [Wrocław University of Technology, Advanced Materials Engineering and Modelling Group, Faculty of Chemistry (Poland); Koźlecki, T. [Wrocław University of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry (Poland); Buckle, M. [CNRS, École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Laboratoire de Biologie et Pharmacologie Appliquée (France); Samoć, M. [Wrocław University of Technology, Advanced Materials Engineering and Modelling Group, Faculty of Chemistry (Poland)

    2015-12-15

    We describe here a modification of properties of colloidal gold nanorods (NRs) resulting from the chemical treatment used to carry out their transfer into isopropanol (IPA) solution. The NRs acquire a tendency to attach one to another by their ends (end-to-end assembly). We focus on the investigation of the change in position and shape of the longitudinal surface plasmon (l-SPR) band after self-assembly. The experimental results are supported by a theoretical calculation, which rationalizes the dramatic change in optical properties when the NRs are positioned end-to-end at short distances. The detailed spectroscopic characterization performed at the consecutive stages of transfer of the NRs from water into IPA solution revealed the features of the interaction between the polymers used as ligands and their contribution to the final stage, when the NRs were dispersed in IPA solution. The efficient method of aligning the NRs detailed here may facilitate applications of the self-assembled NRs as building blocks for optical materials and biological sensing.Graphical Abstract.

  1. Location Assisted Vertical Handover Algorithm for QoS Optimization in End-to-End Connections

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dam, Martin S.; Christensen, Steffen R.; Mikkelsen, Lars M.

    2012-01-01

    implementation on Android based tablets. The simulations cover a wide range of scenarios for two mobile users in an urban area with ubiquitous cellular coverage, and shows our algorithm leads to increased throughput, with fewer handovers, when considering the end-to-end connection than to other handover schemes...

  2. An end to end secure CBIR over encrypted medical database.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bellafqira, Reda; Coatrieux, Gouenou; Bouslimi, Dalel; Quellec, Gwenole

    2016-08-01

    In this paper, we propose a new secure content based image retrieval (SCBIR) system adapted to the cloud framework. This solution allows a physician to retrieve images of similar content within an outsourced and encrypted image database, without decrypting them. Contrarily to actual CBIR approaches in the encrypted domain, the originality of the proposed scheme stands on the fact that the features extracted from the encrypted images are themselves encrypted. This is achieved by means of homomorphic encryption and two non-colluding servers, we however both consider as honest but curious. In that way an end to end secure CBIR process is ensured. Experimental results carried out on a diabetic retinopathy database encrypted with the Paillier cryptosystem indicate that our SCBIR achieves retrieval performance as good as if images were processed in their non-encrypted form.

  3. An end-to-end secure patient information access card system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alkhateeb, A; Singer, H; Yakami, M; Takahashi, T

    2000-03-01

    The rapid development of the Internet and the increasing interest in Internet-based solutions has promoted the idea of creating Internet-based health information applications. This will force a change in the role of IC cards in healthcare card systems from a data carrier to an access key medium. At the Medical Informatics Department of Kyoto University Hospital we are developing a smart card patient information project where patient databases are accessed via the Internet. Strong end-to-end data encryption is performed via Secure Socket Layers, transparent to transmit patient information. The smart card is playing the crucial role of access key to the database: user authentication is performed internally without ever revealing the actual key. For easy acceptance by healthcare professionals, the user interface is integrated as a plug-in for two familiar Web browsers, Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer.

  4. Atlantis model outputs - Developing end-to-end models of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the California Current LME, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  5. Weighted-DESYNC and Its Application to End-to-End Throughput Fairness in Wireless Multihop Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ui-Seong Yu

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The end-to-end throughput of a routing path in wireless multihop network is restricted by a bottleneck node that has the smallest bandwidth among the nodes on the routing path. In this study, we propose a method for resolving the bottleneck-node problem in multihop networks, which is based on multihop DESYNC (MH-DESYNC algorithm that is a bioinspired resource allocation method developed for use in multihop environments and enables fair resource allocation among nearby (up to two hops neighbors. Based on MH-DESYNC, we newly propose weighted-DESYNC (W-DESYNC as a tool artificially to control the amount of resource allocated to the specific user and thus to achieve throughput fairness over a routing path. Proposed W-DESYNC employs the weight factor of a link to determine the amount of bandwidth allocated to a node. By letting the weight factor be the link quality of a routing path and making it the same across a routing path via Cucker-Smale flocking model, we can obtain throughput fairness over a routing path. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves throughput fairness over a routing path and can increase total end-to-end throughput in wireless multihop networks.

  6. WiMAX security and quality of service an end-to-end perspective

    CERN Document Server

    Tang, Seok-Yee; Sharif, Hamid

    2010-01-01

    WiMAX is the first standard technology to deliver true broadband mobility at speeds that enable powerful multimedia applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), online gaming, mobile TV, and personalized infotainment. WiMAX Security and Quality of Service, focuses on the interdisciplinary subject of advanced Security and Quality of Service (QoS) in WiMAX wireless telecommunication systems including its models, standards, implementations, and applications. Split into 4 parts, Part A of the book is an end-to-end overview of the WiMAX architecture, protocol, and system requirements.

  7. On end-to-end performance of MIMO multiuser in cognitive radio networks

    KAUST Repository

    Yang, Yuli

    2011-12-01

    In this paper, a design for the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multiuser transmission in the cognitive radio network is developed and its end-to-end performance is investigated under spectrum-sharing constraints. Firstly, the overall average packet error rate is analyzed by considering the channel state information feedback delay and the multiuser scheduling. Then, we provide corresponding numerical results to measure the performance evaluation for several separate scenarios, which presents a convenient tool for the cognitive radio network design with multiple secondary MIMO users. © 2011 IEEE.

  8. On end-to-end performance of MIMO multiuser in cognitive radio networks

    KAUST Repository

    Yang, Yuli; Aissa, Sonia

    2011-01-01

    In this paper, a design for the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multiuser transmission in the cognitive radio network is developed and its end-to-end performance is investigated under spectrum-sharing constraints. Firstly, the overall average packet error rate is analyzed by considering the channel state information feedback delay and the multiuser scheduling. Then, we provide corresponding numerical results to measure the performance evaluation for several separate scenarios, which presents a convenient tool for the cognitive radio network design with multiple secondary MIMO users. © 2011 IEEE.

  9. Security Considerations around End-to-End Security in the IP-based Internet of Things

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brachmann, M.; Garcia-Mochon, O.; Keoh, S.L.; Kumar, S.S.

    2012-01-01

    The IP-based Internet of Things refers to the interconnection of smart objects in a Low-power and Lossy Network (LLN) with the Internetby means of protocols such as 6LoWPAN or CoAP. The provisioning of an end-to-end security connection is the key to ensure basic functionalities such as software

  10. Performance Enhancements of UMTS networks using end-to-end QoS provisioning

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wang, Haibo; Prasad, Devendra; Teyeb, Oumer

    2005-01-01

    This paper investigates the end-to-end(E2E) quality of service(QoS) provisioning approaches for UMTS networks together with DiffServ IP network. The effort was put on QoS classes mapping from DiffServ to UMTS, Access Control(AC), buffering and scheduling optimization. The DiffServ Code Point (DSCP......) was utilized in the whole UMTS QoS provisioning to differentiate different type of traffics. The overall algorithm was optimized to guarantee the E2E QoS parameters of each service class, especially for realtime applications, as well as to improve the bandwidth utilization. Simulation shows that the enhanced...

  11. Fuel rod end plug

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    McGeary, R.K.; Bucher, G.D.

    1989-01-01

    This patent describes an end plug for welded disposition within the end of a tube. It comprises a circumferentially extending, axially oriented land surface, having a radial extent defined by means of a first predetermined dimension, for disposition within the end of the tube; a circumferentially extending, axially oriented land surface, having a radial extent defined by means of a second predetermined dimension which is greater than the first predetermined dimension, for disposition outside of the end of the tube. The second land surface being disposed upstream of the first land surface; an annularly extending, radially oriented shoulder portion, defined at the downstream end of the second land surface and having a radially inward depth which is greater than the difference defined between the first and second radial dimensions of the first and second land surfaces, for engaging the end of the tube in a butt contact fashion; and annular groove means defined between the upstream end of the first land surface and the shoulder portion of the end plug, for eliminating porosity defects normally developed within a weldment defined between the tube end and the end plug when the end plug is welded within the tube end, and including a conical surface which extends radially outwardly from the innermost radial depth extent of the shoulder portion to the upstream end of the first land surface

  12. Rectovaginal fistula following colectomy with an end-to-end anastomosis stapler for a colorectal adenocarcinoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klein, A; Scotti, S; Hidalgo, A; Viateau, V; Fayolle, P; Moissonnier, P

    2006-12-01

    An 11-year-old, female neutered Labrador retriever was presented with a micro-invasive differentiated papillar adenocarcinoma at the colorectal junction. A colorectal end-to-end anastomosis stapler device was used to perform resection and anastomosis using a transanal technique. A rectovaginal fistula was diagnosed two days later. An exploratory laparotomy was conducted and the fistula was identified and closed. Early dehiscence of the colon was also suspected and another colorectal anastomosis was performed using a manual technique. Comparison to a conventional manual technique of intestinal surgery showed that the use of an automatic staple device was quicker and easier. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of a rectovaginal fistula occurring after end-to-end anastomosis stapler colorectal resection-anastomosis in the dog. To minimise the risk of this potential complication associated with the limited surgical visibility, adequate tissue retraction and inspection of the anastomosis site are essential.

  13. Load factors to end March 1989

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Howles, L.

    1989-01-01

    Load factors for nuclear reactors of 150MWe gross and above for the 12 month period up to the end of March 1989, and over their lifetimes, are tabulated. Units which have been in operation for more than one year as of end March 1989 are ranked in order of annual load factor; cumulative load factors are also shown, measured from first synchronization to the grid not from start of commercial operation. New reactors which had operated for less than 12 months as of end of March 1989 are listed separately. With the exception of the four Paks units in Hungary, Comecon reactors are excluded due to lack of data. (author)

  14. GROWTH OF THE HYPOPLASTIC AORTIC-ARCH AFTER SIMPLE COARCTATION RESECTION AND END-TO-END ANASTOMOSIS

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    BROUWER, MHJ; CROMMEDIJKHUIS, AH; EBELS, T; EIJGELAAR, A

    Surgical treatment of a hypoplastic aortic arch associated with an aortic coarctation is controversial. The controversy concerns the claimed need to surgically enlarge the diameter of the hypoplastic arch, in addition to resection and end-to-end anastomosis. The purpose of this prospective study is

  15. Experimental research on end-to-side anastomosis of peripheral nerves and effect of FK506 on end-to-side anastomosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, L M; Wu, Y X; Zhang, X P; Li, X H

    2014-01-01

    To study the effects of end-to-side anastomosis of initially-denatured nerves at different times. 60 male Wistar albino rats were used to fabricate animal models for the experiment on end-to-side anastomosis of peripheral nerves and 50 female Wistar albino rats were used to fabricate animal models for the experiment on the effect of FK506 on end-to-side anastomosis. Bilateral common peroneal nerve, tibialis anterior muscle electrophysiological and histological examinations, tibialis anterior muscle wet muscle weight determination, and motor end plate examination were performed 3 months after operation. All recovery rates of action potential, single muscle contraction force and tetanic contraction force of the FK506 experimental group are significantly higher than those of the control group and the sectional area of muscle fiber is also higher than that of the control group of normal saline. The best time for end-to-side anastomosis of nerves should be controlled within 2 weeks and the effect of end-to-side anastomosis of nerves will gradually become unsatisfactory. FK506 plays a role in promoting functional rehabilitation following nerve end-to-side anastomosis (Tab. 7, Fig. 4, Ref. 31).

  16. Double 90 Degrees Counterrotated End-to-End-Anastomosis: An Experimental Study of an Intestinal Anastomosis Technique.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holzner, Philipp; Kulemann, Birte; Seifert, Gabriel; Glatz, Torben; Chikhladze, Sophia; Höppner, Jens; Hopt, Ulrich; Timme, Sylvia; Bronsert, Peter; Sick, Olivia; Zhou, Cheng; Marjanovic, Goran

    2015-06-01

    The aim of the article is to investigate a new anastomotic technique compared with standardized intestinal anastomotic procedures. A total of 32 male Wistar rats were randomized to three groups. In the Experimental Group (n = 10), the new double 90 degrees inversely rotated anastomosis was used, in the End Group (n = 10) a single-layer end-to-end anastomosis, and in the Side Group (n = 12) a single-layer side-to-side anastomosis. All anastomoses were done using interrupted sutures. On postoperative day 4, rats were relaparotomized. Bursting pressure, hydroxyproline concentration, a semiquantitative adhesion score and two histological anastomotic healing scores (mucosal healing according to Chiu and overall anastomotic healing according to Verhofstad) were collected. Most data are presented as median (range). p < 0.05 was considered significant. Anastomotic insufficiency occurred only in one rat of the Side Group. Median bursting pressure in the Experimental Group was 105 mm Hg (range = 72-161 mm Hg), significantly higher in the End Group (164 mm Hg; range = 99-210 mm Hg; p = 0.021) and lower in the Side Group by trend (81 mm Hg; range = 59-122 mm Hg; p = 0.093). Hydroxyproline concentration did not differ significantly in between the groups. The adhesion score was 2.5 (range = 1-3) in the Experimental Group, 2 (range = 1-2) in the End Group, but there were significantly more adhesions in the Side Group (range = 3-4); p = 0.020 versus Experimental Group, p < 0.001 versus End Group. The Chiu Score showed the worst mucosal healing in the Experimental Group. The overall Verhofstad Score was significantly worse (mean = 2.032; standard deviation [SD] = 0.842) p = 0.031 and p = 0.002 in the Experimental Group, compared with the Side Group (mean = 1.729; SD = 0.682) and the End Group (mean = 1.571; SD = 0.612). The new anastomotic technique is feasible and did not show any relevant complication. Even though it was superior to the side-to-side anastomosis by trend with

  17. Analytical solutions to SSC coil end design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bossert, R.C.; Brandt, J.S.; Carson, J.A.; Fulton, H.J.; Lee, G.C.; Cook, J.M.

    1989-03-01

    As part of the SCC magnet effort, Fermilab will build and test a series of one meter model SSC magnets. The coils in these magnets will be constructed with several different end configurations. These end designs must satisfy both mechanical and magnetic criteria. Only the mechanical problem will be addressed. Solutions will attempt to minimize stresses and provide internal support for the cable. Different end designs will be compared in an attempt to determine which is most appropriate for the SSC dipole. The mathematics required to create each end configuration will be described. The computer aided design, programming and machine technology needed to make the parts will be reviewed. 2 refs., 10 figs

  18. DNA Breaks and End Resection Measured Genome-wide by End Sequencing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canela, Andres; Sridharan, Sriram; Sciascia, Nicholas; Tubbs, Anthony; Meltzer, Paul; Sleckman, Barry P; Nussenzweig, André

    2016-09-01

    DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) arise during physiological transcription, DNA replication, and antigen receptor diversification. Mistargeting or misprocessing of DSBs can result in pathological structural variation and mutation. Here we describe a sensitive method (END-seq) to monitor DNA end resection and DSBs genome-wide at base-pair resolution in vivo. We utilized END-seq to determine the frequency and spectrum of restriction-enzyme-, zinc-finger-nuclease-, and RAG-induced DSBs. Beyond sequence preference, chromatin features dictate the repertoire of these genome-modifying enzymes. END-seq can detect at least one DSB per cell among 10,000 cells not harboring DSBs, and we estimate that up to one out of 60 cells contains off-target RAG cleavage. In addition to site-specific cleavage, we detect DSBs distributed over extended regions during immunoglobulin class-switch recombination. Thus, END-seq provides a snapshot of DNA ends genome-wide, which can be utilized for understanding genome-editing specificities and the influence of chromatin on DSB pathway choice. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  19. Armazenamento refrigerado sob atmosfera modificada de pedúnculos de cajueiro-anão-precoce dos clones CCP-76, end-157, end-183 e end-189 Storage of cashew apples from dwarf clones CCP-76, end-157, end-183 and end-189 under refrigeration and modified atmosphere

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Auricélia de Souza Morais

    2002-12-01

    Full Text Available Pedúnculos de clones de cajueiro-anão-precoce, dos clones CCP-76, END-157, END-183 e END-189, foram armazenados durante 25 dias, sob refrigeração associada a atmosfera modificada, com o objetivo de avaliar o efeito das condições atualmente utilizadas (5ºC e 85-90% de UR para conservação, transporte e comercialização de cajus in natura. Os pedúnculos foram avaliados a cada 5 dias quanto às seguintes características: perda de peso, firmeza, cor (antocianinas, sólidos e açúcares solúveis, acidez, pH, vitamina C e compostos fenólicos. O uso da refrigeração (5ºC e 85% U.R, associada a atmosfera modificada, proporcionou uma vida útil pós-colheita de 10 dias para o clone END 189, de até 15 dias para o clone END 157 e de até 25 dias para os clones CCP 76 e END 183. A temperatura de 5ºC não se mostrou adequada para armazenamento de pedúnculos de coloração mais intensa (END 157 e END 189 que a testemunha (CCP 76, provocando perda de cor (antocianinas a partir do 10º dia de armazenamento. A atmosfera modificada reduziu significativamente a perda de peso, favorecendo a aparência do produto para comercialização, independentemente do clone estudado.Apples or false fruits from early dwarf cashew clones CCP-76, END-157, END-183 and END-189 were stored for 25 days under refrigeration associated to modified atmosphere with the aim of evaluating the effect of the conditions presently adopted (5ºC and 85-90% RH for conservation, storage and commercialization of fresh cashew apples. The cashew apples were evaluated every 5 days for the following characteristics: weight loss, pulp firmness, color (anthocyannins, acidity, pH, soluble solids, vitamin C and phenolic contents. With the use of refrigeration and modified atmosphere it was possible to attain postharvest storage life of 10 days for clone END 189, 15 days for clone END 157 and up to 25 days for clones CCP 76 and END 183. It was found that 5ºC was not an adequate

  20. Massively parallel Fokker-Planck calculations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mirin, A.A.

    1990-01-01

    This paper reports that the Fokker-Planck package FPPAC, which solves the complete nonlinear multispecies Fokker-Planck collision operator for a plasma in two-dimensional velocity space, has been rewritten for the Connection Machine 2. This has involved allocation of variables either to the front end or the CM2, minimization of data flow, and replacement of Cray-optimized algorithms with ones suitable for a massively parallel architecture. Calculations have been carried out on various Connection Machines throughout the country. Results and timings on these machines have been compared to each other and to those on the static memory Cray-2. For large problem size, the Connection Machine 2 is found to be cost-efficient

  1. The effectiveness of sharp end and rounded end bristle toothbrush

    OpenAIRE

    Paulus Januar; Anastasia Susetyo; Ratih Widyastuti

    2010-01-01

    Background: Numerous designs of manual toothbrush are available in the market with the claims of superiority in plaque removal. It often makes the public confuse which is the best design. The sharp end bristle toothbrush is a modification that commercially available in the market. Purpose: The objective of the study was to compare the effectiveness in plaque removal of the sharp end bristle toothbrush and the rounded end bristle toothbrush. Methods: This clinical trial was a double blind cros...

  2. Multi-institutional evaluation of end-to-end protocol for IMRT/VMAT treatment chains utilizing conventional linacs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loughery, Brian; Knill, Cory; Silverstein, Evan; Zakjevskii, Viatcheslav; Masi, Kathryn; Covington, Elizabeth; Snyder, Karen; Song, Kwang; Snyder, Michael

    2018-03-20

    We conducted a multi-institutional assessment of a recently developed end-to-end monthly quality assurance (QA) protocol for external beam radiation therapy treatment chains. This protocol validates the entire treatment chain against a baseline to detect the presence of complex errors not easily found in standard component-based QA methods. Participating physicists from 3 institutions ran the end-to-end protocol on treatment chains that include Imaging and Radiation Oncology Core (IROC)-credentialed linacs. Results were analyzed in the form of American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group (TG)-119 so that they may be referenced by future test participants. Optically stimulated luminescent dosimeter (OSLD), EBT3 radiochromic film, and A1SL ion chamber readings were accumulated across 10 test runs. Confidence limits were calculated to determine where 95% of measurements should fall. From calculated confidence limits, 95% of measurements should be within 5% error for OSLDs, 4% error for ionization chambers, and 4% error for (96% relative gamma pass rate) radiochromic film at 3% agreement/3 mm distance to agreement. Data were separated by institution, model of linac, and treatment protocol (intensity-modulated radiation therapy [IMRT] vs volumetric modulated arc therapy [VMAT]). A total of 97% of OSLDs, 98% of ion chambers, and 93% of films were within the confidence limits; measurements were found outside these limits by a maximum of 4%, consistent despite institutional differences in OSLD reading equipment and radiochromic film calibration techniques. Results from this test may be used by clinics for data comparison. Areas of improvement were identified in the end-to-end protocol that can be implemented in an updated version. The consistency of our data demonstrates the reproducibility and ease-of-use of such tests and suggests a potential role for their use in broad end-to-end QA initiatives. Copyright © 2018 American Association of Medical

  3. Poly(ethyl glyoxylate)-Poly(ethylene oxide) Nanoparticles: Stimuli-Responsive Drug Release via End-to-End Polyglyoxylate Depolymerization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fan, Bo; Gillies, Elizabeth R

    2017-08-07

    The ability to disrupt polymer assemblies in response to specific stimuli provides the potential to release drugs selectively at certain sites or conditions in vivo. However, most stimuli-responsive delivery systems require many stimuli-initiated events to release drugs. "Self-immolative polymers" offer the potential to provide amplified responses to stimuli as they undergo complete end-to-end depolymerization following the cleavage of a single end-cap. Herein, linker end-caps were developed to conjugate self-immolative poly(ethyl glyoxylate) (PEtG) with poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) to form amphiphilic block copolymers. These copolymers were self-assembled to form nanoparticles in aqueous solution. Cleavage of the linker end-caps were triggered by a thiol reducing agent, UV light, H 2 O 2 , and combinations of these stimuli, resulting in nanoparticle disintegration. Low stimuli concentrations were effective in rapidly disrupting the nanoparticles. Nile red, doxorubin, and curcumin were encapsulated into the nanoparticles and were selectively released upon application of the appropriate stimulus. The ability to tune the stimuli-responsiveness simply by changing the linker end-cap makes this new platform highly attractive for applications in drug delivery.

  4. End-to-end simulation of the C-ADS injector Ⅱ with a 3-D field map

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Zhijun; He Yuan; Li Chao; Wang Wangsheng; Liu Shuhui; Jia Huan; Xu Xianbo; Chen Ximeng

    2013-01-01

    The Injector II, one of the two parallel injectors of the high-current superconducting proton driver linac for the China Accelerator-Driven System (C-ADS) project, is being designed and constructed by the Institute of Modern Physics. At present, the design work for the injector is almost finished. End-to-end simulation has been carried out using the TRACK multiparticle simulation code to check the match between each acceleration section and the performance of the injector as a whole. Moreover, multiparticle simulations with all kinds of errors and misalignments have been performed to define the requirements of each device. The simulation results indicate that the lattice design is robust. In this paper, the results of end-to-end simulation and error simulation with a 3-D field map are presented. (authors)

  5. End to end distribution functions for a class of polymer models

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khandekar, D.C.; Wiegel, F.W.

    1988-01-01

    The two point end-to-end distribution functions for a class of polymer models have been obtained within the first cumulant approximation. The trial distribution function this purpose is chosen to correspond to a general non-local quadratic functional. An Exact expression for the trial distribution function is obtained. It is pointed out that these trial distribution functions themselves can be used to study certain aspects of the configurational behaviours of polymers. These distribution functions are also used to obtain the averaged mean square size 2 > of a polymer characterized by the non-local quadratic potential energy functional. Finally, we derive an analytic expression for 2 > of a polyelectrolyte model and show that for a long polymer a weak electrostatic interaction does not change the behaviour of 2 > from that of a free polymer. (author). 16 refs

  6. Wiretapping End-to-End Encrypted VoIP Calls: Real-World Attacks on ZRTP

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Schürmann Dominik

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Voice calls are still one of the most common use cases for smartphones. Often, sensitive personal information but also confidential business information is shared. End-to-end security is required to protect against wiretapping of voice calls. For such real-time communication, the ZRTP key-agreement protocol has been proposed. By verbally comparing a small number of on-screen characters or words, called Short Authentication Strings, the participants can be sure that no one is wiretapping the call. Since 2011, ZRTP is an IETF standard implemented in several VoIP clients.

  7. End-to-end integrated security and performance analysis on the DEGAS Choreographer platform

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Buchholtz, Mikael; Gilmore, Stephen; Haenel, Valentin

    2005-01-01

    We present a software tool platform which facilitates security and performance analysis of systems which starts and ends with UML model descriptions. A UML project is presented to the platform for analysis, formal content is extracted in the form of process calculi descriptions, analysed with the......We present a software tool platform which facilitates security and performance analysis of systems which starts and ends with UML model descriptions. A UML project is presented to the platform for analysis, formal content is extracted in the form of process calculi descriptions, analysed...

  8. An End-to-End Model of Plant Pheromone Channel for Long Range Molecular Communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Unluturk, Bige D; Akyildiz, Ian F

    2017-01-01

    A new track in molecular communication is using pheromones which can scale up the range of diffusion-based communication from μm meters to meters and enable new applications requiring long range. Pheromone communication is the emission of molecules in the air which trigger behavioral or physiological responses in receiving organisms. The objective of this paper is to introduce a new end-to-end model which incorporates pheromone behavior with communication theory for plants. The proposed model includes both the transmission and reception processes as well as the propagation channel. The transmission process is the emission of pheromones from the leaves of plants. The dispersion of pheromones by the flow of wind constitutes the propagation process. The reception process is the sensing of pheromones by the pheromone receptors of plants. The major difference of pheromone communication from other molecular communication techniques is the dispersion channel acting under the laws of turbulent diffusion. In this paper, the pheromone channel is modeled as a Gaussian puff, i.e., a cloud of pheromone released instantaneously from the source whose dispersion follows a Gaussian distribution. Numerical results on the performance of the overall end-to-end pheromone channel in terms of normalized gain and delay are provided.

  9. The intellectual quadrangle: Mach-Boltzmann-Planck-Einstein

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Broda, E.

    1981-01-01

    These four men were influential in the transition from classical to modern physics. They interacted as scientists, often antagonistically. Thus Boltzmann was the greatest champion of the atom, while Mach remained unconvinced all his life. As a aphysicist, Einstein was greatly influenced by both Mach and Boltzmann, although Mach in the end rejected relativity as well. Because of his work on statistical mechanics, fluctuations, and quantum theory, Einstein has been called the natural successor to Boltzmann. Planck also was influenced by Mach at first. Hence he and Boltzmann were adversaries antil Planck converted to atomistics in 1900 and used the statistical interpretation of entropy to establish his radiation law. Planck accepted relativity early, but in quantum theory he was for a long time partly opposed to Einstein, and vice versa - Einstein considered Planck's derivation of his radiation law as unsound, while Planck could not accept the light quantum. In the case of all four physicists, science was interwoven with philosophy. Boltzmann consistently fought Mach's positivism, while Planck and Einstein moved from positivism to realism. All were also, though in very different ways, actively interested in public affairs. (orig.)

  10. Minimizing End-to-End Interference in I/O Stacks Spanning Shared Multi-Level Buffer Caches

    Science.gov (United States)

    Patrick, Christina M.

    2011-01-01

    This thesis presents an end-to-end interference minimizing uniquely designed high performance I/O stack that spans multi-level shared buffer cache hierarchies accessing shared I/O servers to deliver a seamless high performance I/O stack. In this thesis, I show that I can build a superior I/O stack which minimizes the inter-application interference…

  11. Exploring the requirements for multimodal interaction for mobile devices in an end-to-end journey context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krehl, Claudia; Sharples, Sarah

    2012-01-01

    The paper investigates the requirements for multimodal interaction on mobile devices in an end-to-end journey context. Traditional interfaces are deemed cumbersome and inefficient for exchanging information with the user. Multimodal interaction provides a different user-centred approach allowing for more natural and intuitive interaction between humans and computers. It is especially suitable for mobile interaction as it can overcome additional constraints including small screens, awkward keypads, and continuously changing settings - an inherent property of mobility. This paper is based on end-to-end journeys where users encounter several contexts during their journeys. Interviews and focus groups explore the requirements for multimodal interaction design for mobile devices by examining journey stages and identifying the users' information needs and sources. Findings suggest that multimodal communication is crucial when users multitask. Choosing suitable modalities depend on user context, characteristics and tasks.

  12. Reconstruction of lower end of radius using vascularized upper end of fibula

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Koul Ashok

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Giant cell tumor is a fairly common locally invasive tumor in young adults. The lower end of the radius is the second commonest site for this tumor. The most common treatment for this tumor is curettage with or without bone grafting but it carries a significant rate of recurrence. Excision is the treatment of choice, especially for cases in which the cortex has been breached. After excision of the distal end of the radius, different procedures have been described to reconstruct the defect of distal radius. These include partial arthrodesis and hemiarthroplasty using the upper end of the fibula. The upper end of the fibula has a morphological resemblance to the lower end of the radius and has been used to replace the latter. Traditionally it was used as a ′free′ (non-vascularized graft. More recently the upper end of the fibula has been transferred as a vascularized transfer for the same purpose. Though vascularized transfer should be expected to be more physiological, its superiority over the technically simpler non-vascularized transfer has not been conclusively proven. Materials and Methods: Two patients are presented who had giant cell tumor of distal radius. They underwent wide local excision and reconstruction with free vascularized upper end of the fibula. Result: Follow-up period was two and a half years and 12 months respectively. Both patients have returned to routine work. One patient has excellent functional result and the other has a good result. Conclusion: Vascularized upper end of fibula transfer is a reliable method of reconstruction for loss of the distal end of the radius that restores local anatomy and physiology.

  13. The End

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hasse Jørgensen, Stina

    2016-01-01

    Operaen THE END af den japanske komponist og DJ, Keiichiro Shibuya, skubber radikalt til publikums forventninger om, hvad en opera kan og skal være. THE END byder på 3D animation, surround sound, elektronisk glitch og syntetiske stemmer i en kompromisløs virtuel forestilling med det japanske...

  14. An end-to-end microfluidic platform for engineering life supporting microbes in space exploration missions, Phase I

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — HJ Science & Technology proposes a programmable, low-cost, and compact microfluidic platform capable of running automated end-to-end processes and optimization...

  15. End-to-End Traffic Flow Modeling of the Integrated SCaN Network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheung, K.-M.; Abraham, D. S.

    2012-05-01

    In this article, we describe the analysis and simulation effort of the end-to-end traffic flow for the Integrated Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Network. Using the network traffic derived for the 30-day period of July 2018 from the Space Communications Mission Model (SCMM), we generate the wide-area network (WAN) bandwidths of the ground links for different architecture options of the Integrated SCaN Network. We also develop a new analytical scheme to model the traffic flow and buffering mechanism of a store-and-forward network. It is found that the WAN bandwidth of the Integrated SCaN Network is an important differentiator of different architecture options, as the recurring circuit costs of certain architecture options can be prohibitively high.

  16. The role of sea ports in end-to-end maritime transport chain emissions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gibbs, David; Rigot-Muller, Patrick; Mangan, John; Lalwani, Chandra

    2014-01-01

    This paper's purpose is to investigate the role of sea ports in helping to mitigate the GHG emissions associated with the end-to-end maritime transport chain. The analysis is primarily focused on the UK, but is international in application. The paper is based on both the analysis of secondary data and information on actions taken by ports to reduce their emissions, with the latter data collected for the main UK ports via their published reports and/or via interviews. Only a small number of ports (representing 32% of UK port activity) actually measure and report their carbon emissions in the UK context. The emissions generated by ships calling at these ports are analysed using a method based on Department for Transport Maritime Statistics Data. In addition, a case example (Felixstowe) of emissions associated with HGV movements to and from ports is presented, and data on vessel emissions at berth are also considered. Our analyses indicate that emissions generated by ships during their voyages between ports are of a far greater magnitude than those generated by the port activities. Thus while reducing the ports' own emissions is worthwhile, the results suggest that ports might have more impact through focusing their efforts on reducing shipping emissions. - Highlights: • Investigates role of ports in mitigating GHG emissions in the end-to-end maritime transport chain. • Emissions generated both by ports and by ships calling at ports are analysed. • Shipping's emissions are far greater than those generated by port activities. • Ports may have more impact through focusing efforts on reducing shipping's emissions. • Options for ports to support and drive change in the maritime sector also considered

  17. A new technique for end-to-end ureterostomy in the rat, using an indwelling reabsorbable stent.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carmignani, G; Farina, F P; De Stefani, S; Maffezzini, M

    1983-01-01

    The restoration of the continuity of the urinary tract represents one of the major problems in rat renal transplantation. End-to-end ureterostomy is the most physiologically effective technique; however, it involves noteworthy technical difficulties because of the extremely thin caliber of the ureter in the rat and the high incidence of postoperative hydronephrosis. We describe a new technique for end-to-end ureterostomy in the rat, where the use of an absorbable ureteral stent is recommended. A 5-0 plain catgut thread is used as a stent. The anastomosis is performed under an operating microscope at X 25-40 magnification with interrupted sutures of 11-0 Vicryl. The use of the indwelling stent facilitates the performance of the anastomosis and yields optimal results. The macroscopical, radiological, and histological controls in a group of rats operated on with this technique showed a very high percentage of success with no complications, a result undoubtedly superior to that obtained with conventional methods.

  18. Mucociliary clearance following tracheal resection and end-to-end anastomosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Toomes, H; Linder, A

    1989-10-01

    Mucociliary clearance is an important cleaning system of the bronchial tree. The complex transport system reacts sensitively to medicinal stimuli and inhaled substances. A disturbance causes secretion retention which encourages the development of acute and chronic pulmonary diseases. It is not yet known in which way sectional resection of the central airway effects mucociliary clearance. A large number of the surgical failures are attributable to septic complications in the area of the anastomosis. In order to study the transportation process over the anastomosis, ten dogs underwent a tracheal resection with end-to-end anastomosis, and the mucociliary activity was recorded using a bronchoscopic video-technical method. Recommencement of mucous transport was observed on the third, and transport over the anastomosis from the sixth to tenth, postoperative days. The mucociliary clearance had completely recovered on the twenty-first day in the majority of dogs. Histological examination of the anastomoses nine months postoperatively showed a flat substitute epithelium without cilia-bearing cells in all dogs. This contrasts with the quick restitution of the transport function. In case of undamaged respiratory mucosa, a good adaptation of the resection margins suffices for the mucous film to slide over the anastomosis.

  19. AN AUTOMATED END-TO-END MULTI-AGENT QOS BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR SELECTION OF GEOSPATIAL WEB SERVICES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Shah

    2012-07-01

    With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

  20. Evaluation of Techniques to Detect Significant Network Performance Problems using End-to-End Active Network Measurements

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cottrell, R.Les; Logg, Connie; Chhaparia, Mahesh; /SLAC; Grigoriev, Maxim; /Fermilab; Haro, Felipe; /Chile U., Catolica; Nazir, Fawad; /NUST, Rawalpindi; Sandford, Mark

    2006-01-25

    End-to-End fault and performance problems detection in wide area production networks is becoming increasingly hard as the complexity of the paths, the diversity of the performance, and dependency on the network increase. Several monitoring infrastructures are built to monitor different network metrics and collect monitoring information from thousands of hosts around the globe. Typically there are hundreds to thousands of time-series plots of network metrics which need to be looked at to identify network performance problems or anomalous variations in the traffic. Furthermore, most commercial products rely on a comparison with user configured static thresholds and often require access to SNMP-MIB information, to which a typical end-user does not usually have access. In our paper we propose new techniques to detect network performance problems proactively in close to realtime and we do not rely on static thresholds and SNMP-MIB information. We describe and compare the use of several different algorithms that we have implemented to detect persistent network problems using anomalous variations analysis in real end-to-end Internet performance measurements. We also provide methods and/or guidance for how to set the user settable parameters. The measurements are based on active probes running on 40 production network paths with bottlenecks varying from 0.5Mbits/s to 1000Mbit/s. For well behaved data (no missed measurements and no very large outliers) with small seasonal changes most algorithms identify similar events. We compare the algorithms' robustness with respect to false positives and missed events especially when there are large seasonal effects in the data. Our proposed techniques cover a wide variety of network paths and traffic patterns. We also discuss the applicability of the algorithms in terms of their intuitiveness, their speed of execution as implemented, and areas of applicability. Our encouraging results compare and evaluate the accuracy of our

  1. Surgical approach to end-stage heart failure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klotz, Stefan; Scheld, Hans H

    2011-02-01

    End-stage heart failure is a challenging disease with growing incidence. With decreasing heart transplant rates worldwide organ preserving therapies become, again, of interest. The purpose of the present review is to examine the potential challenges of surgical therapies in patients with end-stage heart failure. The gold-standard for end-stage heart failure is and will be cardiac transplantation. However, due to organ shortage this therapy is limited to a few patients. Therefore implantation of ventricular assist devices (VADs) or long-term minimal-invasive partial support devices will increase. Improvements in device design with smaller devices, easier implantation techniques, and modified anticoagulation outcome and long-term success will likely improve. In addition, good quality of life as destination therapy is almost available. Organ conservation surgery (coronary artery bypass grafting and surgical ventricular restoration or surgical repair of mitral valve regurgitation) in end-stage heart failure patients could not prove the expected results. Transcatheter or minimal-invasive approaches of these therapies might become routine in the near future. Due to the overwhelming outcome rates, cardiac transplantation is the most established surgical therapy for end-stage heart failure. VAD therapy is increasing and minimized VADs might further open the market for destination therapy/permanent support.

  2. Understanding Effect of Constraint Release Environment on End-to-End Vector Relaxation of Linear Polymer Chains

    KAUST Repository

    Shivokhin, Maksim E.

    2017-05-30

    We propose and verify methods based on the slip-spring (SSp) model [ Macromolecules 2005, 38, 14 ] for predicting the effect of any monodisperse, binary, or ternary environment of topological constraints on the relaxation of the end-to-end vector of a linear probe chain. For this purpose we first validate the ability of the model to consistently predict both the viscoelastic and dielectric response of monodisperse and binary mixtures of type A polymers, based on published experimental data. We also report the synthesis of new binary and ternary polybutadiene systems, the measurement of their linear viscoelastic response, and the prediction of these data by the SSp model. We next clarify the relaxation mechanisms of probe chains in these constraint release (CR) environments by analyzing a set of "toy" SSp models with simplified constraint release rates, by examining fluctuations of the end-to-end vector. In our analysis, the longest relaxation time of the probe chain is determined by a competition between the longest relaxation times of the effective CR motions of the fat and thin tubes and the motion of the chain itself in the thin tube. This picture is tested by the analysis of four model systems designed to separate and estimate every single contribution involved in the relaxation of the probe\\'s end-to-end vector in polydisperse systems. We follow the CR picture of Viovy et al. [ Macromolecules 1991, 24, 3587 ] and refine the effective chain friction in the thin and fat tubes based on Read et al. [ J. Rheol. 2012, 56, 823 ]. The derived analytical equations form a basis for generalizing the proposed methodology to polydisperse mixtures of linear and branched polymers. The consistency between the SSp model and tube model predictions is a strong indicator of the compatibility between these two distinct mesoscopic frameworks.

  3. Debris mitigation measures by satellite design and operational methods - Findings from the DLR space debris End-to-End Service

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sdunnus, H.; Beltrami, P.; Janovsky, R.; Koppenwallner, G.; Krag, H.; Reimerdes, H.; Schäfer, F.

    Debris Mitigation has been recognised as an issue to be addressed by the space faring nations around the world. Currently, there are various activities going on, aiming at the establishment of debris mitigation guidelines on various levels, reaching from the UN down to national space agencies. Though guidelines established on the national level already provide concrete information how things should be done (rather that specifying what should be done or providing fundamental principles) potential users of the guidelines will still have the need to explore the technical, management, and financial implications of the guidelines for their projects. Those questions are addressed by the so called "Space Debris End-to-End Service" project, which has been initiated as a national initiative of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). Based on a review of already existing mitigation guidelines or guidelines under development and following an identification of needs from a circle of industrial users the "End-to-End Service Gu idelines" have been established for designer and operators of spacecraft. The End-to-End Service Guidelines are based on requirements addressed by the mitigation guidelines and provide recommendations how and when the technical consideration of the mitigation guidelines should take place. By referencing requirements from the mitigation guidelines, the End-to-End Service Guidelines address the consideration of debris mitigation measures by spacecraft design and operational measures. This paper will give an introduction to the End-to-End Service Guidelines. It will focus on the proposals made for mitigation measures by the S/C system design, i.e. on protective design measures inside the spacecraft and on design measures, e.g. innovative protective (shielding) systems. Furthermore, approaches on the analytical optimisation of protective systems will be presented, aiming at the minimisation of shield mass under conservation of the protective effects. On the

  4. Experimental evaluation of end-to-end delay in switched Ethernet application in the automotive domain

    OpenAIRE

    Beretis , Kostas; Symeonidis , Ieroklis

    2013-01-01

    International audience; This article presents an approach for deriving upper bound for end-to-end delay in a double star switched Ethernet network. Four traffic classes, following a strict priority queuing policy, were considered. The theoretical analysis was based on network calculus. An experimental setup, which accu-rately reflects an automotive communication network, was implemented in or-der to evaluate the theoretical model. The results obtained by the experiments provided valuable feed...

  5. End-to-End Multimodal Emotion Recognition Using Deep Neural Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tzirakis, Panagiotis; Trigeorgis, George; Nicolaou, Mihalis A.; Schuller, Bjorn W.; Zafeiriou, Stefanos

    2017-12-01

    Automatic affect recognition is a challenging task due to the various modalities emotions can be expressed with. Applications can be found in many domains including multimedia retrieval and human computer interaction. In recent years, deep neural networks have been used with great success in determining emotional states. Inspired by this success, we propose an emotion recognition system using auditory and visual modalities. To capture the emotional content for various styles of speaking, robust features need to be extracted. To this purpose, we utilize a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract features from the speech, while for the visual modality a deep residual network (ResNet) of 50 layers. In addition to the importance of feature extraction, a machine learning algorithm needs also to be insensitive to outliers while being able to model the context. To tackle this problem, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are utilized. The system is then trained in an end-to-end fashion where - by also taking advantage of the correlations of the each of the streams - we manage to significantly outperform the traditional approaches based on auditory and visual handcrafted features for the prediction of spontaneous and natural emotions on the RECOLA database of the AVEC 2016 research challenge on emotion recognition.

  6. Primary and secondary structure dependence of peptide flexibility assessed by fluorescence-based measurement of end-to-end collision rates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Fang; Hudgins, Robert R; Nau, Werner M

    2004-12-22

    The intrachain fluorescence quenching of the fluorophore 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-2-ene (DBO) is measured in short peptide fragments, namely the two strands and the turn of the N-terminal beta-hairpin of ubiquitin. The investigated peptides adopt a random-coil conformation in aqueous solution according to CD and NMR experiments. The combination of quenchers with different quenching efficiencies, namely tryptophan and tyrosine, allows the extrapolation of the rate constants for end-to-end collision rates as well as the dissociation of the end-to-end encounter complex. The measured activation energies for fluorescence quenching demonstrate that the end-to-end collision process in peptides is partially controlled by internal friction within the backbone, while measurements in solvents of different viscosities (H2O, D2O, and 7.0 M guanidinium chloride) suggest that solvent friction is an additional important factor in determining the collision rate. The extrapolated end-to-end collision rates, which are only slightly larger than the experimental rates for the DBO/Trp probe/quencher system, provide a measure of the conformational flexibility of the peptide backbone. The chain flexibility is found to be strongly dependent on the type of secondary structure that the peptides represent. The collision rates for peptides derived from the beta-strand motifs (ca. 1 x 10(7) s(-1)) are ca. 4 times slower than that derived from the beta-turn. The results provide further support for the hypothesis that chain flexibility is an important factor in the preorganization of protein fragments during protein folding. Mutations to the beta-turn peptide show that subtle sequence changes strongly affect the flexibility of peptides as well. The protonation and charge status of the peptides, however, are shown to have no significant effect on the flexibility of the investigated peptides. The meaning and definition of end-to-end collision rates in the context of protein folding are critically

  7. End-to-End Neural Optical Music Recognition of Monophonic Scores

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorge Calvo-Zaragoza

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Optical Music Recognition is a field of research that investigates how to computationally decode music notation from images. Despite the efforts made so far, there are hardly any complete solutions to the problem. In this work, we study the use of neural networks that work in an end-to-end manner. This is achieved by using a neural model that combines the capabilities of convolutional neural networks, which work on the input image, and recurrent neural networks, which deal with the sequential nature of the problem. Thanks to the use of the the so-called Connectionist Temporal Classification loss function, these models can be directly trained from input images accompanied by their corresponding transcripts into music symbol sequences. We also present the Printed Music Scores dataset, containing more than 80,000 monodic single-staff real scores in common western notation, that is used to train and evaluate the neural approach. In our experiments, it is demonstrated that this formulation can be carried out successfully. Additionally, we study several considerations about the codification of the output musical sequences, the convergence and scalability of the neural models, as well as the ability of this approach to locate symbols in the input score.

  8. Semantic Complex Event Processing over End-to-End Data Flows

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zhou, Qunzhi [University of Southern California; Simmhan, Yogesh; Prasanna, Viktor K.

    2012-04-01

    Emerging Complex Event Processing (CEP) applications in cyber physical systems like SmartPower Grids present novel challenges for end-to-end analysis over events, flowing from heterogeneous information sources to persistent knowledge repositories. CEP for these applications must support two distinctive features - easy specification patterns over diverse information streams, and integrated pattern detection over realtime and historical events. Existing work on CEP has been limited to relational query patterns, and engines that match events arriving after the query has been registered. We propose SCEPter, a semantic complex event processing framework which uniformly processes queries over continuous and archived events. SCEPteris built around an existing CEP engine with innovative support for semantic event pattern specification and allows their seamless detection over past, present and future events. Specifically, we describe a unified semantic query model that can operate over data flowing through event streams to event repositories. Compile-time and runtime semantic patterns are distinguished and addressed separately for efficiency. Query rewriting is examined and analyzed in the context of temporal boundaries that exist between event streams and their repository to avoid duplicate or missing results. The design and prototype implementation of SCEPterare analyzed using latency and throughput metrics for scenarios from the Smart Grid domain.

