Online learning for QoE management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Menkovski, V.; Exarchakos, G.; Liotta, A.

2010-01-01

Quality of Experience (QoE) is a metric that quantifies the quality experienced while using a service. This is a subjective metric that is crucial for determining the level of satisfaction with the quality of services, such as multimedia streaming or games. Because of its subjective character, QoE

Providing QoS guarantee in 3G wireless networks

Science.gov (United States)

Chuah, MooiChoo; Huang, Min; Kumar, Suresh

2001-07-01

The third generation networks and services present opportunities to offer multimedia applications and services that meet end-to-end quality of service requirements. In this article, we present UMTS QoS architecture and its requirements. This includes the definition of QoS parameters, traffic classes, the end-to-end data delivery model, and the mapping of end-to-end services to the services provided by the network elements of the UMTS. End-to-end QoS of a user flow is achieved by the combination of the QoS control over UMTS Domain and the IP core Network. In the Third Generation Wireless network, UMTS bearer service manager is responsible to manage radio and transport resources to QoS-enabled applications. The UMTS bearer service consists of the Radio Access Bearer Service between Mobile Terminal and SGSN and Core Network bearer service between SGSN and GGSN. The Radio Access Bearer Service is further realized by the Radio Bearer Service (mostly air interface) and Iu bearer service. For the 3G air interface, one can provide differentiated QoS via intelligent burst allocation scheme, adaptive spreading factor control and weighted fair queueing scheduling algorithms. Next, we discuss the requirements for the transport technologies in the radio access network to provide differentiated QoS to multiple classes of traffic. We discuss both ATM based and IP based transport solutions. Last but not least, we discuss how QoS mechanism is provided in the core network to ensure e2e quality of service requirements. We discuss how mobile terminals that use RSVP as QoS signaling mechanisms can be are supported in the 3G network which may implement only IETF diffserv mechanism. . We discuss how one can map UMTS QoS classes with IETF diffserv code points. We also discuss 2G/3G handover scenarios and how the 2G/3G QoS parameters can be mapped.

Reaction of electron-transfer flavoprotein with electron-transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Beckmann, J.D.; Frerman, F.E.

1985-01-01

The oxidative half-reaction of electron-transfer flavoprotein (ETF), electron transfer from ETF to electron-transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO), is dependent on complementary surface charges on the two proteins. ETF is the positively charged member of the redox pair. The evidence is based on the pH and ionic strength dependencies of the comproportionation of oxidized ETF and ETF hydroquinone catalyzed by ETF-QO and on the effects of chemical modification of ETF on the comproportionation reaction. Acetylation of one and five epsilon-amino groups of lysyl residues results in 3- and 13-fold increases, respectively, in the K/sub m/ of ETF-QO for ETF but no change in V/sub max/. Amidination, which maintains positive charge at modified loci, has no effect on steady-state kinetic constants. These chemical modifications have no effect on the equilibrium constant for equilibration of ETF redox states. The K/sub m/ of ETF-QO for ETF is pH dependent above pH 8.5, suggesting titration of lysyl residues. The ionic strength dependence of TN/KmETF for the reaction follows the limiting Bronsted equation. The ETF-QO-catalyzed comproportionation reaction exhibits a primary deuterium isotope effect in D 2 O, perhaps indicating the participation of solvent water in the electron-transfer reaction

SDN-based QoS Aware Network Service Provisioning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caba, Cosmin Marius; Soler, José

2015-01-01

One of the applicability areas of SDN is for creating services for dynamic provisioning of network resources with strict QoS requirements. The research available in this field focuses mainly on the service logic implemented over the functionality of the SDN Controller (SDNC). However, there is much...... to be covered regarding the specific mechanisms used by the SDNC to enforce the QoS in the data plane devices. To this end, the current paper proposes a data plane QoS architecture, together with the invariants that have to be maintained by the SDNC in order to ensure predictable QoS for the network services....... More specifically, the paper will look into on demand provisioning of Virtual Circuits (VCs) with specific QoS, based on the SDN paradigm. The aim is to analyze and compare the strategies for network resources management for two cases: a coarse granular and a fine granular VC provisioning service...

A Network-Attached Storage System Supporting Guaranteed QoS

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

KONG Hua-feng; YU Sheng-sheng; LU Hong-wei

2005-01-01

We propose a network-attached storage system that can support guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), called POPNet Storage. The special policy of date access and disk scheduling is enable users to access files quickly and directly with guaranteed QoS in the POPNet Storage. The POPNet Storage implements a measurement-based admission control algorithm (PSMBAC) to determine whether to admit a new data access request stream and admit as many requests as possible while meeting the QoS guarantees to its clients. The data reconstruction algorithms in the POPNet Storage also put more emphasis on data availability and guaranteed QoS, thus it is designed to complete the data recovery as soon as possible and at the same time provide the guaranteed QoS for high-priority data access. The experiment results show that the POPNet Storage can provide more significant performance, reliability, and guaranteed QoS than conventional storage systems.

Evaluation of QoS supported in Network Mobility NEMO environments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hussien, L F; Abdalla, A H; Habaebi, M H; Khalifa, O O; Hassan, W H

2013-01-01

Network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol is an entire network, roaming as a unit which changes its point of attachment to the Internet and consequently its reachability in the network topology. NEMO BS doesn't provide QoS guarantees to its users same as traditional Internet IP and Mobile IPv6 as well. Typically, all the users will have same level of services without considering about their application requirements. This poses a problem to real-time applications that required QoS guarantees. To gain more effective control of the network, incorporated QoS is needed. Within QoS-enabled network the traffic flow can be distributed to various priorities. Also, the network bandwidth and resources can be allocated to different applications and users. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has proposed several QoS solutions for static network such as IntServ, DiffServ and MPLS. These QoS solutions are designed in the context of a static environment (i.e. fixed hosts and networks). However, they are not fully adapted to mobile environments. They essentially demands to be extended and adjusted to meet up various challenges involved in mobile environments. With existing QoS mechanisms many proposals have been developed to provide QoS for individual mobile nodes (i.e. host mobility). In contrary, research based on the movement of the whole mobile network in IPv6 is still undertaking by the IETF working groups (i.e. network mobility). Few researches have been done in the area of providing QoS for roaming networks. Therefore, this paper aims to review and investigate (previous /and current) related works that have been developed to provide QoS in mobile network. Consequently, a new proposed scheme will be introduced to enhance QoS within NEMO environment, achieving by which seamless mobility to users of mobile network node (MNN)

Cross Layer QoS Provisioning in Home Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Jiayuan; Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Ruepp, Sarah Renée

2011-01-01

This paper introduces an innovative QoS provisioning scheme in home networks, by utilizing Optical Wireless (OW) MAC specification proposed by Home Gigabit Access Project (OMEGA) project. The specification is characterized by its resource reservation protocol and the use of Time Division Multiple...... Access (TDMA). By adopting OW MAC to the widely supported Universal Plug and Play – Quality of Service (UPnP-QoS) Architecture in the simulated home domain, algorithms for cross layer mapping QoS requirements are proposed. Compared to utilizing WLAN MAC, our scheme is able to provide guaranteed Qo......S levels to streams with different priorities, especially to delay-sensitive services. Efficiencies of the algorithms and network performance are validated by analyzing the results collected from OPNET simulation models....

Learning a Continuous-Time Streaming Video QoE Model.

Science.gov (United States)

Ghadiyaram, Deepti; Pan, Janice; Bovik, Alan C

2018-05-01

Over-the-top adaptive video streaming services are frequently impacted by fluctuating network conditions that can lead to rebuffering events (stalling events) and sudden bitrate changes. These events visually impact video consumers' quality of experience (QoE) and can lead to consumer churn. The development of models that can accurately predict viewers' instantaneous subjective QoE under such volatile network conditions could potentially enable the more efficient design of quality-control protocols for media-driven services, such as YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, and so on. However, most existing models only predict a single overall QoE score on a given video and are based on simple global video features, without accounting for relevant aspects of human perception and behavior. We have created a QoE evaluator, called the time-varying QoE Indexer, that accounts for interactions between stalling events, analyzes the spatial and temporal content of a video, predicts the perceptual video quality, models the state of the client-side data buffer, and consequently predicts continuous-time quality scores that agree quite well with human opinion scores. The new QoE predictor also embeds the impact of relevant human cognitive factors, such as memory and recency, and their complex interactions with the video content being viewed. We evaluated the proposed model on three different video databases and attained standout QoE prediction performance.

Effects of radiotherapy for brain metastases on quality of life (QoL). Prospective pilot study of the DEGRO QoL working party

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Steinmann, Diana; Bruns, Frank [Medical School, Hannover (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Schaefer, Christof; Hipp, Matthias [Regensburg Univ. (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Oorschot, Birgitt van [Wuerzburg Univ. (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Wypior, Hans-Joachim [Hospital Landshut (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Boelling, Tobias [Muenster Univ. (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Sehlen, Susanne [Ludwig Maximilians Univ., Muenchen (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Hagg, Juliane [Ulm Univ. (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Bayerl, Anja [Hospital Krems (Austria). Radiation Oncology; Geinitz, Hans [Technical Univ. Muenchen (Germany). Radiation Oncology; Vordermark, Dirk [Halle-Wittenberg Univ., Halle (Germany). Radiation Oncology

2009-03-15

Background: Prospective data on quality-of-life (QoL) effects of radiotherapy for brain metastases are currently lacking, but would be of great interest to guide therapeutic decisions. Patients and Methods: From 01/2007 to 08/2007, 46 patients with previously untreated brain metastases were recruited at eight centers. QoL was measured at start of treatment (T{sub 0}) and at 3 months ({sub T3mo}). In the pilot study, two combinations of QoL instruments could be used at the discretion of the centers (A: EORTC QLQ-C30 and B: EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL both with brain module BN20, assessment by proxies with A: Palliative Care Outcome Scale, B: self-constructed brain-specific instrument). Results: All patients received whole-brain radiotherapy, four with an additional boost irradiation. At T{sub 3mo}, 26/46 patients (56.5%) had died. 17/20 survivors (85%) completed the questionnaires. In 3-month survivors, QoL deteriorated in most domains, significant in drowsiness, hair loss and weakness of legs. The scores for headaches and seizures were slightly better after 3 months. Assessment by proxies also suggested worsening of QoL. Initial QoL at T{sub 0} was better in those alive than in those deceased at T{sub 3mo}, significant for physical function and for the symptom scales of fatigue and pain, motor dysfunction, communication deficit and weakness of legs. Conclusion: Practicability and compliance appeared better with the (shorter) version B. This version is now used in the ongoing main phase of the study with additional centers. First results indicate a moderate worsening of QoL during the first 3 months after start of palliative radiotherapy for brain metastases. QoL at initiation of radiotherapy may be prognostic for survival. (orig.)