  9. Design and end-to-end modelling of a deployable telescope

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dolkens, Dennis; Kuiper, Hans

    2017-09-01

    a closed-loop system based on measurements of the image sharpness as well as measurements obtained with edge sensors placed between the mirror segments. In addition, a phase diversity system will be used to recover residual wavefront aberrations. To aid the design of the deployable telescope, an end-to-end performance model was developed. The model is built around a dedicated ray-trace program written in Matlab. This program was built from the ground up for the purpose of modelling segmented telescope systems and allows for surface data computed with Finite Element Models (FEM) to be imported in the model. The program also contains modules which can simulate the closed-loop calibration of the telescope and it can use simulated images as an input for phase diversity and image processing algorithms. For a given thermo-mechanical state, the end-to-end model can predict the image quality that will be obtained after the calibration has been completed and the image has been processed. As such, the model is a powerful systems engineering tool, which can be used to optimize the in-orbit performance of a segmented, deployable telescope.

  10. Path integral for stochastic inflation: Nonperturbative volume weighting, complex histories, initial conditions, and the end of inflation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gratton, Steven

    2011-09-01

    In this paper we present a path integral formulation of stochastic inflation. Volume weighting can be naturally implemented from this new perspective in a very straightforward way when compared to conventional Langevin approaches. With an in-depth study of inflation in a quartic potential, we investigate how the inflaton evolves and how inflation typically ends both with and without volume weighting. The calculation can be carried to times beyond those accessible to conventional Fokker-Planck approaches. Perhaps unexpectedly, complex histories sometimes emerge with volume weighting. The reward for this excursion into the complex plane is an insight into how volume-weighted inflation both loses memory of initial conditions and ends via slow roll. The slow-roll end of inflation mitigates certain “Youngness Paradox”-type criticisms of the volume-weighted paradigm. Thus it is perhaps time to rehabilitate proper-time volume weighting as a viable measure for answering at least some interesting cosmological questions.

  11. Path integral for stochastic inflation: Nonperturbative volume weighting, complex histories, initial conditions, and the end of inflation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gratton, Steven

    2011-01-01

    In this paper we present a path integral formulation of stochastic inflation. Volume weighting can be naturally implemented from this new perspective in a very straightforward way when compared to conventional Langevin approaches. With an in-depth study of inflation in a quartic potential, we investigate how the inflaton evolves and how inflation typically ends both with and without volume weighting. The calculation can be carried to times beyond those accessible to conventional Fokker-Planck approaches. Perhaps unexpectedly, complex histories sometimes emerge with volume weighting. The reward for this excursion into the complex plane is an insight into how volume-weighted inflation both loses memory of initial conditions and ends via slow roll. The slow-roll end of inflation mitigates certain ''Youngness Paradox''-type criticisms of the volume-weighted paradigm. Thus it is perhaps time to rehabilitate proper-time volume weighting as a viable measure for answering at least some interesting cosmological questions.

  12. End-to-end models for marine ecosystems: Are we on the precipice of a significant advance or just putting lipstick on a pig?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenneth A. Rose

    2012-02-01

    Full Text Available There has been a rapid rise in the development of end-to-end models for marine ecosystems over the past decade. Some reasons for this rise include need for predicting effects of climate change on biota and dissatisfaction with existing models. While the benefits of a well-implemented end-to-end model are straightforward, there are many challenges. In the short term, my view is that the major role of end-to-end models is to push the modelling community forward, and to identify critical data so that these data can be collected now and thus be available for the next generation of end-to-end models. I think we should emulate physicists and build theoretically-oriented models first, and then collect the data. In the long-term, end-to-end models will increase their skill, data collection will catch up, and end-to-end models will move towards site-specific applications with forecasting and management capabilities. One pathway into the future is individual efforts, over-promise, and repackaging of poorly performing component submodels (“lipstick on a pig”. The other pathway is a community-based collaborative effort, with appropriate caution and thoughtfulness, so that the needed improvements are achieved (“significant advance”. The promise of end-to-end modelling is great. We should act now to avoid missing a great opportunity.

  13. End of Life Issues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Planning for the end of life can be difficult. But by deciding what end-of-life care best suits your needs when you are healthy, you can ... right choices when the time comes. End-of-life planning usually includes making choices about the following: ...

  14. An End-to-End System to Enable Quick, Easy and Inexpensive Deployment of Hydrometeorological Stations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Celicourt, P.; Piasecki, M.

    2014-12-01

    The high cost of hydro-meteorological data acquisition, communication and publication systems along with limited qualified human resources is considered as the main reason why hydro-meteorological data collection remains a challenge especially in developing countries. Despite significant advances in sensor network technologies which gave birth to open hardware and software, low-cost (less than $50) and low-power (in the order of a few miliWatts) sensor platforms in the last two decades, sensors and sensor network deployment remains a labor-intensive, time consuming, cumbersome, and thus expensive task. These factors give rise for the need to develop a affordable, simple to deploy, scalable and self-organizing end-to-end (from sensor to publication) system suitable for deployment in such countries. The design of the envisioned system will consist of a few Sensed-And-Programmed Arduino-based sensor nodes with low-cost sensors measuring parameters relevant to hydrological processes and a Raspberry Pi micro-computer hosting the in-the-field back-end data management. This latter comprises the Python/Django model of the CUAHSI Observations Data Model (ODM) namely DjangODM backed by a PostgreSQL Database Server. We are also developing a Python-based data processing script which will be paired with the data autoloading capability of Django to populate the DjangODM database with the incoming data. To publish the data, the WOFpy (WaterOneFlow Web Services in Python) developed by the Texas Water Development Board for 'Water Data for Texas' which can produce WaterML web services from a variety of back-end database installations such as SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL will be used. A step further would be the development of an appealing online visualization tool using Python statistics and analytics tools (Scipy, Numpy, Pandas) showing the spatial distribution of variables across an entire watershed as a time variant layer on top of a basemap.

  15. An end-to-end coupled model ROMS-N 2 P 2 Z 2 D 2 -OSMOSE of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    An end-to-end coupled model ROMS-N 2 P 2 Z 2 D 2 -OSMOSE of the southern Benguela foodweb: parameterisation, calibration and pattern-oriented validation. ... We also highlight the capacity of this model for tracking indicators at various hierarchical levels. Keywords: individual-based model, model validation, ...

  16. Crosstalk in an FDM Laboratory Setup and the Athena X-IFU End-to-End Simulator

    Science.gov (United States)

    den Hartog, R.; Kirsch, C.; de Vries, C.; Akamatsu, H.; Dauser, T.; Peille, P.; Cucchetti, E.; Jackson, B.; Bandler, S.; Smith, S.; Wilms, J.

    2018-04-01

    The impact of various crosstalk mechanisms on the performance of the Athena X-IFU instrument has been assessed with detailed end-to-end simulations. For the crosstalk in the electrical circuit, a detailed model has been developed. In this contribution, we test this model against measurements made with an FDM laboratory setup and discuss the assumption of deterministic crosstalk in the context of the weak link effect in the detectors. We conclude that crosstalk levels predicted by the model are conservative with respect to the observed levels.

  17. The end-to-end testbed of the optical metrology system on-board LISA Pathfinder

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Steier, F; Cervantes, F Guzman; Marin, A F GarcIa; Heinzel, G; Danzmann, K [Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut) and Universitaet Hannover (Germany); Gerardi, D, E-mail: frank.steier@aei.mpg.d [EADS Astrium Satellites GmbH, Friedrichshafen (Germany)

    2009-05-07

    LISA Pathfinder is a technology demonstration mission for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The main experiment on-board LISA Pathfinder is the so-called LISA Technology Package (LTP) which has the aim to measure the differential acceleration between two free-falling test masses with an accuracy of 3 x 10{sup -14} ms{sup -2} Hz{sup -1/2} between 1 mHz and 30 mHz. This measurement is performed interferometrically by the optical metrology system (OMS) on-board LISA Pathfinder. In this paper, we present the development of an experimental end-to-end testbed of the entire OMS. It includes the interferometer and its sub-units, the interferometer backend which is a phasemeter and the processing of the phasemeter output data. Furthermore, three-axes piezo-actuated mirrors are used instead of the free-falling test masses for the characterization of the dynamic behaviour of the system and some parts of the drag-free and attitude control system (DFACS) which controls the test masses and the satellite. The end-to-end testbed includes all parts of the LTP that can reasonably be tested on earth without free-falling test masses. At its present status it consists mainly of breadboard components. Some of those have already been replaced by engineering models of the LTP experiment. In the next steps, further engineering and flight models will also be inserted in this testbed and tested against well-characterized breadboard components. The presented testbed is an important reference for the unit tests and can also be used for validation of the on-board experiment during the mission.

  18. Nuclear fuel element end fitting

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jabsen, F.S.

    1980-01-01

    An invention is described whereby end fittings are formed from lattices of mutually perpendicular plates. At the plate intersections, sockets are secured to the end fittings in a manner that permits the longitudinal axes of each of the sockets to align with the respective lines of intersection of the plates. The sockets all protrude above one of the surfaces of the end fitting. Further, a detent is formed in the proturding sides of each of the sockets. Annular grooves are formed in each of the ends of the fuel rods that are to be mounted between the end fittings. The socket detents protrude into the respective annular grooves, thus engaging the grooves and retaining the fuel rods and end fittings in one integral structure. (auth)

  19. End-to-End Joint Antenna Selection Strategy and Distributed Compress and Forward Strategy for Relay Channels

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rahul Vaze

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Multihop relay channels use multiple relay stages, each with multiple relay nodes, to facilitate communication between a source and destination. Previously, distributed space-time codes were proposed to maximize the achievable diversity-multiplexing tradeoff; however, they fail to achieve all the points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. In the presence of a low-rate feedback link from the destination to each relay stage and the source, this paper proposes an end-to-end antenna selection (EEAS strategy as an alternative to distributed space-time codes. The EEAS strategy uses a subset of antennas of each relay stage for transmission of the source signal to the destination with amplifying and forwarding at each relay stage. The subsets are chosen such that they maximize the end-to-end mutual information at the destination. The EEAS strategy achieves the corner points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (corresponding to maximum diversity gain and maximum multiplexing gain and achieves better diversity gain at intermediate values of multiplexing gain, versus the best-known distributed space-time coding strategies. A distributed compress and forward (CF strategy is also proposed to achieve all points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for a two-hop relay channel with multiple relay nodes.

  20. How to engage end-users in smart energy behaviour?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valkering Pieter

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available End users will play a crucial role in up-coming smart grids that aim to link end-users and energy providers in a better balanced and more efficient electricity system. Within this context, this paper aims to deliver a coherent view on current good practice in end-user engagement in smart grid projects. It draws from a recent review of theoretical insights from sustainable consumption behaviour, social marketing and innovation systems and empirical insights from recent smart grid projects to create an inventory of common motivators, enablers and barriers of behavioural change, and the end-user engagement principles that can be derived from that. We conclude with identifying current research challenges as input for a research agenda on end-user engagement in smart grids.

  1. End-to-end Information Flow Security Model for Software-Defined Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. Ju. Chaly

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Software-defined networks (SDN are a novel paradigm of networking which became an enabler technology for many modern applications such as network virtualization, policy-based access control and many others. Software can provide flexibility and fast-paced innovations in the networking; however, it has a complex nature. In this connection there is an increasing necessity of means for assuring its correctness and security. Abstract models for SDN can tackle these challenges. This paper addresses to confidentiality and some integrity properties of SDNs. These are critical properties for multi-tenant SDN environments, since the network management software must ensure that no confidential data of one tenant are leaked to other tenants in spite of using the same physical infrastructure. We define a notion of end-to-end security in context of software-defined networks and propose a semantic model where the reasoning is possible about confidentiality, and we can check that confidential information flows do not interfere with non-confidential ones. We show that the model can be extended in order to reason about networks with secure and insecure links which can arise, for example, in wireless environments.The article is published in the authors’ wording.

  2. Automatic detection of end-diastolic and end-systolic frames in 2D echocardiography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zolgharni, Massoud; Negoita, Madalina; Dhutia, Niti M; Mielewczik, Michael; Manoharan, Karikaran; Sohaib, S M Afzal; Finegold, Judith A; Sacchi, Stefania; Cole, Graham D; Francis, Darrel P

    2017-07-01

    Correctly selecting the end-diastolic and end-systolic frames on a 2D echocardiogram is important and challenging, for both human experts and automated algorithms. Manual selection is time-consuming and subject to uncertainty, and may affect the results obtained, especially for advanced measurements such as myocardial strain. We developed and evaluated algorithms which can automatically extract global and regional cardiac velocity, and identify end-diastolic and end-systolic frames. We acquired apical four-chamber 2D echocardiographic video recordings, each at least 10 heartbeats long, acquired twice at frame rates of 52 and 79 frames/s from 19 patients, yielding 38 recordings. Five experienced echocardiographers independently marked end-systolic and end-diastolic frames for the first 10 heartbeats of each recording. The automated algorithm also did this. Using the average of time points identified by five human operators as the reference gold standard, the individual operators had a root mean square difference from that gold standard of 46.5 ms. The algorithm had a root mean square difference from the human gold standard of 40.5 ms (P<.0001). Put another way, the algorithm-identified time point was an outlier in 122/564 heartbeats (21.6%), whereas the average human operator was an outlier in 254/564 heartbeats (45%). An automated algorithm can identify the end-systolic and end-diastolic frames with performance indistinguishable from that of human experts. This saves staff time, which could therefore be invested in assessing more beats, and reduces uncertainty about the reliability of the choice of frame. © 2017, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  3. An overview of recent end-to-end wireless medical video telemedicine systems using 3G.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Panayides, A; Pattichis, M S; Pattichis, C S; Schizas, C N; Spanias, A; Kyriacou, E

    2010-01-01

    Advances in video compression, network technologies, and computer technologies have contributed to the rapid growth of mobile health (m-health) systems and services. Wide deployment of such systems and services is expected in the near future, and it's foreseen that they will soon be incorporated in daily clinical practice. This study focuses in describing the basic components of an end-to-end wireless medical video telemedicine system, providing a brief overview of the recent advances in the field, while it also highlights future trends in the design of telemedicine systems that are diagnostically driven.

  4. [End-of-life care and end-of-life medical decisions: the ITAELD study].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miccinesi, Guido; Puliti, Donella; Paci, Eugenio

    2011-01-01

    To describe the attitudes towards end of life care and the practice of end-of-life medical decisions with possible life-shortening effect among Italian physicians. Cross sectional study (last death among the assisted patients in the last 12 months was considered). In the year 2007, 5,710 GPs and 8,950 hospital physicians were invited all over Italy to participate in the ITAELDstudy through anonymous mail questionnaire. Proportion of agreement with statements on end-of-life care issues. Proportion of deaths with an end-of-life medical decision. The response rate was 19.2%. The 65% of respondents agreed with the duty to respect any non-treatment request of the competent patient, the 55% agreed with the same duty in case of advanced directives, the 39% in case of proxy's request. The 53% of respondents agreed with the ethical acceptability of active euthanasia in selected cases. Among 1,850 deaths the 57.7% did not receive any end-of-life medical decision. For a further 21.0% no decision was possible, being sudden and unexpected deaths. In the remaining 21.3% at least one end-of-life medical decision was reported: 0.8% was classified as physician assisted death, 20.5% as non-treatment decision. Among all deceased the 19.6% were reported to have been deeply sedated. Being favourable to the use of opioids in terminal patients was associated to non-treatment decisions with possible but non-intentional life shortening effect; agreeing with the duty to fully respect any actual non-treatment request of the competent patient was associated to end-of life medical decisions with intentional life-shortening effect (adjusted OR>10 in both cases). The life stance and ethical beliefs of physicians determine their behaviour at the end of life wherever specific statements of law are lacking. Therefore education and debate are needed on these issues.

  5. End-to-end interoperability and workflows from building architecture design to one or more simulations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chao, Tian-Jy; Kim, Younghun

    2015-02-10

    An end-to-end interoperability and workflows from building architecture design to one or more simulations, in one aspect, may comprise establishing a BIM enablement platform architecture. A data model defines data entities and entity relationships for enabling the interoperability and workflows. A data definition language may be implemented that defines and creates a table schema of a database associated with the data model. Data management services and/or application programming interfaces may be implemented for interacting with the data model. Web services may also be provided for interacting with the data model via the Web. A user interface may be implemented that communicates with users and uses the BIM enablement platform architecture, the data model, the data definition language, data management services and application programming interfaces to provide functions to the users to perform work related to building information management.

  6. End effects on elbows subjected to moment loadings

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rodabaugh, E.C.; Moore, S.E.

    1982-01-01

    So-called end effects for moment loadings on short-radius and long-radius butt welding elbows of various arc lengths are investigated with a view toward providing more accurate design formulas for critical piping systems. Data developed in this study, along with published information, were used to develop relatively simple design equations for elbows attached at both ends to long sections of straight pipe. These formulas are the basis for an alternate ASME Code procedure for evaluating the bending moment stresses in Class 1 nuclear piping (ASME Code Case N-319). The more complicated problems of elbows with other end conditions, e.g., flanges at one or both ends, are also considered. Comparisons of recently published experimental and theoretical studies with current industrial code design rules for these situations indicate that these rules also need to be improved

  7. End-to-End Beam Simulations for the New Muon G-2 Experiment at Fermilab

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Korostelev, Maxim [Cockcroft Inst. Accel. Sci. Tech.; Bailey, Ian [Lancaster U.; Herrod, Alexander [Liverpool U.; Morgan, James [Fermilab; Morse, William [RIKEN BNL; Stratakis, Diktys [RIKEN BNL; Tishchenko, Vladimir [RIKEN BNL; Wolski, Andrzej [Cockcroft Inst. Accel. Sci. Tech.

    2016-06-01

    The aim of the new muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab is to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon with an unprecedented uncertainty of 140 ppb. A beam of positive muons required for the experiment is created by pion decay. Detailed studies of the beam dynamics and spin polarization of the muons are important to predict systematic uncertainties in the experiment. In this paper, we present the results of beam simulations and spin tracking from the pion production target to the muon storage ring. The end-to-end beam simulations are developed in Bmad and include the processes of particle decay, collimation (with accurate representation of all apertures) and spin tracking.

  8. Home-end and activity-end preferences for access to and egress from train stations in the Copenhagen region

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Halldórsdóttir, Katrín; Nielsen, Otto Anker; Prato, Carlo Giacomo

    2017-01-01

    . Moreover, model results emphasize the role of bicycle parking in terms of the sheer number of spaces to be increased as well as covered places to be offered at the activity end, de facto giving the possibility to leave a bicycle at that end during the night. Lastly, model results show that it is a matter......Increasing public transport use with the aim of improving the sustainability of cities should focus not only on enhancing level and quality of the service offered, but also on understanding determinants of the choice of access and egress modes to and from the railway network. This study analyzes...... the difference in preferences at the home-end and activity-end for travelers who have chosen train as their main travel mode while investigating the effect of policy variables such as car parking availability, bicycle parking availability and type, and bicycle on train possibility. Specifically, this study...

  9. Sleep/wake scheduling scheme for minimizing end-to-end delay in multi-hop wireless sensor networks

    OpenAIRE

    Madani Sajjad; Nazir Babar; Hasbullah Halabi

    2011-01-01

    Abstract We present a sleep/wake schedule protocol for minimizing end-to-end delay for event driven multi-hop wireless sensor networks. In contrast to generic sleep/wake scheduling schemes, our proposed algorithm performs scheduling that is dependent on traffic loads. Nodes adapt their sleep/wake schedule based on traffic loads in response to three important factors, (a) the distance of the node from the sink node, (b) the importance of the node's location from connectivity's perspective, and...

  10. Evaluation of End Mill Coatings

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    L. J. Lazarus; R. L. Hester,

    2005-08-01

    Milling tests were run on families of High Speed Steel (HSS) end mills to determine their lives while machining 304 Stainless Steel. The end mills tested were made from M7, M42 and T15-CPM High Speed Steels. The end mills were also evaluated with no coatings as well as with Titanium Nitride (TiN) and Titanium Carbo-Nitride (TiCN) coatings to determine which combination of HSS and coating provided the highest increase in end mill life while increasing the cost of the tool the least. We found end mill made from M42 gave us the largest increase in tool life with the least increase in cost. The results of this study will be used by Cutting Tool Engineering in determining which end mill descriptions will be dropped from our tool catalog.

  11. End-to-End Assessment of a Large Aperture Segmented Ultraviolet Optical Infrared (UVOIR) Telescope Architecture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Lee; Bolcar, Matt; Liu, Alice; Guyon, Olivier; Stark,Chris; Arenberg, Jon

    2016-01-01

    Key challenges of a future large aperture, segmented Ultraviolet Optical Infrared (UVOIR) Telescope capable of performing a spectroscopic survey of hundreds of Exoplanets will be sufficient stability to achieve 10-10 contrast measurements and sufficient throughput and sensitivity for high yield Exo-Earth spectroscopic detection. Our team has collectively assessed an optimized end to end architecture including a high throughput coronagraph capable of working with a segmented telescope, a cost-effective and heritage based stable segmented telescope, a control architecture that minimizes the amount of new technologies, and an Exo-Earth yield assessment to evaluate potential performance.

  12. Automated Design of Propellant-Optimal, End-to-End, Low-Thrust Trajectories for Trojan Asteroid Tours

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stuart, Jeffrey; Howell, Kathleen; Wilson, Roby

    2013-01-01

    The Sun-Jupiter Trojan asteroids are celestial bodies of great scientific interest as well as potential resources offering water and other mineral resources for longterm human exploration of the solar system. Previous investigations under this project have addressed the automated design of tours within the asteroid swarm. This investigation expands the current automation scheme by incorporating options for a complete trajectory design approach to the Trojan asteroids. Computational aspects of the design procedure are automated such that end-to-end trajectories are generated with a minimum of human interaction after key elements and constraints associated with a proposed mission concept are specified.

  13. User-oriented end-to-end transport protocols for the real-time distribution of telemetry data from NASA spacecraft

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hooke, A. J.

    1979-01-01

    A set of standard telemetry protocols for downlink data flow facilitating the end-to-end transport of instrument data from the spacecraft to the user in real time is proposed. The direct switching of data by autonomous message 'packets' that are assembled by the source instrument on the spacecraft is discussed. The data system consists thus of a format on a message rather than word basis, and such packet telemetry would include standardized protocol headers. Standards are being developed within the NASA End-to-End Data System (NEEDS) program for the source packet and transport frame protocols. The source packet protocol contains identification of both the sequence number of the packet as it is generated by the source and the total length of the packet, while the transport frame protocol includes a sequence count defining the serial number of the frame as it is generated by the spacecraft data system, and a field specifying any 'options' selected in the format of the frame itself.

  14. A tale of two extinctions : converging end-Permian and end-Triassic scenarios

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van de Schootbrugge, Bas; Wignall, Paul B.

    The end-Permian (c. 252 Ma) and end-Triassic (c. 201 Ma) mass-extinction events are commonly linked to the emplacement of the large igneous provinces of the Siberia Traps and Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, respectively. Accordingly, scenarios for both extinctions are increasingly convergent and

  15. End of an era?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Abrahamson, Peter

    2016-01-01

    At the end of 2015, China put an end to the one-child policy (OCP), thereby terminating the largest family planning program in human history. For nearly four decades it had shaped relations between generations and between men and women to an extent never before seen. Today, China struggles with t...... because of the strong preference for boys, which has led to so-called “bare branches:” Chinese men who are not able to find a spouse or have to rely on “mail-order brides.” The paper concludes that the OCP has come to an end, but the unintended consequences prevail.......At the end of 2015, China put an end to the one-child policy (OCP), thereby terminating the largest family planning program in human history. For nearly four decades it had shaped relations between generations and between men and women to an extent never before seen. Today, China struggles...... cultural values and legal prescriptions foresee reciprocal care responsibilities between generations. This has led to an enormous care deficit, which triggers conflicts between both genders and generations. A second major unintended consequence has been a skewed gender ratio of only 18 women per 20 men...

  16. Indico front-end: From spaghetti to lasagna

    CERN Multimedia

    CERN. Geneva

    2017-01-01

    We will present how we transitioned from legacy spaghetti UI code to a more coherent, easier to understand and maintain ecosystem of front-end technologies and facilities with a strong emphasis in reusable components. In particular, we will share with you: 1) how we use Sass to maintain our home-baked CSS, 2) how we survive in 2017 without front-end Javascript frameworks, and 3) how we use template macros and WTForms for generating consistent HTML transparently.

  17. EndNote 7.0

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eapen Bell

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available EndNote is a useful software for online literature search and efficient bibliography management. It helps to format the bibliography according to the citation style of each journal. EndNote stores references in a library file, which can be shared with others. It can connect to online resources like PubMed and retrieve search results as per the search criteria. It can also effortlessly integrate with popular word processors like MS Word. The Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology website has a provision to import references to EndNote.

  18. The Open-Ended Approach Framework

    Science.gov (United States)

    Munroe, Lloyd

    2015-01-01

    This paper describes a pedagogical framework that teachers can use to support students who are engaged in solving open-ended problems, by explaining how two Japanese expert teachers successfully apply open-ended problems in their mathematics class. The Open-Ended Approach (OPA) framework consists of two main sections: Understanding Mathematical…

  19. Development of a prototype lateral flow immunoassay (LFI for the rapid diagnosis of melioidosis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raymond L Houghton

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Burkholderia pseudomallei is a soil-dwelling bacterium and the causative agent of melioidosis. Isolation of B. pseudomallei from clinical samples is the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of melioidosis; results can take 3-7 days to produce. Alternatively, antibody-based tests have low specificity due to a high percentage of seropositive individuals in endemic areas. There is a clear need to develop a rapid point-of-care antigen detection assay for the diagnosis of melioidosis. Previously, we employed In vivo Microbial Antigen Discovery (InMAD to identify potential B. pseudomallei diagnostic biomarkers. The B. pseudomallei capsular polysaccharide (CPS and numerous protein antigens were identified as potential candidates. Here, we describe the development of a diagnostic immunoassay based on the detection of CPS. Following production of a CPS-specific monoclonal antibody (mAb, an antigen-capture immunoassay was developed to determine the concentration of CPS within a panel of melioidosis patient serum and urine samples. The same mAb was used to produce a prototype Active Melioidosis Detect Lateral Flow Immunoassay (AMD LFI; the limit of detection of the LFI for CPS is comparable to the antigen-capture immunoassay (∼0.2 ng/ml. The analytical reactivity (inclusivity of the AMD LFI was 98.7% (76/77 when tested against a large panel of B. pseudomallei isolates. Analytical specificity (cross-reactivity testing determined that 97.2% of B. pseudomallei near neighbor species (35/36 were not reactive. The non-reactive B. pseudomallei strain and the reactive near neighbor strain can be explained through genetic sequence analysis. Importantly, we show the AMD LFI is capable of detecting CPS in a variety of patient samples. The LFI is currently being evaluated in Thailand and Australia; the focus is to optimize and validate testing procedures on melioidosis patient samples prior to initiation of a large, multisite pre-clinical evaluation.

  20. Beginning from the End: Strategies of Composition in Lyrical Improvisation with End Rhyme

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Venla Sykäri

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available This essay examines the basic principles of constructing improvised verses with end rhyme in three contemporary cultures: _mandinadhes_, Mallorcan _gloses_, and Finnish freestyle rap. This study is based on ethnographic interviews, in which improvisers analyze their methods of composition. This knowledge is complemented by a textual analysis of examples of performances in the given traditions. Sykäri shows that competent improvisers master complex cognitive methods when they create their lines that end with the poetic device of end rhyme, and in particular when they structure the discourse so that the strong arguments are situated at the end of the structural unit of composition. This “reversed” method witnesses a tendency to use parallel phonic patterns in a way that is largely the opposite of those employed with semantic (or canonical parallelism.

  1. Planck intermediate results: XLVI. Reduction of large-scale systematic effects in HFI polarization maps and estimation of the reionization optical depth

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Aghanim, N.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.

    2016-01-01

    This paper describes the identification, modelling, and removal of previously unexplained systematic effects in the polarization data of the Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) on large angular scales, including new mapmaking and calibration procedures, new and more complete end-to-end simulat...

  2. Circumferential resection and "Z"-shape plastic end-to-end anastomosis of canine trachea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, H; Li, Z; Fang, J; Fang, C

    1999-03-01

    To prevent anastomotic stricture of the trachea. Forty young mongrel dogs, weighing 5-7 kg, were randomly divided into two groups: experimental group and control group, with 20 dogs in each group. Four tracheal rings were removed from each dog. In the experimental group, two "Z"-shape tracheoplastic anastomoses were performed on each dog, one on the anterior wall and the other on the membranous part of the trachea. In the control group, each dog received only simple end-to-end anastomosis. Vicryl 3-0 absorbable suture and OB fibrin glue were used for both groups. All dogs were killed when their body weight doubled. The average sagittal stenotic ratio were 1.20 +/- 0.12 for the experimental group and 0.83 +/- 0.05 for the control group. The average cross-sectional area stenotic ratio were 0.90 +/- 0.12 and 0.69 +/- 0.09 and T values were 8.71 and 4.57 for the two groups (P anastomosis in preventing anastomotic stricture of canine trachea.

  3. CENTRIFUGE END CAP

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beams, J.W.; Snoddy, L.B.

    1960-08-01

    An end cap for ultra-gas centrifuges is designed to impart or remove angular momentum to or from the gas and to bring the entering gas to the temperature of the gas inside the centrifuge. The end cap is provided with slots or fins for adjusting the temperature and the angular momentum of the entering gas to the temperature and momentum of the gas in the centrifuge and is constructed to introduce both the inner and the peripheral stream into the centrifuge.

  4. Partial QoS-Aware Opportunistic Relay Selection Over Two-Hop Channels: End-to-End Performance Under Spectrum-Sharing Requirements

    KAUST Repository

    Yuli Yang,; Hao Ma,; Aissa, Sonia

    2014-01-01

    it with transmission constraints imposed on the transmit power budget and interference to other users. By analyzing the statistics of received SNRs in the first and second hops, we obtain the end-to-end PLR of this scheme in closed form under the considered scenario

  5. Human Assisted Robotic Vehicle Studies - A conceptual end-to-end mission architecture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lehner, B. A. E.; Mazzotta, D. G.; Teeney, L.; Spina, F.; Filosa, A.; Pou, A. Canals; Schlechten, J.; Campbell, S.; Soriano, P. López

    2017-11-01

    With current space exploration roadmaps indicating the Moon as a proving ground on the way to human exploration of Mars, it is clear that human-robotic partnerships will play a key role for successful future human space missions. This paper details a conceptual end-to-end architecture for an exploration mission in cis-lunar space with a focus on human-robot interactions, called Human Assisted Robotic Vehicle Studies (HARVeSt). HARVeSt will build on knowledge of plant growth in space gained from experiments on-board the ISS and test the first growth of plants on the Moon. A planned deep space habitat will be utilised as the base of operations for human-robotic elements of the mission. The mission will serve as a technology demonstrator not only for autonomous tele-operations in cis-lunar space but also for key enabling technologies for future human surface missions. The successful approach of the ISS will be built on in this mission with international cooperation. Mission assets such as a modular rover will allow for an extendable mission and to scout and prepare the area for the start of an international Moon Village.

  6. MO-B-BRB-04: 3D Dosimetry in End-To-End Dosimetry QA

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ibbott, G. [UT MD Anderson Cancer Center (United States)

    2016-06-15

    irradiated volume can help understand interplay effects during TomoTherapy or VMAT. Titania Juang: Special techniques in the clinic and research Understand the potential for 3D dosimetry in validating dose accumulation in deformable systems, and Observe the benefits of high resolution measurements for precision therapy in SRS and in MicroSBRT for small animal irradiators Geoffrey S. Ibbott: 3D Dosimetry in end-to-end dosimetry QA Understand the potential for 3D dosimetry for end-to-end radiation therapy process validation in the in-house and external credentialing setting. Canadian Institutes of Health Research; L. Schreiner, Modus QA, London, ON, Canada; T. Juang, NIH R01CA100835.

  7. Welding nuclear reactor fuel rod end plugs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yeo, D.

    1984-01-01

    Apparatus for applying a vacuum to a nuclear fuel rod cladding tube's interior through its open end while girth welding an inserted end plug to its other end. An airtight housing has an orifice with a seal which can hermetically engage the tube's open end. A vacuum hose has one end connected to the housing and the other end connected to a vacuum pump. A mechanized device which moves the housing to engage or disengage its seal with the tube's open end includes at least one arm having one end attached to the housing and the other end pivotally attached to a movable table; an arm rotating device to coaxially align the housing's orifice with the welding-positioned tube; and a table moving device to engage the seal of the coaxially aligned orifice with the tube's open end. (author)

  8. West Coast fish, mammal, and bird species diets - Developing end-to-end models of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the California Current LME, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  9. A 3-hydroxy β-end group in xanthophylls is preferentially oxidized to a 3-oxo ε-end group in mammals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagao, Akihiko; Maoka, Takashi; Ono, Hiroshi; Kotake-Nara, Eiichi; Kobayashi, Miyuki; Tomita, Mie

    2015-02-01

    We previously found that mice fed lutein accumulated its oxidative metabolites (3'-hydroxy-ε,ε-caroten-3-one and ε,ε-carotene-3,3'-dione) as major carotenoids, suggesting that mammals can convert xanthophylls to keto-carotenoids by the oxidation of hydroxyl groups. Here we elucidated the metabolic activities of mouse liver for several xanthophylls. When lutein was incubated with liver postmitochondrial fraction in the presence of NAD(+), (3'R,6'R)-3'-hydroxy-β,ε-caroten-3-one and (6RS,3'R,6'R)-3'-hydroxy-ε,ε-caroten-3-one were produced as major oxidation products. The former accumulated only at the early stage and was assumed to be an intermediate, followed by isomerization to the latter. The configuration at the C3' and C6' of the ε-end group in lutein was retained in the two oxidation products. These results indicate that the 3-hydroxy β-end group in lutein was preferentially oxidized to a 3-oxo ε-end group via a 3-oxo β-end group. Other xanthophylls such as β-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin, which have a 3-hydroxy β-end group, were also oxidized in the same manner as lutein. These keto-carotenoids, derived from dietary xanthophylls, were confirmed to be present in plasma of normal human subjects, and β,ε-caroten-3'-one was significantly increased by the ingestion of β-cryptoxanthin. Thus, humans as well as mice have oxidative activity to convert the 3-hydroxy β-end group of xanthophylls to a 3-oxo ε-end group. Copyright © 2015 by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  10. Increasing gas producer profitability with virtual well visibility via an end-to-end wireless Internet gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M. [Northrock Resources Ltd., Calgary, AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [Zed.i solutions, Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2003-07-01

    This PowerPoint presentation describes how Northrock Resources Ltd. increased profitability using Smart-Alek{sup TM} while avoiding high implementation costs. Smart-Alek is a new type of fully integrated end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement (GFM) system based on Field Intelligence Network and End User Interference (FINE). Smart-Alek can analyze gas production through public wireless communications and a web-browser delivery system. The system has enabled Northrock to increase gas volumes with more accurate measurement and reduced downtime. In addition, operating costs have decreased because the frequency of well visits has been reduced and the administrative procedures of data collection is more efficient. The real-time well visibility of the tool has proven to be very effective in optimizing business profitability. 7 figs.

  11. Calorimetry end-point predictions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fox, M.A.

    1981-01-01

    This paper describes a portion of the work presently in progress at Rocky Flats in the field of calorimetry. In particular, calorimetry end-point predictions are outlined. The problems associated with end-point predictions and the progress made in overcoming these obstacles are discussed. The two major problems, noise and an accurate description of the heat function, are dealt with to obtain the most accurate results. Data are taken from an actual calorimeter and are processed by means of three different noise reduction techniques. The processed data are then utilized by one to four algorithms, depending on the accuracy desired to determined the end-point

  12. Risk Factors for Dehiscence of Stapled Functional End-to-End Intestinal Anastomoses in Dogs: 53 Cases (2001-2012).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Snowdon, Kyle A; Smeak, Daniel D; Chiang, Sharon

    2016-01-01

    To identify risk factors for dehiscence in stapled functional end-to-end anastomoses (SFEEA) in dogs. Retrospective case series. Dogs (n = 53) requiring an enterectomy. Medical records from a single institution for all dogs undergoing an enterectomy (2001-2012) were reviewed. Surgeries were included when gastrointestinal (GIA) and thoracoabdominal (TA) stapling equipment was used to create a functional end-to-end anastomosis between segments of small intestine or small and large intestine in dogs. Information regarding preoperative, surgical, and postoperative factors was recorded. Anastomotic dehiscence was noted in 6 of 53 cases (11%), with a mortality rate of 83%. The only preoperative factor significantly associated with dehiscence was the presence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Surgical factors significantly associated with dehiscence included the presence, duration, and number of intraoperative hypotensive periods, and location of anastomosis, with greater odds of dehiscence in anastomoses involving the large intestine. IBD, location of anastomosis, and intraoperative hypotension are risk factors for intestinal anastomotic dehiscence after SFEEA in dogs. Previously suggested risk factors (low serum albumin concentration, preoperative septic peritonitis, and intestinal foreign body) were not confirmed in this study. © Copyright 2015 by The American College of Veterinary Surgeons.

  13. Automatic detection of end-diastole and end-systole from echocardiography images using manifold learning

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gifani, Parisa; Behnam, Hamid; Shalbaf, Ahmad; Sani, Zahra Alizadeh

    2010-01-01

    The automatic detection of end-diastole and end-systole frames of echocardiography images is the first step for calculation of the ejection fraction, stroke volume and some other features related to heart motion abnormalities. In this paper, the manifold learning algorithm is applied on 2D echocardiography images to find out the relationship between the frames of one cycle of heart motion. By this approach the nonlinear embedded information in sequential images is represented in a two-dimensional manifold by the LLE algorithm and each image is depicted by a point on reconstructed manifold. There are three dense regions on the manifold which correspond to the three phases of cardiac cycle ('isovolumetric contraction', 'isovolumetric relaxation', 'reduced filling'), wherein there is no prominent change in ventricular volume. By the fact that the end-systolic and end-diastolic frames are in isovolumic phases of the cardiac cycle, the dense regions can be used to find these frames. By calculating the distance between consecutive points in the manifold, the isovolumic frames are mapped on the three minimums of the distance diagrams which were used to select the corresponding images. The minimum correlation between these images leads to detection of end-systole and end-diastole frames. The results on six healthy volunteers have been validated by an experienced echo cardiologist and depict the usefulness of the presented method

  14. Including 10-Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network under End-to-End Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching Provisioned Quality of Service

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Gavler, Anders; Wessing, Henrik

    2012-01-01

    of the network where quality of service signaling is bridged. This article proposes strategies for generalized multi-protocol label switching control over next emerging passive optical network standard, i.e., the 10-gigabit-capable passive optical network. Node management and resource allocation approaches...... are discussed, and possible issues are raised. The analysis shows that consideration of a 10-gigabit-capable passive optical network as a generalized multi-protocol label switching controlled domain is valid and may advance end-to-end quality of service provisioning for passive optical network based customers.......End-to-end quality of service provisioning is still a challenging task despite many years of research and development in this area. Considering a generalized multi-protocol label switching based core/metro network and resource reservation protocol capable home gateways, it is the access part...

  15. The End of ‘the end of impunity’?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Holtermann, Jakob von Holderstein

    2010-01-01

    With its express intention ‘to put an end to impunity’, the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a substantial challenge in the shape of conditional amnesties granted in future national truth commissions (TCs)—a challenge that invokes fundamental considerations of criminal justice ethics...

  16. ATLAS end-cap detector

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2003-01-01

    Three scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Phyiscs at Novossibirsk with one of the end-caps of the ATLAS detector. The end-caps will be used to detect particles produced in the proton-proton collisions at the heart of the ATLAS experiment that are travelling close to the axis of the two beams.

  17. Users’ Perceptions Using Low-End and High-End Mobile-Rendered HMDs: A Comparative Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M.-Carmen Juan

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Currently, it is possible to combine Mobile-Rendered Head-Mounted Displays (MR HMDs with smartphones to have Augmented Reality platforms. The differences between these types of platforms can affect the user’s experiences and satisfaction. This paper presents a study that analyses the user’s perception when using the same Augmented Reality app with two MR HMD (low-end and high-end. Our study evaluates the user’s experience taking into account several factors (control, sensory, distraction, ergonomics and realism. An Augmalpha-lowerented Reality app was developed to carry out the comparison for two MR HMDs. The application had exactly the same visual appearance and functionality for both devices. Forty adults participated in our study. From the results, there were no statistically significant differences for the users’ experience for the different factors when using the two MR HMDs, except for the ergonomic factors in favour of the high-end MR HMD. Even though the scores for the high-end MR HMD were higher in nearly all of the questions, both MR HMDs provided a very satisfying viewing experience with very high scores. The results were independent of gender and age. The participants rated the high-end MR HMD as the best one. Nevertheless, when they were asked which MR HMD they would buy, the participants chose the low-end MR HMD taking into account its price.

  18. Self-assembled nanogaps via seed-mediated growth of end-to-end linked gold nanorods

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jain, Titoo; Westerlund, Axel Rune Fredrik; Johnson, Erik

    2009-01-01

    Gold nanorods (AuNRs) are of interest for a wide range of applications, ranging from imaging to molecular electronics, and they have been studied extensively for the past decade. An important issue in AuNR applications is the ability to self-assemble the rods in predictable structures...... on the nanoscale. We here present a new way to end-to-end link AuNRs with a single or few linker molecules. Whereas methods reported in the literature so far rely on modification of the AuNRs after the synthesis, we here dimerize gold nanoparticle seeds with a water-soluble dithiol-functionalized polyethylene...... that a large fraction of the rods are flexible around the hinging molecule in solution, as expected for a molecularly linked nanogap. By using excess of gold nanoparticles relative to the linking dithiol molecule, this method can provide a high probability that a single molecule is connecting the two rods...

  19. End-to-end performance of cooperative relaying in spectrum-sharing systems with quality of service requirements

    KAUST Repository

    Asghari, Vahid Reza

    2011-07-01

    We propose adopting a cooperative relaying technique in spectrum-sharing cognitive radio (CR) systems to more effectively and efficiently utilize available transmission resources, such as power, rate, and bandwidth, while adhering to the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the licensed (primary) users of the shared spectrum band. In particular, we first consider that the cognitive (secondary) user\\'s communication is assisted by an intermediate relay that implements the decode-and-forward (DF) technique onto the secondary user\\'s relayed signal to help with communication between the corresponding source and the destination nodes. In this context, we obtain first-order statistics pertaining to the first- and second-hop transmission channels, and then, we investigate the end-to-end performance of the proposed spectrum-sharing cooperative relaying system under resource constraints defined to assure that the primary QoS is unaffected. Specifically, we investigate the overall average bit error rate (BER), ergodic capacity, and outage probability of the secondary\\'s communication subject to appropriate constraints on the interference power at the primary receivers. We then consider a general scenario where a cluster of relays is available between the secondary source and destination nodes. In this case, making use of the partial relay selection method, we generalize our results for the single-relay scheme and obtain the end-to-end performance of the cooperative spectrum-sharing system with a cluster of L available relays. Finally, we examine our theoretical results through simulations and comparisons, illustrating the overall performance of the proposed spectrum-sharing cooperative system and quantify its advantages for different operating scenarios and conditions. © 2011 IEEE.

  20. Natural Braneworld Inflation in Light of Recent Results from Planck and BICEP2

    CERN Document Server

    Neupane, Ishwaree P.

    2014-01-01

    In this paper we report on a major theoretical observation in cosmology. We present a concrete cosmological model for which inflation has natural beginning and natural ending. Inflation is driven by a cosine-form potential, $V(\\phi)= \\Lambda^4 (1-\\cos(\\phi/f))$, which begins at $\\phi \\lesssim \\pi f$ and ends at $\\phi =\\phi_{\\text{end}} \\lesssim 5 f/3$. The distance traversed by the inflaton field $\\phi$ is sub-Planckian. The Gauss-Bonnet term ${\\cal R}^2$ arising as leading curvature corrections in the action $S = \\int d^5{x} \\sqrt{-g_{5}} M^3 (- 6\\lambda M^2 + R + \\alpha M^{-2} {\\cal R}^2)+ \\int d^{4}x \\sqrt{-g_{4}} (\\dot{\\phi}^2/2 - V(\\phi)- \\sigma +{\\cal L}_{\\text{matter}})$ (where $\\alpha$ and $\\lambda$ are constants and $M$ is the five-dimensional Planck mass) plays a key role to terminate inflation. The model generates appropriate tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and inflationary perturbations that are consistent with results from Planck and BICEP2. For example, for $N_*= 50-60$ and $n_s\\sim 0.960\\pm 0.005$, ...

  1. MRI simulation: end-to-end testing for prostate radiation therapy using geometric pelvic MRI phantoms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sun, Jidi; Menk, Fred; Lambert, Jonathan; Martin, Jarad; Denham, James W; Greer, Peter B; Dowling, Jason; Rivest-Henault, David; Pichler, Peter; Parker, Joel; Arm, Jameen; Best, Leah

    2015-01-01

    To clinically implement MRI simulation or MRI-alone treatment planning requires comprehensive end-to-end testing to ensure an accurate process. The purpose of this study was to design and build a geometric phantom simulating a human male pelvis that is suitable for both CT and MRI scanning and use it to test geometric and dosimetric aspects of MRI simulation including treatment planning and digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) generation.A liquid filled pelvic shaped phantom with simulated pelvic organs was scanned in a 3T MRI simulator with dedicated radiotherapy couch-top, laser bridge and pelvic coil mounts. A second phantom with the same external shape but with an internal distortion grid was used to quantify the distortion of the MR image. Both phantoms were also CT scanned as the gold-standard for both geometry and dosimetry. Deformable image registration was used to quantify the MR distortion. Dose comparison was made using a seven-field IMRT plan developed on the CT scan with the fluences copied to the MR image and recalculated using bulk electron densities.Without correction the maximum distortion of the MR compared with the CT scan was 7.5 mm across the pelvis, while this was reduced to 2.6 and 1.7 mm by the vendor’s 2D and 3D correction algorithms, respectively. Within the locations of the internal organs of interest, the distortion was <1.5 and <1 mm with 2D and 3D correction algorithms, respectively. The dose at the prostate isocentre calculated on CT and MRI images differed by 0.01% (1.1 cGy). Positioning shifts were within 1 mm when setup was performed using MRI generated DRRs compared to setup using CT DRRs.The MRI pelvic phantom allows end-to-end testing of the MRI simulation workflow with comparison to the gold-standard CT based process. MRI simulation was found to be geometrically accurate with organ dimensions, dose distributions and DRR based setup within acceptable limits compared to CT. (paper)

  2. jade: An End-To-End Data Transfer and Catalog Tool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meade, P.

    2017-10-01

    The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic kilometer neutrino telescope located at the Geographic South Pole. IceCube collects 1 TB of data every day. An online filtering farm processes this data in real time and selects 10% to be sent via satellite to the main data center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. IceCube has two year-round on-site operators. New operators are hired every year, due to the hard conditions of wintering at the South Pole. These operators are tasked with the daily operations of running a complex detector in serious isolation conditions. One of the systems they operate is the data archiving and transfer system. Due to these challenging operational conditions, the data archive and transfer system must above all be simple and robust. It must also share the limited resource of satellite bandwidth, and collect and preserve useful metadata. The original data archive and transfer software for IceCube was written in 2005. After running in production for several years, the decision was taken to fully rewrite it, in order to address a number of structural drawbacks. The new data archive and transfer software (JADE2) has been in production for several months providing improved performance and resiliency. One of the main goals for JADE2 is to provide a unified system that handles the IceCube data end-to-end: from collection at the South Pole, all the way to long-term archive and preservation in dedicated repositories at the North. In this contribution, we describe our experiences and lessons learned from developing and operating the data archive and transfer software for a particle physics experiment in extreme operational conditions like IceCube.

  3. Apparatus for assembling and welding end plugs to nuclear fuel cladding tubes and inspecting the end plug welds on an automated basis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schoenig, F.C. Jr.; Walker, E.S.; Cueman, M.K.; Haughton, R.A.; Zuloaga, J.A. Jr.

    1989-01-01

    This patent describes an automated apparatus for welding a separate end plug to one open end of each of a succession of nuclear fuel cladding tubes and for inspecting each end plug weld. The apparatus comprising, in combination: a welding station; a cooldown station for cooling each end plug weld in an inert gas atmosphere; a serial number reader station for reading a serial number on each end plug; a first weld inspection station; a second weld inspection station for generating second weld inspection data; a computer system linked with the serial number reader and the first and second weld inspection stations; an input queue for holding a plurality of tubes; a tube transporter for periodically picking individual tubes from the input queque and conveying the tubes in a direction transverse to their tube axis in indexing steps to index positions respectively axially aligned with the welding, serial number reader, and first and second weld inspection stations; and a sorter positioned at an output end of the tube transporter

  4. Analysis of the relationship between end-to-end distance and activity of single-chain antibody against colorectal carcinoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Jianhua; Liu, Shanhong; Shang, Zhigang; Shi, Li; Yun, Jun

    2012-08-22

    We investigated the relationship of End-to-end distance between VH and VL with different peptide linkers and the activity of single-chain antibodies by computer-aided simulation. First, we developed (G4S)n (where n = 1-9) as the linker to connect VH and VL, and estimated the 3D structure of single-chain Fv antibody (scFv) by homologous modeling. After molecular models were evaluated and optimized, the coordinate system of every protein was built and unified into one coordinate system, and End-to-end distances calculated using 3D space coordinates. After expression and purification of scFv-n with (G4S)n as n = 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9, the immunoreactivity of purified ND-1 scFv-n was determined by ELISA. A multi-factorial relationship model was employed to analyze the structural factors affecting scFv: rn=ABn-ABO2+CDn-CDO2+BCn-BCst2. The relationship between immunoreactivity and r-values revealed that fusion protein structure approached the desired state when the r-value = 3. The immunoreactivity declined as the r-value increased, but when the r-value exceeded a certain threshold, it stabilized. We used a linear relationship to analyze structural factors affecting scFv immunoreactivity.

  5. Life's end: Ethnographic perspectives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goodwin-Hawkins, Bryonny; Dawson, Andrew

    2018-01-01

    In this introduction to the special issue, Life's End: Ethnographic Perspectives, we review the field of anthropological studies of death and dying. We make the argument that, largely because of its sub-disciplining into the larger field of the anthropology of religion, ritual and symbolism, the focus of anthropological research on death has been predominantly on post- rather than pre-death events, on death's beginnings rather than life's ends. Additionally, we argue that an anthropological aversion to the study of dying may also lie in the intimacy of the discipline's principal method, ethnography. Contrastingly, we argue that this very methodological intimacy can be a source of insight, and we offer this as a rationale for the special issue as a whole, which comprises eight ethnographic studies of dying and social relations at life's end from across Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America. Each of these studies is then summarized, and a rationale for their presentation around the themes of "structures of dying," "care for the dying," "hope in dying," and "ending life" is presented.

  6. Applying the means-end chain concept to product development

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Søndergaard, Helle Alsted

    This paper proposes that the means-end chain (MEC) approach can influence the use of market information and inter-functional communication in new product development (NPD). The central question is whether market information represented by means-end chain data can be a vehicle for inter......-functional communication. This paper describes a PhD project - that through case studies and action research in two companies - aims at investigating the effects on communication and attitudes to communication by those involved when introducing means-end chain data as market information in NPD....

  7. A multicentre 'end to end' dosimetry audit of motion management (4DCT-defined motion envelope) in radiotherapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palmer, Antony L; Nash, David; Kearton, John R; Jafari, Shakardokht M; Muscat, Sarah

    2017-12-01

    External dosimetry audit is valuable for the assurance of radiotherapy quality. However, motion management has not been rigorously audited, despite its complexity and importance for accuracy. We describe the first end-to-end dosimetry audit for non-SABR (stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy) lung treatments, measuring dose accumulation in a moving target, and assessing adequacy of target dose coverage. A respiratory motion lung-phantom with custom-designed insert was used. Dose was measured with radiochromic film, employing triple-channel dosimetry and uncertainty reduction. The host's 4DCT scan, outlining and planning techniques were used. Measurements with the phantom static and then moving at treatment delivery separated inherent treatment uncertainties from motion effects. Calculated and measured dose distributions were compared by isodose overlay, gamma analysis, and we introduce the concept of 'dose plane histograms' for clinically relevant interpretation of film dosimetry. 12 radiotherapy centres and 19 plans were audited: conformal, IMRT (intensity modulated radiotherapy) and VMAT (volumetric modulated radiotherapy). Excellent agreement between planned and static-phantom results were seen (mean gamma pass 98.7% at 3% 2 mm). Dose blurring was evident in the moving-phantom measurements (mean gamma pass 88.2% at 3% 2 mm). Planning techniques for motion management were adequate to deliver the intended moving-target dose coverage. A novel, clinically-relevant, end-to-end dosimetry audit of motion management strategies in radiotherapy is reported. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. Experience of using MOSFET detectors for dose verification measurements in an end-to-end 192Ir brachytherapy quality assurance system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Persson, Maria; Nilsson, Josef; Carlsson Tedgren, Åsa

    Establishment of an end-to-end system for the brachytherapy (BT) dosimetric chain could be valuable in clinical quality assurance. Here, the development of such a system using MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) detectors and experience gained during 2 years of use are reported with focus on the performance of the MOSFET detectors. A bolus phantom was constructed with two implants, mimicking prostate and head & neck treatments, using steel needles and plastic catheters to guide the 192 Ir source and house the MOSFET detectors. The phantom was taken through the BT treatment chain from image acquisition to dose evaluation. During the 2-year evaluation-period, delivered doses were verified a total of 56 times using MOSFET detectors which had been calibrated in an external 60 Co beam. An initial experimental investigation on beam quality differences between 192 Ir and 60 Co is reported. The standard deviation in repeated MOSFET measurements was below 3% in the six measurement points with dose levels above 2 Gy. MOSFET measurements overestimated treatment planning system doses by 2-7%. Distance-dependent experimental beam quality correction factors derived in a phantom of similar size as that used for end-to-end tests applied on a time-resolved measurement improved the agreement. MOSFET detectors provide values stable over time and function well for use as detectors for end-to-end quality assurance purposes in 192 Ir BT. Beam quality correction factors should address not only distance from source but also phantom dimensions. Copyright © 2017 American Brachytherapy Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Mutation in Torenia fournieri Lind. UFO homolog confers loss of TfLFY interaction and results in a petal to sepal transformation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sasaki, Katsutomo; Yamaguchi, Hiroyasu; Aida, Ryutaro; Shikata, Masahito; Abe, Tomoko; Ohtsubo, Norihiro

    2012-09-01

    We identified a Torenia fournieri Lind. mutant (no. 252) that exhibited a sepaloid phenotype in which the second whorls were changed to sepal-like organs. This mutant had no stamens, and the floral organs consisted of sepals and carpels. Although the expression of a torenia class B MADS-box gene, GLOBOSA (TfGLO), was abolished in the 252 mutant, no mutation of TfGLO was found. Among torenia homologs such as APETALA1 (AP1), LEAFY (LFY), and UNUSUAL FLORAL ORGANS (UFO), which regulate expression of class B genes in Arabidopsis, only accumulation of the TfUFO transcript was diminished in the 252 mutant. Furthermore, a missense mutation was found in the coding region of the mutant TfUFO. Intact TfUFO complemented the mutant phenotype whereas mutated TfUFO did not; in addition, the transgenic phenotype of TfUFO-knockdown torenias coincided with the mutant phenotype. Yeast two-hybrid analysis revealed that the mutated TfUFO lost its ability to interact with TfLFY protein. In situ hybridization analysis indicated that the transcripts of TfUFO and TfLFY were partially accumulated in the same region. These results clearly demonstrate that the defect in TfUFO caused the sepaloid phenotype in the 252 mutant due to the loss of interaction with TfLFY. © 2012 The Authors. The Plant Journal © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  10. Fuel cell end plate structure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guthrie, Robin J.; Katz, Murray; Schroll, Craig R.

    1991-04-23

    The end plates (16) of a fuel cell stack (12) are formed of a thin membrane. Pressure plates (20) exert compressive load through insulation layers (22, 26) to the membrane. Electrical contact between the end plates (16) and electrodes (50, 58) is maintained without deleterious making and breaking of electrical contacts during thermal transients. The thin end plate (16) under compressive load will not distort with a temperature difference across its thickness. Pressure plate (20) experiences a low thermal transient because it is insulated from the cell. The impact on the end plate of any slight deflection created in the pressure plate by temperature difference is minimized by the resilient pressure pad, in the form of insulation, therebetween.

  11. Fukuyama's theory about the end of history end the last man

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nedeljković Zoran

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available 'End of the History' Fukuyama wrote under strong influence of Hegel's philosophic history. Since 1806 year there is no essential political progress, according to Fukuyama, abroad principles of French bourgeois revolution there is no advance. History which appears to be progressive and directional, suggest Fukuyama, ends right there. Word is divided into historical and post historical, social balance of the first one depend of the social misbalance of the second. Professional corporation are the surrogate for family, last man will substitute family moral with professional.

  12. ATLAS electromagnetic end-cap detector

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2003-01-01

    After the insertion of the first end-cap into this cryostat, the team proceed to the wiring operations. Millions of wires are connected to the electromagnetic calorimeter on this end-cap, whch must be carefully fed out from the detector so that data can be read out. The energy of photons, electrons and positrons will be measured as they pass through the end-cap having been created along the line of the beams in the proton-proton collisions.

  13. SU-E-T-282: Dose Measurements with An End-To-End Audit Phantom for Stereotactic Radiotherapy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jones, R; Artschan, R [Calvary Mater Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW (Australia); Thwaites, D [University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW (Australia); Lehmann, J [Calvary Mater Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW (Australia); University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW (Australia)

    2015-06-15

    Purpose: Report on dose measurements as part of an end-to-end test for stereotactic radiotherapy, using a new audit tool, which allows audits to be performed efficiently either by an onsite team or as a postal audit. Methods: Film measurements have been performed with a new Stereotactic Cube Phantom. The phantom has been designed to perform Winston Lutz type position verification measurements and dose measurements in one setup. It comprises a plastic cube with a high density ball in its centre (used for MV imaging with film or EPID) and low density markers in the periphery (used for Cone Beam Computed Tomography, CBCT imaging). It also features strategically placed gold markers near the posterior and right surfaces, which can be used to calculate phantom rotations on MV images. Slit-like openings allow insertion of film or other detectors.The phantom was scanned and small field treatment plans were created. The fields do not traverse any inhomogeneities of the phantom on their paths to the measurement location. The phantom was setup at the delivery system using CBCT imaging. The calculated treatment fields were delivered, each with a piece of radiochromic film (EBT3) placed in the anterior film holder of the phantom. MU had been selected in planning to achieve similar exposures on all films. Calibration films were exposed in solid water for dose levels around the expected doses. Films were scanned and analysed following established procedures. Results: Setup of the cube showed excellent suitability for CBCT 3D alignment. MV imaging with EPID allowed for clear identification of all markers. Film based dose measurements showed good agreement for MLC created fields down to 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm. Conclusion: An end-to-end audit phantom for stereotactic radiotherapy has been developed and tested.

  14. Challenges in end-of-life communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galushko, Maren; Romotzky, Vanessa; Voltz, Raymond

    2012-09-01

    The purpose of this review is to give an overview of challenges that have been addressed in recent research in end-of-life communication. Diversity of difficulties that may occur in communication about end-of-life issues has been showed. The emotional quality of this communication requires special skills from professionals involved. Studies showed that physicians and medical students are often overstrained and avoid end-of-life discussions. Health professionals and patients are often ambivalent about end-of-life discussions. Nevertheless, professionals are expected to initiate these in an honest, needs-oriented way. Patient preferences are difficult to infer and have to be assessed explicitly and regularly. Studies showed that the emotional impact of end-of-life discussions can lead to a high burden or avoidance of professionals. Interdisciplinary, multi-professional work can support health professionals in end-of-life care but often structural barriers obstruct possible benefits. Health professionals need to initiate end-of-life communication in a sensitive way. Specific demands for health professionals in end-of-life communication are to differentiate own emotions and life events from those of patients and to deal with both adequately. Moreover, structural aspects can lead to difficulties between different specialties, professions and sectors, which can have a negative impact on adequate care for patient and relatives. Special efforts for improvement are needed.

  15. A 3-hydroxy β-end group in xanthophylls is preferentially oxidized to a 3-oxo ε-end group in mammals[S

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagao, Akihiko; Maoka, Takashi; Ono, Hiroshi; Kotake-Nara, Eiichi; Kobayashi, Miyuki; Tomita, Mie

    2015-01-01

    We previously found that mice fed lutein accumulated its oxidative metabolites (3′-hydroxy-ε,ε-caroten-3-one and ε,ε-carotene-3,3′-dione) as major carotenoids, suggesting that mammals can convert xanthophylls to keto-carotenoids by the oxidation of hydroxyl groups. Here we elucidated the metabolic activities of mouse liver for several xanthophylls. When lutein was incubated with liver postmitochondrial fraction in the presence of NAD+, (3′R,6′R)-3′-hydroxy-β,ε-caroten-3-one and (6RS,3′R,6′R)-3′-hydroxy-ε,ε-caroten-3-one were produced as major oxidation products. The former accumulated only at the early stage and was assumed to be an intermediate, followed by isomerization to the latter. The configuration at the C3′ and C6′ of the ε-end group in lutein was retained in the two oxidation products. These results indicate that the 3-hydroxy β-end group in lutein was preferentially oxidized to a 3-oxo ε-end group via a 3-oxo β-end group. Other xanthophylls such as β-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin, which have a 3-hydroxy β-end group, were also oxidized in the same manner as lutein. These keto-carotenoids, derived from dietary xanthophylls, were confirmed to be present in plasma of normal human subjects, and β,ε-caroten-3′-one was significantly increased by the ingestion of β-cryptoxanthin. Thus, humans as well as mice have oxidative activity to convert the 3-hydroxy β-end group of xanthophylls to a 3-oxo ε-end group. PMID:25502844

  16. End-of-Life Nursing Care and Education: End-of-Life Nursing Education: Past and Present.

    Science.gov (United States)

    DʼAntonio, Jocelyn

    The dying experience is forever carried in the life story of those for whom the nurse cares. A goal of end-of-life nursing education is to produce nurses who are comfortable with death and dying and who have had the opportunity to reflect on their thoughts and feelings about end-of-life care. This article reviews the history, development, and teaching methods of end-of-life care, offering recommendations for future education.

  17. An alternate end design for SSC dipoles

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Peters, C.; Caspi, S.; Taylor, C.

    1989-02-01

    Experience in the SSC dipole program has shown that fabrication of cylindrical coil ends is difficult. Cable stiffness requires large forces to maintain the proper position of the conductors in the end during winding. After winding, the coil ends remain distorted nd significant motion of the need conductors is required to force the coil end into the molding cavity. Local mechanical stresses are high during this process and extra pieces of insulation are required to prevent turn-to-turn shorts from developing during the winding and molding steps. Prior to assembly the coil end is compressed in a mold cavity and injected with a filler material to correct surface irregularities and fill voids in the end. LBL has developed an alternate design which permits the conductors to be wound over the end using minimal force and technician coerosion. The conductors are placed on a conical surface where the largest diameter over the outer layer conductors is 10 cm. No coil end spaces or insulation pieces between turns are required. The conductor geometry was analytically optimized to meet SSC multipole requirements for the ends. The first 1-m dipole utilizing this end geometry has been constructed and successfully tested. Design and construction data are presented. Also model test results, including training and multipole measurements of the end are given. 1 ref., 12 figs., 3 tabs

  18. Interoperable End-to-End Remote Patient Monitoring Platform Based on IEEE 11073 PHD and ZigBee Health Care Profile.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clarke, Malcolm; de Folter, Joost; Verma, Vivek; Gokalp, Hulya

    2018-05-01

    This paper describes the implementation of an end-to-end remote monitoring platform based on the IEEE 11073 standards for personal health devices (PHD). It provides an overview of the concepts and approaches and describes how the standard has been optimized for small devices with limited resources of processor, memory, and power that use short-range wireless technology. It explains aspects of IEEE 11073, including the domain information model, state model, and nomenclature, and how these support its plug-and-play architecture. It shows how these aspects underpin a much larger ecosystem of interoperable devices and systems that include IHE PCD-01, HL7, and BlueTooth LE medical devices, and the relationship to the Continua Guidelines, advocating the adoption of data standards and nomenclature to support semantic interoperability between health and ambient assisted living in future platforms. The paper further describes the adaptions that have been made in order to implement the standard on the ZigBee Health Care Profile and the experiences of implementing an end-to-end platform that has been deployed to frail elderly patients with chronic disease(s) and patients with diabetes.

  19. Human DNA ligase III bridges two DNA ends to promote specific intermolecular DNA end joining

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kukshal, Vandna; Kim, In-Kwon; Hura, Gregory L.; Tomkinson, Alan E.; Tainer, John A.; Ellenberger, Tom

    2015-01-01

    Mammalian DNA ligase III (LigIII) functions in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA metabolism. In the nucleus, LigIII has functional redundancy with DNA ligase I whereas LigIII is the only mitochondrial DNA ligase and is essential for the survival of cells dependent upon oxidative respiration. The unique LigIII zinc finger (ZnF) domain is not required for catalytic activity but senses DNA strand breaks and stimulates intermolecular ligation of two DNAs by an unknown mechanism. Consistent with this activity, LigIII acts in an alternative pathway of DNA double strand break repair that buttresses canonical non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) and is manifest in NHEJ-defective cancer cells, but how LigIII acts in joining intermolecular DNA ends versus nick ligation is unclear. To investigate how LigIII efficiently joins two DNAs, we developed a real-time, fluorescence-based assay of DNA bridging suitable for high-throughput screening. On a nicked duplex DNA substrate, the results reveal binding competition between the ZnF and the oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding domain, one of three domains constituting the LigIII catalytic core. In contrast, these domains collaborate and are essential for formation of a DNA-bridging intermediate by adenylated LigIII that positions a pair of blunt-ended duplex DNAs for efficient and specific intermolecular ligation. PMID:26130724

  20. SSC collider dipole magnet end mechanical design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Delchamps, S.W.; Bossert, R.C.; Carson, J.; Ewald, K.; Fulton, H.; Kerby, J.; Koska, W.; Strait, J.; Wake, M.; Leung, K.K.

    1991-01-01

    This paper describes the mechanical design of the ends of Superconducting Super Collider dipole magnets to be constructed and tested at Fermilab. Coil end clamps, end yoke configuration, and end plate design are discussed. Loading of the end plate by axial Lorentz forces is discussed. Relevant data from 40 mm and 50 mm aperture model dipole magnets built and tested at Fermilab are presented. In particular, the apparent influence of end clamp design on the quench behavior of model SSC dipoles is described

  1. End-to-End Assessment of a Large Aperture Segmented Ultraviolet Optical Infrared (UVOIR) Telescope Architecture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Lee; Rioux, Norman; Bolcar, Matthew; Liu, Alice; Guyon, Oliver; Stark, Chris; Arenberg, Jon

    2016-01-01

    Key challenges of a future large aperture, segmented Ultraviolet Optical Infrared (UVOIR) Telescope capable of performing a spectroscopic survey of hundreds of Exoplanets will be sufficient stability to achieve 10^-10 contrast measurements and sufficient throughput and sensitivity for high yield Exo-Earth spectroscopic detection. Our team has collectively assessed an optimized end to end architecture including a high throughput coronagraph capable of working with a segmented telescope, a cost-effective and heritage based stable segmented telescope, a control architecture that minimizes the amount of new technologies, and an Exo-Earth yield assessment to evaluate potential performance. These efforts are combined through integrated modeling, coronagraph evaluations, and Exo-Earth yield calculations to assess the potential performance of the selected architecture. In addition, we discusses the scalability of this architecture to larger apertures and the technological tall poles to enabling it.

  2. INTERACTIONS OF REALM BOUNDARIES AND END-TO-ENG NETWORK APPLICATIONS

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    M. FISK; W. FENG

    2000-08-01

    One of the design principles of the Internet is that the network is made more flexible, and therefore useful, by placing functionality in end applications rather than in network infrastructure. Network gateways that violate this principle are considered harmful. This paper demonstrates that such upper-level gateways exist because of realm-specific performance, security, and protocol needs of certain portions of the Internet. Placing this functionality in end hosts is, conversely, harmful to the flexibility of using the Internet to link disparate networks. Requirements are developed for a protocol to allow end-hosts and gateways to negotiate the functionality of these gateways in terms of the needs of both end applications and network realms.

  3. First Demonstration of Real-Time End-to-End 40 Gb/s PAM-4 System using 10-G Transmitter for Next Generation Access Applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wei, Jinlong; Eiselt, Nicklas; Griesser, Helmut

    We demonstrate the first known experiment of a real-time end-to-end 40-Gb/s PAM-4 system for next generation access applications using 10G class transmitters only. Up to 25-dB upstream link budget for 20 km SMF is achieved.......We demonstrate the first known experiment of a real-time end-to-end 40-Gb/s PAM-4 system for next generation access applications using 10G class transmitters only. Up to 25-dB upstream link budget for 20 km SMF is achieved....

  4. Analysis of fuel end-temperature peaking

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Xu, Z.; Jiang, Q.; Lai, L.; Shams, M. [CANDU Energy Inc., Fuel Engineering Dept., Mississauga, Ontario (Canada)

    2013-07-01

    During normal operation and refuelling of CANDU® fuel, fuel temperatures near bundle ends will increase due to a phenomenon called end flux peaking. Similar phenomenon would also be expected to occur during a postulated large break LOCA event. The end flux peaking in a CANDU fuel element is due to the fact that neutron flux is higher near a bundle end, in contact with a neighbouring bundle or close to heavy water coolant, than in the bundle mid-plane, because of less absorption of thermal neutrons by Zircaloy or heavy water than by the UO{sub 2} material. This paper describes Candu Energy experience in analysing behaviour of bundle due to end flux peaking using fuel codes FEAT, ELESTRES and ELOCA. (author)

  5. SSC collider dipole magnet end mechanical design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Delchamps, S.W.; Bossert, R.C.; Carson, J.; Ewald, K.; Fulton, H.; Kerby, J.; Koska, W.; Strait, J.; Wake, S.M.; Leung, K.K.

    1991-05-01

    This paper describes the mechanical design of the ends of Superconducting Super Collider dipole magnets to be constructed and tested at Fermilab. Coil end clamps, end yoke configuration, and end plate design are discussed. Loading of the end plate by axial Lorentz forces is discussed. Relevant data from 40 mm and 50 mm aperture model dipole magnets built and tested at Fermilab are presented. In particular, the apparent influence of end clamp design on the quench behavior of model SSC dipoles is described. 8 refs., 3 figs

  6. End-User Development of Information Visualization

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pantazos, Kostas; Lauesen, Søren; Vatrapu, Ravi

    2013-01-01

    such as data manipulation, but no formal training in programming. 18 visualization tools were surveyed from an enduser developer perspective. The results of this survey study show that end-user developers need better tools to create and modify custom visualizations. A closer collaboration between End......This paper investigates End-User Development of Information Visualization. More specifically, we investigated how existing visualization tools allow end-user developers to construct visualizations. End-user developers have some developing or scripting skills to perform relatively advanced tasks......-User Development and Information Visualization researchers could contribute towards the development of better tools to support custom visualizations. In addition, as empirical evaluations of these tools are lacking both research communities should focus more on this aspect. The study serves as a starting point...

  7. Nerve endings in the heart of teleosts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kumar, S

    1979-01-01

    The nerve endings in the heart of fishes were studied using silver impregnation techniques. The heart chambers are profusely innervated by the sympathetic, parasympathetic (vagal) and postganglionic fibers of the intracardiac ganglia situated at the sinuatrial and the atrioventricular junctions. The plexuses are composed of medullated and nonmedullated fibers. The nerve fibers generally end freely and are slightly branched or unbranched terminations of myelinated and unmyelinated fibers. Moreover, a few nerve fibers end redundant in the form of end-rings, bulb-like, bush-like, club-shaped end end-coil like structures. The complex unencapsulated types of endings are also found in the myocardium of the atrium and the ventricle. The encapsulated endings (Vater-Pacinian; Krause end-bulb) could not be observed.

  8. Increasing gas producer profitability with virtual well visibility via an end-to-end, wireless Internet gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M.; Coleman, K.; Beck, R.; Lyon, R.; Potts, R. [Northrock Resources Ltd., Calgary, AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [Zed.i solutions, Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2003-07-01

    Most gas producing companies still use 100-year old technology to measure gas volumes because of the prohibitive costs of implementing corporate wide electronic information systems to replace circular mechanical chart technology. This paper describes how Northrock Resources Ltd. increased profitability using Smart-Alek{sup TM} while avoiding high implementation costs. Smart-Alek is a new type of fully integrated end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement (GFM) system based on Field Intelligence Network and End User Interference (FINE). Smart-Alek can analyze gas production through public wireless communications and a web-browser delivery system. The system has enabled Northrock to increase gas volumes with more accurate measurement and reduced downtime. In addition, operating costs were also decreased because the frequency of well visits was reduced and the administrative procedures of data collection was more efficient. The real-time well visibility of the tool has proven to be very effective in optimizing business profitability. 9 refs., 1 tab., 9 figs.

  9. Proportional counter end effects eliminator

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Meekins, J.F.

    1976-01-01

    An improved gas-filled proportional counter which includes a resistor network connected between the anode and cathode at the ends of the counter in order to eliminate ''end effects'' is described. 3 Claims, 2 Drawing Figures

  10. A fully automatic end-to-end method for content-based image retrieval of CT scans with similar liver lesion annotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spanier, A B; Caplan, N; Sosna, J; Acar, B; Joskowicz, L

    2018-01-01

    The goal of medical content-based image retrieval (M-CBIR) is to assist radiologists in the decision-making process by retrieving medical cases similar to a given image. One of the key interests of radiologists is lesions and their annotations, since the patient treatment depends on the lesion diagnosis. Therefore, a key feature of M-CBIR systems is the retrieval of scans with the most similar lesion annotations. To be of value, M-CBIR systems should be fully automatic to handle large case databases. We present a fully automatic end-to-end method for the retrieval of CT scans with similar liver lesion annotations. The input is a database of abdominal CT scans labeled with liver lesions, a query CT scan, and optionally one radiologist-specified lesion annotation of interest. The output is an ordered list of the database CT scans with the most similar liver lesion annotations. The method starts by automatically segmenting the liver in the scan. It then extracts a histogram-based features vector from the segmented region, learns the features' relative importance, and ranks the database scans according to the relative importance measure. The main advantages of our method are that it fully automates the end-to-end querying process, that it uses simple and efficient techniques that are scalable to large datasets, and that it produces quality retrieval results using an unannotated CT scan. Our experimental results on 9 CT queries on a dataset of 41 volumetric CT scans from the 2014 Image CLEF Liver Annotation Task yield an average retrieval accuracy (Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain index) of 0.77 and 0.84 without/with annotation, respectively. Fully automatic end-to-end retrieval of similar cases based on image information alone, rather that on disease diagnosis, may help radiologists to better diagnose liver lesions.

  11. Practical End-to-End Performance Testing Tool for High Speed 3G-Based Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shinbo, Hiroyuki; Tagami, Atsushi; Ano, Shigehiro; Hasegawa, Toru; Suzuki, Kenji

    High speed IP communication is a killer application for 3rd generation (3G) mobile systems. Thus 3G network operators should perform extensive tests to check whether expected end-to-end performances are provided to customers under various environments. An important objective of such tests is to check whether network nodes fulfill requirements to durations of processing packets because a long duration of such processing causes performance degradation. This requires testers (persons who do tests) to precisely know how long a packet is hold by various network nodes. Without any tool's help, this task is time-consuming and error prone. Thus we propose a multi-point packet header analysis tool which extracts and records packet headers with synchronized timestamps at multiple observation points. Such recorded packet headers enable testers to calculate such holding durations. The notable feature of this tool is that it is implemented on off-the shelf hardware platforms, i.e., lap-top personal computers. The key challenges of the implementation are precise clock synchronization without any special hardware and a sophisticated header extraction algorithm without any drop.

  12. Chinese Medical Question Answer Matching Using End-to-End Character-Level Multi-Scale CNNs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sheng Zhang

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available This paper focuses mainly on the problem of Chinese medical question answer matching, which is arguably more challenging than open-domain question answer matching in English due to the combination of its domain-restricted nature and the language-specific features of Chinese. We present an end-to-end character-level multi-scale convolutional neural framework in which character embeddings instead of word embeddings are used to avoid Chinese word segmentation in text preprocessing, and multi-scale convolutional neural networks (CNNs are then introduced to extract contextual information from either question or answer sentences over different scales. The proposed framework can be trained with minimal human supervision and does not require any handcrafted features, rule-based patterns, or external resources. To validate our framework, we create a new text corpus, named cMedQA, by harvesting questions and answers from an online Chinese health and wellness community. The experimental results on the cMedQA dataset show that our framework significantly outperforms several strong baselines, and achieves an improvement of top-1 accuracy by up to 19%.

  13. Internet end-to-end performance monitoring for the High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics community

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Matthews, W.

    2000-01-01

    Modern High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics (HENP) experiments at Laboratories around the world present a significant challenge to wide area networks. Petabytes (1015) or exabytes (1018) of data will be generated during the lifetime of the experiment. Much of this data will be distributed via the Internet to the experiment's collaborators at Universities and Institutes throughout the world for analysis. In order to assess the feasibility of the computing goals of these and future experiments, the HENP networking community is actively monitoring performance across a large part of the Internet used by its collaborators. Since 1995, the pingER project has been collecting data on ping packet loss and round trip times. In January 2000, there are 28 monitoring sites in 15 countries gathering data on over 2,000 end-to-end pairs. HENP labs such as SLAC, Fermi Lab and CERN are using Advanced Network's Surveyor project and monitoring performance from one-way delay of UDP packets. More recently several HENP sites have become involved with NLANR's active measurement program (AMP). In addition SLAC and CERN are part of the RIPE test-traffic project and SLAC is home for a NIMI machine. The large End-to-end performance monitoring infrastructure allows the HENP networking community to chart long term trends and closely examine short term glitches across a wide range of networks and connections. The different methodologies provide opportunities to compare results based on different protocols and statistical samples. Understanding agreement and discrepancies between results provides particular insight into the nature of the network. This paper will highlight the practical side of monitoring by reviewing the special needs of High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics experiments and provide an overview of the experience of measuring performance across a large number of interconnected networks throughout the world with various methodologies. In particular, results from each project

  14. Internet end-to-end performance monitoring for the High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics community

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Matthews, W.

    2000-02-22

    Modern High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics (HENP) experiments at Laboratories around the world present a significant challenge to wide area networks. Petabytes (1015) or exabytes (1018) of data will be generated during the lifetime of the experiment. Much of this data will be distributed via the Internet to the experiment's collaborators at Universities and Institutes throughout the world for analysis. In order to assess the feasibility of the computing goals of these and future experiments, the HENP networking community is actively monitoring performance across a large part of the Internet used by its collaborators. Since 1995, the pingER project has been collecting data on ping packet loss and round trip times. In January 2000, there are 28 monitoring sites in 15 countries gathering data on over 2,000 end-to-end pairs. HENP labs such as SLAC, Fermi Lab and CERN are using Advanced Network's Surveyor project and monitoring performance from one-way delay of UDP packets. More recently several HENP sites have become involved with NLANR's active measurement program (AMP). In addition SLAC and CERN are part of the RIPE test-traffic project and SLAC is home for a NIMI machine. The large End-to-end performance monitoring infrastructure allows the HENP networking community to chart long term trends and closely examine short term glitches across a wide range of networks and connections. The different methodologies provide opportunities to compare results based on different protocols and statistical samples. Understanding agreement and discrepancies between results provides particular insight into the nature of the network. This paper will highlight the practical side of monitoring by reviewing the special needs of High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics experiments and provide an overview of the experience of measuring performance across a large number of interconnected networks throughout the world with various methodologies. In particular, results

  15. End-of-Life Conversation Game Increases Confidence for Having End-of-Life Conversations for Chaplains-in-Training.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Scoy, Lauren Jodi; Watson-Martin, Elizabeth; Bohr, Tiffany A; Levi, Benjamin H; Green, Michael J

    2018-04-01

    Discussing end-of-life issues with patients is an essential role for chaplains. Few tools are available to help chaplains-in-training develop end-of-life communication skills. This study aimed to determine whether playing an end-of-life conversation game increases the confidence for chaplain-in-trainings to discuss end-of-life issues with patients. We used a convergent mixed methods design. Chaplains-in-training played the end-of-life conversation game twice over 2 weeks. For each game, pre- and postgame questionnaires measured confidence discussing end-of-life issues with patients and emotional affect. Between games, chaplains-in-training discussed end-of-life issues with an inpatient. One week after game 2, chaplains-in-training were individually interviewed. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum t tests. Content analysis identified interview themes. Quantitative and qualitative data sets were then integrated using a joint display. Twenty-three chaplains-in-training (52% female; 87% Caucasian; 70% were in year 1 of training) completed the study. Confidence scores (scale: 15-75; 75 = very confident) increased significantly after each game, increasing by 10.0 points from pregame 1 to postgame 2 ( P game, and shyness subscale scores decreased significantly after each game. Content analysis found that chaplains-in-training found the game to be a positive, useful experience and reported that playing twice was beneficial (not redundant). Mixed methods analysis suggest that an end-of-life conversation game is a useful tool that can increase chaplain-in-trainings' confidence for initiating end-of-life discussions with patients. A larger sample size is needed to confirm these findings.

  16. End-to-end Structural Restriction of α-Synuclein and Its Influence on Amyloid Fibril Formation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hong, Chul Suk; Park, Jae Hyung; Choe, Young Jun; Paik, Seung R.

    2014-01-01

    Relationship between molecular freedom of amyloidogenic protein and its self-assembly into amyloid fibrils has been evaluated with α-synuclein, an intrinsically unfolded protein related to Parkinson's disease, by restricting its structural plasticity through an end-to-end disulfide bond formation between two newly introduced cysteine residues on the N- and C-termini. Although the resulting circular form of α-synuclein exhibited an impaired fibrillation propensity, the restriction did not completely block the protein's interactive core since co-incubation with wild-type α-synuclein dramatically facilitated the fibrillation by producing distinctive forms of amyloid fibrils. The suppressed fibrillation propensity was instantly restored as the structural restriction was unleashed with β-mercaptoethanol. Conformational flexibility of the accreting amyloidogenic protein to pre-existing seeds has been demonstrated to be critical for fibrillar extension process by exerting structural adjustment to a complementary structure for the assembly

  17. End-to-end Structural Restriction of α-Synuclein and Its Influence on Amyloid Fibril Formation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hong, Chul Suk; Park, Jae Hyung; Choe, Young Jun; Paik, Seung R. [Seoul National University, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

    2014-09-15

    Relationship between molecular freedom of amyloidogenic protein and its self-assembly into amyloid fibrils has been evaluated with α-synuclein, an intrinsically unfolded protein related to Parkinson's disease, by restricting its structural plasticity through an end-to-end disulfide bond formation between two newly introduced cysteine residues on the N- and C-termini. Although the resulting circular form of α-synuclein exhibited an impaired fibrillation propensity, the restriction did not completely block the protein's interactive core since co-incubation with wild-type α-synuclein dramatically facilitated the fibrillation by producing distinctive forms of amyloid fibrils. The suppressed fibrillation propensity was instantly restored as the structural restriction was unleashed with β-mercaptoethanol. Conformational flexibility of the accreting amyloidogenic protein to pre-existing seeds has been demonstrated to be critical for fibrillar extension process by exerting structural adjustment to a complementary structure for the assembly.

  18. Programmer's guide to FFE: a fast front-end data-acquisition program

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Million, D.L.

    1983-05-01

    The Large Coil Test Facility project of the Fusion Energy Division has a data acquisition system which includes a large host computer and several small, peripheral front-end computers. The front-end processors handle details of data acquisition under the control of the host and pass data back to the host for storage. Some of the front ends are known as fast front ends and are required to collect a maximum of 64,000 samples each second. This speed and other hardware constraints resulted in a need for a stand-alone, assembly language task which could be downline loaded from the host system into the fast front ends. FFE (Fast Front End) was written to satisfy this need. It was written in the PDP-11 MACRO-11 assembly language for an LSI-11/23 processor. After the host loads the task into the front end, it controls the data acquisition process with a series of commands and parameters. This Programmer's Guide describes the structure and operation of FFE in detail from a programming point of view. A companion User's guide provides more information on the use of the program from the host system

  19. Longitudinal forces acting at side-to-end and end-to-side anastomoses when a knitted polyester arterial prosthesis is implanted in the dog.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dadgar, L; Downs, A R; Deng, X; Marois, Y; King, M W; Martin, L; Guidoin, R

    1995-01-01

    In a previous study, which investigated the tensions at the proximal and distal end-to-end anastomoses of a vascular prosthesis, no significant differences were found in the longitudinal forces between the two anastomotic sites after different periods of implantation. The present follow-up study was devised to study the longitudinal forces at a proximal side-to-end and a distal end-to-side anastomosis using a warp knitted polyester prosthesis implanted as a canine thorocoabdominal bypass. The external surface of the prosthesis contained a specially printed "tension indicator" design, which enabled changes in length to be assessed photographically at the two anastomoses at the time of implantation and at sacrifice. The longitudinal force at each site was then calculated using a relationship obtained experimentally between the total longitudinal force and the changes in length of the virgin graft in vitro. The in vitro measurements on the prosthesis were performed using a computer-controlled laser calibration system. Although the results showed a tendency toward a gradual loss in longitudinal force at both anastomoses over 7 months in situ, statistical analysis showed no significant difference in the longitudinal force at the two anastomotic sites after any period of implantation. Histopathological and textile analysis also showed that the characteristics of the prostheses were similar at both anastomotic sites. This does not mean, however, that the intramural stress concentrations experienced by the two sites were the same. While comparing the level of the longitudinal forces measured in this study with those observed in the previous thoracic aorta study using end-to-end anastomoses, no significant differences were observed due to the different types of anastomoses. It would appear that the longitudinal force is not one of the main etiological factors that cause the formation and localization of anastomotic failure.

  20. West Coast fish, mammal, bird life history and abunance parameters - Developing end-to-end models of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the California Current LME, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  1. High-end encroachment patterns of new products

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rhee, van der B.; Schmidt, G.; Orden, van J.

    2012-01-01

    Previous research describes two key ways in which a new product may encroach on an existing market. In high-end encroachment, the new product first sells to high-end customers and then diffuses down-market; in low-end encroachment, the new product enters at the low end and encroaches up-market. This

  2. Planck 2013 results. II. Low Frequency Instrument data processing

    CERN Document Server

    Aghanim, N; Arnaud, M; Ashdown, M; Atrio-Barandela, F; Aumont, J; Baccigalupi, C; Banday, A J; Barreiro, R B; Battaner, E; Benabed, K; Benoît, A; Benoit-Lévy, A; Bernard, J -P; Bersanelli, M; Bielewicz, P; Bobin, J; Bock, J J; Bonaldi, A; Bonavera, L; Bond, J R; Borrill, J; Bouchet, F R; Bridges, M; Bucher, M; Burigana, C; Butler, R C; Cappellini, B; Cardoso, J -F; Catalano, A; Chamballu, A; Chen, X; Chiang, L -Y; Christensen, P R; Church, S; Colombi, S; Colombo, L P L; Crill, B P; Cruz, M; Curto, A; Cuttaia, F; Danese, L; Davies, R D; Davis, R J; de Bernardis, P; de Rosa, A; de Zotti, G; Delabrouille, J; Dickinson, C; Diego, J M; Dole, H; Donzelli, S; Doré, O; Douspis, M; Dupac, X; Efstathiou, G; Enßlin, T A; Eriksen, H K; Falvella, M C; Finelli, F; Forni, O; Frailis, M; Franceschi, E; Gaier, T C; Galeotta, S; Ganga, K; Giard, M; Giardino, G; Giraud-Héraud, Y; Gjerløw, E; González-Nuevo, J; Górski, K M; Gratton, S; Gregorio, A; Gruppuso, A; Hansen, F K; Hanson, D; Harrison, D; Henrot-Versillé, S; Hernández-Monteagudo, C; Herranz, D; Hildebrandt, S R; Hivon, E; Hobson, M; Holmes, W A; Hornstrup, A; Hovest, W; Huffenberger, K M; Jaffe, T R; Jaffe, A H; Jewell, J; Jones, W C; Juvela, M; Kangaslahti, P; Keihänen, E; Keskitalo, R; Kiiveri, K; Kisner, T S; Knoche, J; Knox, L; Kunz, M; Kurki-Suonio, H; Lagache, G; Lähteenmäki, A; Lamarre, J -M; Lasenby, A; Lattanzi, M; Laureijs, R J; Lawrence, C R; Leach, S; Leahy, J P; Leonardi, R; Lesgourgues, J; Liguori, M; Lilje, P B; Lindholm, V; Linden-Vørnle, M; López-Caniego, M; Lubin, P M; Macías-Pérez, J F; Maggio, G; Maino, D; Mandolesi, N; Maris, M; Marshall, D J; Martin, P G; Martínez-González, E; Masi, S; Matarrese, S; Matthai, F; Mazzotta, P; Meinhold, P R; Melchiorri, A; Mendes, L; Mennella, A; Migliaccio, M; Mitra, S; Moneti, A; Montier, L; Morgante, G; Mortlock, D; Moss, A; Munshi, D; Naselsky, P; Natoli, P; Netterfield, C B; Nørgaard-Nielsen, H U; Novikov, D; Novikov, I; O'Dwyer, I J; Osborne, S; Paci, F; Pagano, L; Paladini, R; Paoletti, D; Partridge, B; Pasian, F; Patanchon, G; Peel, M; Perdereau, O; Perotto, L; Perrotta, F; Pierpaoli, E; Pietrobon, D; Plaszczynski, S; Platania, P; Pointecouteau, E; Polenta, G; Ponthieu, N; Popa, L; Poutanen, T; Pratt, G W; Prézeau, G; Prunet, S; Puget, J -L; Rachen, J P; Reach, W T; Rebolo, R; Reinecke, M; Remazeilles, M; Ricciardi, S; Riller, T; Rocha, G; Rosset, C; Rossetti, M; Roudier, G; Rubiño-Martín, J A; Rusholme, B; Salerno, E; Sandri, M; Santos, D; Scott, D; Seiffert, M D; Shellard, E P S; Spencer, L D; Starck, J -L; Stolyarov, V; Stompor, R; Sureau, F; Sutton, D; Suur-Uski, A -S; Sygnet, J -F; Tauber, J A; Tavagnacco, D; Terenzi, L; Toffolatti, L; Tomasi, M; Tristram, M; Tucci, M; Tuovinen, J; Türler, M; Umana, G; Valenziano, L; Valiviita, J; Van Tent, B; Varis, J; Vielva, P; Villa, F; Vittorio, N; Wade, L A; Wandelt, B D; Watson, R; Wehus, I K; White, S D M; Wilkinson, A; Yvon, D; Zacchei, A; Zonca, A

    2014-01-01

    We describe the data processing pipeline of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) data processing centre (DPC) to create and characterize full-sky maps based on the first 15.5 months of operations at 30, 44 and 70 GHz. In particular, we discuss the various steps involved in reducing the data, starting from telemetry packets through to the production of cleaned, calibrated timelines and calibrated frequency maps. Data are continuously calibrated using the modulation induced on the mean temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation by the proper motion of the spacecraft. Sky signals other than the dipole are removed by an iterative procedure based on simultaneous fitting of calibration parameters and sky maps. Noise properties are estimated from time-ordered data after the sky signal has been removed, using a generalized least square map-making algorithm. A destriping code (Madam) is employed to combine radiometric data and pointing information into sky maps, minimizing the variance of correlated...