Novel Adaptive QoS Framework for Integrated UMTS/WLAN Environment

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T. Shuminoski

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Since Quality of Service (QoS provisioning for multimedia traffic in integrated Wireless and Mobile Networks is becoming an increasingly important objective, in this paper we introduce a novel concept of an adaptive QoS cross-layer framework. The Adaptive QoS framework is proven via novel simulation results in integrated environment with UMTS and IEEE 802.11 networks. The aim of our novel framework is presenting a new module that shall provide the best QoS and lower cost for a given service using one or more wireless technologies in a given time. The analysis of simulation results has shown superior performances with a high level of QoS provisioning in a variety of network conditions. The performance of Adaptive QoS algorithm is evaluated using ns-miracle augmented with our dual-mode Mobile Equipments (MEs and using statistical analysis.

QoS frameworks for Multimedia Traffic in Mobile Adhoc Networks: A Comparative Review

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S. Soni

2017-06-01

Full Text Available MANETs (Mobile Adhoc Networks has gained an increased interest by the research community. Regular intelligent exchanges of multimedia will be typical in MANET, though the extended motivation on QoS (Quality of Service. However, various properties of the discussed QoS framework are provisioned for QoS as a challenging concern. Providing QoS provisioning is, to a great degree, challenging in MANETs in view of bouncing correspondences, center point movability and nonattendance of central coordination. Thus, most of the research has focused on giving QoS guarantees in MANETs coordinating traditions. Though huge numbers of QoS coordinating procedures have been proposed in composing, focusing on different QoS estimations yet none of the prescribed or discussed frameworks achieves a universal course of action. There exist several genuine necessary research areas of focus such as QoS metric assurance and cost limit layout, source level scheduling framework and QoS coordinating. In this paper, working and connecting of various QoS frameworks for MANETs is investigated throughout several veritable focus areas of research. After a comparative review, it is concluded that there is still a good scope of research for proposing a QoS framework for MANETs which could have cross-layer advantages, resource reservation, connection admission control, multi-constrained QoS parameters, hard QoS assurance, proactive routing advantages etc.

Satellite network robust QoS-aware routing

CERN Document Server

Long, Fei

2014-01-01

Satellite Network Robust QoS-aware Routing presents a novel routing strategy for satellite networks. This strategy is useful for the design of multi-layered satellite networks as it can greatly reduce the number of time slots in one system cycle. The traffic prediction and engineering approaches make the system robust so that the traffic spikes can be handled effectively. The multi-QoS optimization routing algorithm can satisfy various potential user requirements. Clear and sufficient illustrations are also presented in the book. As the chapters cover the above topics independently, readers from different research backgrounds in constellation design, multi-QoS routing, and traffic engineering can benefit from the book.   Fei Long is a senior engineer at Beijing R&D Center of 54th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.

TD-LTE Wireless Private Network QoS Transmission Protection

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jianming; Cheng, Chao; Wu, Zanhong

With the commencement of construction of the smart grid, the demand power business for reliability and security continues to improve, the reliability transmission of power TD-LTE Wireless Private Network are more and more attention. For TD-LTE power private network, it can provide different QoS services according to the user's business type, to protect the reliable transmission of business. This article describes in detail the AF module of PCC in the EPC network, specifically introduces set up AF module station and QoS mechanisms in the EPS load, fully considers the business characteristics of the special power network, establishing a suitable architecture for mapping QoS parameters, ensuring the implementation of each QoS business. Through using radio bearer management, we can achieve the reliable transmission of each business on physical channel.

A QoS aware services mashup model for cloud computing applications

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Yee Ming Chen

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Purpose: With the popularity of cloud computing, cloud services have become to be application programming platform where users can create new applications mashup(composing the functionality offered byothers.By composing of distributed, cloud services dynamicallyto provide more complex tasks, services mashup provides an attractive way for building large-scale Internetapplications.Oneof the challenging issues of cloud services mashup is how to find service paths to route the service instances provider through whilemeeting the applications’ resource requirements so that the QoS constraints are satisfied. However, QoS aware service routing problem istypically NP-hard.The purpose of this paper is to propose a QoS Aware Services Mashup(QASM model to solve this problem more effectively.Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, we focus on the QoS aware services selection problem in cloud services mashup, for example, given the user service composition requirements and their QoS constraint descriptions, how to select the required serviceinstances and route the data flows through these instances so that the QoS requirements are satisfied. We design a heuristic algorithm to find service paths to route the data flows through whilemeeting the applications’ resource requirements and specific QoS constraints.Findings: This study propose a QoS Aware Services Mashup(QASM model to solve this problem more effectively. Simulations show that QASM can achieve desired QoS assurances as well as load balancing in cloud services environment.Originality/value: This paperpresent a QASM model for providing high performance distributedapplications in the cloud computing systems.

Network based control point for UPnP QoS architecture

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Wessing, Henrik; Rossello Busquet, Ana

2011-01-01

Enabling coexistence of non-UPnP Devices in an UPnP QoS Architecture is an important issue that might have a major impact on the deployment and usability of UPnP in future home networks. The work presented here shows potential issues of placing non-UPnP Device in the network managed by UPnP QoS. We...... address this issue by extensions to the UPnP QoS Architecture that can prevent non-UPnP Devices from degrading the overall QoS level. The obtained results show that deploying Network Based Control Point service with efficient traffic classifier, improves significantly the end-to-end packet delay...

The Detection and Characterization of QoI-Resistant Didymella rabiei Causing Ascochyta Blight of Chickpea in Montana

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Ayodeji S. Owati

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Ascochyta blight (AB of pulse crops (chickpea, field pea, and lentils causes yield loss in Montana, where 1.2 million acres was planted to pulses in 2016. Pyraclostrobin and azoxystrobin, quinone outside inhibitor (QoI fungicides, have been the choice of farmers for the management of AB in pulses. However, a G143A mutation in the cytochrome b gene has been reported to confer resistance to QoI fungicides. A total of 990 isolates of AB-causing fungi were isolated and screened for QoI resistance. Out of these, 10% were isolated from chickpea, 81% were isolated from field peas, and 9% isolated from lentil. These were from a survey of grower’s fields and seed lots (chickpea = 17, field pea = 131, and lentil = 21 from 23 counties in Montana sent to the Regional Pulse Crop Diagnostic Laboratory, Bozeman, MT, United States for testing. Fungicide-resistant Didymella rabiei isolates were found in one chickpea seed lot each sent from Daniels, McCone and Valley Counties, MT, from seed produced in 2015 and 2016. Multiple alignment analysis of amino acid sequences showed a missense mutation that replaced the codon for amino acid 143 from GGT to GCT, introducing an amino acid change from glycine to alanine (G143A, which is reported to be associated with QoI resistance. Under greenhouse conditions, disease severity was significantly higher on pyraclostrobin-treated chickpea plants inoculated with QoI-resistant isolates of D. rabiei than sensitive isolates (p-value = 0.001. This indicates that where resistant isolates are located, fungicide failures may be observed in the field. D. rabiei-specific polymerase chain reaction primer sets and hydrolysis probes were developed to efficiently discriminate QoI- sensitive and - resistant isolates.

Autonomous QoS Management and Policing in Unmanaged Local Area Networks

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Christopher Köhnen

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The high increase of bandwidth-intensive applications like high definition video streaming in home and small office environments leads to QoS challenges in hybrid wired/wireless local area networks. These networks are often not QoS aware and may contain bottlenecks in their topology. In addition, they often have a hybrid nature due to the used access technology consisting of, for example, Ethernet, wireless, and PowerLAN links. In this paper, we present the research work on a novel autonomous system for hybrid QoS in local area networks, called QoSiLAN, which does not rely on network infrastructure support but on host cooperation and works independently of the access technology. We present a new QoS Signalling Protocol, policing and admission control algorithms, and a new lightweight statistical bandwidth prediction algorithm for autonomous resource management in LANs. This new QoS framework enables link based, access-medium independent bandwidth management without network support. We provide evaluation results for the novel bandwidth prediction algorithm as well as for the QoSiLAN framework and its protocol, which highlight the features, robustness, and the effectiveness of the proposed system.

An agent-based QoS provisioning mechanism for WDM optical networks

Science.gov (United States)

Ouyang, Yong; Zeng, Qingji; Yue, Ling

2004-04-01

This paper addresses QoS provisioning mechanisms in the WDM optical networks. With the appearance of metropolitan optical network, a hierarchical metro and wide area optical network will be envisioned in the near future. This hierarchical optical transport network is often divided into optical domains by geography, administration and technology, which usually employ different QoS routing algorithms and policies. To provide end-to-end optical QoS is becoming a new challenge for the optical network design. In this paper, we first give an overview of issues on the QoS provisioning in data, control and management planes of the WDM optical network. And then three provisioning approaches are analyzed and compared. Finally, we propose an agent-based hybrid centralized/distributed QoS provisioning mechanism based on the concept of domain agent. This agent-based hybrid mechanism employs centralized approach in the domain and distributed approach between domains. It offers scalability and intra-domain optimal QoS routing. It also keeps independence and interoperability between domains.

IP access networks with QoS support

Science.gov (United States)

Sargento, Susana; Valadas, Rui J. M. T.; Goncalves, Jorge; Sousa, Henrique

2001-07-01

The increasing demand of new services and applications is pushing for drastic changes on the design of access networks targeted mainly for residential and SOHO users. Future access networks will provide full service integration (including multimedia), resource sharing at the packet level and QoS support. It is expected that using IP as the base technology, the ideal plug-and-play scenario, where the management actions of the access network operator are kept to a minimum, will be achieved easily. This paper proposes an architecture for access networks based on layer 2 or layer 3 multiplexers that allows a number of simplifications in the network elements and protocols (e.g. in the routing and addressing functions). We discuss two possible steps in the evolution of access networks towards a more efficient support of IP based services. The first one still provides no QoS support and was designed with the goal of reusing as much as possible current technologies; it is based on tunneling to transport PPP sessions. The second one introduces QoS support through the use of emerging technologies and protocols. We illustrate the different phases of a multimedia Internet access session, when using SIP for session initiation, COPS for the management of QoS policies including the AAA functions and RSVP for resource reservation.

RACOON: a multiuser QoS design for mobile wireless body area networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Cheng, Shihheng; Huang, Chingyao; Tu, Chun Chen

2011-10-01

In this study, Random Contention-based Resource Allocation (RACOON) medium access control (MAC) protocol is proposed to support the quality of service (QoS) for multi-user mobile wireless body area networks (WBANs). Different from existing QoS designs that focus on a single WBAN, a multiuser WBAN QoS should further consider both inter-WBAN interference and inter-WBAN priorities. Similar problems have been studied in both overlapped wireless local area networks (WLANs) and Bluetooth piconets that need QoS supports. However, these solutions are designed for non-medical transmissions that do not consider any priority scheme for medical applications. Most importantly, these studies focus on only static or low mobility networks. Network mobility of WBANs will introduce unnecessary inter-network collisions and energy waste, which are not considered by these solutions. The proposed multiuser-QoS protocol, RACOON, simultaneously satisfies the inter WBAN QoS requirements and overcomes the performance degradation caused by WBAN mobility. Simulation results verify that RACOON provides better latency and energy control, as compared with WBAN QoS protocols without considering the inter-WBAN requirements.

QoS Negotiation and Renegotiation Based on Mobile Agents

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

ZHANG Shi-bing; ZHANG Deng-yin

2006-01-01

The Quality of Service (QoS) has received more and more attention since QoS becomes increasingly important in the Internet development. Mobile software agents represent a valid alternative to the implementation of strategies for the negotiation. In this paper, a QoS negotiation and renegotiation system architecture based on mobile agents is proposed. The agents perform the task in the whole process. Therefore, such a system can reduce the network load, overcome latency, and avoid frequent exchange information between clients and server. The simulation results show that the proposed system could improve the network resource utility about 10%.

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....

A Robust Service Selection Method Based on Uncertain QoS

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Yanping Chen

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, the number of Web services on the Internet is quickly increasing. Meanwhile, different service providers offer numerous services with the similar functions. Quality of Service (QoS has become an important factor used to select the most appropriate service for users. The most prominent QoS-based service selection models only take the certain attributes into account, which is an ideal assumption. In the real world, there are a large number of uncertain factors. In particular, at the runtime, QoS may become very poor or unacceptable. In order to solve the problem, a global service selection model based on uncertain QoS was proposed, including the corresponding normalization and aggregation functions, and then a robust optimization model adopted to transform the model. Experiment results show that the proposed method can effectively select services with high robustness and optimality.

Multi-Resolution Multimedia QoE Models for IPTV Applications

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Prasad Calyam

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Internet television (IPTV is rapidly gaining popularity and is being widely deployed in content delivery networks on the Internet. In order to proactively deliver optimum user quality of experience (QoE for IPTV, service providers need to identify network bottlenecks in real time. In this paper, we develop psycho-acoustic-visual models that can predict user QoE of multimedia applications in real time based on online network status measurements. Our models are neural network based and cater to multi-resolution IPTV applications that include QCIF, QVGA, SD, and HD resolutions encoded using popular audio and video codec combinations. On the network side, our models account for jitter and loss levels, as well as router queuing disciplines: packet-ordered and time-ordered FIFO. We evaluate the performance of our multi-resolution multimedia QoE models in terms of prediction characteristics, accuracy, speed, and consistency. Our evaluation results demonstrate that the models are pertinent for real-time QoE monitoring and resource adaptation in IPTV content delivery networks.

An Intelligent QoS Identification for Untrustworthy Web Services Via Two-phase Neural Networks

OpenAIRE

Wang, Weidong; Wang, Liqiang; Lu, Wei

2016-01-01

QoS identification for untrustworthy Web services is critical in QoS management in the service computing since the performance of untrustworthy Web services may result in QoS downgrade. The key issue is to intelligently learn the characteristics of trustworthy Web services from different QoS levels, then to identify the untrustworthy ones according to the characteristics of QoS metrics. As one of the intelligent identification approaches, deep neural network has emerged as a powerful techniqu...

On the end-user QoS-awareness of a distributed service environment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Widya, I.; Stap, R.E.; Teunissen, L.J.; Hopman, B.F.

2001-01-01

A lot of attention has been given to network quality of service and efforts to make layers on top of the network also QoS-aware increase noticeably. This paper explores QoS-aware service provisioning at a level close to end-user's perception. It shows how end-user oriented QoS requirements have been

Review of HaNDLE-on-QoL: a database of published papers that use questionnaires to report quality of life in patients with cancer of the head and neck.

Science.gov (United States)

Wotherspoon, R J; Kanatas, A N; Rogers, S N

2018-02-01

HaNDLE-on-QoL (Head And Neck Database Listing Evidence on QoL) is a searchable database that comprises abstracts of papers that have used questionnaires to report on quality of life (QoL) in patients with cancer of the head and neck. It can be searched by title, first author, year of publication, words used in the abstract, site of cancer, study design, and questionnaires used. The aim of this paper was to summarise its contents. In May 2017 we searched the website using the criteria above. It contained 1498 papers (including 149 reviews), and the number is increasing each year. Most studies concerned a combination of subsites in the head and neck (n=871); 180 focused specifically on oral sites, and 109 on the larynx. The commonest topics were swallowing (n=353), speech (n=299), pain (n=292), emotions (n=226), and depression (n=193). Nearly all the papers concerned function or predictors of health-related QoL (HRQoL), but 98 were clinical or randomised controlled trials. The site included over 250 questionnaires of which the most common were the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer C30 (EORTC-C30, n=369), the EORTC-head and neck 35 (EORTC H&N35, n=353), and the University of Washington Quality of Life (UWQoL) (n=276). HaNDLE-on-QoL highlights the complexity of QoL after treatment and the diversity and range of the studies. It is a useful point of reference for those involved in clinical practice or research. Copyright © 2017 The British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A QoS Scheme for a Congestion Core Network Based on Dissimilar QoS Structures in Smart-Phone Environments

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, Sung-Ryong; Na, Wonshik; Kang, Jang-Mook

2010-01-01

This study suggests an approach to effective transmission of multimedia content in a rapidly changing Internet environment including smart-phones. Guaranteeing QoS in networks is currently an important research topic. When transmitting Assured Forwarding (AF) packets in a Multi-DiffServ network environment, network A may assign priority in an order AF1, AF2, AF3 and AF4; on the other hand, network B may reverse the order to a priority AF4, AF3, AF2 and AF1. In this case, the AF1 packets that received the best quality of service in network A will receive the lowest in network B, which may result in dropping of packets in network B and vice versa. This study suggests a way to guarantee QoS between hosts by minimizing the loss of AF packet class when one network transmits AF class packets to another network with differing principles. It is expected that QoS guarantees and their experimental value may be utilized as principles which can be applied to various mobile-web environments based on smart-phones. PMID:22163453

Exploring Outliers in Crowdsourced Ranking for QoE

OpenAIRE

Xu, Qianqian; Yan, Ming; Huang, Chendi; Xiong, Jiechao; Huang, Qingming; Yao, Yuan

2017-01-01

Outlier detection is a crucial part of robust evaluation for crowdsourceable assessment of Quality of Experience (QoE) and has attracted much attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose some simple and fast algorithms for outlier detection and robust QoE evaluation based on the nonconvex optimization principle. Several iterative procedures are designed with or without knowing the number of outliers in samples. Theoretical analysis is given to show that such procedures can reach stati...

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...

Acromegaly Quality of Life Questionnaire (AcroQoL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lara Nuria

2004-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Acromegaly is a chronic disease with an important impact on patients, Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL. The ability to effectively measure Health Related Quality of Life is central to describing the impacts of disease or treatment upon the patient, therefore the importance of having a disease specific questionnaire for acromegaly. For the development of the AcroQoL questionnaire different sources of information were used: first a literature search was performed to identify relevant papers describing the impact of acromegaly in HRQoL, second the main domains of impact on HRQoL were identified by 10 experts endocrinologists, and third ten in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in acromegalic patients to identify domains and items related to the self-perceived impact of acromegaly in patients' life. After a proper qualitative analysis a preliminary 38 item questionnaire was obtained. Rasch analysis concluded with a final 22 item questionnaire. The measurement properties (validity and reliability of the resulting final questionnaire were tested and compared using standard procedures (Cronbach's Alpha and item-total correlation. The evaluation of the item parameters confirmed the construct validity of the new instrument. Responsiveness to change was assessed in a small sample of 32 acromegalic patients with active disease in Spain who were administered the AcroQoL and the generic questionnaire EuroQoL 5-D. The results showed a statistically significant relationship between all the dimensions of AcroQoL and the VAS (visual analogic scale of EQ-5D. An improvement in the global score of AcroQoL was related to a global improvement in the VAS of the EQ-5D. Following the current recommended standard methodology the Spanish questionnaire was translated into eleven other languages.

APIs for QoS configuration in Software Defined Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caba, Cosmin Marius; Soler, José

2015-01-01

The OpenFlow (OF) protocol is widely used in Software Defined Networking (SDN) to realize the communication between the controller and forwarding devices. OF allows great flexibility in managing traffic flows. However, OF alone is not enough to build more complex SDN services that require complete...... such as configuration of devices, ports, queues, etc. An Application Programming Interface (API) for dynamic configuration of QoS resources in the network devices is implemented herein, by using the capabilities of OVSDB. Further, the paper demonstrates the possibility to create network services with coarse granularity...... on top of the fine granular services exposed by the QoS configuration API at the SDNC. A series of tests emphasize the capabilities and the performance of the implemented QoS configuration API....

mQoL smart lab

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

De Masi, Alexandre; Ciman, Matteo; Gustarini, Mattia

2016-01-01

serve quality research in all of them. In this paper, we present own "mQoL Smart Lab" for interdisciplinary research efforts on individuals' "Quality of Life" improvement. We present an evolution of our current in-house living lab platform enabling continuous, pervasive data collection from individuals...

Optimal Network QoS over the Internet of Vehicles for E-Health Applications

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Di Lin

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Wireless technologies are pervasive to support ubiquitous healthcare applications. However, a critical issue of using wireless communications under a healthcare scenario is the electromagnetic interference (EMI caused by RF transmission, and a high level of EMI may lead to a critical malfunction of medical sensors. In consideration of EMI on medical sensors, we study the optimization of quality of service (QoS within the whole Internet of vehicles for E-health and propose a novel model to optimize the QoS by allocating the transmit power of each user. Our results show that the optimal power control policy depends on the objective of optimization problems: a greedy policy is optimal to maximize the summation of QoS of each user, whereas a fair policy is optimal to maximize the product of QoS of each user. Algorithms are taken to derive the optimal policies, and numerical results of optimizing QoS are presented for both objectives and QoS constraints.