  3. Gulf of California species and catch spatial distributions and historical time series - Developing end-to-end models of the Gulf of California

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The purpose of this project is to develop spatially discrete end-to-end models of the northern Gulf of California, linking oceanography, biogeochemistry, food web...

  4. End points for adjuvant therapy trials: has the time come to accept disease-free survival as a surrogate end point for overall survival?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gill, Sharlene; Sargent, Daniel

    2006-06-01

    The intent of adjuvant therapy is to eradicate micro-metastatic residual disease following curative resection with the goal of preventing or delaying recurrence. The time-honored standard for demonstrating efficacy of new adjuvant therapies is an improvement in overall survival (OS). This typically requires phase III trials of large sample size with lengthy follow-up. With the intent of reducing the cost and time of completing such trials, there is considerable interest in developing alternative or surrogate end points. A surrogate end point may be employed as a substitute to directly assess the effects of an intervention on an already accepted clinical end point such as mortality. When used judiciously, surrogate end points can accelerate the evaluation of new therapies, resulting in the more timely dissemination of effective therapies to patients. The current review provides a perspective on the suitability and validity of disease-free survival (DFS) as an alternative end point for OS. Criteria for establishing surrogacy and the advantages and limitations associated with the use of DFS as a primary end point in adjuvant clinical trials and as the basis for approval of new adjuvant therapies are discussed.

  5. Mere end marionetdukker

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lehmann-Jacobsen, Emilie Tinne

    2016-01-01

    Pressefrihed er en mangelvare i flere sydøstasiatiske lande, og journalisterne beskrives sjældent som andet end viljeløse marionetdukker for de siddende magthavere. Det er dog langt fra den fulde fortælling. Men myten lever videre til frustration for de fagligt stolte journalister og med konsekve......Pressefrihed er en mangelvare i flere sydøstasiatiske lande, og journalisterne beskrives sjældent som andet end viljeløse marionetdukker for de siddende magthavere. Det er dog langt fra den fulde fortælling. Men myten lever videre til frustration for de fagligt stolte journalister og med...

  6. Influence of physicians' life stances on attitudes to end-of-life decisions and actual end-of-life decision-making in six countries

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cohen, J; van Delden, J; Mortier, F

    2008-01-01

    AIM: To examine how physicians' life stances affect their attitudes to end-of-life decisions and their actual end-of-life decision-making. METHODS: Practising physicians from various specialties involved in the care of dying patients in Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland......) and Protestants (up to 20.4% in The Netherlands) reported ever having made such a decision. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that religious teachings influence to some extent end-of-life decision-making, but are certainly not blankly accepted by physicians, especially when dealing with real patients...... large life-stance groups in each country. RESULTS: Only small differences in life stance were found in all countries in general attitudes and intended and actual behaviour with regard to various end-of-life decisions. However, with regard to the administration of drugs explicitly intended to hasten...

  7. The microorganisms in chronically infected end-stage and non-end-stage cystic fibrosis patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rudkjøbing, Vibeke B; Thomsen, Trine R; Alhede, Morten

    2011-01-01

    Patients suffering from cystic fibrosis (CF) develop chronic lung infections because of highly viscous mucus, where bacteria can form biofilms. In this study, we investigated the microorganisms present in the lungs of end-stage and non-end-stage patients using standard culturing techniques and mo...

  8. On cryptographic security of end-to-end encrypted connections in WhatsApp and Telegram messengers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sergey V. Zapechnikov

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this work is to analyze the available possibilities for improving secure messaging with end-to-end connections under conditions of external violator actions and distrusted service provider. We made a comparative analysis of cryptographic security mechanisms for two widely used messengers: Telegram and WhatsApp. It was found that Telegram is based on MTProto protocol, while WhatsApp is based on the alternative Signal protocol. We examine the specific features of messengers implementation associated with random number generation on the most popular Android mobile platform. It was shown that Signal has better security properties. It is used in several other popular messengers such as TextSecure, RedPhone, GoogleAllo, FacebookMessenger, Signal along with WhatsApp. A number of possible attacks on both messengers were analyzed in details. In particular, we demonstrate that the metadata are poorly protected in both messengers. Metadata security may be one of the goals for further studies.

  9. Investigation of vertebral ''end plate sclerosis''

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, S.W.; Mathie, A.G.; Jackson, J.E.; Hughes, S.P.F.

    2001-01-01

    To evaluate the association between vertebral ''end plate sclerosis'' and neck pain. A retrospective study was carried out of lateral cervical spine radiographs with a Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS). Two hundred patients' files were randomly assessed, comprising four equal groups, A to D. The mean ages of the patients were 62±7.4 years, 61±7.5 years, 40±5.6 years and 23±5.6 years respectively. In group A, all patients had symptoms of neck pain and a radiographic diagnosis of ''end plate sclerosis'' of the cervical spine. In groups B to D, asymptomatic patients were recruited and their age groups were 50-69, 30-49 and 10-29 years respectively. Using the PACS, the radiographic density and the sagittal diameter, thickness and area of the end plates at the C5 level were measured. Results and conclusions: No significant differences were found in the radiographic density of the end plates either between the symptomatic and asymptomatic groups (groups A and B), or between different age groups (groups B, C and D). A significant increase in end plate area and thickness was found, however, in both group B (P<0.005) and group C (P<0.01) in comparison with group D. This indicates that the extent of end plate sclerosis increases with age. Our results suggest that the radiographic density of cervical vertebral end plates correlates neither with neck pain nor with increasing age. The radiological sign of ''end plate sclerosis'' may be over-reported, further limiting its value in the assessment of patients with cervical spondylosis. (orig.)

  10. End to End Digitisation and Analysis of Three-Dimensional Coral Models, from Communities to Corallites.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luis Gutierrez-Heredia

    Full Text Available Coral reefs hosts nearly 25% of all marine species and provide food sources for half a billion people worldwide while only a very small percentage have been surveyed. Advances in technology and processing along with affordable underwater cameras and Internet availability gives us the possibility to provide tools and softwares to survey entire coral reefs. Holistic ecological analyses of corals require not only the community view (10s to 100s of meters, but also the single colony analysis as well as corallite identification. As corals are three-dimensional, classical approaches to determine percent cover and structural complexity across spatial scales are inefficient, time-consuming and limited to experts. Here we propose an end-to-end approach to estimate these parameters using low-cost equipment (GoPro, Canon and freeware (123D Catch, Meshmixer and Netfabb, allowing every community to participate in surveys and monitoring of their coral ecosystem. We demonstrate our approach on 9 species of underwater colonies in ranging size and morphology. 3D models of underwater colonies, fresh samples and bleached skeletons with high quality texture mapping and detailed topographic morphology were produced, and Surface Area and Volume measurements (parameters widely used for ecological and coral health studies were calculated and analysed. Moreover, we integrated collected sample models with micro-photogrammetry models of individual corallites to aid identification and colony and polyp scale analysis.

  11. End to End Digitisation and Analysis of Three-Dimensional Coral Models, from Communities to Corallites.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gutierrez-Heredia, Luis; Benzoni, Francesca; Murphy, Emma; Reynaud, Emmanuel G

    2016-01-01

    Coral reefs hosts nearly 25% of all marine species and provide food sources for half a billion people worldwide while only a very small percentage have been surveyed. Advances in technology and processing along with affordable underwater cameras and Internet availability gives us the possibility to provide tools and softwares to survey entire coral reefs. Holistic ecological analyses of corals require not only the community view (10s to 100s of meters), but also the single colony analysis as well as corallite identification. As corals are three-dimensional, classical approaches to determine percent cover and structural complexity across spatial scales are inefficient, time-consuming and limited to experts. Here we propose an end-to-end approach to estimate these parameters using low-cost equipment (GoPro, Canon) and freeware (123D Catch, Meshmixer and Netfabb), allowing every community to participate in surveys and monitoring of their coral ecosystem. We demonstrate our approach on 9 species of underwater colonies in ranging size and morphology. 3D models of underwater colonies, fresh samples and bleached skeletons with high quality texture mapping and detailed topographic morphology were produced, and Surface Area and Volume measurements (parameters widely used for ecological and coral health studies) were calculated and analysed. Moreover, we integrated collected sample models with micro-photogrammetry models of individual corallites to aid identification and colony and polyp scale analysis.

  12. SU-F-J-177: A Novel Image Analysis Technique (center Pixel Method) to Quantify End-To-End Tests

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wen, N; Chetty, I [Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI (United States); Snyder, K [Henry Ford Hospital System, Detroit, MI (United States); Scheib, S [Varian Medical System, Barton (Switzerland); Qin, Y; Li, H [Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan (United States)

    2016-06-15

    Purpose: To implement a novel image analysis technique, “center pixel method”, to quantify end-to-end tests accuracy of a frameless, image guided stereotactic radiosurgery system. Methods: The localization accuracy was determined by delivering radiation to an end-to-end prototype phantom. The phantom was scanned with 0.8 mm slice thickness. The treatment isocenter was placed at the center of the phantom. In the treatment room, CBCT images of the phantom (kVp=77, mAs=1022, slice thickness 1 mm) were acquired to register to the reference CT images. 6D couch correction were applied based on the registration results. Electronic Portal Imaging Device (EPID)-based Winston Lutz (WL) tests were performed to quantify the errors of the targeting accuracy of the system at 15 combinations of gantry, collimator and couch positions. The images were analyzed using two different methods. a) The classic method. The deviation was calculated by measuring the radial distance between the center of the central BB and the full width at half maximum of the radiation field. b) The center pixel method. Since the imager projection offset from the treatment isocenter was known from the IsoCal calibration, the deviation was determined between the center of the BB and the central pixel of the imager panel. Results: Using the automatic registration method to localize the phantom and the classic method of measuring the deviation of the BB center, the mean and standard deviation of the radial distance was 0.44 ± 0.25, 0.47 ± 0.26, and 0.43 ± 0.13 mm for the jaw, MLC and cone defined field sizes respectively. When the center pixel method was used, the mean and standard deviation was 0.32 ± 0.18, 0.32 ± 0.17, and 0.32 ± 0.19 mm respectively. Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that the center pixel method accurately analyzes the WL images to evaluate the targeting accuracy of the radiosurgery system. The work was supported by a Research Scholar Grant, RSG-15-137-01-CCE from the American

  13. Availability and End-to-end Reliability in Low Duty Cycle Multihop Wireless Sensor Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suhonen, Jukka; Hämäläinen, Timo D; Hännikäinen, Marko

    2009-01-01

    A wireless sensor network (WSN) is an ad-hoc technology that may even consist of thousands of nodes, which necessitates autonomic, self-organizing and multihop operations. A typical WSN node is battery powered, which makes the network lifetime the primary concern. The highest energy efficiency is achieved with low duty cycle operation, however, this alone is not enough. WSNs are deployed for different uses, each requiring acceptable Quality of Service (QoS). Due to the unique characteristics of WSNs, such as dynamic wireless multihop routing and resource constraints, the legacy QoS metrics are not feasible as such. We give a new definition to measure and implement QoS in low duty cycle WSNs, namely availability and reliability. Then, we analyze the effect of duty cycling for reaching the availability and reliability. The results are obtained by simulations with ZigBee and proprietary TUTWSN protocols. Based on the results, we also propose a data forwarding algorithm suitable for resource constrained WSNs that guarantees end-to-end reliability while adding a small overhead that is relative to the packet error rate (PER). The forwarding algorithm guarantees reliability up to 30% PER.

  14. Availability and End-to-end Reliability in Low Duty Cycle MultihopWireless Sensor Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Timo D. Hämäläinen

    2009-03-01

    Full Text Available A wireless sensor network (WSN is an ad-hoc technology that may even consist of thousands of nodes, which necessitates autonomic, self-organizing and multihop operations. A typical WSN node is battery powered, which makes the network lifetime the primary concern. The highest energy efficiency is achieved with low duty cycle operation, however, this alone is not enough. WSNs are deployed for different uses, each requiring acceptable Quality of Service (QoS. Due to the unique characteristics of WSNs, such as dynamic wireless multihop routing and resource constraints, the legacy QoS metrics are not feasible as such. We give a new definition to measure and implement QoS in low duty cycle WSNs, namely availability and reliability. Then, we analyze the effect of duty cycling for reaching the availability and reliability. The results are obtained by simulations with ZigBee and proprietary TUTWSN protocols. Based on the results, we also propose a data forwarding algorithm suitable for resource constrained WSNs that guarantees end-to-end reliability while adding a small overhead that is relative to the packet error rate (PER. The forwarding algorithm guarantees reliability up to 30% PER.

  15. Both movement-end and task-end are critical for error feedback in visuomotor adaptation: a behavioral experiment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Takumi Ishikawa

    Full Text Available An important issue in motor learning/adaptation research is how the brain accepts the error information necessary for maintaining and improving task performance in a changing environment. The present study focuses on the effect of timing of error feedback. Previous research has demonstrated that adaptation to displacement of the visual field by prisms in a manual reaching task is significantly slowed by delayed visual feedback of the endpoint, suggesting that error feedback is most effective when given at the end of a movement. To further elucidate the brain mechanism by which error information is accepted in visuomotor adaptation, we tested whether error acceptance is linked to the end of a given task or to the end of an executed movement. We conducted a behavioral experiment using a virtual shooting task in which subjects controlled their wrist movements to meet a target with a cursor as accurately as possible. We manipulated the timing of visual feedback of the impact position so that it occurred either ahead of or behind the true time of impact. In another condition, the impact timing was explicitly indicated by an additional cue. The magnitude of the aftereffect significantly varied depending on the timing of feedback (p < 0.05, Friedman's Test. Interestingly, two distinct peaks of aftereffect were observed around movement-end and around task-end, irrespective of the existence of the timing cue. However, the peak around task-end was sharper when the timing cue was given. Our results demonstrate that the brain efficiently accepts error information at both movement-end and task-end, suggesting that two different learning mechanisms may underlie visuomotor transformation.

  16. Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS): What Nurses Need to Know.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Essenmacher, Carol; Naegle, Madeline; Baird, Carolyn; Vest, Bridgette; Spielmann, Rene; Smith-East, Marie; Powers, Leigh

    Efforts to decrease adverse effects of tobacco use are affected by emergence of new nicotine delivery products. Advertising, product promotion, and social media promote use of these products, yet a lack of evidence regarding safety leaves nurses unprepared to counsel patients. To critically evaluate current research, reviews of literature, expert opinion, and stakeholder policy proposals on use and safety of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). A targeted examination of literature generated by key stakeholders and subject matter experts was conducted using key words, modified by risk factors, and limited to the past 8 years. Current knowledge gaps in research literature and practice implications of the literature are discussed. The safety of ENDS is questionable and unclear. There are clear health risks of nicotine exposure to developing brains. Potential health risks of ENDS secondhand emissions exposure exist. Using ENDS to facilitate total tobacco cessation is not proven.

  17. 7 CFR 51.1240 - Paper ends.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Paper ends. 51.1240 Section 51.1240 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Cleaned Virginia Type Peanuts in the Shell Definitions § 51.1240 Paper ends. Paper ends means...

  18. Kinetic approach to plasma end loss from linear devices

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dreicer, H.

    1976-01-01

    A first step in the direction of a kinetic approach to end loss has been presented. This approach brings to light some fundamental processes not uncovered by the magnetohydrodynamic or guiding center approach. Attention was focused on the basically transient phenomenon in a way that describes the quite different behavior of collision dominated and collisionless ions, but ignores the magnetic nozzle effects near the ends of the system. The treatment illuminates some of the roles played by the parameter l/sub ii//L, and suggests the direction for more detailed investigations. End loss from linear systems is a very many faceted problem. Kinetic effects, magnetic effects, heat flow, etc. are all intermixed, and it will require a strong long term experimental and theoretical program to unravel all of its mysteries

  19. Surrogate end points in clinical research: hazardous to your health.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grimes, David A; Schulz, Kenneth F

    2005-05-01

    Surrogate end points in clinical research pose real danger. A surrogate end point is an outcome measure, commonly a laboratory test, that substitutes for a clinical event of true importance. Resistance to activated protein C, for example, has been used as a surrogate for venous thrombosis in women using oral contraceptives. Other examples of inappropriate surrogate end points in contraception include the postcoital test instead of pregnancy to evaluate new spermicides, breakage and slippage instead of pregnancy to evaluate condoms, and bone mineral density instead of fracture to assess the safety of depo-medroxyprogesterone acetate. None of these markers captures the effect of the treatment on the true outcome. A valid surrogate end point must both correlate with and accurately predict the outcome of interest. Although many surrogate markers correlate with an outcome, few have been shown to capture the effect of a treatment (for example, oral contraceptives) on the outcome (venous thrombosis). As a result, thousands of useless and misleading reports on surrogate end points litter the medical literature. New drugs have been shown to benefit a surrogate marker, but, paradoxically, triple the risk of death. Thousands of patients have died needlessly because of reliance on invalid surrogate markers. Researchers should avoid surrogate end points unless they have been validated; that requires at least one well done trial using both the surrogate and true outcome. The clinical maxim that "a difference to be a difference must make a difference" applies to research as well. Clinical research should focus on outcomes that matter.

  20. The end of truth?

    OpenAIRE

    C. W. du Toit

    1997-01-01

    As we are approaching the end of the century, many ideas, systems, and certainties, previously taken for granted, seem to be questioned, altered and rejected. One of these is the notion of truth, which pervades the very fibre of Western thinking. Rejecting the relevant critique as simply a postmodem fad, this article proceeds to give attention to the questions regarding the end of religious, scientific, and metaphysical truth. Truth and power are dealt with, as well as the narrative nature of...

  1. A gastrocnemius heterotopical transplant model with end-to-side neurorraphy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jaeger, Marcos Ricardo de Oliveira; Silva, Jefferson Luis Braga; Bain, James; Ely, Pedro Bins; Pires, Jefferson André; Ferreira, Lydia Masako

    2014-01-01

    To present an animal model to assess the effects of end-to-side innervation in the heterotopically transplanted model with reduced chances of neural contamination. The medial portion of the gastrocnemius muscle in wistar male rats was isolated and its pedicle dissected and performed a flap in the abdominal portion. To prevent neural contamination in the abdominal region, the muscle was wrapped with a Goretex(r) sheet. The specimens were divided into 2 groups (G). In G1 was performed an end-to-end suture between tibial nerve of the gastrocnemius and femoral motor nerve and between the saphenous sensory nerve and the motor nerve. In G2 was performed a end-to-side suture between the tibial nerve and the motor femoral and between the tibial nerve and saphenous motor nerve. The specimens were evaluated 60 days later to check the structure of the neurorraphy. Sections were obtained proximal and distal to the coaptation site. The medial gastrocnemius muscle had the advantage of maintaining visible mass after 60 days. No disruption of the coaptation site was found. No major injury to the donor nerve was seen in group 2. The proposed model is simple, reproduciple and prevent the neural contamination in the flap in end-to-side suture.

  2. Online Help to End-Users in a Networked Environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meyer, Paul

    1991-01-01

    Discusses the need for online help for end-users based on experiences with an online public access catalog (OPAC) at the University of Cape Town libraries. The concept of end users is examined, the role of search intermediaries in information systems is explained, and online help and systems design is discussed. (LRW)

  3. Max Planck in the Social Context

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Broda, E.

    1983-07-01

    Planck was the founder of quantum theory, and therefore of modern physics. Moreover, because of the strength of his character and of his towering position in scientific life he had strong public influence. In respect to atomistics Planck went over from the negative position of Mach to the positive position of Boltzmann when he established his radiation law and introduced the quantum of action. Einstein was a supporter of atomistics all his life. From the beginning, Planck furthered the Theory of Relativity and Einstein. In the Weimar Republic he supported Einstein against the socalled 'German Physics'. Planck had the courage to praise Einstein in public even after Hitler came to power. Always interested in philosophy, Planck was initially under the influence of Mach's positivism, but later he turned, like Einstein, to realism. Boltzmann had always been arealist and materialist. Planck produced important ideas also on the problem of Free Will. In politics, Planck was a conventional, conservative, PrussianGerman patriot before the First War. However, under Hitler he became reserved towards the State. As well as he could, but with little success, Planck tried to prevent the worst. Planck was always religious, and he ascribed a strong role to religion also in public life. But he did not accept a personal, and therefore not a Christian, God. An attempt is made to interpret Planck's contradictory position in this respect. Planck's life was full of professional success, but it was tragically darkened by personal blows of fate. A relationship with the path of Germany and of her conservative intellectual leadership is sought. (author) [German] Planck war der Begründer der Quantentheorie und daher der modernen Physik. Außerdem hatte er sowohl durch die Kraft seines Charakters als auch durch seine überragenden Funktionen im wissenschaftlichen Leben starken öffentlichen Einfluß. In Bezug auf die Stellung zur Atomistik ging Planck, als er sein Strahlungsgesetz begr

  4. Where to place the saving obligation: Energy end-users or suppliers?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bertoldi, Paolo; Labanca, Nicola; Rezessy, Silvia; Steuwer, Sibyl; Oikonomou, Vlasis

    2013-01-01

    Obligations to save energy differentiate, among other features, by obliged parties. These are obligations on energy suppliers and energy end-users. Supplier obligations have been introduced in North America, Europe and Australia. Under supplier obligations energy suppliers have to comply with mandatory energy saving targets and thus they implement (directly or via third parties) energy efficiency projects on their clients’ premises, or they decide to trade certified project savings if this option is envisaged by their obligation scheme. In several emerging schemes such as the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme, the Tokyo Emission Trading Scheme or the Perform Achieve and Trade (PAT) Scheme in India, the obligation to reduce energy consumption is placed on large end-users directly and end-users are allowed to trade emissions allowances or energy saving certificates. The paper starts with presenting these two conceptually different ways for introducing energy saving obligations. Then it analyses advantages and disadvantages of end-users obligations compared to suppliers obligations. The preliminary conclusion of the paper is that supplier obligations seem to be well-suited for the residential sector, but end-user saving obligations may offer advantages when it comes to the industrial and commercial sectors. - Highlights: • We present different ways for introducing energy saving obligations. • We analyse energy end-users obligations vs. supplier obligations. • Supplier obligations seem to be well-suited for the residential sector. • End-user obligations offer advantages in the industrial and commercial sectors

  5. Wear of micro end mills

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bissacco, Giuliano; Hansen, Hans Nørgaard; De Chiffre, Leonardo

    2005-01-01

    This paper addresses the important issue of wear on micro end mills considering relevant metrological tools for its characterization and quantification. Investigation of wear on micro end mills is particularly difficult and no data are available in the literature. Small worn volumes cause large...... part. For this investigation 200 microns end mills are considered. Visual inspection of the micro tools requires high magnification and depth of focus. 3D reconstruction based on scanning electron microscope (SEM) images and stereo-pair technique is foreseen as a possible method for quantification...

  6. Status report of the end-to-end ASKAP software system: towards early science operations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guzman, Juan Carlos; Chapman, Jessica; Marquarding, Malte; Whiting, Matthew

    2016-08-01

    300 MHz bandwidth for Array Release 1; followed by the deployment of the real-time data processing components. In addition to the Central Processor, the first production release of the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA) has also been deployed in one of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre facilities and it is integrated to the end-to-end ASKAP data flow system. This paper describes the current status of the "end-to-end" data flow software system from preparing observations to data acquisition, processing and archiving; and the challenges of integrating an HPC facility as a key part of the instrument. It also shares some lessons learned since the start of integration activities and the challenges ahead in preparation for the start of the Early Science program.

  7. End-to-End Trajectory for Conjunction Class Mars Missions Using Hybrid Solar-Electric/Chemical Transportation System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chai, Patrick R.; Merrill, Raymond G.; Qu, Min

    2016-01-01

    NASA's Human Spaceflight Architecture Team is developing a reusable hybrid transportation architecture in which both chemical and solar-electric propulsion systems are used to deliver crew and cargo to exploration destinations. By combining chemical and solar-electric propulsion into a single spacecraft and applying each where it is most effective, the hybrid architecture enables a series of Mars trajectories that are more fuel efficient than an all chemical propulsion architecture without significant increases to trip time. The architecture calls for the aggregation of exploration assets in cislunar space prior to departure for Mars and utilizes high energy lunar-distant high Earth orbits for the final staging prior to departure. This paper presents the detailed analysis of various cislunar operations for the EMC Hybrid architecture as well as the result of the higher fidelity end-to-end trajectory analysis to understand the implications of the design choices on the Mars exploration campaign.

  8. End-to-End Trade-space Analysis for Designing Constellation Missions

    Science.gov (United States)

    LeMoigne, J.; Dabney, P.; Foreman, V.; Grogan, P.; Hache, S.; Holland, M. P.; Hughes, S. P.; Nag, S.; Siddiqi, A.

    2017-12-01

    cost model represents an aggregate model consisting of Cost Estimating Relationships (CERs) from widely accepted models. The current GUI automatically generates graphics representing metrics such as average revisit time or coverage as a function of cost. The end-to-end system will be demonstrated as part of the presentation.

  9. Environmental Education Research: To What Ends?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jickling, Bob

    2009-01-01

    This paper engages questions about ends in environmental education research. In doing so, I argue that such questions are essentially normative, and that normative questions are underrepresented in this field. After cautioning about perils of prescribing research agendas, I gently suggest that in environmental education key normative questions…

  10. A novel end-to-end classifier using domain transferred deep convolutional neural networks for biomedical images.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pang, Shuchao; Yu, Zhezhou; Orgun, Mehmet A

    2017-03-01

    Highly accurate classification of biomedical images is an essential task in the clinical diagnosis of numerous medical diseases identified from those images. Traditional image classification methods combined with hand-crafted image feature descriptors and various classifiers are not able to effectively improve the accuracy rate and meet the high requirements of classification of biomedical images. The same also holds true for artificial neural network models directly trained with limited biomedical images used as training data or directly used as a black box to extract the deep features based on another distant dataset. In this study, we propose a highly reliable and accurate end-to-end classifier for all kinds of biomedical images via deep learning and transfer learning. We first apply domain transferred deep convolutional neural network for building a deep model; and then develop an overall deep learning architecture based on the raw pixels of original biomedical images using supervised training. In our model, we do not need the manual design of the feature space, seek an effective feature vector classifier or segment specific detection object and image patches, which are the main technological difficulties in the adoption of traditional image classification methods. Moreover, we do not need to be concerned with whether there are large training sets of annotated biomedical images, affordable parallel computing resources featuring GPUs or long times to wait for training a perfect deep model, which are the main problems to train deep neural networks for biomedical image classification as observed in recent works. With the utilization of a simple data augmentation method and fast convergence speed, our algorithm can achieve the best accuracy rate and outstanding classification ability for biomedical images. We have evaluated our classifier on several well-known public biomedical datasets and compared it with several state-of-the-art approaches. We propose a robust

  11. Cheating at the end to avoid regret.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Effron, Daniel A; Bryan, Christopher J; Murnighan, J Keith

    2015-09-01

    How do people behave when they face a finite series of opportunities to cheat with little or no risk of detection? In 4 experiments and a small meta-analysis, we analyzed over 25,000 cheating opportunities faced by over 2,500 people. The results suggested that the odds of cheating are almost 3 times higher at the end of a series than earlier. Participants could cheat in 1 of 2 ways: They could lie about the outcome of a private coin flip to get a payoff that they would otherwise not receive (Studies 1-3) or they could overbill for their work (Study 4). We manipulated the number of cheating opportunities they expected but held the actual number of opportunities constant. The data showed that the likelihood of cheating and the extent of dishonesty were both greater when people believed that they were facing a last choice. Mediation analyses suggested that anticipatory regret about passing up a chance to enrich oneself drove this cheat-at-the-end effect. We found no support for alternative explanations based on the possibility that multiple cheating opportunities depleted people's self-control, eroded their moral standards, or made them feel that they had earned the right to cheat. The data also suggested that the cheat-at-the-end effect may be limited to relatively short series of cheating opportunities (i.e., n < 20). Our discussion addresses the psychological and behavioral dynamics of repeated ethical choices. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  12. Pharmacotherapy at the end-of-life.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    O'Mahony, Denis

    2011-07-01

    Older people reaching end-of-life status are particularly at risk from inter-related adverse effects of pharmacotherapy, including polypharmacy, inappropriate medications and adverse drug events. These adverse effects of pharmacotherapy may be highly detrimental, as well as highly expensive. End-of-life pharmacotherapy is sometimes perceived to be complex and challenging, probably unnecessarily. This relates in part to the poorly developed evidence base and lack of high-quality research in this area. In this article, we deal with some of the key issues relating to pharmacotherapy in end-of-life patients, namely (i) the guiding principles of drug selection, (ii) the main drugs and drug classes that are best avoided, (iii) the benefits of \\'oligopharmacy\\' (i.e. deliberate avoidance of polypharmacy) in end-of-life patients.

  13. Secondary link adaptation in cognitive radio networks: End-to-end performance with cross-layer design

    KAUST Repository

    Ma, Hao

    2012-04-01

    Under spectrum-sharing constraints, we consider the secondary link exploiting cross-layer combining of adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) at the physical layer with truncated automatic repeat request (T-ARQ) at the data link layer in cognitive radio networks. Both, basic AMC and aggressive AMC, are adopted to optimize the overall average spectral efficiency, subject to the interference constraints imposed by the primary user of the shared spectrum band and a target packet loss rate. We achieve the optimal boundary points in closed form to choose the AMC transmission modes by taking into account the channel state information from the secondary transmitter to both the primary receiver and the secondary receiver. Moreover, numerical results substantiate that, without any cost in the transmitter/receiver design nor the end-to-end delay, the scheme with aggressive AMC outperforms that with conventional AMC. The main reason is that, with aggressive AMC, different transmission modes utilized in the initial packet transmission and the following retransmissions match the time-varying channel conditions better than the basic pattern. © 2012 IEEE.

  14. Reconstruction after ureteral resection during HIPEC surgery: Re-implantation with uretero-neocystostomy seems safer than end-to-end anastomosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pinar, U; Tremblay, J-F; Passot, G; Dazza, M; Glehen, O; Tuech, J-J; Pocard, M

    2017-09-01

    Resection of the pelvic ureter may be necessary in cytoreductive surgery for peritoneal carcinomatosis in combination with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). As the morbidity for cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC has decreased, expert teams have begun to perform increasingly complex surgical procedures associated with HIPEC, including pelvic reconstructions. After ureteral resection, two types of reconstruction are possible: uretero-ureteral end-to-end anastomosis and uretero-vesical re-implantation or uretero-neocystostomy (the so-called psoas hitch technique). By compiling the experience of three surgical teams that perform HIPEC surgeries, we have tried to compare the effectiveness of these two techniques. A retrospective comparative case-matched multicenter study was conducted for patients undergoing operation between 2005 and 2014. Patients included had undergone resection of the pelvic ureter during cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC for peritoneal carcinomatomosis; ureteral reconstruction was by either end-to-end anastomosis (EEA group) or re-implantation uretero-neocystostomy (RUC group). The primary endpoint was the occurrence of urinary fistula in postoperative follow-up. There were 14 patients in the EEA group and 14 in the RUC group. The groups were comparable for age, extent of carcinomatosis (PCI index) and operative duration. Four urinary fistulas occurred in the EEA group (28.5%) versus zero fistulas in the RUC group (0%) (P=0.0308). Re-implantation with uretero-neocystostomy during cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC is the preferred technique for reconstruction after ureteral resection in case of renal conservation. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

  15. Can Planck-mass relics of evaporating black holes close the Universe

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    MacGibbon, J.H.

    1987-01-01

    The authors propose that the cosmological dark matter consists of the Planck-mass remnants of evaporating primordial black holes. Such remnants would be expected to have close to the critical density if the black holes evaporating at the present epoch have the maximum density consistent with cosmic-ray constraints. Primordial black holes of the required density may form naturally at the end of an inflationary epoch. Planck-mass relics would behave dynamically just like 'cold dark matter' and would therefore share the attractions of other 'cold' candidates. In addition, because the baryonic matter in black holes cannot participate in nucleosynthesis the limits on the baryonic content of the Universe set by primordial nucleosynthesis are circumvented. (author)

  16. Det gående interview

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rasmussen, Kim

    2017-01-01

    Det gående interview understøtter børns aktive deltagelse, og giver indblik i den materielle og kulturelle kontekst......Det gående interview understøtter børns aktive deltagelse, og giver indblik i den materielle og kulturelle kontekst...

  17. Validation of intermediate end points in cancer research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schatzkin, A; Freedman, L S; Schiffman, M H; Dawsey, S M

    1990-11-21

    Investigations using intermediate end points as cancer surrogates are quicker, smaller, and less expensive than studies that use malignancy as the end point. We present a strategy for determining whether a given biomarker is a valid intermediate end point between an exposure and incidence of cancer. Candidate intermediate end points may be selected from case series, ecologic studies, and animal experiments. Prospective cohort and sometimes case-control studies may be used to quantify the intermediate end point-cancer association. The most appropriate measure of this association is the attributable proportion. The intermediate end point is a valid cancer surrogate if the attributable proportion is close to 1.0, but not if it is close to 0. Usually, the attributable proportion is close to neither 1.0 nor 0; in this case, valid surrogacy requires that the intermediate end point mediate an established exposure-cancer relation. This would in turn imply that the exposure effect would vanish if adjusted for the intermediate end point. We discuss the relative advantages of intervention and observational studies for the validation of intermediate end points. This validation strategy also may be applied to intermediate end points for adverse reproductive outcomes and chronic diseases other than cancer.

  18. Atmospheric carbon injection linked to end-Triassic mass extinction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruhl, Micha; Bonis, Nina R; Reichart, Gert-Jan; Sinninghe Damsté, Jaap S; Kürschner, Wolfram M

    2011-07-22

    The end-Triassic mass extinction (~201.4 million years ago), marked by terrestrial ecosystem turnover and up to ~50% loss in marine biodiversity, has been attributed to intensified volcanic activity during the break-up of Pangaea. Here, we present compound-specific carbon-isotope data of long-chain n-alkanes derived from waxes of land plants, showing a ~8.5 per mil negative excursion, coincident with the extinction interval. These data indicate strong carbon-13 depletion of the end-Triassic atmosphere, within only 10,000 to 20,000 years. The magnitude and rate of this carbon-cycle disruption can be explained by the injection of at least ~12 × 10(3) gigatons of isotopically depleted carbon as methane into the atmosphere. Concurrent vegetation changes reflect strong warming and an enhanced hydrological cycle. Hence, end-Triassic events are robustly linked to methane-derived massive carbon release and associated climate change.

  19. NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory - An End-to-End Observational Science Enterprise

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rockwell, A.; Baeuerle, B.; Grubišić, V.; Hock, T. F.; Lee, W. C.; Ranson, J.; Stith, J. L.; Stossmeister, G.

    2017-12-01

    Researchers who want to understand and describe the Earth System require high-quality observations of the atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere. Making these observations not only requires capable research platforms and state-of-the-art instrumentation but also benefits from comprehensive in-field project management and data services. NCAR's Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) is an end-to-end observational science enterprise that provides leadership in observational research to scientists from universities, U.S. government agencies, and NCAR. Deployment: EOL manages the majority of the NSF Lower Atmosphere Observing Facilities, which includes research aircraft, radars, lidars, profilers, and surface and sounding systems. This suite is designed to address a wide range of Earth system science - from microscale to climate process studies and from the planet's surface into the Upper Troposphere/Lower Stratosphere. EOL offers scientific, technical, operational, and logistics support to small and large field campaigns across the globe. Development: By working closely with the scientific community, EOL's engineering and scientific staff actively develop the next generation of observing facilities, staying abreast of emerging trends, technologies, and applications in order to improve our measurement capabilities. Through our Design and Fabrication Services, we also offer high-level engineering and technical expertise, mechanical design, and fabrication to the atmospheric research community. Data Services: EOL's platforms and instruments collect unique datasets that must be validated, archived, and made available to the research community. EOL's Data Management and Services deliver high-quality datasets and metadata in ways that are transparent, secure, and easily accessible. We are committed to the highest standard of data stewardship from collection to validation to archival. Discovery: EOL promotes curiosity about Earth science, and fosters advanced understanding of the

  20. 12 CFR 221.109 - Loan to open-end investment company.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... CARRYING MARGIN STOCK (REGULATION U) Interpretations § 221.109 Loan to open-end investment company. In... customarily purchases stocks registered on a national securities exchange, the Board stated that in view of... 12 Banks and Banking 3 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Loan to open-end investment company. 221.109...

  1. Completion of the first TRT End-cap

    CERN Multimedia

    Catinaccio, A; Rohne, O

    On July 1, the first end-cap of the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) was successfully completed in terms of the integration of the wheels assembled in Russia with their front-end electronics. The two groups of the detector, fully assembled and equipped with front-end electronics, were rotated from their horizontal position during stacking to their nominal vertical position, in which they will be integrated with the corresponding end-cap silicon-strip (SCT) detector towards the end of 2005, before installation into ATLAS in spring 2006. After starting the assembly in the SR building one year ago, the TRT team reached this important milestone, which marks the final realization and validation of the engineering concept developed by the CERN DT1 (ex-TA1) and ATT teams. A TRT end-cap consists of two sets of identical and independent wheels. The first type of wheels (type A, 12 wheels, positioned closest to the primary interaction point) contains 6144 radial straws positioned in eight successive layers s...

  2. MFTF-α+T end plug magnet design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Srivastava, V.C.; O'Toole, J.A.

    1983-01-01

    The conceptual design of the end-plug magnets for MFTF-α+T is described. MFTF-α+ T is a near-term upgrade of MFTF-B, which features new end plugs to improve performance. The Fusion Engineering Design Center has performed the engineering design of MFTF-α+T under the overall direction of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Each end plug consists of two Yin-Yang pairs, each with approx.2.5:1 mirror ratio and approx.5-T peak field on axis; two transition coils; and a recircularizing solenoid. This paper describes the end-plug magnet system functional requirements and presents a conceptual design that meets them. The peak field at the windings of the end-plug coils is approx.6-T. These coils are designed using the NbTi MFTF-B conductor and cooled by a 4.2K liquid helium bath. All the end-plug magnets are designed to operate in the cryostable mode with adequate quench protection for safety. Shielding requirements are stated and a summary of heat loads is provided. Field and force calculations are discussed. The field on axis is shown to meet the functional requirements. Force resultants are reported in terms of winding running loads and resultant coil forces are also given. The magnet structural support is described. A trade study to determine the optimum end-cell coil internal nuclear shield thickness and the resulting coil size based on minimizing the end-cell life cycle cost is summarized

  3. End-to-end requirements management for multiprojects in the construction industry

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wörösch, Michael

    Performance Concrete and insulation materials – is used. By means of action research and interviews of case project staff it has become evident that many elements of formalized requirements management are missing in the case project. To fill those gaps and be able to manage requirements end...... with regards to requirements management. As the literature study gives little new information, a series of interviews are initiated with experts from industry and universities. Those interviews reveal major shortcomings in the way requirements are handled in Danish construction companies today. In order...... to give managers of construction projects a useful and guiding tool for formally managing requirements that is rooted in practice, the “Conceptual requirements management framework”, is created. The framework builds upon the gathered empirical data, obtained by action research, interviews, and available...

  4. ATLAS End-cap Part II

    CERN Multimedia

    2007-01-01

    The epic journey of the ATLAS magnets is drawing to an end. On Thursday 12 July, the second end-cap of the ATLAS toroid magnet was lowered into the cavern of the experiment with the same degree of precision as the first (see Bulletin No. 26/2007). This spectacular descent of the 240-tonne component, is one of the last transport to be completed for ATLAS.

  5. An application of differential geometry to SSC magnet end winding

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cook, J.M.

    1990-04-01

    It is expected that a large fraction of the total cost of the proposed Superconducting Supercollider will be spent on magnets, and, as Leon Lederman has remarked, ''most of the cost of making a magnet is in the ends.'' Among the mechanical problems to be solved there is the construction of an end-configuration for the superconducting cables which will minimize their strain energy. The purpose of this paper is to promote the use of differential geometry in this minimization. The use will be illustrated by a specific application to the winding of dipole ends. The cables are assumed to be clamped so firmly that their strain is not altered by Lorentz stresses. 15 refs

  6. A Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor with End-to-end Performance Optimization

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zhu, Michelle M. [Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale, IL (United States); Wu, Chase Q. [Univ. of Memphis, TN (United States)

    2013-11-07

    Next-generation eScience applications often generate large amounts of simulation, experimental, or observational data that must be shared and managed by collaborative organizations. Advanced networking technologies and services have been rapidly developed and deployed to facilitate such massive data transfer. However, these technologies and services have not been fully utilized mainly because their use typically requires significant domain knowledge and in many cases application users are even not aware of their existence. By leveraging the functionalities of an existing Network-Aware Data Movement Advisor (NADMA) utility, we propose a new Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor (WINDMA) with end-to-end performance optimization for this DOE funded project. This WINDMA system integrates three major components: resource discovery, data movement, and status monitoring, and supports the sharing of common data movement workflows through account and database management. This system provides a web interface and interacts with existing data/space management and discovery services such as Storage Resource Management, transport methods such as GridFTP and GlobusOnline, and network resource provisioning brokers such as ION and OSCARS. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed transport-support workflow system in several use cases based on its implementation and deployment in DOE wide-area networks.

  7. Progress in LAr EndCap Calorimetry: News from the Hadronic EndCap Group.

    CERN Multimedia

    Oram, C.J.

    With module production and testing completed for the Hadronic EndCap calorimeter, the attention of the HEC group is heavily directed towards wheel assembly in building 180. Three of the four HEC wheels are now assembled and rotated, and work is progressing on assembling the final wheel. This year has been a busy year for the installation of components in the EndCap C cryostat: the signal feedthrough installation was completed April 22nd, the pre-sampler shortly thereafter and the Electro-Magnetic EndCap August 13th. This allowed the HEC group to start transferring the HEC wheels from the T6A storage cradle into the cryostat. The operation started in mid-September and has progressed, on or ahead of schedule, since then with the major milestones being: Insertion of 67 ton front HEC wheel October 3rd Insertion of 90 ton rear HEC wheel October 22nd. The wheel alignment has proved to be excellent, with the position of the centre of the front(rear) wheel with respect to the nominal position being displaced b...

  8. IDENTIFYING ELUSIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE MERGERS: AN END-TO-END SIMULATION

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nissanke, Samaya; Georgieva, Alexandra; Kasliwal, Mansi

    2013-01-01

    Combined gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) observations of compact binary mergers should enable detailed studies of astrophysical processes in the strong-field gravity regime. This decade, ground-based GW interferometers promise to routinely detect compact binary mergers. Unfortunately, networks of GW interferometers have poor angular resolution on the sky and their EM signatures are predicted to be faint. Therefore, a challenging goal will be to unambiguously pinpoint the EM counterparts of GW mergers. We perform the first comprehensive end-to-end simulation that focuses on: (1) GW sky localization, distance measures, and volume errors with two compact binary populations and four different GW networks; (2) subsequent EM detectability by a slew of multiwavelength telescopes; and (3) final identification of the merger counterpart amidst a sea of possible astrophysical false positives. First, we find that double neutron star binary mergers can be detected out to a maximum distance of 400 Mpc (or 750 Mpc) by three (or five) detector GW networks, respectively. Neutron-star-black-hole binary mergers can be detected a factor of 1.5 further out; their median to maximum sky localizations are 50-170 deg 2 (or 6-65 deg 2 ) for a three (or five) detector GW network. Second, by optimizing depth, cadence, and sky area, we quantify relative fractions of optical counterparts that are detectable by a suite of different aperture-size telescopes across the globe. Third, we present five case studies to illustrate the diversity of scenarios in secure identification of the EM counterpart. We discuss the case of a typical binary, neither beamed nor nearby, and the challenges associated with identifying an EM counterpart at both low and high Galactic latitudes. For the first time, we demonstrate how construction of low-latency GW volumes in conjunction with local universe galaxy catalogs can help solve the problem of false positives. We conclude with strategies that would

  9. Neuroma prevention by end-to-side neurorraphy: an experimental study in rats.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aszmann, Oskar C; Korak, Klaus J; Rab, Matthias; Grünbeck, Matthias; Lassmann, Hans; Frey, Manfred

    2003-11-01

    The successful treatment of painful neuromas remains a difficult goal to attain. In this report we explore the feasibility of neuroma prevention by insertion of the proximal end of a nerve through an end-to-side neurorraphy into an adjacent mixed nerve to provide a pathway and target for axons deprived of their end organ. Experiments were performed on a total of twenty 250-g Sprague-Dawley rats. Two groups of 10 animals were prepared. Group A served as an anatomic control. In group B the right saphenous nerve was transected and implanted end-to-side through an epineurial window into the tibial nerve distal to the trifurcation of the sciatic nerve. After 12 weeks the corresponding sensory neurons were identified by retrograde labeling techniques and histomorphometric analysis of the proximal and distal tibial nerve segments, and regular histology of the end-to-side site were performed. The results of the retrograde labeling of the corresponding sensory neuron pool of the saphenus nerve showed extensive labelling of the L1 to L3 spinal ganglions after intracutaneous tracer application of the planta pedis. The morphology of the end-to-side coaptation site and histomorphologic analysis prove that sensory neurons penetrate the perineurial sheath and axons regenerate along the tibial Schwann cell tubes toward their targets. Axons of a severed peripheral nerve that are provided with a pathway and target through an end-to-side coaptation will either be pruned or establish some type of end-organ contact so that a neuroma can be prevented. Whether these axons will lead to disturbing sensations such as paresthesia or dysesthesia in the newly found environment or remain silent codwellers, this experiment cannot answer. Long-term results of future clinical work will have to decide whether the prevention of the neuroma through end-to-side coaptation will be an appropriate therapy for this difficult problem.