Model-Checking Driven Design of QoS-Based Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

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Zhi Chen

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Accurate and reliable routing protocols with Quality of Service (QoS support determine the mission-critical application efficiency in WSNs. This paper proposes a model-checking design driven framework for designing the QoS-based routing protocols of WSNs, which involves the light-weight design process, the timed automata model, and the alternative QoS verification properties. The accurate feedback of continually model checking in the iterative design process effectively stimulates the parameter tuning of the protocols. We demonstrate the straightforward and modular characteristics of the proposed framework in designing a prototype QoS-based routing protocol. The prototype study shows that the model-checking design framework may complement other design methods and ensure the QoS implementation of the QoS-based routing protocol design for WSNs.

Quality of life (QoL) and neurotoxicity in germ-cell cancer survivors (GCCS)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lauritsen, J.; Bandak, Mikkel; Mortensen, M. S.

2016-01-01

Background: The majority of patients with testicular cancer become long-term survivors. However, treatment is associated with late effects which may hamper QoL. The aims of the present study were to assess the impact of treatment on long-term QoL and evaluate the influence of neurotoxicity on Qo...

Statistical-QoS Guaranteed Energy Efficiency Optimization for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks.

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Gao, Ya; Cheng, Wenchi; Zhang, Hailin

2017-08-23

Energy harvesting, which offers a never-ending energy supply, has emerged as a prominent technology to prolong the lifetime and reduce costs for the battery-powered wireless sensor networks. However, how to improve the energy efficiency while guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS) for energy harvesting based wireless sensor networks is still an open problem. In this paper, we develop statistical delay-bounded QoS-driven power control policies to maximize the effective energy efficiency (EEE), which is defined as the spectrum efficiency under given specified QoS constraints per unit harvested energy, for energy harvesting based wireless sensor networks. For the battery-infinite wireless sensor networks, our developed QoS-driven power control policy converges to the Energy harvesting Water Filling (E-WF) scheme and the Energy harvesting Channel Inversion (E-CI) scheme under the very loose and stringent QoS constraints, respectively. For the battery-finite wireless sensor networks, our developed QoS-driven power control policy becomes the Truncated energy harvesting Water Filling (T-WF) scheme and the Truncated energy harvesting Channel Inversion (T-CI) scheme under the very loose and stringent QoS constraints, respectively. Furthermore, we evaluate the outage probabilities to theoretically analyze the performance of our developed QoS-driven power control policies. The obtained numerical results validate our analysis and show that our developed optimal power control policies can optimize the EEE over energy harvesting based wireless sensor networks.

Analyzing Comprehensive QoS with Security Constraints for Services Composition Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Naixue Xiong

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Services composition is fundamental to software development in multi-service wireless sensor networks (WSNs. The quality of service (QoS of services composition applications (SCAs are confronted with severe challenges due to the open, dynamic, and complex natures of WSNs. Most previous research separated various QoS indices into different fields and studied them individually due to the computational complexity. This approach ignores the mutual influence between these QoS indices, and leads to a non-comprehensive and inaccurate analysis result. The universal generating function (UGF shows the speediness and precision in QoS analysis. However, only one QoS index at a time can be analyzed by the classic UGF. In order to efficiently analyze the comprehensive QoS of SCAs, this paper proposes an improved UGF technique—vector universal generating function (VUGF—which considers the relationship between multiple QoS indices, including security, and can simultaneously analyze multiple QoS indices. The numerical examples demonstrate that it can be used for the evaluation of the comprehensive QoS of SCAs subjected to the security constraint in WSNs. Therefore, it can be effectively applied to the optimal design of multi-service WSNs.

Analyzing comprehensive QoS with security constraints for services composition applications in wireless sensor networks.

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Xiong, Naixue; Wu, Zhao; Huang, Yannong; Xu, Degang

2014-12-01

Services composition is fundamental to software development in multi-service wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The quality of service (QoS) of services composition applications (SCAs) are confronted with severe challenges due to the open, dynamic, and complex natures of WSNs. Most previous research separated various QoS indices into different fields and studied them individually due to the computational complexity. This approach ignores the mutual influence between these QoS indices, and leads to a non-comprehensive and inaccurate analysis result. The universal generating function (UGF) shows the speediness and precision in QoS analysis. However, only one QoS index at a time can be analyzed by the classic UGF. In order to efficiently analyze the comprehensive QoS of SCAs, this paper proposes an improved UGF technique-vector universal generating function (VUGF)-which considers the relationship between multiple QoS indices, including security, and can simultaneously analyze multiple QoS indices. The numerical examples demonstrate that it can be used for the evaluation of the comprehensive QoS of SCAs subjected to the security constraint in WSNs. Therefore, it can be effectively applied to the optimal design of multi-service WSNs.

Using Kalman Filter to Guarantee QoS Robustness of Web Server

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2006-01-01

The exponential growth of the Internet coupled with the increasing popularity of dynamically generated content on the World Wide Web, has created the need for more and faster Web servers capable of serving the over 100 million Internet users. To converge the control method has emerged as a promising technique to solve the Web QoS problem. In this paper, a model of adaptive session is presented and a session flow self-regulating algorism based on Kalman Filter are proposed towards Web Server. And a Web QoS self-regulating scheme is advanced. To attain the goal of on-line system identification, the optimized estimation of QoS parameters is fulfilled by utilizing Kalman Filter in full domain. The simulation results shows that the proposed scheme can guarantee the QoS with both robustness and stability .

Uplink Cross-Layer Scheduling with Differential QoS Requirements in OFDMA Systems

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Chen Wei

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Fair and efficient scheduling is a key issue in cross-layer design for wireless communication systems, such as 3GPP LTE and WiMAX. However, few works have considered the multiaccess of the traffic with differential QoS requirements in wireless systems. In this paper, we will consider an OFDMA-based wireless system with four types of traffic associated with differential QoS requirements, namely, minimum reserved rate, maximum sustainable rate, maximum latency, and tolerant jitter. Given these QoS requirements, the traffic scheduling will be formulated into a cross-layer optimization problem, which is convex fortunately. By separating the power allocation through the waterfilling algorithm in each user, this problem will further reduce to a kind of continuous quadratic knapsack problem in the base station which yields low complexity. It is then demonstrated that the proposed cross-layer method cannot only guarantee the application layer QoS requirements, but also minimizes the integrated residual workload in the MAC layer. To further enhance the ability of QoS assurance in heavily loaded scenario, a call admission control scheme will also be proposed. The simulation results show that the QoS requirements for the four types of traffic are guaranteed effectively by the proposed algorithms.

CCSDS Advanced Orbiting Systems Virtual Channel Access Service for QoS MACHETE Model

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Jennings, Esther H.; Segui, John S.

2011-01-01

To support various communications requirements imposed by different missions, interplanetary communication protocols need to be designed, validated, and evaluated carefully. Multimission Advanced Communications Hybrid Environment for Test and Evaluation (MACHETE), described in "Simulator of Space Communication Networks" (NPO-41373), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 29, No. 8 (August 2005), p. 44, combines various tools for simulation and performance analysis of space networks. The MACHETE environment supports orbital analysis, link budget analysis, communications network simulations, and hardware-in-the-loop testing. By building abstract behavioral models of network protocols, one can validate performance after identifying the appropriate metrics of interest. The innovators have extended the MACHETE model library to include a generic link-layer Virtual Channel (VC) model supporting quality-of-service (QoS) controls based on IP streams. The main purpose of this generic Virtual Channel model addition was to interface fine-grain flow-based QoS (quality of service) between the network and MAC layers of the QualNet simulator, a commercial component of MACHETE. This software model adds the capability of mapping IP streams, based on header fields, to virtual channel numbers, allowing extended QoS handling at link layer. This feature further refines the QoS v existing at the network layer. QoS at the network layer (e.g. diffserv) supports few QoS classes, so data from one class will be aggregated together; differentiating between flows internal to a class/priority is not supported. By adding QoS classification capability between network and MAC layers through VC, one maps multiple VCs onto the same physical link. Users then specify different VC weights, and different queuing and scheduling policies at the link layer. This VC model supports system performance analysis of various virtual channel link-layer QoS queuing schemes independent of the network-layer QoS systems.

UPnP QoS and queuing in home networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Wessing, Henrik; Dittmann, Lars

2010-01-01

The QoS provisioning in home networks is being more often considered for future use cases, where mulitple high bandwidth flows are accomodated in the home environment. This paper investigates chosen characteristics of one of the home network control and management protocol suites, namely UPn......P. Using network modeling tools, we evaluate UPnP QoS architecture and its resource management influence on the end-to-end packet delay characteristics for different scheduling approaches....

Design of a QoS-controlled ATM-based communications system in chorus

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Coulson, Geoff; Campbell, Andrew; Robin, Philippe; Blair, Gordon; Papathomas, Michael; Shepherd, Doug

1995-05-01

We describe the design of an application platform able to run distributed real-time and multimedia applications alongside conventional UNIX programs. The platform is embedded in a microkernel/PC environment and supported by an ATM-based, QoS-driven communications stack. In particular, we focus on resource-management aspects of the design and deal with CPU scheduling, network resource-management and memory-management issues. An architecture is presented that guarantees QoS levels of both communications and processing with varying degrees of commitment as specified by user-level QoS parameters. The architecture uses admission tests to determine whether or not new activities can be accepted and includes modules to translate user-level QoS parameters into representations usable by the scheduling, network, and memory-management subsystems.

The Iron-Sulfur Cluster of Electron Transfer Flavoprotein-ubiquinone Oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is the Electron Acceptor for Electron Transfer Flavoprotein†

Science.gov (United States)

Swanson, Michael A.; Usselman, Robert J.; Frerman, Frank E.; Eaton, Gareth R.; Eaton, Sandra S.