  10. Octanol reduces end-plate channel lifetime

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gage, Peter W.; McBurney, Robert N.; Van Helden, Dirk

    1978-01-01

    1. Post-synaptic effects of n-octanol at concentrations of 0·1-1 mM were examined in toad sartorius muscles by use of extracellular and voltage-clamp techniques. 2. Octanol depressed the amplitude and duration of miniature end-plate currents and hence depressed neuromuscular transmission. 3. The decay of miniature end-plate currents remained exponential in octanol solutions even when the time constant of decay (τD) was decreased by 80-90%. 4. The lifetime of end-plate channels, obtained by analysis of acetylcholine noise, was also decreased by octanol. The average lifetime measured from noise spectra agreed reasonably well with the time constant of decay of miniature end-plate currents, both in control solution and in octanol solutions. 5. Octanol caused a reduction in the conductance of end-plate channels. Single channel conductance was on average about 25 pS in control solution and 20 pS in octanol. 6. In most cells the normal voltage sensitivity of the decay of miniature end-plate currents was retained in octanol solutions. The lifetime of end-plate channels measured from acetylcholine noise also remained voltage-sensitive in octanol solutions. In some experiments in which channel lifetime was exceptionally reduced the voltage sensitivity was less than normal. 7. In octanol solutions, τD was still very sensitive to temperature changes in most cells although in some the temperature sensitivity of τD was clearly reduced. Changes in τD with temperature could generally be fitted by the Arrhenius equation suggesting that a single step reaction controlled the decay of currents both in control and in octanol solutions. In some cells in which τD became less than 0·3 ms, the relationship between τD and temperature became inconsistent with the Arrhenius equation. 8. As the decay of end-plate currents in octanol solutions remains exponential, and the voltage and temperature sensitivity can be unchanged even when τD is significantly reduced, it seems likely that

  11. Multi-geohazards of Ende city area

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Igan Supriatman Sutawidjaja

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.17014/ijog.vol2no4.20073The Ende City is a steep mountainous area, of which the height of their peaks are above 1500 m asl. It has the limited extent of plain places, without coastal plains. Due to this condition, large parts of the area are vulnerable to mass-movements mainly debris flows, rock-falls and shallow translational and rotational landslides. On the other hand, Flores Island is a segment of the Banda Arc that contains eleven very active volcanoes and numerous inactive volcanic cones. Two of them, Mount Iya and Mount Kelimutu are included to Ende Regency. The northern foot of Mount Iya is only about 1 km away from the southern outskirts of Ende city. But the presence of Mount Meja and Mount Roja as the barrier, and the orientation of the active crater (K2, the highly explosive eruption of Iya Volcano may not directly endanger the city of Ende. Most pyroclastic flows of previous eruptions and other eruptive material emplaced into the sea, but due to a short horizontal distance between Mount Iya and Ende City, the ejected rock fragments can endanger the city of Ende especially its southern parts. A crack has developed around the active crater (K2 of Iya Volcano. It seems that the crack indicates a major weakness within the volcano, which could result in a giant landslide, entering the sea in future eruptions of Iya Volcano. The kinetic energy which is transmitted through the water may probably generate a tsunami. The Ende City also experienced significant damages in the 1992 earthquake. Luckily this city is located on a solid rock instead of alluvial sediments which can potentially undergo liquefaction.  

  12. Designing end-user interfaces

    CERN Document Server

    Heaton, N

    1988-01-01

    Designing End-User Interfaces: State of the Art Report focuses on the field of human/computer interaction (HCI) that reviews the design of end-user interfaces.This compilation is divided into two parts. Part I examines specific aspects of the problem in HCI that range from basic definitions of the problem, evaluation of how to look at the problem domain, and fundamental work aimed at introducing human factors into all aspects of the design cycle. Part II consists of six main topics-definition of the problem, psychological and social factors, principles of interface design, computer intelligenc

  13. Telomere dynamics, end-to-end fusions and telomerase activation during the human fibroblast immortalization process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ducray, C; Pommier, J P; Martins, L; Boussin, F D; Sabatier, L

    1999-07-22

    Loss of telomeric repeats during cell proliferation could play a role in senescence. It has been generally assumed that activation of telomerase prevents further telomere shortening and is essential for cell immortalization. In this study, we performed a detailed cytogenetic and molecular characterization of four SV40 transformed human fibroblastic cell lines by regularly monitoring the size distribution of terminal restriction fragments, telomerase activity and the associated chromosomal instability throughout immortalization. The mean TRF lengths progressively decreased in pre-crisis cells during the lifespan of the cultures. At crisis, telomeres reached a critical size, different among the cell lines, contributing to the peak of dicentric chromosomes, which resulted mostly from telomeric associations. We observed a direct correlation between short telomere length at crisis and chromosomal instability. In two immortal cell lines, although telomerase was detected, mean telomere length still continued to decrease whereas the number of dicentric chromosomes associated was stabilized. Thus telomerase could protect specifically telomeres which have reached a critical size against end-to-end dicentrics, while long telomeres continue to decrease, although at a slower rate as before crisis. This suggests a balance between elongation by telomerase and telomere shortening, towards a stabilized 'optimal' length.

  14. 20 CFR 408.816 - When does SVB entitlement end due to death?

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false When does SVB entitlement end due to death? 408.816 Section 408.816 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION SPECIAL BENEFITS FOR CERTAIN WORLD WAR II VETERANS Suspensions and Terminations Termination § 408.816 When does SVB entitlement end due to death? Your SVB entitlement ends wit...

  15. An end-to-end assessment of range uncertainty in proton therapy using animal tissues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Yuanshui; Kang, Yixiu; Zeidan, Omar; Schreuder, Niek

    2016-11-01

    Accurate assessment of range uncertainty is critical in proton therapy. However, there is a lack of data and consensus on how to evaluate the appropriate amount of uncertainty. The purpose of this study is to quantify the range uncertainty in various treatment conditions in proton therapy, using transmission measurements through various animal tissues. Animal tissues, including a pig head, beef steak, and lamb leg, were used in this study. For each tissue, an end-to-end test closely imitating patient treatments was performed. This included CT scan simulation, treatment planning, image-guided alignment, and beam delivery. Radio-chromic films were placed at various depths in the distal dose falloff region to measure depth dose. Comparisons between measured and calculated doses were used to evaluate range differences. The dose difference at the distal falloff between measurement and calculation depends on tissue type and treatment conditions. The estimated range difference was up to 5, 6 and 4 mm for the pig head, beef steak, and lamb leg irradiation, respectively. Our study shows that the TPS was able to calculate proton range within about 1.5% plus 1.5 mm. Accurate assessment of range uncertainty in treatment planning would allow better optimization of proton beam treatment, thus fully achieving proton beams’ superior dose advantage over conventional photon-based radiation therapy.

  16. Working to End Family Homelessness. Annual Report

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Center on Family Homelessness (NJ1), 2012

    2012-01-01

    The National Center on Family Homelessness is determined to end family homelessness. Sheltering families provides a temporary safe haven. Connecting families to permanent housing, essential services, and critical supports can change their lives forever. Through research the Center learns what families need to rebound from the housing, economic,…

  17. FMIT test-end instrumentation conceptual design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fuller, J.L.

    1984-08-01

    FMIT test-end measurement techniques and instrumentation concepts for deuteron beam control, test-end device protection, test cell radiation field characterization, lithium jet performance monitoring, and in-situ off-line target testing and examination are described. The test-end refers to the beam line-target-test assembly interface area inside the test cell, but TEI includes measurements inside and outside the cell. The measurement requirements are briefly reviewed and referenced. The sometimes severe environmental limitations are discussed. Where feasible, multifunctional systems have been configured. Special facility features have been minimized

  18. In vivo laser assisted end-to-end anastomosis with ICG-infused chitosan patches

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rossi, Francesca; Matteini, Paolo; Esposito, Giuseppe; Scerrati, Alba; Albanese, Alessio; Puca, Alfredo; Maira, Giulio; Rossi, Giacomo; Pini, Roberto

    2011-07-01

    Laser assisted vascular repair is a new optimized technique based on the use of ICG-infused chitosan patch to close a vessel wound, with or even without few supporting single stitches. We present an in vivo experimental study on an innovative end-to-end laser assisted vascular anastomotic (LAVA) technique, performed with the application of ICGinfused chitosan patches. The photostability and the mechanical properties of ICG-infused chitosan films were preliminary measured. The in vivo study was performed in 10 New Zealand rabbits. After anesthesia, a 3-cm segment of the right common carotid artery was exposed, thus clamped proximally and distally. The artery was then interrupted by means of a full thickness cut. Three single microsutures were used to approximate the two vessel edges. The ICG-infused chitosan patch was rolled all over the anastomotic site and welded by the use of a diode laser emitting at 810 nm and equipped with a 300 μm diameter optical fiber. Welding was obtained by delivering single laser spots to induce local patch/tissue adhesion. The result was an immediate closure of the anastomosis, with no bleeding at clamps release. Thus animals underwent different follow-up periods, in order to evaluate the welded vessels over time. At follow-up examinations, all the anastomoses were patent and no bleeding signs were documented. Samples of welded vessels underwent histological examinations. Results showed that this technique offer several advantages over conventional suturing methods: simplification of the surgical procedure, shortening of the operative time, better re-endothelization and optimal vascular healing process.

  19. End-Use Efficiency to Lower Carbon Emissions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Marnay, Chris; Osborn, Julie; Webber, Carrie

    2001-01-01

    Compelling evidence demonstrating the warming trend in global temperatures and the mechanism behind it, namely the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG), has spurred an international effort to reduce emissions of these gases. Despite improving efficiency of the U.S. economy in terms of energy cost per dollar of GDP since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, energy consumption and carbon emissions are continuing to rise as the economy expands. This growing gap further emphasizes the importance of improving energy use efficiency as a component in the U.S. climate change mitigation program. The end-use efficiency research activities at Berkeley Lab incorporate residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors. This paper focuses on two successful U.S. programs that address end-use efficiency in residential and commercial demand: energy efficient performance standards established by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) ENERGY STAR(registered trademark) program

  20. Modeling the frequency response of microwave radiometers with QUCS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zonca, A; Williams, B; Rubin, I; Meinhold, P; Lubin, P; Roucaries, B; D'Arcangelo, O; Franceschet, C; Mennella, A; Bersanelli, M; Jahn, S

    2010-01-01

    Characterization of the frequency response of coherent radiometric receivers is a key element in estimating the flux of astrophysical emissions, since the measured signal depends on the convolution of the source spectral emission with the instrument band shape. Laboratory Radio Frequency (RF) measurements of the instrument bandpass often require complex test setups and are subject to a number of systematic effects driven by thermal issues and impedance matching, particularly if cryogenic operation is involved. In this paper we present an approach to modeling radiometers bandpasses by integrating simulations and RF measurements of individual components. This method is based on QUCS (Quasi Universal Circuit Simulator), an open-source circuit simulator, which gives the flexibility of choosing among the available devices, implementing new analytical software models or using measured S-parameters. Therefore an independent estimate of the instrument bandpass is achieved using standard individual component measurements and validated analytical simulations. In order to automate the process of preparing input data, running simulations and exporting results we developed the Python package python-qucs and released it under GNU Public License. We discuss, as working cases, bandpass response modeling of the COFE and Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) radiometers and compare results obtained with QUCS and with a commercial circuit simulator software. The main purpose of bandpass modeling in COFE is to optimize component matching, while in LFI they represent the best estimation of frequency response, since end-to-end measurements were strongly affected by systematic effects.

  1. Oncologists' strategies and barriers to effective communication about the end of life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Granek, Leeat; Krzyzanowska, Monika K; Tozer, Richard; Mazzotta, Paolo

    2013-07-01

    Communicating about the end of life with patients has been reported as one of the most difficult and stressful part of the work of oncologists. Despite this fact, oncologists receive little training in this area, and many do not communicate effectively with patients. The purpose of this analysis, part of a larger study examining oncologists' experiences of patient loss, was to explore oncologists' communication strategies and communication barriers when discussing end-of-life issues with patients. Twenty oncologists were interviewed at three hospitals about their communication strategies on end-of-life issues with patients. The data were analyzed using the grounded theory method. The findings revealed the strategies to effective communication about the end of life included: being open and honest; having ongoing, early conversations; communicating about modifying treatment goals; and balancing hope and reality. Barriers to implementing these strategies fell broadly into three domains, including physician factors, patient factors, and institutional factors. Physician factors included difficulty with treatment and palliation, personal discomfort with death and dying, diffusion of responsibility among colleagues, using the "death-defying mode," lack of experience, and lack of mentorship. Patient factors included, patients and/or families being reluctant to talk about the end of life, language barriers, and younger age. Institutional factors included stigma around palliative care, lack of protocol about end-of-life issues; and lack of training for oncologists on how to talk with patients about end-of-life issues. We conclude by drawing implications from our study and suggest that further research and intervention are necessary to aid oncologists in achieving effective communication about end-of-life issues.

  2. One stage functional end-to-end stapled intestinal anastomosis and resection performed by nonexpert surgeons for the treatment of small intestinal obstruction in 30 dogs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jardel, Nicolas; Hidalgo, Antoine; Leperlier, Dimitri; Manassero, Mathieu; Gomes, Aymeric; Bedu, Anne Sophie; Moissonnier, Pierre; Fayolle, Pascal; Begon, Dominique; Riquois, Elisabeth; Viateau, Véronique

    2011-02-01

    To describe stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end intestinal anastomosis for treatment of small intestinal obstruction in dogs and evaluate outcome when the technique is performed by nonexpert surgeons after limited training in the technique. Case series. Dogs (n=30) with intestinal lesions requiring an enterectomy. Stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end anastomosis and resection using a GIA-60 and a TA-55 stapling devices were performed under supervision of senior residents and faculty surgeons by junior surgeons previously trained in the technique on pigs. Procedure duration and technical problems were recorded. Short-term results were collected during hospitalization and at suture removal. Long-term outcome was established by clinical and ultrasonographic examinations at least 2 months after surgery and from written questionnaires, completed by owners. Mean±SD procedure duration was 15±12 minutes. Postoperative recovery was uneventful in 25 dogs. One dog had anastomotic leakage, 1 had a localized abscess at the transverse staple line, and 3 dogs developed an incisional abdominal wall abscess. No long-term complications occurred (follow-up, 2-32 months). Stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end anastomosis and resection is a fast and safe procedure in the hand of nonexpert but trained surgeons. © Copyright 2011 by The American College of Veterinary Surgeons.

  3. MayDay Colloquium 23: The End(s) of Music Education? A Call for Re-Visioning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bates, Vincent C.

    2013-01-01

    In the summer of 2011 (June 16-19), the MayDay Group met in Salt Lake City, Utah (USA) for MayDay Colloquium 23, with presentations and discussions on the theme,"The End(s) of Music Education? A Call for Re-Visioning": In a time of rapidly changing political processes, power relations, and policies, music educators are challenged to…

  4. The nerve endings of the acetabular labrum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Y T; Azuma, H

    1995-11-01

    The nerve endings of the human acetabular labrum were investigated. Twenty-three acetabular labra were obtained from 24 fresh human cadavers, stained with Suzuki's silver impregnation and an immunohistochemical technique for neurogenic specific protein S-100, and examined by light and electron microscopy. Ramified free nerve endings were seen in all specimens by silver staining, and also were observed by the immunohistochemical technique for S-100 protein. Sensory nerve end organs, such as a Vater-Pacini corpuscle, Golgi-Mazzoni corpuscle, Ruffini corpuscle, and articular corpuscle (Krause corpuscle), were observed by silver staining. Collagen fibers were scattered sparsely in the superficial layer of the labrum, and nerve endings were observed mostly in this region. Collagen fibers were sparse, and nerve endings also were observed in some regions among the collagen fiber bundles in the inner layer. Innervation of the acetabular labrum was confirmed in this study, suggesting that nerve endings in the labrum may be involved in nociceptive and proprioceptive mechanisms.

  5. Devoluming and stabilizing method for end piece

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ikeda, Satoshi; Shiotsuki, Msao; Kawamura, Shigeyoshi; Komatsu, Fumiaki.

    1991-01-01

    As a first method, end pieces and other radioactive metal wastes are filled as a mixture in a vessel, and preliminary compression is conducted. Then, the bulk density of the radioactive metal wastes is reduced and gaps in the end pieces are filled with radioactive metal wastes. If they are applied with heat treatment under high pressure in this state together with the vessel, they are devolumed and stabilized without damaging the vessel. As a second method, metal powders are mixed and filled in the vessel together with the end pieces. The gaps in the end pieces are filled with the metal powders and if they are applied with heat treatment under high pressure in this state together with the vessel, the end pieces are devolumed and stabilized without damaging the vessel in the same manner. This can devolume and stabilize the end pieces separated from nuclear fuel assemblies easily and safely. (T.M.)

  6. Lowering the YE+1 end-cap for CMS

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2007-01-01

    On 9 January 2007, the massive YE+1 end-cap was lowered into the CMS cavern. This is a very precise process as the crane must lower the end-cap through minimal clearance without tilt or sway. Once in the cavern, the end-cap is then positioned over the end of the barrel to detect particles produced in collisions that travel close to the axis of the beams.

  7. Interfaces for End-User Information Seeking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marchionini, Gary

    1992-01-01

    Discusses essential features of interfaces to support end-user information seeking. Highlights include cognitive engineering; task models and task analysis; the problem-solving nature of information seeking; examples of systems for end-users, including online public access catalogs (OPACs), hypertext, and help systems; and suggested research…

  8. TU-D-201-03: Proposed Solutions to End-Of-Life Issue

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ouhib, Z.

    2015-01-01

    Brachytherapy devices and software are designed to last for a certain period of time. Due to a number of considerations, such as material factors, wear-and-tear, backwards compatibility, and others, they all reach a date when they are no longer supported by the manufacturer. Most of these products have a limited duration for their use, and the information is provided to the user at time of purchase. Because of issues or concerns determined by the manufacturer, certain products are retired sooner than the anticipated date, and the user is immediately notified. In these situations, the institution is facing some difficult choices: remove these products from the clinic or perform tests and continue their usage. Both of these choices come with a financial burden: replacing the product or assuming a potential medicolegal liability. This session will provide attendees with the knowledge and tools to make better decisions when facing these issues. Learning Objectives: Understand the meaning of “end-of-life or “life expectancy” for brachytherapy devices and software Review items (devices and software) affected by “end-of-life” restrictions Learn how to effectively formulate “end-of-life” policies at your institution Learn about possible implications of “end-of-life” policy Review other possible approaches toend-of-life” issue

  9. TRF2 Protein Interacts with Core Histones to Stabilize Chromosome Ends.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Konishi, Akimitsu; Izumi, Takashi; Shimizu, Shigeomi

    2016-09-23

    Mammalian chromosome ends are protected by a specialized nucleoprotein complex called telomeres. Both shelterin, a telomere-specific multi-protein complex, and higher order telomeric chromatin structures combine to stabilize the chromosome ends. Here, we showed that TRF2, a component of shelterin, binds to core histones to protect chromosome ends from inappropriate DNA damage response and loss of telomeric DNA. The N-terminal Gly/Arg-rich domain (GAR domain) of TRF2 directly binds to the globular domain of core histones. The conserved arginine residues in the GAR domain of TRF2 are required for this interaction. A TRF2 mutant with these arginine residues substituted by alanine lost the ability to protect telomeres and induced rapid telomere shortening caused by the cleavage of a loop structure of the telomeric chromatin. These findings showed a previously unnoticed interaction between the shelterin complex and nucleosomal histones to stabilize the chromosome ends. © 2016 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  10. TRF2 Protein Interacts with Core Histones to Stabilize Chromosome Ends*

    Science.gov (United States)

    Izumi, Takashi; Shimizu, Shigeomi

    2016-01-01

    Mammalian chromosome ends are protected by a specialized nucleoprotein complex called telomeres. Both shelterin, a telomere-specific multi-protein complex, and higher order telomeric chromatin structures combine to stabilize the chromosome ends. Here, we showed that TRF2, a component of shelterin, binds to core histones to protect chromosome ends from inappropriate DNA damage response and loss of telomeric DNA. The N-terminal Gly/Arg-rich domain (GAR domain) of TRF2 directly binds to the globular domain of core histones. The conserved arginine residues in the GAR domain of TRF2 are required for this interaction. A TRF2 mutant with these arginine residues substituted by alanine lost the ability to protect telomeres and induced rapid telomere shortening caused by the cleavage of a loop structure of the telomeric chromatin. These findings showed a previously unnoticed interaction between the shelterin complex and nucleosomal histones to stabilize the chromosome ends. PMID:27514743

  11. In vivo blunt-end cloning through CRISPR/Cas9-facilitated non-homologous end-joining

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geisinger, Jonathan M.; Turan, Sören; Hernandez, Sophia; Spector, Laura P.; Calos, Michele P.

    2016-01-01

    The CRISPR/Cas9 system facilitates precise DNA modifications by generating RNA-guided blunt-ended double-strand breaks. We demonstrate that guide RNA pairs generate deletions that are repaired with a high level of precision by non-homologous end-joining in mammalian cells. We present a method called knock-in blunt ligation for exploiting these breaks to insert exogenous PCR-generated sequences in a homology-independent manner without loss of additional nucleotides. This method is useful for making precise additions to the genome such as insertions of marker gene cassettes or functional elements, without the need for homology arms. We successfully utilized this method in human and mouse cells to insert fluorescent protein cassettes into various loci, with efficiencies up to 36% in HEK293 cells without selection. We also created versions of Cas9 fused to the FKBP12-L106P destabilization domain in an effort to improve Cas9 performance. Our in vivo blunt-end cloning method and destabilization-domain-fused Cas9 variant increase the repertoire of precision genome engineering approaches. PMID:26762978

  12. RPC performance vs. front-end electronics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cardarelli, R.; Aielli, G.; Camarri, P.; Di Ciaccio, A.; Di Stante, L.; Liberti, B.; Pastori, E.; Santonico, R.; Zerbini, A.

    2012-01-01

    Moving the amplification from the gas to the front-end electronics was a milestone in the development of Resistive Plate Chambers. Here we discuss the historical evolution of RPCs and we show the results obtained with newly developed front-end electronics with threshold in the fC range.

  13. Double muscle innervation using end-to-side neurorrhaphy in rats

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elisangela Jeronymo Stipp-Brambilla

    Full Text Available CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: One of the techniques used for treating facial paralysis is double muscle innervation using end-to-end neurorrhaphy with sectioning of healthy nerves. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether double muscle innervation by means of end-to-side neurorrhaphy could occur, with maintenance of muscle innervation. DESIGN AND SETTING: Experimental study developed at the Experimental Research Center, Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu, Unesp. METHODS: One hundred rats were allocated to five groups as follows: G1, control group; G2, the peroneal nerve was sectioned; G3, the tibial nerve was transected and the proximal stump was end-to-side sutured to the intact peroneal nerve; G4, 120 days after the G3 surgery, the peroneal nerve was sectioned proximally to the neurorrhaphy; G5, 120 days after the G3 surgery, the peroneal and tibial nerves were sectioned proximally to the neurorrhaphy. RESULTS: One hundred and fifty days after the surgery, G3 did not show any change in tibial muscle weight or muscle fiber diameter, but the axonal fiber diameter in the peroneal nerve distal to the neurorrhaphy had decreased. Although G4 showed atrophy of the cranial tibial muscle 30 days after sectioning the peroneal nerve, the electrophysiological test results and axonal diameter measurement confirmed that muscle reinnervation had occurred. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that double muscle innervation did not occur through end-to-side neurorrhaphy; the tibial nerve was not able to maintain muscle innervation after the peroneal nerve had been sectioned, although muscle reinnervation was found to have occurred, 30 days after the peroneal nerve had been sectioned.

  14. Feedback from operational experience in front-end transportation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mondonel, J.L.; Parison, C.

    1998-01-01

    Transport forms an integral part of the nuclear fuel cycle, representing the strategic link between each stage of the cycle. In a way there is a transport cycle that parallels the nuclear fuel cycle. This concerns particularly the front-end of the cycle whose steps - mining conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication - require numerous transports. Back-end shipments involve a handful of countries, but front-end transports involve all five continents, and many exotic countries. All over Europe such transports are routinely performed with an excellent safety track record. Transnucleaire dominates the French nuclear transportation market and carries out both front and back-end transports. For instance in 1996 more than 28,400 front-end packages were transported as well as more than 3,600 back-end packages. However front-end transport is now a business undergoing much change. A nuclear transportation company must now cope with an evolving picture including new technical requirements, new transportation schemes and new business conditions. This paper describes the latest evolutions in terms of front-end transportation and the way this activity is carried out by Transnucleaire, and goes on to discuss future prospects. (authors)

  15. Short Linear Sequence Motif LxxPTPh Targets Diverse Proteins to Growing Microtubule Ends

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kumar, Anil; Manatschal, Cristina; Rai, Ankit; Grigoriev, Ilya; Degen, Miriam Steiner; Jaussi, Rolf; Kretzschmar, Ines; Prota, Andrea E; Volkmer, Rudolf; Kammerer, Richard A.; Akhmanova, Anna; Steinmetz, Michel O.

    2017-01-01

    Microtubule plus-end tracking proteins (+TIPs) are involved in virtually all microtubule-based processes. End-binding (EB) proteins are considered master regulators of +TIP interaction networks, since they autonomously track growing microtubule ends and recruit a plethora of proteins to this

  16. Muon front end for the neutrino factory

    CERN Document Server

    Rogers, C T; Prior, G; Gilardoni, S; Neuffer, D; Snopok, P; Alekou, A; Pasternak, J

    2013-01-01

    In the neutrino factory, muons are produced by firing high-energy protons onto a target to produce pions. The pions decay to muons and pass through a capture channel known as the muon front end, before acceleration to 12.6 GeV. The muon front end comprises a variable frequency rf system for longitudinal capture and an ionization cooling channel. In this paper we detail recent improvements in the design of the muon front end.

  17. Delayed primary end-to-end anastomosis for traumatic long segment urethral stricture and its short-term outcomes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rajarshi Kumar

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the aetiology of posterior urethral stricture in children and analysis of results after delayed primary repair with extensive distal urethral mobilisation. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective study carried out in a tertiary care centre from January 2009 to December 2013. Results: Eight children with median age 7.5 years (range 4–11 years, underwent delayed anastomotic urethroplasty: Six through perineal and two through combined perineal and transpubic approach. All the eight children had long-segment >2 cm stricture: Three posterior and five anterior urethral stricture. On a mean follow-up period of 33 months (range 24–48 m, all were passing urine with good flow and stream. Conclusion: End-to-end anastomosis in post-traumatic long segment posterior urethral stricture between prostatic and penile urethra in children is possible by perineal or combined perineal and transpubic approach with good results without any urethral replacement.

  18. Nuclear instrumentation cable end seal

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cannon, C.P.; Brown, D.P.

    1979-01-01

    An improved coaxial end seal for hermetically sealed nuclear instrumentation cable exhibiting an improved breakdown pulse noise characteristic under high voltage, high temperature conditions is described. A tubular insulator body has metallized interior and exterior surface portions which are braze sealed to a center conductor and an outer conductive sheath. The end surface of the insulator body which is directed toward the coaxial cable to which it is sealed has a recessed surface portion within which the braze seal material terminates

  19. 34 CFR 34.26 - Ending garnishment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 34 Education 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Ending garnishment. 34.26 Section 34.26 Education Office of the Secretary, Department of Education ADMINISTRATIVE WAGE GARNISHMENT § 34.26 Ending... to pay any portion of the amount stated in the order, the employer must— (i) Notify us; and (ii...

  20. Octopole and hexapole end cells for tandem mirrors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Devoto, R.S.

    1985-01-01

    To date, nearly all operating or planned tandem mirror experiments use quadrupole magnetic fields in the end cells for stabilization of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities. A disadvantage with quadrupole fields is the considerable aximuthal asymmetry in the magnetic field. As a result, those center-cell ions which pass into the end cell can suffer a radial deflection and be lost by radial diffusion. The diffusion can be minimized by adding C-coils to the end cell to symmetrize the geodesic curvature in the end cell. Very small radial deflection can be obtained on each field line. Such a method is used in the design of the MFTF-B experiment and the MARS reactor. A disadvantage of this approach is the large number of coils required. In addition, since ions drift azimuthally as they reflect in the end cell, even perfect cancellation on individual field lines will, in general, not lead to zero radial diffusion. One way to form a more symmetric field in the end cells is to use multipoles higher than quadrupole. The use of an octopole end cell for a small tandem-mirror reactor was recently proposed/sup L/ and has been adopted for the miniMARS reactor study. In this paper the author discusses some feature of octopole, and to a lesser extent, hexapole end cells in both reactor and experimental (MFTF-B) applications

  1. Muon front end for the neutrino factory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C. T. Rogers

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available In the neutrino factory, muons are produced by firing high-energy protons onto a target to produce pions. The pions decay to muons and pass through a capture channel known as the muon front end, before acceleration to 12.6 GeV. The muon front end comprises a variable frequency rf system for longitudinal capture and an ionization cooling channel. In this paper we detail recent improvements in the design of the muon front end.

  2. Fast front-end electronics for COMPASS MWPCs

    CERN Document Server

    Colantoni, M L; Ferrero, A; Frolov, V; Grasso, A; Heinz, S; Maggiora, A; Maggiora, M G; Panzieri, D; Popov, A; Tchalyshev, V

    2000-01-01

    In the COMPASS experiment, under construction at CERN, about 23000 channels of MWPCs will be used. The very high rate of the muon and hadron beams, and the consequently high trigger rate, require front- end electronics with innovative conceptual design. A new MWPC front- end electronics that fulfills the main COMPASS requirement to have a fast DAQ with a minimum dead-time has been designed. The general concept of the front-end cards is described; the comparative tests of two front-end chips, and different fast gas mixtures, are also shown. The commissioning of the experiment will start in the summer 2000, and production running, using the muon beam, is foreseen for the year 2001. (8 refs).

  3. Special-purpose multifingered robotic end-effectors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Crowder, R.M.

    1990-01-01

    A number of advanced multifingered robotic end-effectors have been developed recently in which the finger joints are powered from external actuators. Although this gives dexterous performance, there are considerable problems with power transmission, due to the use of flexible tendons between the external actuators and the individual finger joints. If a multifingered robotic end-effector is to be operated in a confined space, local actuation of the fingers needs to be fully considered, even if there is a reduction in hand dexterity over that of an externally mounted actuator system. The University of Southampton has developed a number of end-effectors that incorporate integral finger actuators and mechanisms, two examples of which are discussed in this paper

  4. SampleCNN: End-to-End Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Using Very Small Filters for Music Classification

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jongpil Lee

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN have been applied to diverse machine learning tasks for different modalities of raw data in an end-to-end fashion. In the audio domain, a raw waveform-based approach has been explored to directly learn hierarchical characteristics of audio. However, the majority of previous studies have limited their model capacity by taking a frame-level structure similar to short-time Fourier transforms. We previously proposed a CNN architecture which learns representations using sample-level filters beyond typical frame-level input representations. The architecture showed comparable performance to the spectrogram-based CNN model in music auto-tagging. In this paper, we extend the previous work in three ways. First, considering the sample-level model requires much longer training time, we progressively downsample the input signals and examine how it affects the performance. Second, we extend the model using multi-level and multi-scale feature aggregation technique and subsequently conduct transfer learning for several music classification tasks. Finally, we visualize filters learned by the sample-level CNN in each layer to identify hierarchically learned features and show that they are sensitive to log-scaled frequency.

  5. Spanning k-ended trees of 3-regular connected graphs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hamed Ghasemian Zoeram

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available A vertex of degree one is called an end-vertex and the set of end-vertices of G is denoted by End(G. For a positive integer k, a tree T be called k-ended tree if $|End(T| \\leq k$. In this paper, we obtain sufficient conditions for spanning k-trees of 3-regular connected graphs. We give a construction sequence of graphs satisfying the condition. At the end, we present a conjecture about spanning k-ended trees of 3-regular connected graphs.

  6. End Ordovician extinctions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Harper, David A. T.; Hammarlund, Emma; Rasmussen, Christian M. Ø.

    2014-01-01

    -global anoxia associated with a marked transgression during the Late Hirnantian. Most recently, however, new drivers for the extinctions have been proposed, including widespread euxinia together with habitat destruction caused by plate tectonic movements, suggesting that the end Ordovician mass extinctions were...

  7. Year-end seasonality in one-month LIBOR derivatives

    OpenAIRE

    Christopher J. Neely; Drew B. Winters

    2005-01-01

    We examine the markets for one-month LIBOR futures contracts and options on those futures for a year-end price effect consistent with the previously identified year-end rate increase in one-month LIBOR. The cash market rate increase appears in forward rates and derivative prices, which allows the derivatives to properly hedge year-end interest rate risk. However, while the year-end effect appears in the derivative contract, these derivative contracts provide biased forecasts of both future in...

  8. End-to-end probability for an interacting center vortex world line in Yang-Mills theory

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Teixeira, Bruno F.I.; Lemos, Andre L.L. de; Oxman, Luis E.

    2011-01-01

    Full text: The understanding of quark confinement is a very important open problem in Yang-Mills theory. In this regard, nontrivial topological defects are expected to play a relevant role to achieve a solution. Here we are interested in how to deal with these structures, relying on the Cho-Faddeev-Niemi decomposition and the possibility it offers to describe defects in terms of a local color frame. In particular, the path integral for a single center vortex is a fundamental object to handle the ensemble integration. As is well-known, in three dimensions center vortices are string-like and the associated physics is closely related with that of polymers. Using recent techniques developed in the latter context, we present in this work a detailed derivation of the equation for the end-to-end probability for a center vortex world line, including the effects of interactions. Its solution can be associated with a Green function that depends on the position and orientation at the boundaries, where monopole-like instantons are placed. In the limit of semi flexible polymers, an expansion only keeping the lower angular momenta for the final orientation leads to a reduced Green function for a complex vortex field minimally coupled to the dual Yang-Mills fields. This constitutes a key ingredient to propose an effective model for correlated monopoles, center vortices and the dual fields. (author)

  9. MMIC front-ends for optical communication systems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Petersen, Anders Kongstad

    1993-01-01

    Two different types of optical front-end MMIC amplifiers for a 2.5-Gb/s coherent heterodyne optical receiver are presented. A bandwidth of 6-12 GHz has been obtained for a tuned front-end and 3-13 GHz for a distributed front-end. An input noise current density of 5-15 pA/√Hz has been obtained for...

  10. Mudaraba-Venture Capital Closed-end Mutual Funds and Mudaraba-Venture Capital Open-end Mutual Funds

    OpenAIRE

    Halil Ibrahim Bulut

    2008-01-01

    The important part of this study attempts to explain that both venture capital and interest-free financing are based on similar ground, if not the same. Two new models called Mudaraba-Venture Capital Closed-End Mutual Funds and Mudaraba-Venture Capital Open-End Mutual Funds, based on both the similarities and the needs of financial innovation in the interest-free financing system, are detailed. It is believed that the development of these two models could make some improvements not only in th...

  11. Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill evaluated using an end-to-end ecosystem model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ainsworth, Cameron H; Paris, Claire B; Perlin, Natalie; Dornberger, Lindsey N; Patterson, William F; Chancellor, Emily; Murawski, Steve; Hollander, David; Daly, Kendra; Romero, Isabel C; Coleman, Felicia; Perryman, Holly

    2018-01-01

    We use a spatially explicit biogeochemical end-to-end ecosystem model, Atlantis, to simulate impacts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and subsequent recovery of fish guilds. Dose-response relationships with expected oil concentrations were utilized to estimate the impact on fish growth and mortality rates. We also examine the effects of fisheries closures and impacts on recruitment. We validate predictions of the model by comparing population trends and age structure before and after the oil spill with fisheries independent data. The model suggests that recruitment effects and fishery closures had little influence on biomass dynamics. However, at the assumed level of oil concentrations and toxicity, impacts on fish mortality and growth rates were large and commensurate with observations. Sensitivity analysis suggests the biomass of large reef fish decreased by 25% to 50% in areas most affected by the spill, and biomass of large demersal fish decreased even more, by 40% to 70%. Impacts on reef and demersal forage caused starvation mortality in predators and increased reliance on pelagic forage. Impacts on the food web translated effects of the spill far away from the oiled area. Effects on age structure suggest possible delayed impacts on fishery yields. Recovery of high-turnover populations generally is predicted to occur within 10 years, but some slower-growing populations may take 30+ years to fully recover.

  12. Front-end and back-end electrochemistry of molten salt in accelerator-driven transmutation systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Williamson, M.A.; Venneri, F.

    1995-01-01

    The objective of this work is to develop preparation and clean-up processes for the fuel and carrier salt in the Los Alamos Accelerator-Driven Transmutation Technology molten salt nuclear system. The front-end or fuel preparation process focuses on the removal of fission products, uranium, and zirconium from spent nuclear fuel by utilizing electrochemical methods (i.e., electrowinning). The same method provides the separation of the so-called noble metal fission products at the back-end of the fuel cycle. Both implementations would have important diversion safeguards. The proposed separation processes and a thermodynamic analysis of the electrochemical separation method are presented

  13. Coil end design for the LHC dipole magnet

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Brandt, J.S.

    1996-01-01

    This paper describes the design of the coil ends for the Large Hadron Collider dipole magnets of the CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Switzerland. This alternative to existing European designs was provided by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory by agreement between CERN and the United States. The superconducting cable paths are determined from both magnetic and mechanical considerations. The coil end parts used to shape and constrain the conductors in the coil ends are designed using the developable surface, grouped end approach. This method allows the analysis of strain energy within the conductor groups, and the optimization of mechanical factors during the design. Design intent and implementation are discussed. Inner and outer coil design challenges and end analysis are detailed

  14. A multitasking, multisinked, multiprocessor data acquisition front end

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fox, R.; Au, R.; Molen, A.V.

    1989-01-01

    The authors have developed a generalized data acquisition front end system which is based on MC68020 processors running a commercial real time kernel (rhoSOS), and implemented primarily in a high level language (C). This system has been attached to the back end on-line computing system at NSCL via our high performance ETHERNET protocol. Data may be simultaneously sent to any number of back end systems. Fixed fraction sampling along links to back end computing is also supported. A nonprocedural program generator simplifies the development of experiment specific code

  15. End-point sharpness in thermometric titrimetry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tyrrell, H J

    1967-07-01

    It is shown that the sharpness of an end-point in a thermometric titration where the simple reaction A + B right harpoon over left harpoon AB takes place, depends on Kc(A') where K is the equilibrium constant for the reaction, and c(A') is the total concentration of the titrand (A) in the reaction mixture. The end-point is sharp if, (i) the enthalpy change in the reaction is not negligible, and (ii) Kc(A') > 10(3). This shows that it should, for example, be possible to titrate 0.1 M acid, pK(A) = 10, using a thennometric end-point. Some aspects of thermometric titrimetry when Kc(A') < 10(3) are also considered.

  16. Nuclear fuel rod end plug weld inspection

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Parker, M. A.; Patrick, S. S.; Rice, G. F.

    1985-01-01

    Apparatus and method for testing TIG (tungsten inert gas) welds of end plugs on a sealed nuclear reactor fuel rod. An X-ray fluorescent spectrograph testing unit detects tungsten inclusion weld defects in the top end plug's seal weld. Separate ultrasonic weld inspection system testing units test the top end plug's seal and girth welds and test the bottom end plug's girth weld for penetration, porosity and wall thinning defects. The nuclear fuel rod is automatically moved into and out from each testing unit and is automatically transported between the testing units by rod handling devices. A controller supervises the operation of the testing units and the rod handling devices

  17. Adaptive RF front-ends for hand-held applications

    CERN Document Server

    van Bezooijen, Andre; van Roermund, Arthur

    2010-01-01

    The RF front-end - antenna combination is a vital part of a mobile phone because its performance is very relevant to the link quality between hand-set and cellular network base-stations. The RF front-end performance suffers from changes in operating environment, like hand-effects, that are often unpredictable. ""Adaptive RF Front-Ends for Hand-Held Applications"" presents an analysis on the impact of fluctuating environmental parameters. In order to overcome undesired behavior two different adaptive control methods are treated that make RF frond-ends more resilient: adaptive impedance control,

  18. Biocompatibility of root-end filling materials: recent update

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Payal Saxena

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of a root-end filling is to establish a seal between the root canal space and the periradicular tissues. As root-end filling materials come into contact with periradicular tissues, knowledge of the tissue response is crucial. Almost every available dental restorative material has been suggested as the root-end material of choice at a certain point in the past. This literature review on root-end filling materials will evaluate and comparatively analyse the biocompatibility and tissue response to these products, with primary focus on newly introduced materials.

  19. End-stage kidney disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... stage; Kidney failure - end stage; ESRD; ESKD Images Kidney anatomy References Fogarty DG, Taal MW. A stepped care approach to the management of chronic kidney disease. In: Skorecki K, Chertow GM, Marsden PA, ...

  20. Good end-of-life care according to patients and their GPs

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Borgsteede, Sander D.; Graafland-Riedstra, Corrie; Deliens, Luc; Francke, Anneke L.; van Eijk, Jacques ThM; Willems, Dick L.

    2006-01-01

    BACKGROUND: Most patients prefer to die at home, where a GP provides end-of-life care. A few previous studies have been directed at the GPs' values on good end-of-life care, yet no study combined values of patients and their own GP. AIM: To explore the aspects valued by both patients and GPs in

  1. Good end-of-life care according to patients and their GPs.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Borgsteede, S.D.; Graafland-Riedstra, C.; Deliens, L.; Francke, A.L.; Eijk, J.T.M. van; Willems, D.L.

    2006-01-01

    Background: Most patients prefer to die at home, where a GP provides end-of-life care. A few previous studies have been directed at the GPs' values on good end-of-life care, yet no study combined values of patients and their own GP. Aim: To explore the aspects valued by both patients and GPs in

  2. MANAGING HIGH-END, HIGH-VOLUME INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gembong Baskoro

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper discuses the concept of managing high-end, high-volume innovative products. High-end, high-volume consumer products are products that have considerable influence to the way of life. Characteristic of High-end, high-volume consumer products are (1 short cycle time, (2 quick obsolete time, and (3 rapid price erosion. Beside the disadvantages that they are high risk for manufacturers, if manufacturers are able to understand precisely the consumer needs then they have the potential benefit or success to be the market leader. High innovation implies to high utilization of the user, therefore these products can influence indirectly to the way of people life. The objective of managing them is to achieve sustainability of the products development and innovation. This paper observes the behavior of these products in companies operated in high-end, high-volume consumer product.

  3. Analysis of end-face seals by FEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juraszek J.

    2002-09-01

    Full Text Available The end face-seals joint simultaneously the function of seal, bearing and heat exchanger. In order to improve the design of end-face seals the analysis of this type of joint by means of finite element method, was developed. The temperature distribution is indispensable to the analysis of displacement and stress in this type of face seal. In this work the values of temperature and stress in end-face seals were calculated. The numerical results were confirmed by measurements in the laboratory.

  4. End-of-life decisions: Christian perspectives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stempsey, William E

    1997-12-01

    While legal rights to make medical treatment decisions at the end of one's life have been recognized by the courts, particular religious traditions put axiological and metaphysical meat on the bare bones of legal rights. Mere legal rights do not capture the full reality, meaning and importance of death. End-of-life decisions reflect not only the meaning we find in dying, but also the meaning we have found in living. The Christian religions bring particular understandings of the vision of life as a gift from God, human responsibility for stewardship of that life, the wholeness of the person, and the importance of the dying process in preparing spiritually for life beyond earthly life, to bear on end-of-life decisions.

  5. Generating end plug potentials in tandem mirror plasma confinement by heating thermal particles so as to escape low density end stoppering plasmas

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baldwin, D.E.; Logan, B.G.

    The invention provides a method and apparatus for raising the potential of a magnetic mirror cell by pumping charged particles of the opposite sign of the potential desired out of the mirror cell through excitation, with the pumping being done by an externally imposed field at the bounce frequence of the above charged particles. These pumped simple mirror cells then provide end stoppering for a center mirror cell for the tandem mirror plasma confinement apparatus. For the substantially complete pumping case, the end plugs of a tandem mirror can be up to two orders of magnitude lower in density for confining a given center mirror cell plasma than in the case of end plugs without pumping. As a result the decrease in recirculating power required to keep the system going, the technical state of the art required, and the capital cost are all greatly lowered.

  6. GWDC Expands High-End Market Share

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    2008-01-01

    @@ It is a decision of great significance for GWDC to expand high-end market share in order to realize its transformation of development strategy and improve its development quality. As an important step of GWDC to explore high-end market, Oman PDO Project marks the first time that the Chinese petroleum engineering service team cooperates with the transnational petroleum corporations ranking first three in the world.

  7. END FIELD EFFECTS IN BEND ONLY COOLING LATTICES

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BEERG, J.S.; KIRK, H.; GARREN, A.