2011-01-01

Electron-transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) accepts electrons from electron-transfer flavoprotein (ETF) and reduces ubiquinone from the ubiquinone-pool. It contains one [4Fe-4S]2+,1+ and one FAD, which are diamagnetic in the isolated oxidized enzyme and can be reduced to paramagnetic forms by enzymatic donors or dithionite. In the porcine protein, threonine 367 is hydrogen bonded to N1 and O2 of the flavin ring of the FAD. The analogous site in Rhodobacter sphaeroides ETF-QO is asparagine 338. Mutations N338T and N338A were introduced into the R. sphaeroides protein by site-directed mutagenesis to determine the impact of hydrogen bonding at this site on redox potentials and activity. The mutations did not alter the optical spectra, EPR g-values, spin-lattice relaxation rates, or the [4Fe-4S]2+,1+ to FAD point-dipole interspin distances. The mutations had no impact on the reduction potential for the iron-sulfur cluster, which was monitored by changes in the continuous wave EPR signals of the [4Fe-4S]+ at 15 K. For the FAD semiquinone, significantly different potentials were obtained by monitoring the titration at 100 or 293 K. Based on spectra at 293 K the N338T mutation shifted the first and second midpoint potentials for the FAD from +47 mV and −30 mV for wild type to −11 mV and −19 mV, respectively. The N338A mutation decreased the potentials to −37 mV and −49 mV. Lowering the midpoint potentials resulted in a decrease in the quinone reductase activity and negligible impact on disproportionation of ETF1e− catalyzed by ETF-QO. These observations indicate that the FAD is involved in electron transfer to ubiquinone, but not in electron transfer from ETF to ETF-QO. Therefore the iron-sulfur cluster is the immediate acceptor from ETF. PMID:18672901

A QoS Framework with Traffic Request in Wireless Mesh Network

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Bo; Huang, Hejiao

In this paper, we consider major issues in ensuring greater Quality-of-Service (QoS) in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), specifically with regard to reliability and delay. To this end, we use traffic request to record QoS requirements of data flows. In order to achieve required QoS for all data flows efficiently and with high portability, we develop Network State Update Algorithm. All assumptions, definitions, and algorithms are made exclusively with WMNs in mind, guaranteeing the portability of our framework to various environments in WMNs. The simulation results in proof that our framework is correct.

Validating the HeartQoL questionnaire in patients with atrial fibrillation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristensen, Marie S; Zwisler, Ann-Dorthe; Berg, Selina K

2016-01-01

questionnaire, the HeartQoL, offers a single measurement instrument which may allow outcome comparisons across cardiac diseases. The aim of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of HeartQoL in an AF population treated with ablation by assessing its factor structure, construct validity, internal...... consistency, and test-retest reliability. DESIGN AND METHODS: Data were collected in two phases: (a) a cross-sectional study including 462 patients with AF/atrial flutter who completed the HeartQoL and the Short-Form 36 (SF-36), allowing for the evaluation of internal consistency, factor structure...

BP Network Control for Resource Allocation and QoS Ensurance in UAV Cloud

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Ang Gao

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV cloud can greatly enhance the intelligence of unmanned systems by dynamically unloading the compute-intensive applications to cloud. For the uncertain nature of UAV missions and fast-changing environment, different UAV applications may have different quality of service (QoS requirements. This paper proposes a mixed QoS ensurance and energy-balanced (MQEB architecture for UAV cloud from a view of control theory, which can support both hard and soft QoS ensurance with the consideration of energy saving. The hard and soft QoS requirements are decoupled by being normalized into a two-level cascaded feedback loop. The former is time slot loop (TS-Loop to enforce the absolute QoS ensurance for real-time applications, and the latter is contention window loop (CW-Loop to enforce the plastic QoS ensurance for non-real-time applications. Finally, the back propagating (BP neuron network is used for parameters’ self-tuning and controller design. The hardware experiments demonstrate the feasibility of MQEB. In heavy load, MQEB has greater throughput and better energy efficiency, and in light load, MQBE has lower total power consumption.

An Application-Level QoS Control Method Based on Local Bandwidth Scheduling

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Yong Wang

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Quality of service (QoS is an important performance indicator for Web applications and bandwidth is a key factor affecting QoS. Current methods use network protocols or ports to schedule bandwidth, which require tedious manual configurations or modifications of the underlying network. Some applications use dynamic ports and the traditional port-based bandwidth control methods cannot deal with them. A new QoS control method based on local bandwidth scheduling is proposed, which can schedule bandwidth at application level in a user-transparent way and it does not require tedious manual configurations. Experimental results indicate that the new method can effectively improve the QoS for applications, and it can be easily integrated into current Web applications without the need to modify the underlying network.

Providing QoS through machine-learning-driven adaptive multimedia applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Ruiz, Pedro M; Botía, Juan A; Gómez-Skarmeta, Antonio

2004-06-01

We investigate the optimization of the quality of service (QoS) offered by real-time multimedia adaptive applications through machine learning algorithms. These applications are able to adapt in real time their internal settings (i.e., video sizes, audio and video codecs, among others) to the unpredictably changing capacity of the network. Traditional adaptive applications just select a set of settings to consume less than the available bandwidth. We propose a novel approach in which the selected set of settings is the one which offers a better user-perceived QoS among all those combinations which satisfy the bandwidth restrictions. We use a genetic algorithm to decide when to trigger the adaptation process depending on the network conditions (i.e., loss-rate, jitter, etc.). Additionally, the selection of the new set of settings is done according to a set of rules which model the user-perceived QoS. These rules are learned using the SLIPPER rule induction algorithm over a set of examples extracted from scores provided by real users. We will demonstrate that the proposed approach guarantees a good user-perceived QoS even when the network conditions are constantly changing.

QoS-Aware Error Recovery in Wireless Body Sensor Networks Using Adaptive Network Coding

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Mohammad Abdur Razzaque

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs for healthcare and medical applications are real-time and life-critical infrastructures, which require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS, in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Considering the criticality of healthcare and medical applications, WBSNs need to fulfill users/applications and the corresponding network’s QoS requirements. For instance, for a real-time application to support on-time data delivery, a WBSN needs to guarantee a constrained delay at the network level. A network coding-based error recovery mechanism is an emerging mechanism that can be used in these systems to support QoS at very low energy, memory and hardware cost. However, in dynamic network environments and user requirements, the original non-adaptive version of network coding fails to support some of the network and user QoS requirements. This work explores the QoS requirements of WBSNs in both perspectives of QoS. Based on these requirements, this paper proposes an adaptive network coding-based, QoS-aware error recovery mechanism for WBSNs. It utilizes network-level and user-/application-level information to make it adaptive in both contexts. Thus, it provides improved QoS support adaptively in terms of reliability, energy efficiency and delay. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed mechanism in terms of adaptability, reliability, real-time data delivery and network lifetime compared to its counterparts.

QoS-Aware Error Recovery in Wireless Body Sensor Networks Using Adaptive Network Coding

Science.gov (United States)

Razzaque, Mohammad Abdur; Javadi, Saeideh S.; Coulibaly, Yahaya; Hira, Muta Tah

2015-01-01

Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) for healthcare and medical applications are real-time and life-critical infrastructures, which require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS), in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Considering the criticality of healthcare and medical applications, WBSNs need to fulfill users/applications and the corresponding network's QoS requirements. For instance, for a real-time application to support on-time data delivery, a WBSN needs to guarantee a constrained delay at the network level. A network coding-based error recovery mechanism is an emerging mechanism that can be used in these systems to support QoS at very low energy, memory and hardware cost. However, in dynamic network environments and user requirements, the original non-adaptive version of network coding fails to support some of the network and user QoS requirements. This work explores the QoS requirements of WBSNs in both perspectives of QoS. Based on these requirements, this paper proposes an adaptive network coding-based, QoS-aware error recovery mechanism for WBSNs. It utilizes network-level and user-/application-level information to make it adaptive in both contexts. Thus, it provides improved QoS support adaptively in terms of reliability, energy efficiency and delay. Simulation results show the potential of the proposed mechanism in terms of adaptability, reliability, real-time data delivery and network lifetime compared to its counterparts. PMID:25551485

QoE-Driven D2D Media Services Distribution Scheme in Cellular Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mingkai Chen

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Device-to-device (D2D communication has been widely studied to improve network performance and considered as a potential technological component for the next generation communication. Considering the diverse users’ demand, Quality of Experience (QoE is recognized as a new degree of user’s satisfaction for media service transmissions in the wireless communication. Furthermore, we aim at promoting user’s Mean of Score (MOS value to quantify and analyze user’s QoE in the dynamic cellular networks. In this paper, we explore the heterogeneous media service distribution in D2D communications underlaying cellular networks to improve the total users’ QoE. We propose a novel media service scheme based on different QoE models that jointly solve the massive media content dissemination issue for cellular networks. Moreover, we also investigate the so-called Media Service Adaptive Update Scheme (MSAUS framework to maximize users’ QoE satisfaction and we derive the popularity and priority function of different media service QoE expression. Then, we further design Media Service Resource Allocation (MSRA algorithm to schedule limited cellular networks resource, which is based on the popularity function to optimize the total users’ QoE satisfaction and avoid D2D interference. In addition, numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme is more effective in cellular network content delivery, which makes it suitable for various media service propagation.

Neuro-QoL health-related quality of life measurement system: Validation in Parkinson's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Nowinski, Cindy J; Siderowf, Andrew; Simuni, Tanya; Wortman, Catherine; Moy, Claudia; Cella, David

2016-05-01

Neuro-QoL is a multidimensional patient-reported outcome measurement system assessing aspects of physical, mental, and social health identified by neurology patients and caregivers as important. One of the first neurology-specific patient-reported outcome measure systems created using modern test development methods, Neuro-Qol enables brief, yet precise, assessment and the ability to conduct both PD-specific and cross-disease comparisons. We present results of Neuro-QoL clinical validation using a sample of PD patients. A total of 120 PD patients recruited from academic medical centers were assessed at baseline, 1 week, and 6 months. Assessments included Neuro-QoL and general and PD-specific validity measures. Participants were 62% male and 95% white (average age = 66); H & Y stages were 1 (16%), 2 (61%), 3 (18%), and 4 (5%). Internal consistency and test-retest reliability of Neuro-QoL ranged from Cronbach's alphas = 0.81 to 0.94 with intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.66 to 0.80. Pearson's correlations between Neuro-QoL and legacy measures were generally moderate and in expected directions. UPDRS Part 2 was moderately correlated with Neuro-QoL Upper Extremity and Mobility, respectively (r's = -0.44; -0.59). Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 and Neuro-QoL measures of similar constructs showed strong-to-moderate correlations (r's = 0.70-0.44). Neuro-QoL measures of fatigue, mobility, positive emotion, and emotional/behavioral control showed responsiveness to self-reported change. Neuro-QoL is valid for use in PD clinical research. Reliability for all but two measures is sufficient for group comparisons, with some evidence supporting responsiveness to change. Neuro-QoL possesses characteristics, such as brevity, flexibility in administration, and suitability, for cross-disease comparisons that may be advantageous to users in a variety of settings. © 2016 Movement Disorder Society. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder

Real-Time QoS Routing Protocols in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks: Study and Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Alanazi, Adwan; Elleithy, Khaled

2015-09-02

Many routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. These routing protocols are almost always based on energy efficiency. However, recent advances in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) cameras and small microphones have led to the development of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN) as a class of wireless sensor networks which pose additional challenges. The transmission of imaging and video data needs routing protocols with both energy efficiency and Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics in order to guarantee the efficient use of the sensor nodes and effective access to the collected data. Also, with integration of real time applications in Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), the use of QoS routing protocols is not only becoming a significant topic, but is also gaining the attention of researchers. In designing an efficient QoS routing protocol, the reliability and guarantee of end-to-end delay are critical events while conserving energy. Thus, considerable research has been focused on designing energy efficient and robust QoS routing protocols. In this paper, we present a state of the art research work based on real-time QoS routing protocols for WMSNs that have already been proposed. This paper categorizes the real-time QoS routing protocols into probabilistic and deterministic protocols. In addition, both categories are classified into soft and hard real time protocols by highlighting the QoS issues including the limitations and features of each protocol. Furthermore, we have compared the performance of mobility-aware query based real-time QoS routing protocols from each category using Network Simulator-2 (NS2). This paper also focuses on the design challenges and future research directions as well as highlights the characteristics of each QoS routing protocol.