    2003-01-01

    Cooling lattices consisting only of bends (using either rotated pole faces or gradient dipoles to achieve focusing) often require large apertures and short magnets. One expects the effect of end fields to be significant in this case. In this paper we explore the effect of adding end fields to a working lattice design that originally lacked them. The paper describes the process of correcting the lattice design for the added end fields so as to maintain desirable lattice characteristics. It then compares the properties of the lattice with end fields relative to the lattice without them

  8. End-to-end simulations and planning of a small space telescopes: Galaxy Evolution Spectroscopic Explorer: a case study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heap, Sara; Folta, David; Gong, Qian; Howard, Joseph; Hull, Tony; Purves, Lloyd

    2016-08-01

    Large astronomical missions are usually general-purpose telescopes with a suite of instruments optimized for different wavelength regions, spectral resolutions, etc. Their end-to-end (E2E) simulations are typically photons-in to flux-out calculations made to verify that each instrument meets its performance specifications. In contrast, smaller space missions are usually single-purpose telescopes, and their E2E simulations start with the scientific question to be answered and end with an assessment of the effectiveness of the mission in answering the scientific question. Thus, E2E simulations for small missions consist a longer string of calculations than for large missions, as they include not only the telescope and instrumentation, but also the spacecraft, orbit, and external factors such as coordination with other telescopes. Here, we illustrate the strategy and organization of small-mission E2E simulations using the Galaxy Evolution Spectroscopic Explorer (GESE) as a case study. GESE is an Explorer/Probe-class space mission concept with the primary aim of understanding galaxy evolution. Operation of a small survey telescope in space like GESE is usually simpler than operations of large telescopes driven by the varied scientific programs of the observers or by transient events. Nevertheless, both types of telescopes share two common challenges: maximizing the integration time on target, while minimizing operation costs including communication costs and staffing on the ground. We show in the case of GESE how these challenges can be met through a custom orbit and a system design emphasizing simplification and leveraging information from ground-based telescopes.

  9. End of Life Care

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... Related Topics Choosing Wisely Join our e-newsletter! Aging & Health A to Z End of Life Care ... be used. Ice chips, popsicles, moist swabs, or artificial saliva can help prevent the mouth from becoming ...

  10. End-inspiratory rebreathing reduces the end-tidal to arterial PCO2 gradient in mechanically ventilated pigs

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Fierstra, Jorn; Machina, Matthew; Battisti-Charbonney, Anne; Duffin, James; Fisher, Joseph Arnold; Minkovich, Leonid

    Noninvasive monitoring of the arterial partial pressures of CO2 (PaCO2) of critically ill patients by measuring their end-tidal partial pressures of CO2 (PetCO(2)) would be of great clinical value. However, the gradient between PetCO(2) and PaCO2 (Pet-aCO(2)) in such patients typically varies over a

  11. Shared decision-making in end-stage renal disease: a protocol for a multi-center study of a communication intervention to improve end-of-life care for dialysis patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eneanya, Nwamaka D; Goff, Sarah L; Martinez, Talaya; Gutierrez, Natalie; Klingensmith, Jamie; Griffith, John L; Garvey, Casey; Kitsen, Jenny; Germain, Michael J; Marr, Lisa; Berzoff, Joan; Unruh, Mark; Cohen, Lewis M

    2015-06-12

    End-stage renal disease carries a prognosis similar to cancer yet only 20 % of end-stage renal disease patients are referred to hospice. Furthermore, conversations between dialysis team members and patients about end-of-life planning are uncommon. Lack of provider training about how to communicate prognostic data may contribute to the limited number of end-of-life care discussions that take place with this chronically ill population. In this study, we will test the Shared Decision-Making Renal Supportive Care communication intervention to systematically elicit patient and caretaker preferences for end-of-life care so that care concordant with patients' goals can be provided. This multi-center study will deploy an intervention to improve end-of-life communication for hemodialysis patients who are at high risk of death in the ensuing six months. The intervention will be carried out as a prospective cohort with a retrospective cohort serving as the comparison group. Patients will be recruited from 16 dialysis units associated with two large academic centers in Springfield, Massachusetts and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Critical input from patient advisory boards, a stakeholder panel, and initial qualitative analysis of patient and caretaker experiences with advance care planning have informed the communication intervention. Rigorous communication training for hemodialysis social workers and providers will ensure that standardized study procedures are performed at each dialysis unit. Nephrologists and social workers will communicate prognosis and provide advance care planning in face-to-face encounters with patients and families using a social work-centered algorithm. Study outcomes including frequency and timing of hospice referrals, patient and caretaker satisfaction, quality of end-of-life discussions, and quality of death will be assessed over an 18 month period. The Shared Decision-Making Renal Supportive Care Communication intervention intends to improve discussions

  12. Open-Ended Evolution

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Taylor, Tim; Bedau, Mark A.; Channon, Alastair

    2016-01-01

    This report describes the First Workshop on Open-Ended Evolution: Recent Progress and Future Milestones (OEE1), held during the ECAL 2015 conference at the University of York, U.K., in July 2015. We briefly summarise the content of the talks and discussions and the workshop, and provide links...

  13. When Strategy Ends

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vestenskov, David; Jørgensen, Lars Wille

    2014-01-01

    This chapter deals with the end of strategy, that is, conflict termination and how strategic achievements are measured and evaluated. It claims that the modern intervention of choice by NATO and its allies are transformation wars and challenges the concept of victory in such wars. Through a compa...

  14. A Multinational perspective to managing end-of-life electronics

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Herold, M.

    2007-07-01

    This thesis focuses on how multinational electronics manufacturers manage used products in the EU, USA, Japan and China. Managing used or end-of-life products has interesting environmental and commercial implications. Recovering end-of-life products can reduce the environmental effects of disposal, raw material extraction, transport, and production. Whereas the commercial effects include image benefits and savings on raw material costs. Manufacturer involvement in end-of-life management is especially topical in the electronics industry, which is the focus of this thesis. Electronics products, such as TVs and computers, have been targeted with extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation in different countries across the world. EPR is an environmental policy approach that forces manufacturers to take physical and/or financial responsibility for end-of-life products. The main objective of this dissertation was to increase understanding of how multinational manufacturers manage end-of-life products in the EU, in the USA, and in China and Japan, and the regional and company-specific factors explain their levels of involvement. This study consisted of an inductive 16-case multiple case study. The products and companies included in the study were as follows: Refrigerators (Bosch und Siemens Hausgeraete, Electrolux, Whirlpool); TVs (Samsung, Philips, Hitachi); PCs (Hewlett Packard, NEC, Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers and an anonymous company, Alpha Computers); Mobile phones (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung); Telecommunication network equipment (Nokia, Motorola, Huawei). A manufacturer's level of involvement in end-of-life management can be characterized in terms of the level of organizational capabilities. These capabilities range from none to running a treatment facility and recovering value from own branded products. Levels in between can be characterized by outsourcing end-of-life management to industry-wide schemes, managing contracts for treating

  15. A model for emergency department end-of-life communications after acute devastating events--part II: moving from resuscitative to end-of-life or palliative treatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Limehouse, Walter E; Feeser, V Ramana; Bookman, Kelly J; Derse, Arthur

    2012-11-01

    The model for emergency department (ED) end-of-life communications after acute devastating events addresses decision-making capacity, surrogates, and advance directives, including legal definitions and application of these steps. Part II concerns communications moving from resuscitative to palliative and end-of-life treatments. After completing the steps involved in determining decision-making, emergency physicians (EPs) should consider starting palliative measures versus continuing resuscitative treatment. As communications related to these end-of-life decisions increasingly fall within the scope of emergency medicine (EM) practice, we need to become educated about and comfortable with them. © 2012 by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.

  16. High-End Scientific Computing

    Science.gov (United States)

    EPA uses high-end scientific computing, geospatial services and remote sensing/imagery analysis to support EPA's mission. The Center for Environmental Computing (CEC) assists the Agency's program offices and regions to meet staff needs in these areas.

  17. Nuclear fuel element end fitting

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jabsen, F.S.

    1979-01-01

    A typical embodiment of the invention has an array of sockets that are welded to the intersections of the plates that form the upper and lower end fittings of a nuclear reactor fuel element. The sockets, which are generally cylindrical in shape, are oriented in directions that enable the longitudinal axes of the sockets to align with the longitudinal axes of the fuel rods that are received in the respective sockets. Detents impressed in the surfaces of the sockets engage mating grooves that are formed in the ends of the fuel rods to provide for the structural integrity of the fuel element

  18. End-to-side neurorrhaphy with and without perineurium

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fausto Viterbo

    Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: We compared end-to-side neurorraphy with and without the perineural sheath. METHOD: Twenty rats were used. The peroneal nerve was sectioned and the distal end was sutured to the lateral face of the tibial nerve. We removed the perineural sheath only on the right side, but not on the left side. The proximal end of the peroneal nerve was curved back approximately at a 100° angle and implanted into the adductor muscle. Six months later, the 14 surviving animals were submitted to electrophysiological tests, sacrificed, and the nerves and muscles were taken for histological exams. RESULTS: On the right side, the muscles that had positive response needed an average of 258.89 mV (±92.31 of electric stimulus and on the left side 298.34 mV (±139.32. The average weight of the tibial cranial muscles of the right side was 0.47 g (0.18 and for the left side 0.45 g (0.15. The distal end of the peroneal nerve showed averages of 310.29 (±191.34 nerve fibers on the right side and 287.71 (±183.60 on the left side. The tibial nerve above the neurorraphy showed averages of 939.46 (±223.51 nerve fibers on the right side and 959.46 (±327.48 on the left side. The tibial nerve below the neurorraphy showed averages of 935.17 (±298.65 nerve fibers on the right side and 755.31 (±323.26 on the left side. The average areas of the right tibial cranial muscles were 0.0162 m2 (±0.008, after 230 magnification, and 0.0152 m2 (0.0064 for the left tibial cranial muscles. The histological features of the tibial cranial muscles, taking normal as 100%, were 78.21 (±20.75 on the right side and 82.14 (±15.89 on the left side. The statistical analysis (Student's t test did not reveal any difference (p>0.05 among right and left sides for all variables. CONCLUSION: The authors concluded that the two neurorraphies (with and without perineurium did not show any difference regarding morphological and electrophysiological features studied.

  19. End-to-side neurorrhaphy with and without perineurium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Viterbo, F; Teixeira, E; Hoshino, K; Padovani, C R

    1998-01-01

    We compared end-to-side neurorraphy with and without the perineural sheath. Twenty rats were used. The peroneal nerve was sectioned and the distal end was sutured to the lateral face of the tibial nerve. We removed the perineural sheath only on the right side, but not on the left side. The proximal end of the peroneal nerve was curved back approximately at a 100 degrees angle and implanted into the adductor muscle. Six months later, the 14 surviving animals were submitted to electrophysiological tests, sacrificed, and the nerves and muscles were taken for histological exams. On the right side, the muscles that had positive response needed an average of 258.89 mV (+/- 92.31) of electric stimulus and on the left side 298.34 mV (+/- 139.32). The average weight of the tibial cranial muscles of the right side was 0.47 g (0.18) and for the left side 0.45 g (0.15). The distal end of the peroneal nerve showed averages of 310.29 (+/- 191.34) nerve fibers on the right side and 287.71 (+/- 183.60) on the left side. The tibial nerve above the neurorraphy showed averages of 939.46 (+/- 223.51) nerve fibers on the right side and 959.46 (+/- 327.48) on the left side. The tibial nerve below the neurorraphy showed averages of 935.17 (+/- 298.65) nerve fibers on the right side and 755.31 (+/- 323.26) on the left side. The average areas of the right tibial cranial muscles were 0.0162 m2 (+/- 0.008), after 230 magnification, and 0.0152 m2 (0.0064) for the left tibial cranial muscles. The histological features of the tibial cranial muscles, taking normal as 100%, were 78.21 (+/- 20.75) on the right side and 82.14 (+/- 15.89) on the left side. The statistical analysis (Student's t test) did not reveal any difference (p > 0.05) among right and left sides for all variables. The authors concluded that the two neurorraphies (with and without perineurium) did not show any difference regarding morphological and electrophysiological features studied.

  20. Formyl-ended heterobifunctional poly(ethylene oxide): synthesis of poly(ethylene oxide) with a formyl group at one end and a hydroxyl group at the other end.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagasaki, Y; Kutsuna, T; Iijima, M; Kato, M; Kataoka, K; Kitano, S; Kadoma, Y

    1995-01-01

    Well-defined poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) with a formyl group at one end and a hydroxyl group at the other terminus was synthesized by the anionic ring opening polymerization of ethylene oxide (EO) with a new organometallic initiator possessing an acetal moiety, potassium 3,3-diethoxypropyl alkoxide. Hydrolysis of the acetal moiety produced a formyl group-terminated heterobifunctional PEO with a hydroxyl group at the other end.

  1. Demonstration of the First Real-Time End-to-End 40-Gb/s PAM-4 for Next-Generation Access Applications using 10-Gb/s Transmitter

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wei, J. L.; Eiselt, Nicklas; Griesser, Helmut

    2016-01-01

    We demonstrate the first known experiment of a real-time end-to-end 40-Gb/s PAM-4 system for next-generation access applications using 10-Gb/s class transmitters only. Based on the measurement of a real-time 40-Gb/s PAM system, low-cost upstream and downstream link power budgets are estimated. Up...

  2. Guidelines for time-to-event end-point definitions in trials for pancreatic cancer. Results of the DATECAN initiative (Definition for the Assessment of Time-to-event End-points in CANcer trials).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bonnetain, Franck; Bonsing, Bert; Conroy, Thierry; Dousseau, Adelaide; Glimelius, Bengt; Haustermans, Karin; Lacaine, François; Van Laethem, Jean Luc; Aparicio, Thomas; Aust, Daniela; Bassi, Claudio; Berger, Virginie; Chamorey, Emmanuel; Chibaudel, Benoist; Dahan, Laeticia; De Gramont, Aimery; Delpero, Jean Robert; Dervenis, Christos; Ducreux, Michel; Gal, Jocelyn; Gerber, Erich; Ghaneh, Paula; Hammel, Pascal; Hendlisz, Alain; Jooste, Valérie; Labianca, Roberto; Latouche, Aurelien; Lutz, Manfred; Macarulla, Teresa; Malka, David; Mauer, Muriel; Mitry, Emmanuel; Neoptolemos, John; Pessaux, Patrick; Sauvanet, Alain; Tabernero, Josep; Taieb, Julien; van Tienhoven, Geertjan; Gourgou-Bourgade, Sophie; Bellera, Carine; Mathoulin-Pélissier, Simone; Collette, Laurence

    2014-11-01

    Using potential surrogate end-points for overall survival (OS) such as Disease-Free- (DFS) or Progression-Free Survival (PFS) is increasingly common in randomised controlled trials (RCTs). However, end-points are too often imprecisely defined which largely contributes to a lack of homogeneity across trials, hampering comparison between them. The aim of the DATECAN (Definition for the Assessment of Time-to-event End-points in CANcer trials)-Pancreas project is to provide guidelines for standardised definition of time-to-event end-points in RCTs for pancreatic cancer. Time-to-event end-points currently used were identified from a literature review of pancreatic RCT trials (2006-2009). Academic research groups were contacted for participation in order to select clinicians and methodologists to participate in the pilot and scoring groups (>30 experts). A consensus was built after 2 rounds of the modified Delphi formal consensus approach with the Rand scoring methodology (range: 1-9). For pancreatic cancer, 14 time to event end-points and 25 distinct event types applied to two settings (detectable disease and/or no detectable disease) were considered relevant and included in the questionnaire sent to 52 selected experts. Thirty experts answered both scoring rounds. A total of 204 events distributed over the 14 end-points were scored. After the first round, consensus was reached for 25 items; after the second consensus was reached for 156 items; and after the face-to-face meeting for 203 items. The formal consensus approach reached the elaboration of guidelines for standardised definitions of time-to-event end-points allowing cross-comparison of RCTs in pancreatic cancer. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Treatment of a partially thrombosed giant aneurysm of the vertebral artery by aneurysm trapping and direct vertebral artery-posterior inferior cerebellar artery end-to-end anastomosis: technical case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benes, Ludwig; Kappus, Christoph; Sure, Ulrich; Bertalanffy, Helmut

    2006-07-01

    The purpose of this article is to focus for the first time on the operative management of a direct vertebral artery (VA)-posterior inferior cerebellar artery (PICA) end-to-end anastomosis in a partially thrombosed giant VA-PICA-complex aneurysm and to underline its usefulness as an additional treatment option. The operative technique of a direct VA-PICA end-to-end anatomosis is described in detail. The VA was entering the large aneurysm sack. Distally, the PICA originated from the aneurysm sack-VA-complex. The donor and recipient vessel were cut close to the aneurysm. Whereas the VA was cut in a straight manner, the PICA was cut at an oblique 45-degree angle to enlarge the vascular end diameter. Vessel ends were flushed with heparinized saline and sutured. The thrombotic material inside the aneurysm sack was removed and the distal VA clipped, leaving the anterior spinal artery and brainstem perforators free. The patient regained consciousness without additional morbidity. Magnetic resonance imaging scans revealed a completely decompressed brainstem without infarction. The postoperative angiograms demonstrated a good filling of the anastomosed PICA. Despite the caliber mistmatch of these two vessels the direct VA-PICA end-to-end anastomosis provides an accurate alternative in addition to other anastomoses and bypass techniques, when donor and recipient vessels are suitable and medullary perforators do not have to be disrupted.

  4. Vision-based mobile robot navigation through deep convolutional neural networks and end-to-end learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yachu; Zhao, Yuejin; Liu, Ming; Dong, Liquan; Kong, Lingqin; Liu, Lingling

    2017-09-01

    In contrast to humans, who use only visual information for navigation, many mobile robots use laser scanners and ultrasonic sensors along with vision cameras to navigate. This work proposes a vision-based robot control algorithm based on deep convolutional neural networks. We create a large 15-layer convolutional neural network learning system and achieve the advanced recognition performance. Our system is trained from end to end to map raw input images to direction in supervised mode. The images of data sets are collected in a wide variety of weather conditions and lighting conditions. Besides, the data sets are augmented by adding Gaussian noise and Salt-and-pepper noise to avoid overfitting. The algorithm is verified by two experiments, which are line tracking and obstacle avoidance. The line tracking experiment is proceeded in order to track the desired path which is composed of straight and curved lines. The goal of obstacle avoidance experiment is to avoid the obstacles indoor. Finally, we get 3.29% error rate on the training set and 5.1% error rate on the test set in the line tracking experiment, 1.8% error rate on the training set and less than 5% error rate on the test set in the obstacle avoidance experiment. During the actual test, the robot can follow the runway centerline outdoor and avoid the obstacle in the room accurately. The result confirms the effectiveness of the algorithm and our improvement in the network structure and train parameters

  5. A comparative analysis of the encapsulated end-organs of mammalian skeletal muscles and of their sensory nerve endings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Banks, R W; Hulliger, M; Saed, H H; Stacey, M J

    2009-06-01

    The encapsulated sensory endings of mammalian skeletal muscles are all mechanoreceptors. At the most basic functional level they serve as length sensors (muscle spindle primary and secondary endings), tension sensors (tendon organs), and pressure or vibration sensors (lamellated corpuscles). At a higher functional level, the differing roles of individual muscles in, for example, postural adjustment and locomotion might be expected to be reflected in characteristic complements of the various end-organs, their sensory endings and afferent nerve fibres. This has previously been demonstrated with regard to the number of muscle-spindle capsules; however, information on the other types of end-organ, as well as the complements of primary and secondary endings of the spindles themselves, is sporadic and inconclusive regarding their comparative provision in different muscles. Our general conclusion that muscle-specific variability in the provision of encapsulated sensory endings does exist demonstrates the necessity for the acquisition of more data of this type if we are to understand the underlying adaptive relationships between motor control and the structure and function of skeletal muscle. The present quantitative and comparative analysis of encapsulated muscle afferents is based on teased, silver-impregnated preparations. We begin with a statistical analysis of the number and distribution of muscle-spindle afferents in hind-limb muscles of the cat, particularly tenuissimus. We show that: (i) taking account of the necessity for at least one primary ending to be present, muscles differ significantly in the mean number of additional afferents per spindle capsule; (ii) the frequency of occurrence of spindles with different sensory complements is consistent with a stochastic, rather than deterministic, developmental process; and (iii) notwithstanding the previous finding, there is a differential distribution of spindles intramuscularly such that the more complex ones tend

  6. Cosmic Microwave Background: cosmology from the Planck perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Zotti, Gianfranco

    2017-08-01

    picture determined from its temperature data. Moreover, they have provided an accurate determination of the optical depth for Thomson scattering, τ, due to the cosmic reionization. The result for τ has provided key information on the end of ``dark ages'' and largely removed the tension with the constraints on the reionization history provided by optical/UV data, indicated by earlier estimates. This has dispensed from the need of exotic energy sources in addition to the ionizing power provided by massive stars during the early galaxy evolution. A joint analysis of BICEP2, Keck Array, and Planck data has shown that the B-mode polarization detected by the BICEP2 team can be accounted for by polarized Galactic dust and has tightened the constraint on the B-mode amplitude due to primordial tensor perturbations.

  7. Robotic end-effector for rewaterproofing shuttle tiles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manouchehri, Davoud; Hansen, Joseph M.; Wu, Cheng M.; Yamamoto, Brian S.; Graham, Todd

    1992-11-01

    This paper summarizes work by Rockwell International's Space Systems Division's Robotics Group at Downey, California. The work is part of a NASA-led team effort to automate Space Shuttle rewaterproofing in the Orbiter Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center and the ferry facility at the Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility. Rockwell's effort focuses on the rewaterproofing end-effector, whose function is to inject hazardous dimethylethyloxysilane into thousands of ceramic tiles on the underside of the orbiter after each flight. The paper has five sections. First, it presents background on the present manual process. Second, end-effector requirements are presented, including safety and interface control. Third, a design is presented for the five end-effector systems: positioning, delivery, containment, data management, and command and control. Fourth, end-effector testing and integrating to the total system are described. Lastly, future applications for this technology are discussed.

  8. Semi-automated categorization of open-ended questions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthias Schonlau

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Text data from open-ended questions in surveys are difficult to analyze and are frequently ignored. Yet open-ended questions are important because they do not constrain respondents’ answer choices. Where open-ended questions are necessary, sometimes multiple human coders hand-code answers into one of several categories. At the same time, computer scientists have made impressive advances in text mining that may allow automation of such coding. Automated algorithms do not achieve an overall accuracy high enough to entirely replace humans. We categorize open-ended questions soliciting narrative responses using text mining for easy-to-categorize answers and humans for the remainder using expected accuracies to guide the choice of the threshold delineating between “easy” and “hard”. Employing multinomial boosting avoids the common practice of converting machine learning “confidence scores” into pseudo-probabilities. This approach is illustrated with examples from open-ended questions related to respondents’ advice to a patient in a hypothetical dilemma, a follow-up probe related to respondents’ perception of disclosure/privacy risk, and from a question on reasons for quitting smoking from a follow-up survey from the Ontario Smoker’s Helpline. Targeting 80% combined accuracy, we found that 54%-80% of the data could be categorized automatically in research surveys.

  9. Advertising to the End Consumers by Pharmaceutical Companies: Blessing or Curse?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Scott Goldberg

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available The last several years have seen an increase inthe number of direct to consumer advertisements by pharmaceutical companies.Direct to Consumer advertisements (DTC means targeting the end consumerthrough advertisements on television, radio, in newspapers, magazines, and theInternet. The qualitative study presents data and supports  the need for a future quantitative study toask physicians and consumers their opinions on whether pharmaceutical companiesshould be allowed to advertise directly to the end consumer. This article reviewsthe literature on this controversial topic, supporting the need to explore thereserach questions in greater detail. A review of the literature suggests thereis financial motivation on the part of the pharmaceutical companies to increasetheir sales by advertsing directly to the end consumer as opposed to performingan educational service to the consumer.

  10. A real-time 3D end-to-end augmented reality system (and its representation transformations)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tytgat, Donny; Aerts, Maarten; De Busser, Jeroen; Lievens, Sammy; Rondao Alface, Patrice; Macq, Jean-Francois

    2016-09-01

    The new generation of HMDs coming to the market is expected to enable many new applications that allow free viewpoint experiences with captured video objects. Current applications usually rely on 3D content that is manually created or captured in an offline manner. In contrast, this paper focuses on augmented reality applications that use live captured 3D objects while maintaining free viewpoint interaction. We present a system that allows live dynamic 3D objects (e.g. a person who is talking) to be captured in real-time. Real-time performance is achieved by traversing a number of representation formats and exploiting their specific benefits. For instance, depth images are maintained for fast neighborhood retrieval and occlusion determination, while implicit surfaces are used to facilitate multi-source aggregation for both geometry and texture. The result is a 3D reconstruction system that outputs multi-textured triangle meshes at real-time rates. An end-to-end system is presented that captures and reconstructs live 3D data and allows for this data to be used on a networked (AR) device. For allocating the different functional blocks onto the available physical devices, a number of alternatives are proposed considering the available computational power and bandwidth for each of the components. As we will show, the representation format can play an important role in this functional allocation and allows for a flexible system that can support a highly heterogeneous infrastructure.

  11. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Minimum Operations Performance Standards End-to-End Verification and Validation (E2-V2) Simulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ghatas, Rania W.; Jack, Devin P.; Tsakpinis, Dimitrios; Vincent, Michael J.; Sturdy, James L.; Munoz, Cesar A.; Hoffler, Keith D.; Dutle, Aaron M.; Myer, Robert R.; Dehaven, Anna M.; hide

    2017-01-01

    As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) make their way to mainstream aviation operations within the National Airspace System (NAS), research efforts are underway to develop a safe and effective environment for their integration into the NAS. Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems are required to account for the lack of "eyes in the sky" due to having no human on-board the aircraft. The current NAS relies on pilot's vigilance and judgement to remain Well Clear (CFR 14 91.113) of other aircraft. RTCA SC-228 has defined DAA Well Clear (DAAWC) to provide a quantified Well Clear volume to allow systems to be designed and measured against. Extended research efforts have been conducted to understand and quantify system requirements needed to support a UAS pilot's ability to remain well clear of other aircraft. The efforts have included developing and testing sensor, algorithm, alerting, and display requirements. More recently, sensor uncertainty and uncertainty mitigation strategies have been evaluated. This paper discusses results and lessons learned from an End-to-End Verification and Validation (E2-V2) simulation study of a DAA system representative of RTCA SC-228's proposed Phase I DAA Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS). NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) was called upon to develop a system that evaluates a specific set of encounters, in a variety of geometries, with end-to-end DAA functionality including the use of sensor and tracker models, a sensor uncertainty mitigation model, DAA algorithmic guidance in both vertical and horizontal maneuvering, and a pilot model which maneuvers the ownship aircraft to remain well clear from intruder aircraft, having received collective input from the previous modules of the system. LaRC developed a functioning batch simulation and added a sensor/tracker model from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center, an in-house developed sensor uncertainty mitigation strategy, and implemented a pilot

  12. A Validation Approach of an End-to-End Whole Genome Sequencing Workflow for Source Tracking of Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella enterica

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne-Catherine Portmann

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Whole genome sequencing (WGS, using high throughput sequencing technology, reveals the complete sequence of the bacterial genome in a few days. WGS is increasingly being used for source tracking, pathogen surveillance and outbreak investigation due to its high discriminatory power. In the food industry, WGS used for source tracking is beneficial to support contamination investigations. Despite its increased use, no standards or guidelines are available today for the use of WGS in outbreak and/or trace-back investigations. Here we present a validation of our complete (end-to-end WGS workflow for Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella enterica including: subculture of isolates, DNA extraction, sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. This end-to-end WGS workflow was evaluated according to the following performance criteria: stability, repeatability, reproducibility, discriminatory power, and epidemiological concordance. The current study showed that few single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs were observed for L. monocytogenes and S. enterica when comparing genome sequences from five independent colonies from the first subculture and five independent colonies after the tenth subculture. Consequently, the stability of the WGS workflow for L. monocytogenes and S. enterica was demonstrated despite the few genomic variations that can occur during subculturing steps. Repeatability and reproducibility were also demonstrated. The WGS workflow was shown to have a high discriminatory power and has the ability to show genetic relatedness. Additionally, the WGS workflow was able to reproduce published outbreak investigation results, illustrating its capability of showing epidemiological concordance. The current study proposes a validation approach comprising all steps of a WGS workflow and demonstrates that the workflow can be applied to L. monocytogenes or S. enterica.

  13. A relational ethical approach to end-of-life delirium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wright, David Kenneth; Brajtman, Susan; Macdonald, Mary Ellen

    2014-08-01

    Delirium is a condition of acute onset and fluctuating course in which a person's level of consciousness and cognition become disturbed. Delirium is a common and distressing phenomenon in end-of-life care, yet it is underrecognized and undertreated. In this article, we review qualitative descriptions of the delirium experience in end-of-life care, found through a systematic search of academic databases, to generate insight into the intersubjective nature of the delirium experience. Our analysis of retrieved studies advances an understanding of the relational ethical dimensions of this phenomenon, that is, how delirium is lived by patients, families, and health care providers and how it affects the relationships and values at stake. We propose three themes that explain the distressing nature of delirium in palliative care: 1) experiences of relational tension; 2) challenges in recognizing the delirious person; and 3) struggles to interpret the meaning of delirious behaviors. By approaching end-of-life delirium from a perspective of relational ethics, attention is focused on the implications for the therapeutic relationship with patients and families when delirium becomes part of the dying trajectory. Copyright © 2014 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. End-User Driven Business Process Composition

    OpenAIRE

    Stoitsev, Todor

    2009-01-01

    Business Process Management (BPM) solutions enable enterprises to consolidate and optimize their business operations and to gain competitive advantage in the fast evolving global market. Often, the only ones to understand the matter and complexity of business processes are the end users of enterprise software, who execute them on a daily basis. The need to involve end users in business process composition during the implementation of BPM solutions in enterprises is clearly perceived. However,...

  15. Messenger RNA 3' end formation in plants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hunt, A G

    2008-01-01

    Messenger RNA 3' end formation is an integral step in the process that gives rise to mature, translated messenger RNAs in eukaryotes. With this step, a pre-messenger RNA is processed and polyadenylated, giving rise to a mature mRNA bearing the characteristic poly(A) tract. The poly(A) tract is a fundamental feature of mRNAs, participating in the process of translation initiation and being the focus of control mechanisms that define the lifetime of mRNAs. Thus messenger RNA 3' end formation impacts two steps in mRNA biogenesis and function. Moreover, mRNA 3' end formation is something of a bridge that integrates numerous other steps in mRNA biogenesis and function. While the process is essential for the expression of most genes, it is also one that is subject to various forms of regulation, such that both quantitative and qualitative aspects of gene expression may be modulated via the polyadenylation complex. In this review, the current status of understanding of mRNA 3' end formation in plants is discussed. In particular, the nature of mRNA 3' ends in plants is reviewed, as are recent studies that are beginning to yield insight into the functioning and regulation of plant polyadenylation factor subunits.

  16. Electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) battery-related burns presenting to US emergency departments, 2016.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corey, Catherine G; Chang, Joanne T; Rostron, Brian L

    2018-03-05

    Currently, an estimated 7.9 million US adults use electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). Although published reports have identified fires and explosions related to use of ENDS since 2009, these reports do not provide national estimates of burn injuries associated with ENDS batteries in the US. We analyzed nationally representative data provided in the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) to estimate the number of US emergency department (ED) visits for burn injuries associated with ENDS batteries. We reviewed the case narrative field to gain additional insights into the circumstances of the burn injury. In 2016, 26 ENDS battery-related burn cases were captured by NEISS, which translates to a national estimate of 1007 (95%CI: 357-1657) injuries presenting in US EDs. Most of the burns were thermal burns (80.4%) and occurred to the upper leg/lower trunk (77.3%). Examination of the case narrative field indicated that at least 20 of the burn injuries occurred while ENDS batteries were in the user's pocket. Our study provides valuable information for understanding the current burden of ENDS battery-related burn injuries treated in US EDs. The nature and circumstances of the injuries suggest these incidents were unintentional and would potentially be prevented through battery design requirements, battery testing standards and public education related to ENDS battery safety.

  17. Strategies for early metabolic disturbances in patients with an end jejunostomy or end ileostomy. Experience from a specialized Home Parenteral Nutrition (HPN center

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michał Ławiński

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Introduction : An end stoma syndrome is usually the result of an intentional surgical intervention in the course of staged treatment or a complication of surgery. These patients most frequently suffer from water and electrolyte disturbances, malnutrition syndromes caused by malabsorption of trace elements and/or vitamins, and undernutrition. Aim : To present early metabolic disturbances observed in patients with an end jejunostomy or end ileostomy syndrome on the first day of their hospitalization in a specialist Home Parenteral Nutrition (HPN center. Material and methods : The study included 142 patients with an end stoma syndrome (76 women and 66 men, hospitalized between 2004 and 2014. Patients were divided into two main groups. Group A consisted of 90 patients with an end jejunostomy and group B consisted of 52 patients with an end ileostomy. Results : After comparing the patients with an end jejunostomy vs. those with an end ileostomy, significant differences were found as regards pH (7.34 vs. 7.39, p = 0.043 and BE (3.24 vs. –0.86, p = 0.005. Depending on the lack or possibility of oral food intake, patients in the end jejunostomy group had different levels of the markers phosphate, Mg, Ca, urea, and creatinine, with all of these parameters within normal laboratory limits. When the end ileostomy group was divided into subgroups depending on the lack or possibility of oral food intake, differences in C-reactive protein activity were found (55.6 vs. 25.7, p = 0.041. Conclusions : Patients with an end jejunostomy syndrome are more prone to metabolic acidosis with significant alkali deficiencies.

  18. End-to-end Cyberinfrastructure and Data Services for Earth System Science Education and Research: Unidata's Plans and Directions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramamurthy, M.

    2005-12-01

    work together in a fundamentally different way. Likewise, the advent of digital libraries, grid computing platforms, interoperable frameworks, standards and protocols, open-source software, and community atmospheric models have been important drivers in shaping the use of a new generation of end-to-end cyberinfrastructure for solving some of the most challenging scientific and educational problems. In this talk, I will present an overview of the scientific, technological, and educational drivers and discuss recent developments in cyberinfrastructure and Unidata's role and directions in providing robust, end-to-end data services for solving geoscientific problems and advancing student learning.

  19. Minimizing Barriers in Learning for On-Call Radiology Residents-End-to-End Web-Based Resident Feedback System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Choi, Hailey H; Clark, Jennifer; Jay, Ann K; Filice, Ross W

    2018-02-01

    Feedback is an essential part of medical training, where trainees are provided with information regarding their performance and further directions for improvement. In diagnostic radiology, feedback entails a detailed review of the differences between the residents' preliminary interpretation and the attendings' final interpretation of imaging studies. While the on-call experience of independently interpreting complex cases is important to resident education, the more traditional synchronous "read-out" or joint review is impossible due to multiple constraints. Without an efficient method to compare reports, grade discrepancies, convey salient teaching points, and view images, valuable lessons in image interpretation and report construction are lost. We developed a streamlined web-based system, including report comparison and image viewing, to minimize barriers in asynchronous communication between attending radiologists and on-call residents. Our system provides real-time, end-to-end delivery of case-specific and user-specific feedback in a streamlined, easy-to-view format. We assessed quality improvement subjectively through surveys and objectively through participation metrics. Our web-based feedback system improved user satisfaction for both attending and resident radiologists, and increased attending participation, particularly with regards to cases where substantive discrepancies were identified.

  20. Training Providers and Patients to Talk about End-of-Life Care

    Science.gov (United States)

    Failing to discuss the transition from active cancer treatment to end-of-life care can leave doctors unsure of what a patient truly wants. Failing to receive end-of-life care in line with their values and wishes can cause patients and their families great distress. Researchers have developed innovative, evidence-based programs to help doctors and patients improve their communication skills and grow comfortable with these discussions.

  1. An Analysis of the Radiation Damage to the ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker End-Caps

    CERN Document Server

    Millar, Declan; Moretti, Stefano

    The motivation, theoretical principles and analytical procedure for an assessment of the radiation damage to the ATLAS SCT end-caps is presented. An analysis of the leakage current across end-cap modules is performed for 2011 and 2012 data. A comparison between the observed and expected leakage current is made, with measurements favouring the shape of the theoretical evolution. Measured data is found to be systematically lower than predicted for a large subset of end-cap modules, while the remainder show surface current effects which interfere with bulk current observation. Uniform differences for modules at different radial distances suggest a radial temperature distribution in the end-caps, with absolute silicon sensor temperature to be established in further analysis.

  2. Issues surrounding end-of-life decision-making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tejwani V

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Vickram Tejwani,1,* YiFan Wu,1,* Sabrina Serrano,2 Luis Segura,2 Michael Bannon,3 Qi Qian1 1Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, 2Mayo Graduate School, 3Department of Trauma, Critical Care, and General Surgery, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: End-of-life decision-making is a complex process that can be extremely challenging. We describe a 42-year-old woman in an irreversible coma without an advance directive. The case serves to illustrate the complications that can occur in end-of-life decision-making and challenges in resolving difficult futility disputes. We review the role of advance directives in planning end-of-life care, the responsibility and historical performance of patient surrogates, the genesis of futility disputes, and approaches to resolving disputes. Keywords: end-of-life care, advance directive, surrogate, futility dispute, conflict resolution

  3. Open-ended questions in sensory testing practice

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Piqueras Fiszman, B.

    2015-01-01

    Why use open-ended questions? This chapter provides an up-to-date overview on the use of open-ended questions in novel rapid sensory methodologies and the potential applications in which they could provide unique benefits. Next, the step-by-step process is described (from task performance to

  4. End-To-END Performance of the future MOMA intrument aboard the EXOMARS MISSION

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buch, A.; Pinnick, V. T.; Szopa, C.; Grand, N.; Danell, R.; van Amerom, F. H. W.; Freissinet, C.; Glavin, D. P.; Stalport, F.; Arevalo, R. D., Jr.; Coll, P. J.; Steininger, H.; Raulin, F.; Goesmann, F.; Mahaffy, P. R.; Brinckerhoff, W. B.

    2016-12-01

    After the SAM experiment aboard the curiosity rover, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) experiment aboard the future ExoMars mission will be the continuation of the search for the organic composition of the Mars surface with the advantage that the sample will be extracted as deep as 2 meters below the martian surface to minimize effects of radiation and oxidation on organic materials. To analyse the wide range of organic composition (volatile and non volatils compounds) of the martian soil MOMA is composed with an UV laser desorption / ionization (LDI) and a pyrolysis gas chromatography ion trap mass spectrometry (pyr-GC-ITMS). In order to analyse refractory organic compounds and chirality samples which undergo GC-ITMS analysis may be submitted to a derivatization process, consisting of the reaction of the sample components with specific reactants (MTBSTFA [1], DMF-DMA [2] or TMAH [3]). To optimize and test the performance of the GC-ITMS instrument we have performed several coupling tests campaigns between the GC, providing by the French team (LISA, LATMOS, CentraleSupelec), and the MS, providing by the US team (NASA, GSFC). Last campaign has been done with the ITU models wich is similar to the flight model and wich include the oven and the taping station providing by the German team (MPS). The results obtained demonstrate the current status of the end-to-end performance of the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry mode of operation. References:[1] Buch, A. et al. (2009) J chrom. A, 43, 143-151. [2] Freissinet et al. (2011) J Chrom A, 1306, 59-71. [3] Geffroy-Rodier, C. et al. (2009) JAAP, 85, 454-459. Acknowledgements: Funding provided by the Mars Exploration Program (point of contact, George Tahu, NASA/HQ). MOMA is a collaboration between NASA and ESA (PI Goesmann, MPS). MOMA-GC team acknowledges support from the French Space Agency (CNES), French National Programme of Planetology (PNP), National French Council (CNRS), Pierre Simon Laplace Institute.

  5. ATLAS end-caps 
on the move

    CERN Multimedia

    2007-01-01

    Two delicate and spectacular transport operations have been performed for ATLAS in recent weeks: the first end-cap tracker was installed in its final position, and one of the huge end-caps of the toroid magnet was moved to the top of the experiment’s shaft.

  6. Pharmacy Students' Attitudes Toward Death and End-of-life Care

    Science.gov (United States)

    Broeseker, Amy E.

    2010-01-01

    Objectives To assess pharmacy students' attitudes toward death and end-of-life care. Methods Third-year pharmacy students enrolled in the Ethics in Christianity and Health Care course were administered a survey instrument prior to introduction of the topic of end-of-life care. Students' attitudes toward different professions' roles in end-of-life care and their comfort in discussing end-of-life issues were assessed. The survey instrument was readministered to the same students at the end of their fourth year. Results On most survey items, female students responded more favorably toward death and end-of-life care than male students. One exception was the perceived emotional ability to be in the room of a dying patient or loved one. Post-experiential survey responses were generally more favorable toward death and end-of-life care than were pre-discussion responses. Conclusions In general, when surveyed concerning death and end-of-life care, female students responded more favorably than male students, and responses at the end of the fourth year were more favorable than at the beginning of the course. PMID:21045946

  7. Preparing an ATLAS toroid magnet end-cap for lowering

    CERN Multimedia

    Claudia Marcelloni

    2007-01-01

    One of the two 13-m high toroid magnet end-caps for the ATLAS experiment being transported from the construction hall to the experimental area. The end-cap will be lowered into the ATLAS cavern and attached to an end of the detector.

  8. Back end of the fuel cycle

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wolfe, B.; Lambert, R.W.

    1975-01-01

    At present, that portion of the nuclear fuel cycle involving reprocessing, waste management, and mixed-oxide fuel fabrication is in an unsettled state. Government regulatory requirements with respect to all aspects of the back end of the fuel cycle are still being formulated, and there is little positive experience on the operation of commercial reprocessing or mixed-oxide fabrication plants. In view of this unsettled situation, it will be difficult to meet the reprocessing and mixed-oxide fabrication needs of the next decade in the pattern previously anticipated. The costs in the back end of the fuel cycle are much higher than had been anticipated several years ago, a situation similar to that of almost all large endeavors in this country. On the other hand, the added costs are small relative to total power costs and do not affect the economic advantage of nuclear power as compared to other power sources. A rough economic analysis indicates that the question for the back end of the fuel cycle has changed from one of optimizing profitability to one of determining the most economic disposition of spent fuel. Long-term spent fuel storage is a practical and economically acceptable way to provide time for determining a sound course of action for the back end of the fuel cycle. Indeed, if one could count on a breeder economy before the end of the century, one possible course of action is to store light-water fuel until the plutonium can be used in breeders. However, for philosophical as well as practical reasons, it is important that the uncertainties in the course of action should be resolved as quickly as possible. Long-term storage should not be an excuse to delay resolution of the basic questions. (U.S.)

  9. SME2EM: Smart mobile end-to-end monitoring architecture for life-long diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serhani, Mohamed Adel; Menshawy, Mohamed El; Benharref, Abdelghani

    2016-01-01

    Monitoring life-long diseases requires continuous measurements and recording of physical vital signs. Most of these diseases are manifested through unexpected and non-uniform occurrences and behaviors. It is impractical to keep patients in hospitals, health-care institutions, or even at home for long periods of time. Monitoring solutions based on smartphones combined with mobile sensors and wireless communication technologies are a potential candidate to support complete mobility-freedom, not only for patients, but also for physicians. However, existing monitoring architectures based on smartphones and modern communication technologies are not suitable to address some challenging issues, such as intensive and big data, resource constraints, data integration, and context awareness in an integrated framework. This manuscript provides a novel mobile-based end-to-end architecture for live monitoring and visualization of life-long diseases. The proposed architecture provides smartness features to cope with continuous monitoring, data explosion, dynamic adaptation, unlimited mobility, and constrained devices resources. The integration of the architecture׳s components provides information about diseases׳ recurrences as soon as they occur to expedite taking necessary actions, and thus prevent severe consequences. Our architecture system is formally model-checked to automatically verify its correctness against designers׳ desirable properties at design time. Its components are fully implemented as Web services with respect to the SOA architecture to be easy to deploy and integrate, and supported by Cloud infrastructure and services to allow high scalability, availability of processes and data being stored and exchanged. The architecture׳s applicability is evaluated through concrete experimental scenarios on monitoring and visualizing states of epileptic diseases. The obtained theoretical and experimental results are very promising and efficiently satisfy the proposed

  10. Seven-laser diode end-pumped Nd

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Berger, J.; Welch, D.F.; Streifer, W.; Scifres, D.R.; Smith, J.J.; Hoffman, H.J.; Peisley, D.; Radecki, D.

    1988-01-01

    End pumping of solid-state lasers by single semiconductor laser diode arrays (LDAs) is efficient, but the maximum pump power is limited by the source brightness and matching the TEM/sub 00/ Nd:YAG cavity mode. To increase the output power from a solid-state Nd:YAG laser, one option is to employ a multiplicity of LDA to provide more pump power than is available from a single source. The authors report herein a 660-mW cw TEM/sub 00/ Nd:YAG laser, end-pumped by seven LDA, with bundled optical fibers coupling the light from each diode to the Nd:YAG rod end. The maximum electrical-to-optical conversion efficiency attained was 4.7% at 560-mW Nd:YAG output power. The LDAs (SDL-2430-C, 100 μm wide) were mounted on separate thermoelectric coolers to tune emission wavelength to the Nd:YAG absorption bands. The diodes were operated at their rated output power (50,000 h mean time to failure). The 110/125-μm diam 0.37-N.A. fibers were butt coupled to the lasers and glued together into a hexagonal close pack. The authors have obtained the highest average power demonstrated to date in the TEM/sub 00/ mode from a Nd:YAG laser, reliably end-pumped by multiple laser diodes with good efficiency

  11. [Treatment of painful neuromas via end-to-side neurorraphy].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aszmann, O C; Moser, V; Frey, M

    2010-08-01

    Management of the painful neuroma has been subject to controversy since the earliest descriptions of this disabling problem. Today, treatment is limited to resection of the neuroma and implantation of the nerve in a muscle at a location where it is safe from irritation and trauma. This however is not attainable in many cases and it is our clinical experience, that nerves without a target remain a source of constant discomfort and pain. Recently we reported of the feasibility of neuroma prevention through end-to-side neurorraphy into adjacent sensory and/or motor nerves to provide a target for axons deprived of their endorgan. Here we report of our first clinical experience with this method in sixteen patients with longstanding upper and lower extremity neuromas. 16 patients were included in this study. All had neuromas of different sensory nerves of both the upper and lower extremity. 11 were of iatrogenic origin, 5 were caused by different traumas. 8 had previous attempts to surgically treat the neuroma. Finally, all were treated by end-to-side neurorraphy into adjacent nerves. Postoperatively quantitative sensorymotor testing was performed to evaluate possible changes of nerve function of the recipient nerves. Pain was evaluated by visual analogue score and changes in pain medication. In no patient a sensory or motor deficit or painful sensations were induced in the target area of the recipient nerve. Some had dysaesthesias for about 6 months, which finally subsided. All but 1 patient improved in their symptoms at a follow-up of more than 2 years. Previous experimental work and present clinical results suggest that axons of a severed peripheral nerve that are provided with a pathway and target through an end-to-side coaptation will either be pruned or establish some type of end-organ contact so that a neuroma can be prevented without inducing sensory or motor dysfunctions in the recipient nerve. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart New York.

  12. SAMHD1 Promotes DNA End Resection to Facilitate DNA Repair by Homologous Recombination

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Waaqo Daddacha

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available DNA double-strand break (DSB repair by homologous recombination (HR is initiated by CtIP/MRN-mediated DNA end resection to maintain genome integrity. SAMHD1 is a dNTP triphosphohydrolase, which restricts HIV-1 infection, and mutations are associated with Aicardi-Goutières syndrome and cancer. We show that SAMHD1 has a dNTPase-independent function in promoting DNA end resection to facilitate DSB repair by HR. SAMHD1 deficiency or Vpx-mediated degradation causes hypersensitivity to DSB-inducing agents, and SAMHD1 is recruited to DSBs. SAMHD1 complexes with CtIP via a conserved C-terminal domain and recruits CtIP to DSBs to facilitate end resection and HR. Significantly, a cancer-associated mutant with impaired CtIP interaction, but not dNTPase-inactive SAMHD1, fails to rescue the end resection impairment of SAMHD1 depletion. Our findings define a dNTPase-independent function for SAMHD1 in HR-mediated DSB repair by facilitating CtIP accrual to promote DNA end resection, providing insight into how SAMHD1 promotes genome integrity.

  13. Training leads to increased auditory brain-computer interface performance of end-users with motor impairments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Halder, S; Käthner, I; Kübler, A

    2016-02-01

    Auditory brain-computer interfaces are an assistive technology that can restore communication for motor impaired end-users. Such non-visual brain-computer interface paradigms are of particular importance for end-users that may lose or have lost gaze control. We attempted to show that motor impaired end-users can learn to control an auditory speller on the basis of event-related potentials. Five end-users with motor impairments, two of whom with additional visual impairments, participated in five sessions. We applied a newly developed auditory brain-computer interface paradigm with natural sounds and directional cues. Three of five end-users learned to select symbols using this method. Averaged over all five end-users the information transfer rate increased by more than 1800% from the first session (0.17 bits/min) to the last session (3.08 bits/min). The two best end-users achieved information transfer rates of 5.78 bits/min and accuracies of 92%. Our results show that an auditory BCI with a combination of natural sounds and directional cues, can be controlled by end-users with motor impairment. Training improves the performance of end-users to the level of healthy controls. To our knowledge, this is the first time end-users with motor impairments controlled an auditory brain-computer interface speller with such high accuracy and information transfer rates. Further, our results demonstrate that operating a BCI with event-related potentials benefits from training and specifically end-users may require more than one session to develop their full potential. Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. FMIT test-end instrumentation development bases

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fuller, J.L.

    1982-06-01

    FMIT test-end measurements proposed for deuteron beam control, target diagnostics, and irradiation sample dosimetry are listed. The test-end refers to the area inside the test cell, but includes measurements inside and outside the cell. Justification, categorization, and limits qualification are presented for each measurement. Methods are purposefully de-emphasized in order to clarify the measurement needs, not techniques. Some discussion of techniques currently under investigation is given in the last section of the report

  15. The upgraded CDF front end electronics for calorimetry

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Drake, G.; Frei, D.; Hahn, S.R.; Nelson, C.A.; Segler, S.L.; Stuermer, W.

    1991-11-01

    The front end electronics used in the calorimetry of the CDF detector has been upgraded to meet system requirements for higher expected luminosity. A fast digitizer utilizing a 2 {mu}Sec, 16 bit ADC has been designed and built. Improvements to the front end trigger circuitry have been implemented, including the production of 900 new front end modules. Operational experience with the previous system is presented, with discussion of the problems and performance goals.

  16. The upgraded CDF front end electronics for calorimetry

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Drake, G.; Frei, D.; Hahn, S.R.; Nelson, C.A.; Segler, S.L.; Stuermer, W.

    1991-11-01

    The front end electronics used in the calorimetry of the CDF detector has been upgraded to meet system requirements for higher expected luminosity. A fast digitizer utilizing a 2 μSec, 16 bit ADC has been designed and built. Improvements to the front end trigger circuitry have been implemented, including the production of 900 new front end modules. Operational experience with the previous system is presented, with discussion of the problems and performance goals

  17. End points and assessments in esthetic dental treatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ishida, Yuichi; Fujimoto, Keiko; Higaki, Nobuaki; Goto, Takaharu; Ichikawa, Tetsuo

    2015-10-01

    There are two key considerations for successful esthetic dental treatments. This article systematically describes the two key considerations: the end points of esthetic dental treatments and assessments of esthetic outcomes, which are also important for acquiring clinical skill in esthetic dental treatments. The end point and assessment of esthetic dental treatment were discussed through literature reviews and clinical practices. Before designing a treatment plan, the end point of dental treatment should be established. The section entitled "End point of esthetic dental treatment" discusses treatments for maxillary anterior teeth and the restoration of facial profile with prostheses. The process of assessing treatment outcomes entitled "Assessments of esthetic dental treatment" discusses objective and subjective evaluation methods. Practitioners should reach an agreement regarding desired end points with patients through medical interviews, and continuing improvements and developments of esthetic assessments are required to raise the therapeutic level of esthetic dental treatments. Copyright © 2015 Japan Prosthodontic Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Malvaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Magda Chanco

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Malvaceae es reconocida en el Perú con 38 géneros y 264 especies (Brako & Zarucchi 1993, Ulloa et al. 2004, mayormente arbustos y hierbas. En este trabajo reconocemos 87 especies endémicas en 16 géneros. El género más rico en especies endémicas es Nototriche. Las especies endémicas se encuentran en varias regiones ecológicas, entre ellas Altoandina, Mesoandina y Puna Húmeda y Seca, por encima de los 2500 m, hasta alcanzar los límites de la vegetación a 5100 m de altitud. Se aplicaron las categorías y criterios de la UICN a 84 especies. Once especies endémicas se encuentran presentes en el Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  19. Curvaton and the inhomogeneous end of inflation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Assadullahi, Hooshyar; Wands, David; Firouzjahi, Hassan; Namjoo, Mohammad Hossein

    2012-01-01

    We study the primordial density perturbations and non-Gaussianities generated from the combined effects of an inhomogeneous end of inflation and curvaton decay in hybrid inflation. This dual role is played by a single isocurvature field which is massless during inflation but acquire a mass at the end of inflation via the waterfall phase transition. We calculate the resulting primordial non-Gaussianity characterized by the non-linearity parameter, f NL , recovering the usual end-of-inflation result when the field decays promptly and the usual curvaton result if the field decays sufficiently late

  20. Vochysiaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Blanca León

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Vochysiaceae es reconocida en el Perú por presentar cuatro géneros y 32 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993; Ulloa Ulloa et al., 2004, todas árboles. En este trabajo reconocemos dos especies endémicas en el género Qualea. Estas especies endémicas han sido encontradas en la región Bosques Húmedos Amazónicos, entre los 100 y 160 m de altitud. Ninguna especie endémica se encuentra representada dentro del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  1. Modeling Non-homologous End Joining

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Yongfeng

    2013-01-01

    Non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) is the dominant DNA double strand break (DSB) repair pathway and involves several NHEJ proteins such as Ku, DNA-PKcs, XRCC4, Ligase IV and so on. Once DSBs are generated, Ku is first recruited to the DNA end, followed by other NHEJ proteins for DNA end processing and ligation. Because of the direct ligation of break ends without the need for a homologous template, NHEJ turns out to be an error-prone but efficient repair pathway. Some mechanisms have been proposed of how the efficiency of NHEJ repair is affected. The type of DNA damage is an important factor of NHEJ repair. For instance, the length of DNA fragment may determine the recruitment efficiency of NHEJ protein such as Ku [1], or the complexity of the DNA breaks [2] is accounted for the choice of NHEJ proteins and subpathway of NHEJ repair. On the other hand, the chromatin structure also plays a role of the accessibility of NHEJ protein to the DNA damage site. In this talk, some mathematical models of NHEJ, that consist of series of biochemical reactions complying with the laws of chemical reaction (e.g. mass action, etc.), will be introduced. By mathematical and numerical analysis and parameter estimation, the models are able to capture the qualitative biological features and show good agreement with experimental data. As conclusions, from the viewpoint of modeling, how the NHEJ proteins are recruited will be first discussed for connection between the classical sequential model [4] and recently proposed two-phase model [5]. Then how the NHEJ repair pathway is affected, by the length of DNA fragment [6], the complexity of DNA damage [7] and the chromatin structure [8], will be addressed

  2. End-user centeredness in antiretroviral therapy services in Nigerian ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Objective: To describe the perception of end users with regard to end-user centeredness in antiretroviral therapy (ART) service provision in Nigerian public health facilities. Design: A qualitative design was followed. Subjects and setting: Unstructured focus group discussions were conducted with end users (n = 64) in six ...

  3. Nerves and nerve endings in the skin of tropical cattle.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Amakiri, S F; Ozoya, S E; Ogunnaike, P O

    1978-01-01

    The nerves and nerve endings in the skin of tropical cattle were studied using histological and histochemical techniques. Many nerve trunks and fibres were present in the reticular and papillary dermis in both hairy and non-hairy skin sites. In non-hairy skin locations such as the muzzle and lower lip, encapsulated endings akin to Krause and Ruffini end bulbs, which arise from myelinated nerve trunks situated lower down the dermis were observed at the upper papillary layer level. Some fibre trunks seen at this level extended upwards to terminate within dermal papillae as bulb-shaped longitudinally lamellated Pacinian-type endings, while other onion-shaped lamellated nerve structures were located either within dermal papillae or near the dermo-epidermal area. Intraepidermal free-ending nerve fibres, appearing non-myelinated were observed in areas with thick epidermis. Intraepidermal free-ending nerve fibres, appearing non-myelinated were observed in areas with thick epidermis. On hairy skin sites, however, organized nerve endings or intraepidermal nerve endings were not readily identifiable.

  4. Virksomhedscensur farligere end selvcensur

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Brink, Dennis Meyhoff

    2010-01-01

    Når TV-stationer som SBS og auktionshuse som lauritz.com ikke tør vise provokerende materiale, så er der ikke tale om selvcensur, men om virksomhedscensur. Og det er langt farligere end selvcensur....

  5. Back End Programming in .NET Framework

    OpenAIRE

    Sapkota, Dinesh

    2013-01-01

    The main goal of the project was to develop a web application which provides the services for both web and mobile client. The complete application development process was carried out by the team of four members and a supervisor. According to the interest of group members the whole project was divided into four parts; that is user interface design, mobile application development, back end development for mobile services and server side back end development of application. I got the task of ser...

  6. CMS end-cap yoke at the detector's assembly site.

    CERN Multimedia

    Patrice Loïez

    2002-01-01

    The magnetic flux generated by the superconducting coil in the CMS detector is returned via an iron yoke comprising three end-cap discs at each end (end-cap yoke) and five concentric cylinders (barrel yoke). This picture shows the first of three end-cap discs (red) seen through the outer cylinder of the vacuum tank which will house the superconducting coil.

  7. End-user challenges to security digitalisation and integration: a retail perspective

    OpenAIRE

    Lahtinen, Markus

    2008-01-01

    With the assumed digitalisation happening on the end-user side, progressive systems integrators stress the importance of changing the business concept from being installers to being service and solution providers. However, less is known about the details of this process on the end-user side. Based on an online survey of loss prevention managers it can be stated that security digitalisation and further business integration of security is a top agreement among the respondents. Integ...

  8. Analysis of a DSM program using an end use model; End use model wo mochiita DSM program no bunseki

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Asano, H.; Takahashi, M.; Okada, K. [Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Tokyo (Japan)

    1997-01-30

    An end use model used in the United States who is advanced in demand-side management (DSM) was used to discuss possibilities of designing and evaluating Japan`s future DSM measures. The end use model assumes energy demand based on such factors as device characteristics, meteorological data, energy prices, user characteristics, market characteristics and DSM measures. The model calculates energy demand amount by end uses basically by multiplying assumptions on device unit requirement, device retention rate, and number of users. A representative tool as an end use model that handles load shapes is the hourly electric load model (HELM). It assumes an annual load curve and predicts a maximum system load. The present discussions have performed estimation on demand for consumer use air conditioners in a day in which a maximum summer load occurs in a reference year, estimation on load in a maximum load day in an estimated year, and estimation on weather sensitivity of loads. 5 refs., 5 figs.

  9. Common Patterns with End-to-end Interoperability for Data Access

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gallagher, J.; Potter, N.; Jones, M. B.

    2010-12-01

    At first glance, using common storage formats and open standards should be enough to ensure interoperability between data servers and client applications, but that is often not the case. In the REAP (Realtime Environment for Analytical Processing; NSF #0619060) project we integrated access to data from OPeNDAP servers into the Kepler workflow system and found that, as in previous cases, we spent the bulk of our effort addressing the twin issues of data model compatibility and integration strategies. Implementing seamless data access between a remote data source and a client application (data sink) can be broken down into two kinds of issues. First, the solution must address any differences in the data models used by the data source (OPeNDAP) and the data sink (the Kepler workflow system). If these models match completely, there is little work to be done. However, that is rarely the case. To map OPeNDAP's data model to Kepler's, we used two techniques (ignoring trivial conversions): On-the-fly type mapping and out-of-band communication. Type conversion takes place both for data and metadata because Kepler requires a priori knowledge of some aspects (e.g., syntactic metadata) of the data to build a workflow. In addition, OPeNDAP's constraint expression syntax was used to send out-of-band information to restrict the data requested from the server, facilitating changes in the returned data's type. This technique provides a way for users to exert fine-grained control over the data request, a potentially useful technique, at the cost of requiring that users understand a little about the data source's processing capabilities. The second set of issues for end-to-end data access are integration strategies. OPeNDAP provides several different tools for bringing data into an application: C++, C and Java libraries that provide functions for newly written software; The netCDF library which enables existing applications to read from servers using an older interface; and simple

  10. Modelling assessment of End Pit Lakes meromictic potential

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2006-11-01

    The use of End Pit Lakes have been proposed as a remediation solution for oil sands reclamation and operational waters. This report modelled the main factors controlling the occurrence of stratification in Pit Lakes in order to establish design and management guidelines for the Cumulative Environmental Management Association's End Pit Lake Sub-group. The study focused on End Pit Lake size, depth, starting lake salinity concentrations, inflow rates and inflow salinity flux, and investigated their influence on density gradients. One-dimensional modelling and limited 2-D modelling simulations were conducted to examine meromictic potential for a large range of End Pit Lake configurations and conditions. Modelling results showed that fall is the governing season for determining meromixis. The expelling of salt from saline water upon ice formation and its effect on stratification potential and the effect of fresh water loading on stratification potential during spring melt events were not observed to be dominant factors governing meromictic potential for the scenarios examined in the study. Results suggested that shallow End Pit Lakes showed a high turn-over rate with seasonal heating and cooling cycles. Moderately deep End Pit Lakes demonstrated a meromictic potential that was inversely proportional to lake size and require higher starting salinities. With a 2 or 10 million m 3 /yr inflow rate and a 5 parts per thousand starting salinity, a 50 m deep End Pit Lake achieved meromixis at all 3 size ranges considered in the study. Results also showed that the rate of influent salinity decrease was the least important of the parameters influencing meromixis. It was observed that meromixis was a temporary condition in all of the End Pit Lake scenarios envisioned due to the lack of a constant, positive salt replenishment over the long term. It was concluded that further 3-D modelling is required to represent littoral areas as well as to account for extreme winter conditions. A

  11. Segregation of chain ends to polymer melt surfaces and interfaces

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhao, W.; Zhao, X.; Rafailovich, M.H.; Sokolov, J.; Composto, R.J.; Smith, S.D.; Satkowski, M.; Russell, T.P.; Dozier, W.D.; Mansfield, T.

    1993-01-01

    The conformation of polymer chains in the melt near an impenetrable boundary has recently been studied by molecular dynamics and off-lattice Monte Carlo simulations. Both types of calculations show an enhancement of the chain end density within a distance of approximately two polymer segment lengths of the interface relative to the bulk. In the absence of preferential interactions between monomers and the interface, the segregation arises from minimizing the loss of conformational entropy near an impenetrable boundary; i.e., by positioning an end near the surface, only one unit rather than two is reflected. In order to obtain an experimental measure of this effect, monodisperse polystyrene (PS) chains of molecular weight 63 000 with short blocks of deuterated polystyrene (dPS) at each end were prepared. The block length was kept as short as possible, while yet producing sufficient neutron scattering contrast in order to minimize any preferential surface segregation due to isotopic effects. The synthesis was carried out via living anionic polymerization of a purified styrene monomer in cyclohexane at 60 C, utilizing sec-butyllithium as the initiator. The process was terminated using degassed methanol

  12. Exercise starts and ends in the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kayser, Bengt

    2003-10-01

    Classically the limit to endurance of exercise is explained in terms of metabolic capacity. Cardio-respiratory capacity and muscle fatigue are thought to set the limit and the majority of studies on factors limiting endurance exercise discuss issues such as maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), aerobic enzyme capacity, cardiac output, glycogen stores, etc. However, this paradigm does not explain the limitation to endurance exercise with large muscle groups at altitude, when at exhaustion exercise is ended without limb locomotor muscle fatigue and with sub-maximal cardiac output. A simple fact provides a basis for an explanation. Voluntary exercise starts and ends in the brain. It starts with spatial and temporal recruitment of motor units and ends with their de-recruitment. A conscious decision precedes a voluntary effort. The end of effort is again volitional and a forced conscious decision to stop precedes it, but it is unknown what forces the off-switch of recruitment at exhaustion although sensation of exertion certainly plays a role. An alternative model explaining the limitation of exercise endurance thus proposes that the central nervous system integrates input from various sources all related to the exercise and limits the intensity and duration of recruitment of limb skeletal muscle to prevent jeopardizing the integrity of the organism. This model acknowledges the cardio-respiratory and muscle metabolic capacities as prime actors on the performance scene, while crediting the central nervous system for its pivotal role as the ultimate site where exercise starts and ends.

  13. Mixed integer nonlinear programming model of wireless pricing scheme with QoS attribute of bandwidth and end-to-end delay

    Science.gov (United States)

    Irmeilyana, Puspita, Fitri Maya; Indrawati

    2016-02-01

    The pricing for wireless networks is developed by considering linearity factors, elasticity price and price factors. Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming of wireless pricing model is proposed as the nonlinear programming problem that can be solved optimally using LINGO 13.0. The solutions are expected to give some information about the connections between the acceptance factor and the price. Previous model worked on the model that focuses on bandwidth as the QoS attribute. The models attempt to maximize the total price for a connection based on QoS parameter. The QoS attributes used will be the bandwidth and the end to end delay that affect the traffic. The maximum goal to maximum price is achieved when the provider determine the requirement for the increment or decrement of price change due to QoS change and amount of QoS value.

  14. The Areva Group back-end division - challenges and prospects

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2004-06-01

    This document presents the Areva Group back-end division challenges and prospects. Areva, a world nuclear industry leader, analyzes in this document, the high-profile mix of complementary activities of the nuclear energy industry, concerning the back-end division the full range of services for the end of the fuel cycle, the fuel cycle back-end markets, the economic and financial associated considerations. (A.L.B.)

  15. Uncharted terrain: preference construction at the end of life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Mary T

    2014-01-01

    Respect for patients' self-determination has long been considered central to efforts to improve end-of-life care, yet efforts to promote advance directives or engage patients in end-of-life discussions are often unsuccessful. In this article, I contend that this is because the shared decision-making approach typically used in healthcare assumes patients' capacity to make rational choices, which is not always possible in end-of-life decisions. Drawing on decision theory, behavioral psychology, and related studies of end-of-life care, I present a growing body of evidence that suggests the novelty, complexity, and uncertainty of end-of-life circumstances make rational and stable preferences difficult to establish. I argue that an effective decision-making approach for the terminally ill must recognize and respond to the unique characteristics of end-of-life choices, including their nonrational dimensions. I conclude with a description of an initiative that appears to do so, resulting in increased patients' satisfaction. Copyright 2014 The Journal of Clinical Ethics. All rights reserved.

  16. Analysis of Smith-Purcell BWO with end reflections

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kumar, V.; Kim, K.-J.

    2006-01-01

    We present a one-dimensional time-dependent analysis and simulation of Smith-Purcell (SP) backward wave oscillator (BWO) taking end reflections and attenuation into account. In the linear regime, we obtain an analytic solution and calculate the start current. The dependence of start current on end reflections is studied taking the attenuation due to finite conductivity into account. In this paper, we have set up Maxwell-Lorentz equations for the one-dimensional time-dependent analysis of SP-BWO including end reflection and attenuation due to finite conductivity. We have obtained a solution in the linear regime and extended the analysis to the nonlinear regime by solving the Maxwell-Lorentz equations numerically. Our analysis can be used for detailed optimization of outcoupled power and start current in SP-BWO taking end reflection and attenuation into account.

  17. Unidata's Vision for Providing Comprehensive and End-to-end Data Services

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramamurthy, M. K.

    2009-05-01

    This paper presents Unidata's vision for providing comprehensive, well-integrated, and end-to-end data services for the geosciences. These include an array of functions for collecting, finding, and accessing data; data management tools for generating, cataloging, and exchanging metadata; and submitting or publishing, sharing, analyzing, visualizing, and integrating data. When this vision is realized, users no matter where they are or how they are connected to the Internetwill be able to find and access a plethora of geosciences data and use Unidata-provided tools and services both productively and creatively in their research and education. What that vision means for the Unidata community is elucidated by drawing a simple analogy. Most of users are familiar with Amazon and eBay e-commerce sites and content sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. On the eBay marketplace, people can sell practically anything at any time and buyers can share their experience of purchasing a product or the reputation of a seller. Likewise, at Amazon, thousands of merchants sell their goods and millions of customers not only buy those goods, but provide a review or opinion of the products they buy and share their experiences as purchasers. Similarly, YouTube and Flickr are sites tailored to video- and photo-sharing, respectively, where users can upload their own content and share it with millions of other users, including family and friends. What all these sites, together with social-networking applications like MySpace and Facebook, have enabled is a sense of a virtual community in which users can search and browse products or content, comment and rate those products from anywhere, at any time, and via any Internet- enabled device like an iPhone, laptop, or a desktop computer. In essence, these enterprises have fundamentally altered people's buying modes and behavior toward purchases. Unidata believes that similar approaches, appropriately tailored to meet the needs of the scientific

  18. Ferromagnetic interaction in an asymmetric end-to-end azido double-bridged copper(II) dinuclear complex: a combined structure, magnetic, polarized neutron diffraction and theoretical study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aronica, Christophe; Jeanneau, Erwann; El Moll, Hani; Luneau, Dominique; Gillon, Béatrice; Goujon, Antoine; Cousson, Alain; Carvajal, Maria Angels; Robert, Vincent

    2007-01-01

    A new end-to-end azido double-bridged copper(II) complex [Cu(2)L(2)(N(3))2] (1) was synthesized and characterized (L=1,1,1-trifluoro-7-(dimethylamino)-4-methyl-5-aza-3-hepten-2-onato). Despite the rather long Cu-Cu distance (5.105(1) A), the magnetic interaction is ferromagnetic with J= +16 cm(-1) (H=-JS(1)S(2)), a value that has been confirmed by DFT and high-level correlated ab initio calculations. The spin distribution was studied by using the results from polarized neutron diffraction. This is the first such study on an end-to-end system. The experimental spin density was found to be localized mainly on the copper(II) ions, with a small degree of delocalization on the ligand (L) and terminal azido nitrogens. There was zero delocalization on the central nitrogen, in agreement with DFT calculations. Such a picture corresponds to an important contribution of the d(x2-y2) orbital and a small population of the d(z2) orbital, in agreement with our calculations. Based on a correlated wavefunction analysis, the ferromagnetic behavior results from a dominant double spin polarization contribution and vanishingly small ionic forms.

  19. Synthesis of the initial survey related to PSAs End-Users needs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guigueno, Yves; Duflot, Nicolas; Durin, Thomas; Pihl, Joel; Benzoni, Stephane; Brac, Pascal; Gallois, Marie; Vasseur, Dominique; Loeffler, Horst; Nitoi, Mirela; Volkanovski, Andrija; Sevbo, Oleksandr; Ivanov, Ivan

    2015-01-01

    The ASAMPSA-E project aims at identifying good practices for the development of extended PSAs that include low-probability internal and external hazards which can lead to extreme consequences, and at discussing the application of extended PSAs for NPP safety enhancement decision making in the European context. A first questionnaire related to End-Users needs (ASAMPSA-E/WP10/D10.112013-4) has been disseminated at international level to PSA End-Users in November 2013 in order to identify the needs for guidance for the performance and application of extended PSA. This document presents the analysis of the responses to the survey. A draft version has been used to present the responses to the survey and discuss End-Users' needs during an international workshop organized on 26, 27 and 28 May 2014 in Uppsala (Sweden). The final version of this document has been prepared by incorporating the comments received from the project partners and the outcomes of the discussions at the Uppsala workshop. (authors)

  20. Open-Ended Electric Motor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gould, Mauri

    1975-01-01

    Presents complete instructions for assembling an electric motor which does not require large amounts of power to operate and which is inexpensive as well as reliable. Several open-ended experiments with the motor are included as well as information for obtaining a kit of parts and instructions. (BR)

  1. The Ends of Revolution

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Haugbølle, Sune; Bandak, Andreas

    2017-01-01

    from the days of Tahrir Square in early 2011, when people with elated spirits poured into the streets to demand a better political future. If the large-scale social mobilization back then provided the best refutation of Francis Fukuyama’s the end of history thesis then the failure to translate...

  2. Moraceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pamela Cáceres

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Moraceae es reconocida en el Perú por presentar 19 géneros y 128 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993; Ulloa Ulloa et al., 2004, la mayoría arbóreas y/o hemiepífitos. En este trabajo reconocemos dos especies endémicas en igual número de géneros. Las especies endémicas se encuentran en la región Bosques Húmedos Amazónicos, entre los 115 y 220 m de altitud. Ambas especies endémicas se encuentran dentro del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  3. Rosaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wilfredo Mendoza

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Rosaceae es reconocida en el Perú por presentar 24 géneros y 113 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993; Mendoza, 2005; Ulloa Ulloa et al., 2004, entre hierbas, arbustos y árboles. En este trabajo reconocemos 14 especies endémicas en cuatro géneros. Las especies endémicas se encuentran principalmente en las regiones Bosques Pluviales Montanos, Bosques Muy Húmedos Montanos y Páramo, entre los 1900 y 3800 m de altitud. Seis especies endémicas se encuentran representadas dentro del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  4. Apiaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Blanca León

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Apiaceae es reconocida en el Perú por presentar 29 géneros y 88 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993, básicamente hierbas y subarbustos. En este trabajo reconocemos como endémicos 22 taxones en siete géneros. Un género, Paraselinum, es endémico del Perú. La mayoría de los taxones endémicos ocupan las regiones Desierto Semicálido Costero, Mesoandina y Bosques Muy Húmedos Montanos, entre los 10 y 4400 m de altitud. Ninguna de estas especies está representada en las áreas protegidas.

  5. Assembling the CMS yoke end-caps

    CERN Multimedia

    Laurent Guiraud

    2001-01-01

    A crane is used to piece together one of the end-caps that will provide the path for magnetic flux return on the CMS experiment. A total of six end-cap discs will be assembled before being positioned on the barrel yoke to complete the huge 12 500 tonne cylinder yoke. The magnetic field produced will be greater than any other solenoid created to date at 4 T, 100 000 times greater than the Earth's natural magnetic field, and will store enough energy to melt 18 tonnes of gold.

  6. 49 CFR 238.413 - End structures of trailer cars.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... 49 Transportation 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false End structures of trailer cars. 238.413 Section... II Passenger Equipment § 238.413 End structures of trailer cars. (a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, the end structure of a trailer car shall be designed to include the following...

  7. Incomplete information and the closed-end fund discount

    OpenAIRE

    Barone-Adesi, Giovanni; Kim, Youngsoo

    2008-01-01

    We model the closed-end fund discount/premium in a version of Merton’s (1978) asset pricing model with incomplete information. In this economy, investors trade only assets which they “ know about” . The model generates a closed-end fund discount or premium, depending on risk-aversion parameters. The fund share price reverts to the net asset value on open-ending of the fund. The discount/premium is a result of two economic forces: (1) the fund manager’s objective is to maximize expected utilit...

  8. The end of International Relations theory?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dunne, Tim; Hansen, Lene; Wight, Colin

    2013-01-01

    With a view to providing contextual background for the Special Issue, this opening article analyses several dimensions of ‘The end of International Relations theory?’ It opens with a consideration of the status of different types of theory. Thereafter, we look at the proliferation of theories...... to the alternatives currently being practised: integrative pluralism. The article ends on a cautiously optimistic note: given the disciplinary competition that now exists in relation to explaining and understanding global social forces, International Relations may find resilience because it has become theory...

  9. Shared intention and the doxastic single end condition

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Blomberg, Olle

    2016-01-01

    end condition captures a feature at the very heart of the phenomenon of intentional joint action. For instance, just as several simple actions are only unified into a complex intentional singular activity if the agent believes or assumes that there is a single end that each action is directed to, so...... several agents’ actions are only unified into an intentional joint activity if each agent believes or assumes that there is a single end that each intends to contribute to. Influential accounts of intentional joint action, including Christopher Kutz's and Michael Bratman's, implicitly include...

  10. Synthesis and phase behavior of end-functionalized associating polymers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wrue, Michelle H.

    We have explored polymer blend phase behavior in the presence of multiple hydrogen bonding end-groups. This work details the synthesis of functionalized polymers and their subsequent use in miscibility studies. The synthesis of end-functionalized hydrogen bonding polymers and the investigation of their physical properties and miscibility is presented. Mono-functional and telechelic ureidopyrimidinone (UPy) functionalized polymers were prepared by two main routes: post-polymerization functionalization (of commercially available or synthesized polymers); and polymerization of monomers using a functionalized initiator. UPy-functionalized polymers were prepared with a variety of polymer backbones including poly(ethylene oxide)s; poly(butadiene)s, poly(dimethyl siloxanxe)s; poly(styrene)s and poly(methyl methacrylate)s. The most successful route to polymers with UPy end-groups was atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) using a UPy-functionalized initiator, followed by atom transfer radical coupling (ATRC). The incorporation of ureidopyrimidinone end-groups was shown to affect the physical properties of the polymer backbone. Parent polymers that were liquids became viscous liquids or waxy solids upon UPy-functionalization of chain end. UPy-functionalization of a hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HO-PB-OH) resulted in a waxy solid while the HO-PB-OH precursor was a viscous liquid. The thermal properties of functionalized polymers also differed from those of the unfunctionalized parent polymers. Hot-stage optical microscopy revealed that UPy-functionalized PEO displayed a depressed melting point relative to the analogous unfunctionalized precursor. Differential scanning calorimetry was also used to investigate the synthesized UPy-polymers. UPy-functionalized polystyrenes and poly(methyl methacrylate)s showed an increased T g compared to the equivalent homopolymer standards. This increased Tg was determined to be dependent upon the fraction of UPy groups present and

  11. Doubled-ended ceramic thyratron

    CERN Multimedia

    1974-01-01

    The double-ended ceramic thyratron CX 1171 B, with its coaxial voltage divider for the SPS. Such a switch, paralleled by three ignitrons in series forms the "thyragnitron" arrangement, and can switch 10 kA, 25 ms pulses, with very fast rise times.

  12. MSGD: Scalable back-end for indoor magnetic field-based GraphSLAM

    OpenAIRE

    Gao, C; Harle, Robert Keith

    2017-01-01

    Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) systems that recover the trajectory of a robot or mobile device are characterised by a front-end and back-end. The front-end uses sensor observations to identify loop closures; the back-end optimises the estimated trajectory to be consistent with these closures. The GraphSLAM framework formulates the back-end problem as a graph-based optimisation on a pose graph. This paper describes a back-end system optimised for very dense sequence-based lo...

  13. 30 CFR 57.19028 - End attachment replacement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false End attachment replacement. 57.19028 Section 57.19028 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Hoisting Wire Ropes § 57.19028 End attachment replacement. Wire rope attachments shall be replaced when...

  14. 30 CFR 56.19028 - End attachment replacement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false End attachment replacement. 56.19028 Section 56.19028 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Wire Ropes § 56.19028 End attachment replacement. Wire rope attachments shall be replaced when cracked...

  15. 30 CFR 77.1438 - End attachment replacement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false End attachment replacement. 77.1438 Section 77.1438 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR COAL MINE SAFETY AND... Personnel Hoisting Wire Ropes § 77.1438 End attachment replacement. Wire rope attachments shall be replaced...

  16. FDTD analysis of open-ended dielectric sensors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Anderson, J.; Okoniewski, M.; Stuchly, S.S. [Univ. of Victoria (Canada)

    1994-12-31

    The reflection coefficient of an open-ended coaxial line immersed in water and methanol is simulated using a modified FDTD code. Calculated values are compared with previously obtained moment method and experimental values. The effects of variations in the end of line geometry on the reflection coefficient are investigated.

  17. PROVIDING MORALE, WELFARE, AND RECREATION FUNDS AS INCENTIVES TO SAVE - ENDING THE END OF YEAR SPENDING FRENZY

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-10-25

    budget law as it applies to the Air Force. The issue of wasteful year end spending is rooted in the very laws originally passed to reduce abuses of...statutes, each layered upon the prior one… [t]his incremental growth has created something of a legal nettle .”21 7 One-year Incremental Budget...attitudes toward spending versus saving. 29 CONCLUSION In order to reach its conclusion, this research paper began by examining the roots of the

  18. Appendix F : finite element analysis of end region.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-03-01

    FE (finite element) modeling was conducted to 1) provide a better understanding of the : elastic behavior of the end region prior to cracking and 2) to evaluate the effects of bearing pad : stiffness and width on end region elastic stresses. The FEA ...

  19. SU-F-T-76: Total Skin Electron Therapy: An-End-To-End Examination of the Absolute Dosimetry with a Rando Phantom

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cui, G; Ha, J; Zhou, S; Cui, J; Shiu, A [University Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)

    2016-06-15

    Purpose: To examine and validate the absolute dose for total skin electron therapy (TSET) through an end-to-end test with a Rando phantom using optically stimulated luminescent dosimeters (OSLDs) and EBT3 radiochromic films. Methods: A Varian Trilogy linear accelerator equipped with the special procedure 6 MeV HDTSe- was used to perform TSET irradiations using a modified Stanford 6-dual-field technique. The absolute dose was calibrated using a Markus ion chamber at a reference depth of 1.3cm at 100 cm SSD with a field size of 36 × 36 cm at the isocenter in solid water slabs. The absolute dose was cross validated by a farmer ion chamber. Then the dose rate in the unit of cGy/Mu was calibrated using the Markus chamber at the treatment position. OSLDs were used to independently verify the dose using the calibrated dose rate. Finally, a patient treatment plan (200 cGy/cycle) was delivered in the QA mode to a Rando phantom, which had 16 pairs of OSLDs and EBT3 films taped onto its surface at different anatomical positions. The doses recorded were read out to validate the absolute dosimetry for TSET. Results: The OSLD measurements were within 7% agreement with the planned dose except the shoulder areas, where the doses recorded were 23% lower on average than those of the planned. The EBT3 film measurements were within 10% agreement with the planned dose except the shoulder and the scalp vertex areas, where the respective doses recorded were 18% and 14% lower on average than those of the planned. The OSLDs gave more consistent dose measurements than those of the EBT3 films. Conclusion: The absolute dosimetry for TSET was validated by an end-to-end test with a Rando phantom using the OSLDs and EBT3 films. The beam calibration and monitor unit calculations were confirmed.

  20. End-threaded intramedullary positive profile screw ended self-tapping pin (Admit pin) - A cost-effective novel implant for fixing canine long bone fractures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chanana, Mitin; Kumar, Adarsh; Tyagi, Som Prakash; Singla, Amit Kumar; Sharma, Arvind; Farooq, Uiase Bin

    2018-02-01

    The current study was undertaken to evaluate the clinical efficacy of end-threaded intramedullary pinning for management of various long bone fractures in canines. This study was conducted in two phases, managing 25 client-owned dogs presented with different fractures. The technique of application of end-threaded intramedullary pinning in long bone fractures was initially standardized in 6 clinical patients presented with long bone fractures. In this phase, end-threaded pins of different profiles, i.e., positive and negative, were used as the internal fixation technique. On the basis of results obtained from standardization phase, 19 client-owned dogs clinically presented with different fractures were implanted with end-threaded intramedullary positive profile screw ended self-tapping pin in the clinical application phase. The patients, allocated randomly in two groups, when evaluated postoperatively revealed slight pin migration in Group-I (negative profile), which resulted in disruption of callus site causing delayed union in one case and large callus formation in other two cases whereas no pin migration was observed in Group-II (positive profile). Other observations in Group-I was reduced muscle girth and delayed healing time as compared to Group-II. In clinical application, phase 21 st and 42 nd day post-operative radiographic follow-up revealed no pin migration in any of the cases, and there was no bone shortening or fragment collapse in end-threaded intramedullary positive profile screw ended self-tapping pin. The end-threaded intramedullary positive profile screw ended self-tapping pin used for fixation of long bone fractures in canines can resist pin migration, pin breakage, and all loads acting on the bone, i.e., compression, tension, bending, rotation, and shearing to an extent with no post-operative complications.

  1. End design of the SSC 58 mm High Gradient Quadrupole

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Caspi, S.

    1992-01-01

    The ''end'' design of the High Gradient Quad. was done with consideration to the integrated field harmonics, the iron contribution, and the maximum field at the conductor. Magnetic analysis was done on the return end only, however the physical dimension of the lead end were determined as well. Using the cross-section of the windings and Cook's program BEND, we generated the physical end windings around the return end. Placing a single wire at the center of each turn the integrated gradient was computed and iterating on the end block spacers the integrated harmonics minimized. The final geometry was then used for more, extensive calculations, such as the field at the conductor and the 3D field harmonics. For this detailed calculation we have placed a single line current at the center of each strand and included the iron contribution (μ = ∞), see Appendix C. With the termination of the iron serving as a reference, the maximum length of the inner and outer layers are 182 mm and 215 mm respectively. The magnetic length of the end was computed from the gradient function A 2 and was found to be 142 mm. In reality we expect the physical length of the end to be somewhat larger, however this should have little or no effect on the magnetic length. The gradient in the straight section is 212.44 T/m at 7000 A and the integrated value of the gradient is -3.01665 E5 (G) in the end region marked by the magnetic length of the end. The respective integrated harmonics for the end 12 pole and 20 pole are -10.6658 (G/CM 4 ) and 0.7279 (G/cm 8 ) corresponding to b 6 = 0.351 , b 10 = -0.024 units. The above was computed from the values of A 2 , A 6 , and A 10

  2. Selectrion procedures for sites of rdatioactive waste disposal. Recommendations of the AkEnd; Auswahlverfahren fuer Endlagerstandorte. Empfehlungen des AkEnd

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2002-12-01

    The Working Group on Procedures for the Selection of Repository Sites (AkEnd) had been appointed by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) to develop procedures and criteria for the search for, and selection of, a repository site for all kinds of radioactive waste in deep geologic formations in Germany. ILK in principle welcomes the attempt on the part of AkEnd to develop a systematic procedure. On the other hand, ILK considers the two constraints imposed by BMU inappropriate: AkEnd was not to take into account the two existing sites of Konrad and Gorleben and, instead, work from a so-called white map of Germany.

  3. Onagraceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Susy Castillo

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Esta es la familia de las «fucsias», la cual es reconocida en el Perú por presentar seis géneros y 76 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993; Ulloa Ulloa et al., 2004, principalmente arbustos y hierbas. En este trabajo reconocemos 24 especies endémicas, la mayoría en el género Fuchsia. Las especies endémicas se encuentran mayormente en la región Bosques Muy Húmedos Montanos, entre los 1600 y 2500 m de altitud. Diez especies endémicas se encuentran representados dentro del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  4. Labelling of end-of-life decisions by physicians

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Deyaert, J.; Chambaere, K.; Cohen, J.; Roelands, M.; Deliens, L.

    2014-01-01

    Objectives: Potentially life-shortening medical end-oflife practices (end-of-life decisions (ELDs)) remain subject to conceptual vagueness. This study evaluates how physicians label these practices by examining which of their own practices (described according to the precise act, the intention, the

  5. Chronicity, crisis, and the 'end of AIDS'.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sangaramoorthy, Thurka

    2018-01-11

    In biomedical, public health, and popular discourses, the 'end of AIDS' has emerged as a predominant way to understand the future of HIV research and prevention. This approach is predicated on structuring and responding to HIV in ways that underscore its presumed lifelong nature. In this article, I examine the phenomenon of HIV chronicity that undergirds the 'end of AIDS' discourse. In particular, I explore how the logic of HIV chronicity, induced by technological advances in treatment and global financial and political investments, intensifies long-term uncertainty and prolonged crisis. Focusing on over 10 years of anthropological and public health research in the United States, I argue that HIV chronicity, and subsequently, the 'end of AIDS' discourse, obscure the on-going HIV crisis in particular global communities, especially among marginalised and ageing populations who live in under-resourced areas. By tracing the 'end of AIDS' discourse in my field sites and in other global locations, I describe how HIV chronicity signals a continuing global crisis and persistent social precarity rather than a 'break' with a hopeless past or a promising future free from AIDS.

  6. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL — UNDERSTANDING THE FRONT-END AND BACK-END OF BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION

    OpenAIRE

    FRANZISKA GÜNZEL; ANNA B. HOLM

    2013-01-01

    Business model innovation is becoming a central research topic in management. However, a lack of a common understanding of the nature of the business model leads to disregarding its multifaceted structure when analyzing the business model innovation process. This article proposes a more detailed understanding of the business model innovation process by drawing on existing knowledge from new product development literature and examining the front-end and the back-end of business model innovatio...

  7. End-User Evaluations of Semantic Web Technologies

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McCool, Rob; Cowell, Andrew J.; Thurman, David A.

    2005-11-07

    Stanford University's Knowledge Systems Laboratory (KSL) is working in partnership with Battelle Memorial Institute and IBM Watson Research Center to develop a suite of technologies for information extraction, knowledge representation & reasoning, and human-information interaction, in unison entitled 'Knowledge Associates for Novel Intelligence' (KANI). We have developed an integrated analytic environment composed of a collection of analyst associates, software components that aid the user at different stages of the information analysis process. An important part of our participatory design process has been to ensure our technologies and designs are tightly integrate with the needs and requirements of our end users, To this end, we perform a sequence of evaluations towards the end of the development process that ensure the technologies are both functional and usable. This paper reports on that process.

  8. End-to-side neurorrhaphy repairs peripheral nerve injury: sensory nerve induces motor nerve regeneration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Qing; Zhang, She-Hong; Wang, Tao; Peng, Feng; Han, Dong; Gu, Yu-Dong

    2017-10-01

    End-to-side neurorrhaphy is an option in the treatment of the long segment defects of a nerve. It involves suturing the distal stump of the disconnected nerve (recipient nerve) to the side of the intimate adjacent nerve (donor nerve). However, the motor-sensory specificity after end-to-side neurorrhaphy remains unclear. This study sought to evaluate whether cutaneous sensory nerve regeneration induces motor nerves after end-to-side neurorrhaphy. Thirty rats were randomized into three groups: (1) end-to-side neurorrhaphy using the ulnar nerve (mixed sensory and motor) as the donor nerve and the cutaneous antebrachii medialis nerve as the recipient nerve; (2) the sham group: ulnar nerve and cutaneous antebrachii medialis nerve were just exposed; and (3) the transected nerve group: cutaneous antebrachii medialis nerve was transected and the stumps were turned over and tied. At 5 months, acetylcholinesterase staining results showed that 34% ± 16% of the myelinated axons were stained in the end-to-side group, and none of the myelinated axons were stained in either the sham or transected nerve groups. Retrograde fluorescent tracing of spinal motor neurons and dorsal root ganglion showed the proportion of motor neurons from the cutaneous antebrachii medialis nerve of the end-to-side group was 21% ± 5%. In contrast, no motor neurons from the cutaneous antebrachii medialis nerve of the sham group and transected nerve group were found in the spinal cord segment. These results confirmed that motor neuron regeneration occurred after cutaneous nerve end-to-side neurorrhaphy.

  9. Atmospheric Carbon Injection Linked to End-Triassic Mass Extinction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ruhl, M.; Bonis, N.R.; Reichart, G.J.; Sinninghe Damsté, J.S.; Kürschner, W.M.

    2011-01-01

    The end-Triassic mass extinction (similar to 201.4 million years ago), marked by terrestrial ecosystem turnover and up to similar to 50% loss in marine biodiversity, has been attributed to intensified volcanic activity during the break-up of Pangaea. Here, we present compound-specific carbon-isotope

  10. End-of-life decisions in the intensive care unit

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Hanne Irene

    2012-01-01

    be interdisciplinary, but the literature shows that this is not always the case. Research on end-of-life issues in Danish ICUs is limited. Aim The aims of this thesis were to • Examine Danish practices regarding end-of-life decisions in the ICU. • Examine the opinions of nurses and physicians who work in Danish ICUs...... and decision-making. Hypotheses • Nurses, intensivists, and primary physicians have different experiences of interdisciplinary collaboration regarding end-of-life decision-making in the ICU. • Specific interventions targeting end-of-life decision-making in the ICU, such as interdisciplinary audits......Background When making end-of-life decisions in intensive care units, the different staff groups have different roles in the decision-making process and may not always assess the situation identically. Practice recommendations for withholding or withdrawing therapy state that decisions should...