Integration of QoS provisioning in home and access networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Popov, Mikhail; Gavler, A.; Sköldström, P.

2010-01-01

Approaches for QoS provisioning using UPnP for home networks and GMPLS for access networks are described. A solution for interworking the UPnP and the GMPLS at the residential gateway is proposed.......Approaches for QoS provisioning using UPnP for home networks and GMPLS for access networks are described. A solution for interworking the UPnP and the GMPLS at the residential gateway is proposed....

SLA-aware differentiated QoS in elastic optical networks

Science.gov (United States)

Agrawal, Anuj; Vyas, Upama; Bhatia, Vimal; Prakash, Shashi

2017-07-01

The quality of service (QoS) offered by optical networks can be improved by accurate provisioning of service level specifications (SLSs) included in the service level agreement (SLA). A large number of users coexisting in the network require different services. Thus, a pragmatic network needs to offer a differentiated QoS to a variety of users according to the SLA contracted for different services at varying costs. In conventional wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical networks, service differentiation is feasible only for a limited number of users because of its fixed-grid structure. Newly introduced flex-grid based elastic optical networks (EONs) are more adaptive to traffic requirements as compared to the WDM networks because of the flexibility in their grid structure. Thus, we propose an efficient SLA provisioning algorithm with improved QoS for these flex-grid EONs empowered by optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O-OFDM). The proposed algorithm, called SLA-aware differentiated QoS (SADQ), employs differentiation at the level of routing, spectrum allocation, and connection survivability. The proposed SADQ aims to accurately provision the SLA using such multilevel differentiation with an objective to improve the spectrum utilization from the network operator's perspective. SADQ is evaluated for three different CoSs under various traffic demand patterns and for different ratios of the number of requests belonging to the three considered CoSs. We propose two new SLA metrics for the improvement of functional QoS requirements, namely, security, confidentiality and survivability of high class of service (CoS) traffic. Since, to the best of our knowledge, the proposed SADQ is the first scheme in optical networks to employ exhaustive differentiation at the levels of routing, spectrum allocation, and survivability in a single algorithm, we first compare the performance of SADQ in EON and currently deployed WDM networks to assess the

The Hand-Foot Skin Reaction and Quality of Life Questionnaire: An Assessment Tool for Oncology

Science.gov (United States)

Keating, Karen N.; Doll, Helen A.; Camacho, Fabian

2015-01-01

Background. Skin toxicity (hand-foot syndrome/hand-foot skin reaction, HFS/R) related to antineoplastic therapy is a significant issue in oncology practice, with potentially large impacts on health-related quality of life (HRQL). Materials and Methods. A patient-reported questionnaire, the hand-foot skin reaction and quality of life (HF-QoL) questionnaire was developed to measure the HFS/R symptoms associated with cancer therapeutic agents and their effect on daily activities. The validity and reliability of the HF-QoL questionnaire was tested in a randomized trial of capecitabine with sorafenib/placebo in 223 patients with locally advanced/metastatic breast cancer. Other measures completed included patient ratings of condition severity, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast cancer (FACT-B), and the clinician-rated National Cancer Institute-Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (NCI-CTCAE), version 3.0, hand-foot skin reaction grade. The psychometric properties of the HF-QoL tested included structural validity, internal consistency, construct validity, discriminant validity, and responsiveness. Finally, the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) was estimated. Results. The HF-QoL instrument comprises a 20-item symptom scale and an 18-item daily activity scale. Each scale demonstrated excellent measurement properties and discriminated between NCI-CTCAE grade and patient-rated condition severity with large effect sizes. The daily activity scale had excellent internal consistency and correlated with the FACT-B and HF-QoL symptom scores. Both HF-QoL scale scores increased linearly with increasing patient-rated condition severity. The MCIDs were estimated as 5 units for daily activities and 8 units for symptoms mean scores. Conclusion. The HF-QoL was sensitive to symptoms and HRQL issues associated with HFS/R among participants treated with capecitabine with and without sorafenib. The HF-QoL appears suitable for assessing the HRQL

The Hand-Foot Skin Reaction and Quality of Life Questionnaire: An Assessment Tool for Oncology.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Roger T; Keating, Karen N; Doll, Helen A; Camacho, Fabian

2015-07-01

Skin toxicity (hand-foot syndrome/hand-foot skin reaction, HFS/R) related to antineoplastic therapy is a significant issue in oncology practice, with potentially large impacts on health-related quality of life (HRQL). A patient-reported questionnaire, the hand-foot skin reaction and quality of life (HF-QoL) questionnaire was developed to measure the HFS/R symptoms associated with cancer therapeutic agents and their effect on daily activities. The validity and reliability of the HF-QoL questionnaire was tested in a randomized trial of capecitabine with sorafenib/placebo in 223 patients with locally advanced/metastatic breast cancer. Other measures completed included patient ratings of condition severity, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast cancer (FACT-B), and the clinician-rated National Cancer Institute-Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (NCI-CTCAE), version 3.0, hand-foot skin reaction grade. The psychometric properties of the HF-QoL tested included structural validity, internal consistency, construct validity, discriminant validity, and responsiveness. Finally, the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) was estimated. The HF-QoL instrument comprises a 20-item symptom scale and an 18-item daily activity scale. Each scale demonstrated excellent measurement properties and discriminated between NCI-CTCAE grade and patient-rated condition severity with large effect sizes. The daily activity scale had excellent internal consistency and correlated with the FACT-B and HF-QoL symptom scores. Both HF-QoL scale scores increased linearly with increasing patient-rated condition severity. The MCIDs were estimated as 5 units for daily activities and 8 units for symptoms mean scores. The HF-QoL was sensitive to symptoms and HRQL issues associated with HFS/R among participants treated with capecitabine with and without sorafenib. The HF-QoL appears suitable for assessing the HRQL impairment associated with HFS/R to cancer therapies. Skin

Modelling the guaranteed QoS for wireless sensor networks: a network calculus approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu Jianping

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Wireless sensor networks (WSNs became one of the high technology domains during the last 10 years. Real-time applications for them make it necessary to provide the guaranteed quality of service (QoS. The main contributions of this article are a system skeleton and a guaranteed QoS model that are suitable for the WSNs. To do it, we develop a sensor node model based on virtual buffer sharing and present a two-layer scheduling model using the network calculus. With the system skeleton, we develop a guaranteed QoS model, such as the upper bounds on buffer queue length/delay/effective bandwidth, and single-hop/multi-hops delay/jitter/effective bandwidth. Numerical results show the system skeleton and the guaranteed QoS model are scalable for different types of flows, including the self-similar traffic flows, and the parameters of flow regulators and service curves of sensor nodes affect them. Our proposal leads to buffer dimensioning, guaranteed QoS support and control in the WSNs.

Longitudinal AddiQoL scores may identify higher risk for adrenal crises in Addison's disease.

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Meyer, Gesine; Koch, Maike; Herrmann, Eva; Bojunga, Jörg; Badenhoop, Klaus

2018-05-01

Several studies have shown a reduced quality of life (QoL) in patients with Addison's disease (AD), but investigations of QoL over a long-term course are lacking. Adrenal crises (AC) are life-threatening complications in AD. The purpose of this prospective study was to test whether the repeated use of QoL-questionnaires can detect prodromal periods of an AC. 110 patients with AD were asked to complete the disease specific-QoL questionnaire AddiQoL and a short questionnaire about adverse events once monthly over a period of ten months. AC was defined if at least two of the following symptoms were reported: (a) hypotension, (b) nausea or vomiting, (c) severe fatigue, (d) documented hyponatremia, hyperkalemia, or hypoglycemia, and subsequent parenteral glucocorticoid administration was carried out. Prevalence of AC was 10.9/100 patient years. AddiQoL scores in patients with AC showed a trend (p = 0,08) to a wider fluctuation over time. Subjective precrises not meeting the criteria for AC were reported by 31 patients who had significantly lower AddiQoL scores (p = 0,018). These are the first data showing the course of QoL during a period of ten months in patients with AD. Incidence of AC exceeds previous data. Our data show, that subjective precrises in AD associate with lower QoL. AC, as well as precrises affect intraindividual AddiQol-scores over time with a trend to a stronger fluctuation. Longitudinal AddiQol scores and self-reporting of precrises via patient diaries are additional clinical tools to identify higher risk for critical events.

Validation of the Neuro-QoL measurement system in children with epilepsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Lai, Jin-Shei; Nowinski, Cindy J; Zelko, Frank; Wortman, Katy; Burns, James; Nordli, Douglas R; Cella, David

2015-05-01

Children with epilepsy often face complex psychosocial consequences that are not fully captured by existing patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures. The Neurology Quality of Life Measurement System "Neuro-QoL" was developed to provide a set of common PRO measures that address issues important to people with neurologic disorders. This paper reports Neuro-QoL (anxiety, depression, interaction with peers, fatigue, pain, cognitive function, stigma, and upper and lower extremity functions) validation in children with epilepsy. Patients (aged 10-18years) diagnosed with epilepsy completed Neuro-QoL and legacy measures at time 1 (initial study visit) and 6-month follow-up. Internal consistency reliability was also evaluated. Concurrent validity was assessed by comparing Neuro-QoL measures with more established "legacy" measures of the same concepts. Clinical validity was evaluated by comparing mean Neuro-QoL scores of patients grouped by clinical anchors such as disease severity. Responsiveness of the Neuro-QoL from time 1 (initial study visit) to 6months was evaluated using self-reported change as the primary anchor. Sixty-one patients (mean age=13.4years; 62.3% male, 75.9% white) participated. Most patients (64.2%) had been seizure-free in the 3months prior to participation, and seizure frequency was otherwise described as follows: 17.8% daily, 13.3% weekly, 35.6% monthly, and 33.3% yearly. All patients were taking antiepileptic drugs. Patients reported better function/less symptoms compared to the reference groups. Internal consistency (alpha) coefficients ranged from 0.76 to 0.87. Patients with different seizure frequencies differed on anxiety (pNeuro-QoL measures were significantly correlated with other measures assessing similar domains. Stigma was related to self-reported change in several areas of functioning but in sometimes unexpected directions. The Neurology Quality of Life Measurement System is a valid and reliable assessment tool for children with epilepsy

ALPHA: Proposal of Mapping QoS Parameters between UPnP Home Network and GMPLS Access

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brewka, Lukasz Jerzy; Sköldström, Pontus; Gavler, Anders

2011-01-01

This paper is treating the interdomain QoS signaling between the home and access domains with a focus on applying it for providing QoS between a UPnP-QoS based home network and GMPLS based access network. The work presented here is defining a possible approach for an interface between UPn...

Assessing Measurements of QoS for global Cloud Computing Services

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Jens Myrup; Riaz, M. Tahir; Júnior, Joaquim Celestino

2011-01-01

Many global distributed cloud computing applications and services running over the Internet, between globally dispersed clients and servers, will require certain levels of Quality of Service (QoS) in order to deliver and give a sufficiently smooth user experience. This would be essential for real......-time streaming multimedia applications like online gaming and watching movies on a pay as you use basis hosted in a cloud computing environment. However, guaranteeing or even predicting QoS in global and diverse networks supporting complex hosting of application services is a very challenging issue that needs...... a stepwise refinement approach to be solved as the technology of cloud computing matures. In this paper, we investigate if latency in terms of simple Ping measurements can be used as an indicator for other QoS parameters such as jitter and throughput. The experiments were carried out on a global scale...

Towards a QoE-Driven Resource Control in LTE and LTE-A Networks

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Gerardo Gómez

2013-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a novel architecture for providing quality of experience (QoE awareness to mobile operator networks. In particular, we describe a possible architecture for QoE-driven resource control for long-term evolution (LTE and LTE-advanced networks, including a selection of KPIs to be monitored in different network elements. We also provide a description and numerical results of the QoE evaluation process for different data services as well as potential use cases that would benefit from the rollout of the proposed framework.

Directing reaction pathways by catalyst active-site selection using self-assembled monolayers.

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Pang, Simon H; Schoenbaum, Carolyn A; Schwartz, Daniel K; Medlin, J Will

2013-01-01

One key route for controlling reaction selectivity in heterogeneous catalysis is to prepare catalysts that exhibit only specific types of sites required for desired product formation. Here we show that alkanethiolate self-assembled monolayers with varying surface densities can be used to tune selectivity to desired hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation products during the reaction of furfural on supported palladium catalysts. Vibrational spectroscopic studies demonstrate that the selectivity improvement is achieved by controlling the availability of specific sites for the hydrogenation of furfural on supported palladium catalysts through the selection of an appropriate alkanethiolate. Increasing self-assembled monolayer density by controlling the steric bulk of the organic tail ligand restricts adsorption on terrace sites and dramatically increases selectivity to desired products furfuryl alcohol and methylfuran. This technique of active-site selection simultaneously serves both to enhance selectivity and provide insight into the reaction mechanism.

Fitness, Competitive Ability, and Mutation Stability of Isolates of Colletotrichum acutatum from Strawberry Resistant to QoI Fungicides.

Science.gov (United States)

Forcelini, Bruna B; Rebello, Carolina S; Wang, Nan-Yi; Peres, Natalia A

2018-04-01

Quinone-outside inhibitor (QoI) fungicides are used to manage anthracnose of strawberry, caused by Colletotrichum acutatum. However, selection for resistance to QoI fungicides was first reported in 2013 in Florida and, subsequently, in strawberry nurseries and production areas across the United States and Canada. C. acutatum resistance to QoIs is associated with the G143A point mutation in the cytochrome b gene. This mutation is known to be associated with field resistance even at high rates of QoI. In this study, we investigated the relative fitness and competitive ability of QoI-resistant and -sensitive C. acutatum isolates. A fitness comparison did not indicate any difference between resistant and sensitive isolates in aggressiveness, spore production, and mycelial growth at different temperatures. Additionally, in the absence of selection pressure, resistant and sensitive isolates were equally competitive. Cultivation of QoI-resistant and QoI-sensitive isolates for four culture cycles in vitro in the absence of azoxystrobin showed that QoI resistance was stable. The observed lack of fitness penalties and stability of the G143A mutation in QoI-resistant C. acutatum populations suggest that the interruption and further reintroduction of QoI fungicides might not be an option for strawberry nurseries and fruit production areas. Further investigation of alternative chemical and nonchemical C. acutatum control practices, in addition to the integration of multisite fungicides, is needed to reduce the occurrence and distribution of QoI-resistant populations in strawberry fields.

Unravelling Site-Specific Photo-Reactions of Ethanol on Rutile TiO2(110)

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Jonas Ø.; Bebensee, Regine; Martinez, Umberto; Porsgaard, Soeren; Lira, Estephania; Wei, Yinying; Lammich, Lutz; Li, Zheshen; Idriss, Hicham; Besenbacher, Flemming; Hammer, Bjørk; Wendt, Stefan

2016-01-01

Finding the active sites of catalysts and photo-catalysts is crucial for an improved fundamental understanding and the development of efficient catalytic systems. Here we have studied the photo-activated dehydrogenation of ethanol on reduced and oxidized rutile TiO2(110) in ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Utilizing scanning tunnelling microscopy, various spectroscopic techniques and theoretical calculations we found that the photo-reaction proceeds most efficiently when the reactants are adsorbed on regular Ti surface sites, whereas species that are strongly adsorbed at surface defects such as O vacancies and step edges show little reaction under reducing conditions. We propose that regular Ti surface sites are the most active sites in photo-reactions on TiO2. PMID:26915303

Impacto de Parámetros de QoS en Aspectos de QoE: Análisis desde el Punto de Vista de la Sincronización Multimedia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M.A. Montagud Climent (Mario); F. Boronat (Fernando); M. Martinez; J. Belda (Jordi); P.S. Cesar Garcia (Pablo Santiago)

2015-01-01

htmlabstractLa sincronización multimedia ha sido un área de investigación clave desde los inicios de los sistemas multimedia. En este artículo se ofrecen una visión general y un análisis sobre el impacto de varios parámetros de QoS en diferentes aspectos de la QoE, desde el punto de vista de la

Chemical tailoring of teicoplanin with site-selective reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Pathak, Tejas P; Miller, Scott J

2013-06-05

Semisynthesis of natural product derivatives combines the power of fermentation with orthogonal chemical reactions. Yet, chemical modification of complex structures represents an unmet challenge, as poor selectivity often undermines efficiency. The complex antibiotic teicoplanin eradicates bacterial infections. However, as resistance emerges, the demand for improved analogues grows. We have discovered chemical reactions that achieve site-selective alteration of teicoplanin. Utilizing peptide-based additives that alter reaction selectivities, certain bromo-teicoplanins are accessible. These new compounds are also scaffolds for selective cross-coupling reactions, enabling further molecular diversification. These studies enable two-step access to glycopeptide analogues not available through either biosynthesis or rapid total chemical synthesis alone. The new compounds exhibit a spectrum of activities, revealing that selective chemical alteration of teicoplanin may lead to analogues with attenuated or enhanced antibacterial properties, in particular against vancomycin- and teicoplanin-resistant strains.

Priority Queues with Fractional Service for Tiered Delay QoS

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Gary Chang

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Packet scheduling is key to quality of service (QoS capabilities of broadband wired and wireless networks. In a heterogeneous traffic environment, a comprehensive QoS packet scheduler must strike a balance between flow fairness and access delay. Many advanced packet scheduling solutions have targeted fair bandwidth allocation while protecting delay-constrained traffic by adding priority queue(s on top of a fair bandwidth scheduler. Priority queues are known to cause performance uncertainties and, thus, various modifications have been proposed. In this paper, we present a packet queueing engine dubbed Fractional Service Buffer (FSB, which, when coupled with a configurable flow scheduler, can achieve desired QoS objectives, such as fair throughputs and differentiated delay guarantees. Key performance metrics, such as delay limit and probability of delay limit violation, are derived as a function of key FSB parameters for each delay class in the packet queueing engine using diffusion approximations. OPNET simulations verify these analytical results.

The LupusQoL and associations with demographics and clinical measurements in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Science.gov (United States)

McElhone, Kathleen; Castelino, Madhura; Abbott, Janice; Bruce, Ian N; Ahmad, Yasmeen; Shelmerdine, Joanna; Peers, Kate; Isenberg, David; Ferenkeh-Koroma, Ada; Griffiths, Bridget; Akil, Mohammed; Maddison, Peter; Gordon, Caroline; Teh, Lee-Suan

2010-11-01

Having developed and validated a disease-specific health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measure for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the LupusQoL, we determined its relationship to demographic and clinical measurements in a group of patients with SLE. A group of 322 outpatients completed the LupusQoL. Demographic (age, sex, marital status, ethnicity) and clinical variables (disease duration, disease activity, damage) were recorded. Associations between the 8 LupusQoL domains and age, disease duration, disease activity, and damage were explored using Spearman's correlation coefficients. Differences in LupusQoL scores were examined for sex and marital status using the Mann-Whitney U test. Ethnic groups were compared using ANOVA. All domains of LupusQoL were impaired, with fatigue (56.3) being the worst affected and body image (80.0) the least. The correlations between the LupusQoL domain scores and age (r = -0.01 to -0.22) and disease duration (r = 0 to 0.16) were absent or weak. Similarly, there were no significant differences in the LupusQoL scores regarding sex, marital status, or the 3 main ethnic groups (Black-Caribbean, Asian, White). Although there were statistically significant correlations between the scores of the LupusQoL domains and some scores of the British Isles Lupus Assessment Group index (r = -0.22 to 0.09) and the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics/American College of Rheumatology Damage Index (r = -0.29 to 0.21), these were weak. HRQOL was impaired in this cohort of outpatients with SLE as assessed by the validated lupus-specific LupusQoL. There were no clinically important associations between the 8 domains of the LupusQoL and clinical or demographic variables in this group of patients. Thus, the LupusQoL is a relatively independent outcome measure in patients with SLE.