  11. Frame conditions for a well-functioning end user market

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Livik, Klaus

    1997-10-01

    The aim of this report is to describe and define different frame conditions being necessary for the development of a well-functioning end user market. The report describes the sharing of roles between end users, grid owners, suppliers, system operators and market operators in the power market, and it points out how the interplay between these roles should be arranged. A particular attention is laid on how to involve the end user relations into the five different market roles during the development of a more active end user market. Products and eventual potentials are described and discussed being based on estimates as well as load measurements. 17 figs., 4 tabs

  12. RF front-end world class designs

    CERN Document Server

    Love, Janine

    2009-01-01

    All the design and development inspiration and direction a harware engineer needs in one blockbuster book! Janine Love site editor for RF Design Line,columnist, and author has selected the very best RF design material from the Newnes portfolio and has compiled it into this volume. The result is a book covering the gamut of RF front end design from antenna and filter design fundamentals to optimized layout techniques with a strong pragmatic emphasis. In addition to specific design techniques and practices, this book also discusses various approaches to solving RF front end design problems and h

  13. Esophageal Resection for End-Stage Achalasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aiolfi, Alberto; Asti, Emanuele; Bonitta, Gianluca; Siboni, Stefano; Bonavina, Luigi

    2018-04-01

    Achalasia is a rare disease characterized by impaired lower esophageal sphincter relaxation loss and of peristalsis in the esophageal body. Endoscopic balloon dilation and laparoscopic surgical myotomy have been established as initial treatment modalities. Indications and outcomes of esophagectomy in the management of end-stage achalasia are less defined. A literature search was conducted to identify all reports on esophagectomy for end-stage achalasia between 1987 and 2017. MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane databases were consulted matching the terms "achalasia," "end-stage achalasia," "esophagectomy," and "esophageal resection." Seventeen articles met the inclusion criteria and 1422 patients were included in this narrative review. Most of the patients had previous multiple endoscopic and/or surgical treatments. Esophagectomy was performed through a transthoracic (74%) or a transhiatal (26%) approach. A thoracoscopic approach was used in a minority of patients and seemed to be safe and effective. In 95 per cent of patients, the stomach was used as an esophageal substitute. The mean postoperative morbidity rate was 27.1 per cent and the mortality rate 2.1 per cent. Symptom resolution was reported in 75 to 100 per cent of patients over a mean follow-up of 43 months. Only five series including 195 patients assessed the long-term follow-up (>5 years) after reconstruction with gastric or colon conduits, and the results seem similar. Esophagectomy for end-stage achalasia is safe and effective in tertiary referral centers. A thoracoscopic approach is a feasible and safe alternative to thoracotomy and may replace the transhiatal route in the future.

  14. End effects on elbows subjected to moment loadings

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rodabaugh, E.C.; Iskander, S.K.; Moore, S.E.

    1978-03-01

    End effects on elbows subjected to moment loading are investigated using the finite element program EPACA. Relatively simple but more accurate (than present Code) equations are developed and recommendation for an alternative Code method using these equations is presented. Data from EPACA on stresses at welds (elbow-to-pipe juncture) are presented. A simple equation is given for estimating the maximum stresses at the welds

  15. Front-end multiplexing—applied to SQUID multiplexing: Athena X-IFU and QUBIC experiments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prele, D.

    2015-08-01

    As we have seen for digital camera market and a sensor resolution increasing to "megapixels", all the scientific and high-tech imagers (whatever the wave length - from radio to X-ray range) tends also to always increases the pixels number. So the constraints on front-end signals transmission increase too. An almost unavoidable solution to simplify integration of large arrays of pixels is front-end multiplexing. Moreover, "simple" and "efficient" techniques allow integration of read-out multiplexers in the focal plane itself. For instance, CCD (Charge Coupled Device) technology has boost number of pixels in digital camera. Indeed, this is exactly a planar technology which integrates both the sensors and a front-end multiplexed readout. In this context, front-end multiplexing techniques will be discussed for a better understanding of their advantages and their limits. Finally, the cases of astronomical instruments in the millimeter and in the X-ray ranges using SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) will be described.

  16. Front-end multiplexing—applied to SQUID multiplexing: Athena X-IFU and QUBIC experiments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Prele, D.

    2015-01-01

    As we have seen for digital camera market and a sensor resolution increasing to 'megapixels', all the scientific and high-tech imagers (whatever the wave length - from radio to X-ray range) tends also to always increases the pixels number. So the constraints on front-end signals transmission increase too. An almost unavoidable solution to simplify integration of large arrays of pixels is front-end multiplexing. Moreover, 'simple' and 'efficient' techniques allow integration of read-out multiplexers in the focal plane itself. For instance, CCD (Charge Coupled Device) technology has boost number of pixels in digital camera. Indeed, this is exactly a planar technology which integrates both the sensors and a front-end multiplexed readout. In this context, front-end multiplexing techniques will be discussed for a better understanding of their advantages and their limits. Finally, the cases of astronomical instruments in the millimeter and in the X-ray ranges using SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) will be described

  17. Putting an end to nuclear energy: why and how

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dessus, Benjamin; Laponche, Bernard

    2011-01-01

    This short book demonstrates the necessity and possibility to put an end to nuclear energy. First, it sweeps away the fallacious reasoning of nuclear supporters, like the energy independence, the safety and security aspects, the electricity cost, the greenhouse gases abatement. Then, it replaces the ending of nuclear energy in the more general framework of a worldwide energy transition, with its constraints and risks, which has become a necessity considering the geographical disparities of energy consumption. According to the author, the particular energy situation of France would lead the country to isolation and to an energy impasse while other worldwide and regional scenarios exist which would lead to exit the crisis and to reach a new energy civilization. Finally, a reasoned scenario of nuclear energy exit is proposed for France which is based on other power generation means. Such an energy transition will require some political and social conditions which are discussed. (J.S.)

  18. An anthropomorphic multimodality (CT/MRI) head phantom prototype for end-to-end tests in ion radiotherapy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gallas, Raya R.; Huenemohr, Nora; Runz, Armin; Niebuhr, Nina I.; Greilich, Steffen [German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg (Germany). Div. of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology; National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology, Heidelberg (Germany). Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO); Jaekel, Oliver [German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg (Germany). Div. of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology; National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology, Heidelberg (Germany). Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO); Heidelberg University Hospital (Germany). Dept. of Radiation Oncology; Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (HIT), Heidelberg (Germany)

    2015-07-01

    With the increasing complexity of external beam therapy ''end-to-end'' tests are intended to cover every step from therapy planning through to follow-up in order to fulfill the higher demands on quality assurance. As magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an important part of the treatment process, established phantoms such as the Alderson head cannot fully be used for those tests and novel phantoms have to be developed. Here, we present a feasibility study of a customizable multimodality head phantom. It is initially intended for ion radiotherapy but may also be used in photon therapy. As basis for the anthropomorphic head shape we have used a set of patient computed tomography (CT) images. The phantom recipient consisting of epoxy resin was produced by using a 3D printer. It includes a nasal air cavity, a cranial bone surrogate (based on dipotassium phosphate), a brain surrogate (based on agarose gel), and a surrogate for cerebrospinal fluid (based on distilled water). Furthermore, a volume filled with normoxic dosimetric gel mimicked a tumor. The entire workflow of a proton therapy could be successfully applied to the phantom. CT measurements revealed CT numbers agreeing with reference values for all surrogates in the range from 2 HU to 978 HU (120 kV). MRI showed the desired contrasts between the different phantom materials especially in T2-weighted images (except for the bone surrogate). T2-weighted readout of the polymerization gel dosimeter allowed approximate range verification.

  19. An anthropomorphic multimodality (CT/MRI) head phantom prototype for end-to-end tests in ion radiotherapy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gallas, Raya R.; Huenemohr, Nora; Runz, Armin; Niebuhr, Nina I.; Greilich, Steffen; Jaekel, Oliver

    2015-01-01

    With the increasing complexity of external beam therapy ''end-to-end'' tests are intended to cover every step from therapy planning through to follow-up in order to fulfill the higher demands on quality assurance. As magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an important part of the treatment process, established phantoms such as the Alderson head cannot fully be used for those tests and novel phantoms have to be developed. Here, we present a feasibility study of a customizable multimodality head phantom. It is initially intended for ion radiotherapy but may also be used in photon therapy. As basis for the anthropomorphic head shape we have used a set of patient computed tomography (CT) images. The phantom recipient consisting of epoxy resin was produced by using a 3D printer. It includes a nasal air cavity, a cranial bone surrogate (based on dipotassium phosphate), a brain surrogate (based on agarose gel), and a surrogate for cerebrospinal fluid (based on distilled water). Furthermore, a volume filled with normoxic dosimetric gel mimicked a tumor. The entire workflow of a proton therapy could be successfully applied to the phantom. CT measurements revealed CT numbers agreeing with reference values for all surrogates in the range from 2 HU to 978 HU (120 kV). MRI showed the desired contrasts between the different phantom materials especially in T2-weighted images (except for the bone surrogate). T2-weighted readout of the polymerization gel dosimeter allowed approximate range verification.

  20. An anthropomorphic multimodality (CT/MRI) head phantom prototype for end-to-end tests in ion radiotherapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gallas, Raya R; Hünemohr, Nora; Runz, Armin; Niebuhr, Nina I; Jäkel, Oliver; Greilich, Steffen

    2015-12-01

    With the increasing complexity of external beam therapy "end-to-end" tests are intended to cover every step from therapy planning through to follow-up in order to fulfill the higher demands on quality assurance. As magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an important part of the treatment process, established phantoms such as the Alderson head cannot fully be used for those tests and novel phantoms have to be developed. Here, we present a feasibility study of a customizable multimodality head phantom. It is initially intended for ion radiotherapy but may also be used in photon therapy. As basis for the anthropomorphic head shape we have used a set of patient computed tomography (CT) images. The phantom recipient consisting of epoxy resin was produced by using a 3D printer. It includes a nasal air cavity, a cranial bone surrogate (based on dipotassium phosphate), a brain surrogate (based on agarose gel), and a surrogate for cerebrospinal fluid (based on distilled water). Furthermore, a volume filled with normoxic dosimetric gel mimicked a tumor. The entire workflow of a proton therapy could be successfully applied to the phantom. CT measurements revealed CT numbers agreeing with reference values for all surrogates in the range from 2 HU to 978 HU (120 kV). MRI showed the desired contrasts between the different phantom materials especially in T2-weighted images (except for the bone surrogate). T2-weighted readout of the polymerization gel dosimeter allowed approximate range verification. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

  1. END-OF-USE PRODUCTS IN REVERSE LOGISTICS

    OpenAIRE

    Marta Starostka-Patyk

    2007-01-01

    Reverse logistics is a very useful tool for enterprises which have to deal with end-of-use products. Forward logistics is not able to manage them, because they show up on the beginning of reverse supply chain. That is the reason for growing importance of reverse flows. Reverse logistics is quite new logistics system. This paper presents the idea of reverse logistics and end-of-use products problems.

  2. Bruce unit 1 moderator to end shield cooling leak repairs

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Boucher, P; Ashton, A [Ontario Hydro, Tiverton, ON (Canada). Bruce Nuclear Generating Station-A

    1996-12-31

    In October 1994, a leak developed between the heavy water Moderator System and the light water End Shield Cooling System at Ontario Hydro`s Bruce A Generating Station Unit 1. The interface between these two systems consists of numerous reactor components all within the reactor vessel. This paper describes the initial discovery and determination of the leak source. The techniques used to pinpoint the leak location are described. The repair strategies and details are outlined. Flushing and refilling of the Moderator system are discussed. The current status of the Unit 1 End Shield Cooling System is given with possible remedial measures for clean-up. Recommendations and observations are provided for future references. (author). 7 figs.

  3. Uneven batch data alignment with application to the control of batch end-product quality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wan, Jian; Marjanovic, Ognjen; Lennox, Barry

    2014-03-01

    Batch processes are commonly characterized by uneven trajectories due to the existence of batch-to-batch variations. The batch end-product quality is usually measured at the end of these uneven trajectories. It is necessary to align the time differences for both the measured trajectories and the batch end-product quality in order to implement statistical process monitoring and control schemes. Apart from synchronizing trajectories with variable lengths using an indicator variable or dynamic time warping, this paper proposes a novel approach to align uneven batch data by identifying short-window PCA&PLS models at first and then applying these identified models to extend shorter trajectories and predict future batch end-product quality. Furthermore, uneven batch data can also be aligned to be a specified batch length using moving window estimation. The proposed approach and its application to the control of batch end-product quality are demonstrated with a simulated example of fed-batch fermentation for penicillin production. Copyright © 2013 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. End-to-end Cyberinfrastructure and Data Services for Earth System Science Education and Research: A vision for the future

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramamurthy, M. K.

    2006-05-01

    yet revolutionary way of building applications and methods to connect and exchange information over the Web. This new approach, based on XML - a widely accepted format for exchanging data and corresponding semantics over the Internet - enables applications, computer systems, and information processes to work together in fundamentally different ways. Likewise, the advent of digital libraries, grid computing platforms, interoperable frameworks, standards and protocols, open-source software, and community atmospheric models have been important drivers in shaping the use of a new generation of end-to-end cyberinfrastructure for solving some of the most challenging scientific and educational problems. In this talk, I will present an overview of the scientific, technological, and educational landscape, discuss recent developments in cyberinfrastructure, and Unidata's role in and vision for providing easy-to use, robust, end-to-end data services for solving geoscientific problems and advancing student learning.

  5. The Different Role of Working Memory in Open-Ended versus Closed-Ended Creative Problem Solving: A Dual-Process Theory Account

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Wei-Lun; Lien, Yunn-Wen

    2013-01-01

    This study examined how working memory plays different roles in open-ended versus closed-ended creative problem-solving processes, as represented by divergent thinking tests and insight problem-solving tasks. With respect to the analysis of different task demands and the framework of dual-process theories, the hypothesis was that the idea…

  6. Guidelines for time-to-event end-point definitions in trials for pancreatic cancer. Results of the DATECAN initiative (Definition for the Assessment of Time-to-event End-points in CANcer trials)

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bonnetain, Franck; Bonsing, Bert; Conroy, Thierry; Dousseau, Adelaide; Glimelius, Bengt; Haustermans, Karin; Lacaine, François; van Laethem, Jean Luc; Aparicio, Thomas; Aust, Daniela; Bassi, Claudio; Berger, Virginie; Chamorey, Emmanuel; Chibaudel, Benoist; Dahan, Laeticia; de Gramont, Aimery; Delpero, Jean Robert; Dervenis, Christos; Ducreux, Michel; Gal, Jocelyn; Gerber, Erich; Ghaneh, Paula; Hammel, Pascal; Hendlisz, Alain; Jooste, Valérie; Labianca, Roberto; Latouche, Aurelien; Lutz, Manfred; Macarulla, Teresa; Malka, David; Mauer, Muriel; Mitry, Emmanuel; Neoptolemos, John; Pessaux, Patrick; Sauvanet, Alain; Tabernero, Josep; Taieb, Julien; van Tienhoven, Geertjan; Gourgou-Bourgade, Sophie; Bellera, Carine; Mathoulin-Pélissier, Simone; Collette, Laurence

    2014-01-01

    Using potential surrogate end-points for overall survival (OS) such as Disease-Free- (DFS) or Progression-Free Survival (PFS) is increasingly common in randomised controlled trials (RCTs). However, end-points are too often imprecisely defined which largely contributes to a lack of homogeneity across

  7. Crassulaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Blanca León

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Crassulaceae es reconocida en el Perú por presentar cinco géneros y 29 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993, mayormente arbustos y hierbas. En este trabajo reconocemos 13 especies y dos variedades como endemismos peruanos en tres géneros. Echeveria es el género con el mayor número de especies endémicas. Los taxones endémicos ocupan principalmente las regiones Mesoandina y Puna Húmeda y Seca, entre los 1700 y 4500 m de altitud. Se aplicaron las categorías y criterios de la UICN a nueve taxones. Dos Crassulaceae endémicas están representados dentro del Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado.

  8. Behavior of four-bolt extended end-plate connection subjected to lateral loading

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elsayed Mashaly

    2011-03-01

    Full Text Available A considerable number of literatures have been published on the behavior of end-plate connections in ordinary moment-resisting frames. It was found, experimentally, that this type of connection might act as either a fully-rigid or a semi-rigid connection depending mainly on the thickness of the end plate and the diameter of bolts. In recent years, due to their good ductility and their good ability of energy dissipation, extended end-plate connections are recommended to be widely used in special moment-resisting frames subjected to lateral loads. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of both the material and geometric properties of four-bolt extended end-plate connections upon their behavior when subjected to lateral loading. This is done through a parametric study upon a finite element model using the multi-purpose software package ANSYS. The parametric study takes into account 12 parameters which are expected to be effective on the behavior of the studied connection. The results are presented by the relation between the storey drift, which represents the rotation of the connection and the applied lateral load, which simulates the moment on the connection. The results verify that the chosen parameters are considered effective depending on the energy dissipation of the connection.

  9. Concepts for a Muon Accelerator Front-End

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Stratakis, Diktys [Fermilab; Berg, Scott [Brookhaven; Neuffer, David [Fermilab

    2017-03-16

    We present a muon capture front-end scheme for muon based applications. In this Front-End design, a proton bunch strikes a target and creates secondary pions that drift into a capture channel, decaying into muons. A series of rf cavities forms the resulting muon beams into a series of bunches of differerent energies, aligns the bunches to equal central energies, and initiates ionization cooling. We also discuss the design of a chicane system for the removal of unwanted secondary particles from the muon capture region and thus reduce activation of the machine. With the aid of numerical simulations we evaluate the performance of this Front-End scheme as well as study its sensitivity against key parameters such as the type of target, the number of rf cavities and the gas pressure of the channel.

  10. Ku must load directly onto the chromosome end in order to mediate its telomeric functions.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christopher R Lopez

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available The Ku heterodimer associates with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae telomere, where it impacts several aspects of telomere structure and function. Although Ku avidly binds DNA ends via a preformed channel, its ability to associate with telomeres via this mechanism could be challenged by factors known to bind directly to the chromosome terminus. This has led to uncertainty as to whether Ku itself binds directly to telomeric ends and whether end association is crucial for Ku's telomeric functions. To address these questions, we constructed DNA end binding-defective Ku heterodimers by altering amino acid residues in Ku70 and Ku80 that were predicted to contact DNA. These mutants continued to associate with their known telomere-related partners, such as Sir4, a factor required for telomeric silencing, and TLC1, the RNA component of telomerase. Despite these interactions, we found that the Ku mutants had markedly reduced association with telomeric chromatin and null-like deficiencies for telomere end protection, length regulation, and silencing functions. In contrast to Ku null strains, the DNA end binding defective Ku mutants resulted in increased, rather than markedly decreased, imprecise end-joining proficiency at an induced double-strand break. This result further supports that it was the specific loss of Ku's telomere end binding that resulted in telomeric defects rather than global loss of Ku's functions. The extensive telomere defects observed in these mutants lead us to propose that Ku is an integral component of the terminal telomeric cap, where it promotes a specific architecture that is central to telomere function and maintenance.

  11. Ku must load directly onto the chromosome end in order to mediate its telomeric functions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lopez, Christopher R; Ribes-Zamora, Albert; Indiviglio, Sandra M; Williams, Christopher L; Haricharan, Svasti; Bertuch, Alison A

    2011-08-01

    The Ku heterodimer associates with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae telomere, where it impacts several aspects of telomere structure and function. Although Ku avidly binds DNA ends via a preformed channel, its ability to associate with telomeres via this mechanism could be challenged by factors known to bind directly to the chromosome terminus. This has led to uncertainty as to whether Ku itself binds directly to telomeric ends and whether end association is crucial for Ku's telomeric functions. To address these questions, we constructed DNA end binding-defective Ku heterodimers by altering amino acid residues in Ku70 and Ku80 that were predicted to contact DNA. These mutants continued to associate with their known telomere-related partners, such as Sir4, a factor required for telomeric silencing, and TLC1, the RNA component of telomerase. Despite these interactions, we found that the Ku mutants had markedly reduced association with telomeric chromatin and null-like deficiencies for telomere end protection, length regulation, and silencing functions. In contrast to Ku null strains, the DNA end binding defective Ku mutants resulted in increased, rather than markedly decreased, imprecise end-joining proficiency at an induced double-strand break. This result further supports that it was the specific loss of Ku's telomere end binding that resulted in telomeric defects rather than global loss of Ku's functions. The extensive telomere defects observed in these mutants lead us to propose that Ku is an integral component of the terminal telomeric cap, where it promotes a specific architecture that is central to telomere function and maintenance.

  12. End-User Development of Visualizations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lauesen, Søren; Pantazos, Kostas

    2016-01-01

    view. With uVis, developers construct a visualization from simple visual components such as boxes, curvePoints, and textboxes. All component properties such as Top and BackColor can be complex formulas similar to spreadsheet formulas. The operands in the formula can address relational data......In this article the authors investigated a visualization tool (uVis) for end-user developers, in order to see how end users actually use it. The tool was an early version and the investigation helped the authors to improve it. The investigation showed that users appreciated the simple formula...... language, the coordinated panels, and the drag-and-drop mechanism. However, the most important thing for them was the immediate response when they changed something, for instance part of a formula. The entire visualization was updated immediately without having to switch from development view to production...

  13. Static end-expiratory and dynamic forced expiratory tracheal collapse in COPD

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    O'Donnell, C.R.; Bankier, A.A.; O'Donnell, D.H.; Loring, S.H.; Boiselle, P.M.

    2014-01-01

    Aim: To determine the range of tracheal collapse at end-expiration among chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and to compare the extent of tracheal collapse between static end-expiratory and dynamic forced-expiratory multidetector-row computed tomography (MDCT). Materials and methods: After institutional review board approval and obtaining informed consent, 67 patients meeting the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)/World Health Organization (WHO) Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) criteria for COPD were sequentially imaged using a 64-detector-row CT machine at end-inspiration, during forced expiration, and at end-expiration. Standardized respiratory coaching and spirometric monitoring were employed. Mean percentage tracheal collapse at end-expiration and forced expiration were compared using correlation analysis, and the power of end-expiratory cross-sectional area to predict excessive forced-expiratory tracheal collapse was computed following construction of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: Mean percentage expiratory collapse among COPD patients was 17 ± 18% at end-expiration compared to 62 ± 16% during forced expiration. Over the observed range of end-expiratory tracheal collapse (approximately 10–50%), the positive predictive value of end-expiratory collapse to predict excessive (≥80%) forced expiratory tracheal collapse was <0.3. Conclusion: COPD patients demonstrate a wide range of end-expiratory tracheal collapse. The magnitude of static end-expiratory tracheal collapse does not predict excessive dynamic expiratory tracheal collapse

  14. End-to-end gene fusions and their impact on the production of multifunctional biomass degrading enzymes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rizk, Mazen; Antranikian, Garabed; Elleuche, Skander

    2012-01-01

    Highlights: ► Multifunctional enzymes offer an interesting approach for biomass degradation. ► Size and conformation of separate constructs play a role in the effectiveness of chimeras. ► A connecting linker allows for maximal flexibility and increased thermostability. ► Genes with functional similarities are the best choice for fusion candidates. -- Abstract: The reduction of fossil fuels, coupled with its increase in price, has made the search for alternative energy resources more plausible. One of the topics gaining fast interest is the utilization of lignocellulose, the main component of plants. Its primary constituents, cellulose and hemicellulose, can be degraded by a series of enzymes present in microorganisms, into simple sugars, later used for bioethanol production. Thermophilic bacteria have proven to be an interesting source of enzymes required for hydrolysis since they can withstand high and denaturing temperatures, which are usually required for processes involving biomass degradation. However, the cost associated with the whole enzymatic process is staggering. A solution for cost effective and highly active production is through the construction of multifunctional enzyme complexes harboring the function of more than one enzyme needed for the hydrolysis process. There are various strategies for the degradation of complex biomass ranging from the regulation of the enzymes involved, to cellulosomes, and proteins harboring more than one enzymatic activity. In this review, the construction of multifunctional biomass degrading enzymes through end-to-end gene fusions, and its impact on production and activity by choosing the enzymes and linkers is assessed.

  15. Means-end theory of lifestyle

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Scholderer, Joachim; Brunsø, Karen; Grunert, Klaus G.

    2002-01-01

    Brunsø, Scholderer and Grunert (in press) reconstruct means-end chain theory and lifestyle within a dual-process framework, incorporating bottom-up and top-down information-processing routes. The bottom-up route of their model is defined as a hierarchical categorization process, and the top...... of the intervening knowledge structures is considered a necessary condition for both information-processing routes to reach their ends, predicting a complete-mediation model. The initial study by Brunsø et al. (in press) was exactly replicated based on survey data gathered in the United Kingdom in 1998, using...... modeling. Compared against five alternative model structures, the complete-mediation model fitted the data best, thus confirming the predictions derived from the reconstructed theory, and cross-validating the initial model in a different consumer population....

  16. Monster Figures and Unhappy Endings in Inuit Literature.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McGrath, Robin

    1988-01-01

    Examines the incidence of frightening figures and unhappy endings in traditional and modern Inuit stories and identifies purpose for these elements. Monsters and unhappy endings apparently are tools to help children come to terms with Eskimo environment and values. Studies the conclusions and implications for Indian education. (TES)

  17. From a global crisis to the 'end of AIDS': New epidemics of signification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kenworthy, Nora; Thomann, Matthew; Parker, Richard

    2017-08-22

    In the past decade, discourses about AIDS have taken a remarkable, and largely unquestioned, turn. Whereas mobilisations for treatment scale-up during the 2000s were premised on perceptions of an 'epidemic out of control', we have repeatedly been informed in more recent years that an end to AIDS is immanent. This new discourse and its resulting policies are motivated by post-recession financial pressures, a changing field of global institutions, and shifting health and development priorities. These shifts also reflect a biomedical triumphalism in HIV prevention and treatment, whereby shorter term, privatised, technological, and 'cost-effective' interventions are promoted over long-term support for antiretroviral treatment. To explore these changes, we utilise Treichler's [(1987). How to have theory in an epidemic: Cultural chronicles of AIDS. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] view of AIDS as an 'epidemic of signification' to develop a review of 'End of AIDS' discourses in recent years. We use this review to investigate the political and philanthropic interests served by efforts to rebrand and re-signify the epidemic. We also hold up these discourses against the realities of treatment access in resource-poor countries, where 'Ending AIDS' has not heralded the end of an epidemic per se, but rather the end of external support for treatment programmes, highlighting new difficulties for sustaining treatment in this new era of the epidemic.

  18. New coil end design for the RHIC Arc dipole

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Morgan, G.H.; Morgillo, A.; Power, K.; Thompson, P.

    1994-06-01

    To simplify production, the number of parts in the ends, about 64 in each coil end, was reduced by using thicker spacers between the turns, to about 23. A new computer program was written which gives a description of each turn closely resembling the turn as made. The output of this program is processed by newly written computer programs which change the parts descriptions into forms which are used by a computer-controlled, 5-axis milling machine. The solid spacers replace spacers assembled from laminations and improve the fit as well. The parts will be molded during production. The calculated harmonic content of the ends is compared with measurements on the first magnets built with the new ends.

  19. An optimum cold end configuration for helium liquefaction cycles

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Minta, M.; Smith, J.L.

    1984-01-01

    This chapter examines the effect of the non-ideal behavior of helium at low temperature on the performance of helium liquefaction cycles. The effect is isolated by means of a continuum model for the precooling stage. The cold end losses are due primarily to the composite effect of the non-ideality of helium at low temperatures and the heat exchanger losses, in addition to the component losses fixed by the expander/compressor efficiencies. Topics considered include continuously distributed full-pressure ratio expanders, continuously distributed full-flow expanders, the heat exchange effect (ideal gas working fluid, real gas working fluid), and cold end configuration. The cold end configuration minimizes the cycle cold end losses

  20. New coil end design for the RHIC Arc dipole

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Morgan, G.H.; Morgillo, A.; Power, K.; Thompson, P.

    1994-01-01

    To simplify production, the number of parts in the ends, about 64 in each coil end, was reduced by using thicker spacers between the turns, to about 23. A new computer program was written which gives a description of each turn closely resembling the turn as made. The output of this program is processed by newly written computer programs which change the parts descriptions into forms which are used by a computer-controlled, 5-axis milling machine. The solid spacers replace spacers assembled from laminations and improve the fit as well. The parts will be molded during production. The calculated harmonic content of the ends is compared with measurements on the first magnets built with the new ends

  1. FAMS DECOMMISSIONING END-STATE ALTERNATIVE EVALUATION

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Grimm, B; Stephen Chostner, S; Brenda Green, B

    2006-01-01

    Nuclear Material Management (NMM) completed a comprehensive study at the request of the Department of Energy Savannah River Operations Office (DOE-SR) in 2004 (Reference 11.1). The study evaluated the feasibility of removal and/or mitigation of the Pu-238 source term in the F-Area Material Storage (FAMS) facility during on-going material storage operations. The study recommended different options to remove and/or mitigate the Pu-238 source term depending on its location within the facility. During April 2005, the Department of Energy (DOE) sent a letter of direction (LOD) to Washington Savannah River Company (WSRC) directing WSRC to implement a new program direction that would enable an accelerated shutdown and decommissioning of FAMS (Reference 11.2). Further direction in the LOD stated that effective December 1, 2006 the facility will be transitioned to begin deactivation and decommissioning (D and D) activities. To implement the LOD, Site D and D (SDD) and DOE agreed the planning end-state would be demolition of the FAMS structure to the building slab. SDD developed the D and D strategy, preliminary cost and schedule, and issued the deactivation project plan in December 2005 (Reference 11.3). Due to concerns and questions regarding the FAMS planning end-state and in support of the project's Critical Decision 1, an alternative study was performed to evaluate the various decommissioning end-states and the methods by which those end-states are achieved. This report documents the results of the alternative evaluation which was performed in a structured decision-making process as outlined in the E7 Manual, Procedure 2.15, ''Alternative Studies'' (Reference 11.4)

  2. Realizing directional cloning using sticky ends produced by 3ʹ-5ʹ ...

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    The Klenow fragment (KF) has been used to make the blunt end as a tool enzyme. Its 5′-3′ polymerase activity can extend the 5′ overhanging sticky end to the blunt end, and 3′-5′ exonuclease activity can cleave the 3′ overhanging sticky end to the blunt end. The blunt end is useful for cloning. Here, we for the first ...

  3. The Closed-End Funds Puzzle: A Survey Review

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marta Charrón

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available The main objective of this paper is to explore the most salient research aimed at explaining the closed-end fund puzzle from both the traditional and behavioral finance perspectives. It provides a better understanding of closed-end fund behavior and motivates further research of closed-end funds, market efficiency, asset pricing and the traditional and behavioral finance paradigms. So far, none of the possible explanations from either traditional finance or behavioral finance have been able to fully account for the occurrence of the puzzle. It continues to be an important issue in the long standing debate between traditional finance and behavioral finance.

  4. REASONING IN THE FUZZY FRONT END OF INNOVATION:

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Haase, Louise Møller; Laursen, Linda Nhu

    2018-01-01

    in the fuzzy front end is the reasoning process: innovation teams are faced with open-ended, ill-defined problems, where they need to make decisions about an unknown future but have only incomplete, ambiguous and contradicting insights available. We study the reasoning of experts, how they frame to make sense...... of all the insights and create a basis for decision-making in relation to a new project. Based on case studies of five innovative products from various industries, we propose a Product DNA model for understanding the reasoning in the fuzzy front end of innovation. The Product DNA Model explains how...... experts reason and what direct their reasoning....

  5. A survey of views and practice patterns of dialysis medical directors toward end-of-life decision making for patients with end-stage renal disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fung, Enrica; Slesnick, Nate; Kurella Tamura, Manjula; Schiller, Brigitte

    2016-07-01

    Patients with end-stage renal disease report infrequent end-of-life discussions, and nephrology trainees report feeling unprepared for end-of-life decision making, but the views of dialysis medical directors have not been studied. Our objective is to understand dialysis medical directors' views and practice patterns on end-of-life decision making for patients with ESRD. We administered questionnaires to dialysis medical directors during medical director meetings of three different dialysis organizations in 2013. Survey questions corresponded to recommendations from the Renal Physicians Association clinical practice guidelines on initiation and withdrawal of dialysis. There were 121 medical director respondents from 28 states. The majority of respondents felt "very prepared" (66%) or "somewhat prepared" (29%) to participate in end-of-life decisions and most (80%) endorsed a model of shared decision making. If asked to do so, 70% of the respondents provided prognostic information "often" or "nearly always." For patients with a poor prognosis, 36% of respondents would offer a time-limited trial of dialysis "often" or "nearly always", while 56% of respondents would suggest withdrawal from dialysis "often" or "nearly always" for those with a poor prognosis currently receiving dialysis therapy. Patient resistance and fear of taking away hope were the most commonly cited barriers to end-of-life discussions. Views and reported practice patterns of medical directors are consistent with clinical practice guidelines for end-of-life decision making for patients with end-stage renal disease but inconsistent with patient perceptions. © The Author(s) 2016.

  6. Pain relief at the end of life: nurses' experiences regarding end-of-life pain relief in patients with dementia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brorson, Hanna; Plymoth, Henrietta; Örmon, Karin; Bolmsjö, Ingrid

    2014-03-01

    Patients with dementia receive suboptimal palliative care, and this patient group is at risk to have pain at the end of life. Because communicative impairments are common in this patient group, nurses play an important caregiver role in identifying, assessing, and relieving patients' pain. This study aimed to describe nurses' experiences regarding end-of-life pain relief in patients with dementia. This descriptive exploratory qualitative study was based on seven semistructured interviews. Burnard's content analysis inspired the data analysis. Two main categories were identified: (1) nurses' experience of difficulties concerning pain relief and (2) nurses' experience of resources concerning pain relief. Nurses experienced difficulties, such as feeling of powerlessness because of difficulties in obtaining adequate prescriptions for analgesics, ethical dilemmas, feeling of inadequacy because analgesia did not have the desired effect, and a feeling of not being able to connect with the patient. Factors, including knowledge about the patient, professional experience, utilization of pain assessment tools, interpersonal relationships, and interprofessional cooperation, served as resources and enabled end-of-life pain relief. The results of this study highlight the complexity of pain relief in patients with dementia at the end of life from a nursing perspective. The inability of patients with dementia to verbally communicate their pain makes them a vulnerable patient group, dependent on their caregivers. Knowing the life story of the patient, professional experience, teamwork based on good communication, and use of a pain assessment tool were reported by the nurses to improve pain relief at the end of life for patients with dementia. Copyright © 2014 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Visible sector inflation and the right thermal history in light of Planck data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang, Lingfei; Pukartas, Ernestas; Mazumdar, Anupam

    2013-01-01

    Inflation creates perturbations for the large scale structures in the universe, but it also dilutes everything. Therefore it is pertinent that the end of inflation must explain how to excite the Standard Model dof along with the dark matter. In this paper we will briefly discuss the role of visible sector inflaton candidates which are embedded within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and discuss their merit on how well they match the current data from the Planck. Since the inflaton carries the Standard Model charges their decay naturally produces all the relevant dof with no dark/hidden sector radiation and no isocurvature fluctuations. We will first discuss a single supersymmetric flat direction model of inflation and demonstrate what parameter space is allowed by the Planck and the LHC. We will also consider where the perturbations are created by another light field which decays after inflation, known as a curvaton. The late decay of the curvaton can create observable non-Gaussianity. In the end we will discuss the role of a spectator field whose origin may not lie within the visible sector physics, but its sheer presence during inflation can still create all the perturbations responsible for the large scale structures including possible non-Gaussianity, while the inflaton is embedded within the visible sector which creates all the relevant matter including dark matter, but no dark radiation

  8. Managing the Risks Associated with End-User Computing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alavi, Maryam; Weiss, Ira R.

    1986-01-01

    Identifies organizational risks of end-user computing (EUC) associated with different stages of the end-user applications life cycle (analysis, design, implementation). Generic controls are identified that address each of the risks enumerated in a manner that allows EUC management to select those most appropriate to their EUC environment. (5…

  9. 20 CFR 404.728 - Evidence a marriage has ended.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Evidence a marriage has ended. 404.728... DISABILITY INSURANCE (1950- ) Evidence Evidence of Age, Marriage, and Death § 404.728 Evidence a marriage has ended. (a) When evidence is needed that a marriage has ended. If you apply for benefits as the insured...

  10. 24 CFR 203.256 - Insurance of open-end advance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... Insurance § 203.256 Insurance of open-end advance. Insurance on an open-end advance will be evidenced by delivery of a certificate stating the amount of the advance, the date of insurance, and the regulations... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Insurance of open-end advance. 203...

  11. Shear strength of end slabs of prestressed concrete reactor vessels

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cheung, K.C.; Gotschall, H.L.; Liu, T.C.

    1975-01-01

    Prestressed concrete reactor vessels (PCRV's) have been adopted for primary containments in most large high-temperature gas-cooled reactor installations. The most common configuration for PCRVs is a right-vertical cylinder with thick end slabs. In order to assess the integrity of a PCRV it is necessary to predict the ultimate strength of the end slabs. The complexity of the basic mechanism of shear failure in the PCRV end slabs has thus far prohibited the development of a completely analytical solution. However, many experimental investigations of PCRV end slabs have been conducted over the past decade. This information makes it possible to establish empirical formulae for the ultimate strength of PCRV end slabs. The basis and development of an empirical shear-flexure interaction expression is presented. (Auth.)

  12. Loop versus end colostomy reversal: has anything changed?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruns, B R; DuBose, J; Pasley, J; Kheirbek, T; Chouliaras, K; Riggle, A; Frank, M K; Phelan, H A; Holena, D; Inaba, K; Diaz, J; Scalea, T M

    2015-10-01

    Though primary repair of colon injuries is preferred, certain injury patterns require colostomy creation. Colostomy reversal is associated with significant morbidity and healthcare cost. Complication rates may be influenced by technique of diversion (loop vs. end colostomy), though this remains ill-defined. We hypothesized that reversal of loop colostomies is associated with fewer complications than end colostomies. This is a retrospective, multi-institutional study (four, level-1 trauma centers) of patients undergoing colostomy takedown for trauma during the time period 1/2006-12/2012. Data were collected from index trauma admission and subsequent admission for reversal and included demographics and complications of reversal. Student's t test was used to compare continuous variables against loop versus end colostomy. Discrete variables were compared against both groups using Chi-squared tests. Over the 6-year study period, 218 patients underwent colostomy takedown after trauma with a mean age of 30; 190 (87%) were male, 162 (74%) had penetrating injury as their indication for colostomy, and 98 (45%) experienced at least one complication. Patients in the end colostomy group (n = 160) were more likely to require midline laparotomy (145 vs. 18, p colostomy (n = 58). Local takedown of a loop colostomy is safe and leads to shorter hospital stays, less intra-operative blood loss, and fewer complications when compared to end colostomy.

  13. Liliaceae endémicas del Perú

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Blanca León

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available La familia Liliaceae es reconocida en el Perú con 15 géneros (excepto Alstroemeria y Bomarea y aproximadamente 29 especies (Brako & Zarucchi, 1993; Ulloa Ulloa et al., 2004, todas ellas hierbas. Esta familia incluye tres géneros endémicos, Diamena, Diora y Trichlora. En este trabajo reconocemos 11 especies endémicas en cinco géneros. Se asignó las categorías de amenaza de la UICN a seis especies. La mitad de los endemismos es conocido solamente de una localidad. Los taxones endémicos ocupan las regiones del Desierto Semicálido Costero y Mesoandina, entre los 600 y 3600 m de altitud. Solamente una especie está representada en un área natural protegida.

  14. Adaptation and validation of a commercial head phantom for cranial radiosurgery dosimetry end-to-end audit.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dimitriadis, Alexis; Palmer, Antony L; Thomas, Russell A S; Nisbet, Andrew; Clark, Catharine H

    2017-06-01

    To adapt and validate an anthropomorphic head phantom for use in a cranial radiosurgery audit. Two bespoke inserts were produced for the phantom: one for providing the target and organ at risk for delineation and the other for performing dose measurements. The inserts were tested to assess their positional accuracy. A basic treatment plan dose verification with an ionization chamber was performed to establish a baseline accuracy for the phantom and beam model. The phantom and inserts were then used to perform dose verification measurements of a radiosurgery plan. The dose was measured with alanine pellets, EBT extended dose film and a plastic scintillation detector (PSD). Both inserts showed reproducible positioning (±0.5 mm) and good positional agreement between them (±0.6 mm). The basic treatment plan measurements showed agreement to the treatment planning system (TPS) within 0.5%. Repeated film measurements showed consistent gamma passing rates with good agreement to the TPS. For 2%-2 mm global gamma, the mean passing rate was 96.7% and the variation in passing rates did not exceed 2.1%. The alanine pellets and PSD showed good agreement with the TPS (-0.1% and 0.3% dose difference in the target) and good agreement with each other (within 1%). The adaptations to the phantom showed acceptable accuracies. The presence of alanine and PSD do not affect film measurements significantly, enabling simultaneous measurements by all three detectors. Advances in knowledge: A novel method for thorough end-to-end test of radiosurgery, with capability to incorporate all steps of the clinical pathway in a time-efficient and reproducible manner, suitable for a national audit.

  15. Fiber-to-the-home: bringing the services the end-user

    Science.gov (United States)

    van den Hoven, G. N.; Pluk, E. G. C.

    2006-07-01

    The ever increasing bandwidth demand will put large pressure on classical broadband communication networks. Optical fiber, with its high bandwidth, offers a solution to this emerging problem. Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) can provide end-users with virtually unlimited bandwidth, creating the opportunity to receive any service they like. FTTH networks consist of a passive network, active equipment and a top-layer which brings the services to the end-user. Companies and organisations who are deploying FTTH networks are not the traditional telecom and cable operators, but utility companies, housing corporations and local communities. The FTTH network deployed in Nuenen is a good example showing the strength of FTTH. In the future, bandwidth demand will increase even more. Intelligent solutions, such as flexible bandwidth, can have large added value for future FTTH networks.

  16. Size and importance of small electrical end uses in households

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Broderick, J R; Zogg, R A; Alberino, D L

    1998-07-01

    Miscellaneous end uses (an energy-consumption category in the residential sector) has recently emerged with more importance than ever before. Miscellaneous end uses are a collection of numerous end uses (often unrelated in technology or market characteristics) that individually are small consumers but when grouped together can become notable in size. The Annual Energy Outlook 1998, published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), suggests that about 32% of residential electricity use in 1996 is attributable to miscellaneous end uses (21% from the Other Uses category and 11% from other miscellaneous categories). The EIA predicts this consumption will grow to about 47% of residential electricity use by 2010. Other studies have shown substantial consumption in this category, and forecast substantial future growth as well. However, it is not clear that the current accounting structure of the miscellaneous category is the most appropriate one, nor that the forecast growth in consumption will materialize. A bottom-up study on a collection of miscellaneous electric end uses was performed to better understand this complex, ill-defined category. Initial results show that many end uses can be categorized more appropriately, such as furnace fans, which belong in Space Heating. A recommended categorization reduces the Other Uses category from 21% to 12% of electric consumption estimated in 1996. Thus, the consumption from miscellaneous end uses is not nearly as large as thought. Furthermore, the growth rate associated with small end uses is projected to be lower relative to projections from other sources.

  17. End-user GHG emissions from energy. Reallocation of emissions from energy industries to end users 2005-2009

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Fernandez, R. (European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen (Denmark)); Watterson, J. (AEA Technology plc - EEA' s European Topic Centre on Air Pollution and Climate Change Mitigation (ETC/ACM) (United Kingdom))

    2011-12-15

    The objective of this report is to help improve the understanding of past greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends in the energy sector from the demand or end-user side. To do this, the report develops a methodology to redistributes emissions from energy industries to the final users (by sector) of that energy. This reallocation is done on the basis of Eurostat's energy balances and GHG inventories for the energy sector as reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), for the period 2005-2009. (Author)

  18. End-user GHG emissions from energy. Reallocation of emissions from energy industries to end users 2005-2010

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Fernandez, R. [European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen (Denmark); Watterson, J. [AEA Technology plc - EEA' s European Topic Centre on Air Pollution and Climate Change Mitigation (ETC/ACM) (United Kingdom)

    2012-12-15

    The objective of this report is to help improve the understanding of past GHG emission trends in the energy sector from the demand or end-user side. To do this, the report develops a methodology to redistributes emissions from energy industries to the final users (by sector) of that energy. This reallocation is done on the basis of Eurostat's energy balances and GHG inventories for the energy sector as reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), for the period 2005-2010. (Author)

  19. Partial QoS-Aware Opportunistic Relay Selection Over Two-Hop Channels: End-to-End Performance Under Spectrum-Sharing Requirements

    KAUST Repository

    Yuli Yang,

    2014-10-01

    In this paper, we propose a partial quality-of-service (QoS)-oriented relay selection scheme with a decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocol, to reduce the feedback amount required for relay selection. In the proposed scheme, the activated relay is the one with the maximum signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) in the second hop among those whose packet loss rates (PLRs) in the first hop achieve a predetermined QoS level. For the purpose of evaluating the performance of the proposed scheme, we exploit it with transmission constraints imposed on the transmit power budget and interference to other users. By analyzing the statistics of received SNRs in the first and second hops, we obtain the end-to-end PLR of this scheme in closed form under the considered scenario. Moreover, to compare the proposed scheme with popular relay selection schemes, we also derive the closed-form PLR expressions for partial relay selection (PRS) and opportunistic relay selection (ORS) criteria in the same scenario under study. Illustrative numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of our derivations and substantiate that the proposed relay selection scheme is a promising alternative with respect to the tradeoff between performance and complexity.

  20. Polymer containing functional end groups is base for new polymers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirshfield, S. M.

    1971-01-01

    Butadiene is polymerized with lithium-p-lithiophenoxide to produce linear polymer containing oxy-lithium group at one end and active carbon-lithium group at other end. Living polymers represent new approach to preparation of difunctional polymers in which structural features, molecular weight, type and number of end groups are controlled.