Health-related quality of life and patient burden in patients with split-thickness skin graft donor site wounds.

Science.gov (United States)

Humrich, Marco; Goepel, Lisa; Gutknecht, Mandy; Lohrberg, David; Blessmann, Marco; Bruning, Guido; Diener, Holger; Dissemond, Joachim; Hartmann, Bernd; Augustin, Matthias

2018-04-01

Split-thickness skin grafting is a common procedure to treat different kinds of wounds. This systematic, multicentre, observational, cross-sectional study of adult patients with split-thickness skin graft (STSG) donor site wounds was conducted to evaluate quality of life (QoL) impairments caused by donor site wounds following split-thickness skin grafting. Therefore, 112 patients from 12 wound centres in Germany were examined based on patient and physician questionnaires as well as a physical examination of the donor site wound. Most indications for skin grafting were postsurgical treatment (n = 51; 42.5%) and chronic wounds (n = 47; 39.2%). European QoL visual analoque scale (EQ VAS) averaged 64.7 ± 23.3, European QoL 5 dimensions (EQ-5D) averaged 77.4 ± 30.0. Wound-QoL (range: 0-4) was rated 0.8 ± 0.8 post-surgery and 0.4 ± 0.6 at the time of survey (on average 21 weeks between the time points). Compared to averaged Wound-QoL scores of chronic wounds donor site-related QoL impairments in split-thickness skin-graft patients were less pronounced. There were significant differences in patient burden immediately after surgery compared to the time of the survey, with medium effect sizes. This supports the hypothesis that faster healing of the donor site wound leads to more favourable patient-reported outcomes. © 2017 Medicalhelplines.com Inc and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Energy saving approaches for video streaming on smartphone based on QoE modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ballesteros, Luis Guillermo Martinez; Ickin, Selim; Fiedler, Markus

2016-01-01

In this paper, we study the influence of video stalling on QoE. We provide QoE models that are obtained in realistic scenarios on the smartphone, and provide energy-saving approaches for smartphone by leveraging the proposed QoE models in relation to energy. Results show that approximately 5J...... is saved in a 3 minutes video clip with an acceptable Mean Opinion Score (MOS) level when the video frames are skipped. If the video frames are not skipped, then it is suggested to avoid freezes during a video stream as the freezes highly increase the energy waste on the smartphones....

Anticipation of Traffic Demands to Guarantee QoS in IP/Optical Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carolina Pinart

2010-09-01

Full Text Available Traffic in the Internet backbone is expected to grow above a few Tbit/s in 2020. To cope with this, operators are moving to IP/optical network architectures, where IP is the convergence layer for all services. On the other hand, the quality of service (QoS requirements of future applications encompasses the individualization of services and the assurance of stricter quality parameters such as latency, jitter or capacity. In other words, future optical networks will not only transport more IP data, but they will also have to offer differentiated QoS requirements to services. Finally, some emerging applications, e.g., grid computing, need greater flexibility in the usage of network resources, which involves establishing and releasing connections as if they were virtualized resources controlled by other elements or layers. In this context, traffic-driven lightpath provisioning and service-plane approaches arise as very interesting candidate solutions to solve the main challenges described above. This work reviews the concepts of service-oriented and self-managed networks and relates them to propose an integrated approach to assure QoS by offering flow-aware networking in the sense that traffic demands will be anticipated in a suitable way, lightpaths will be established taking into account QoS information (i.e., impairments and complex services will be decomposed into optical connections so that the above techniques can be employed to assure QoS for any service.

Assessing health-related quality of life in primary Sjögren's syndrome-The PSS-QoL.

Science.gov (United States)

Lackner, Angelika; Stradner, Martin H; Hermann, Josef; Unger, Julia; Stamm, Tanja; Graninger, Winfried B; Dejaco, Christian

2017-11-27

To develop a questionnaire for the assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQL) in primary Sjögren's syndrome (PSS), and to test its psychometric properties. Based on the concepts of a previous qualitative study, a questionnaire for the assessment of HRQL in PSS (PSS-QoL) was developed. Psychometric testing of PSS-QoL was performed after revising the first draft with feedback of patients (n = 6) and clinicians (n = 4). Convergent construct validity was assessed by correlating the score with the EULAR Sjögren's Syndrome Patient Reported Index (ESSPRI), EULAR Sjögren's Syndrome Disease Activity Index (ESSDAI) and Euro-QoL 5D (EQ-5D). Reliability was examined by asking patients to complete the questionnaire twice 1-2 weeks apart. An English Version of the PSS-QoL was developed by using standard methodology with forward and back translation. Out of the 75 PSS patients, 91% were female, mean (±SD) age was 58.5 ± 12.5 years. PSS-QoL consists of 25 questions and can be divided into two main categories: physical (discomfort and dryness) and psychosocial. The internal consistency of the PSS-QoL revealed a Crohnbach's α of 0.892. Strong and moderate correlations were found between the PSS-QoL and ESSPRI (corr coeff = 0.755) and EQ. 5D-pain/discomfort (corr coeff = 0.531). Reproducibility of the PSS-QoL was high, yielding an ICC of 0.958 (95% CI: 0.926-0.981). The PSS-QoL is the first specific tool for the assessment of patients' HRQL in PSS and showed good psychometric properties. It may serve as a novel patient-reported outcome measure in future clinical studies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

rTMS in fibromyalgia: a randomized trial evaluating QoL and its brain metabolic substrate.

Science.gov (United States)

Boyer, Laurent; Dousset, Alix; Roussel, Philippe; Dossetto, Nathalie; Cammilleri, Serge; Piano, Virginie; Khalfa, Stéphanie; Mundler, Olivier; Donnet, Anne; Guedj, Eric

2014-04-08

This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study investigated the impact of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on quality of life (QoL) of patients with fibromyalgia, and its possible brain metabolic substrate. Thirty-eight patients were randomly assigned to receive high-frequency rTMS (n = 19) or sham stimulation (n = 19), applied to left primary motor cortex in 14 sessions over 10 weeks. Primary clinical outcomes were QoL changes at the end of week 11, measured using the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ). Secondary clinical outcomes were mental and physical QoL component measured using the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), but also pain, mood, and anxiety. Resting-state [(18)F]-fluorodeoxyglucose-PET metabolism was assessed at baseline, week 2, and week 11. Whole-brain voxel-based analysis was performed to study between-group metabolic changes over time. At week 11, patients of the active rTMS group had greater QoL improvement in the FIQ (p = 0.032) and in the mental component of the SF-36 (p = 0.019) than the sham stimulation group. No significant impact was found for other clinical outcomes. Compared with the sham stimulation group, patients of the active rTMS group presented an increase in right medial temporal metabolism between baseline and week 11 (p FIQ and mental component SF-36 concomitant changes (r = -0.38, p = 0.043; r = 0.51, p = 0.009, respectively). QoL improvement involved mainly affective, emotional, and social dimensions. Our study shows that rTMS improves QoL of patients with fibromyalgia. This improvement is associated with a concomitant increase in right limbic metabolism, arguing for a neural substrate to the impact of rTMS on emotional dimensions involved in QoL. This study provides Class II evidence that rTMS compared with sham rTMS improves QoL in patients with fibromyalgia.

Middleware Support for Media Streaming Establishment Driven by User-oriented QoS Requirements

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hesselman, C.E.W.; Widya, I.A.; van Halteren, Aart; Nieuwenhuis, Lambertus Johannes Maria; Scholten, Johan; van Sinderen, Marten J.

2000-01-01

The requirements for the QoS of distributed applications are traditionally expressed in terms of network oriented or systems oriented parameters. In general, the users of these services are not interested or capable of specifying the QoS of their services in such technical terms. In this paper, we

Bio-Inspired Distributed Transmission Power Control Considering QoS Fairness in Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Chan-Jae; Jung, Ji-Young; Lee, Jung-Ryun

2017-10-14

Recently, the development of wireless body area sensor network (WBASN) has accelerated due to the rapid development of wireless technology. In the WBASN environment, many WBASNs coexist where communication ranges overlap with each other, resulting in the possibility of interference. Although nodes in a WBASN typically operate at a low power level, to avoid adversely affecting the human body, high transmission rates may be required to support some applications. In addition to this, since many varieties of applications exist in the WBASN environment, each prospective user may have different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Hence, the following issues should be considered in the WBASN environment: (1) interference between adjacent WBASNs, which influences the performance of a specific system, and (2) the degree of satisfaction on the QoS of each user, i.e., the required QoS such as user throughput should be considered to ensure that all users in the network are provided with a fair QoS satisfaction. Thus, in this paper, we propose a transmission power adjustment algorithm that addresses interference problems and guarantees QoS fairness between users. First, we use a new utility function to measure the degree of the satisfaction on the QoS for each user. Then, the transmission power of each sensor node is calculated using the Cucker-Smale model, and the QoS satisfaction of each user is synchronized dispersively. The results of simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs better than existing algorithms, with respect to QoS fairness and energy efficiency.

QoE Guarantee Scheme Based on Cooperative Cognitive Cloud and Opportunistic Weight Particle Swarm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Weihang Shi

2015-01-01

Full Text Available It is well known that the Internet application of cloud services may be affected by the inefficiency of cloud computing and inaccurate evaluation of quality of experience (QoE seriously. In our paper, based on construction algorithms of cooperative cognitive cloud platform and optimization algorithm of opportunities weight particle swarm clustering, the QoE guarantee mechanism was proposed. The mechanism, through the sending users of requests and the cognitive neighbor users’ cooperation, combined the cooperation of subcloud platforms and constructed the optimal cloud platform with the different service. At the same time, the particle swarm optimization algorithm could be enhanced dynamically according to all kinds of opportunity request weight, which could optimize the cooperative cognitive cloud platform. Finally, the QoE guarantee scheme was proposed with the opportunity weight particle swarm optimization algorithm and collaborative cognitive cloud platform. The experimental results show that the proposed mechanism compared is superior to the QoE guarantee scheme based on cooperative cloud and QoE guarantee scheme based on particle swarm optimization, compared with optimization fitness and high cloud computing service execution efficiency and high throughput performance advantages.

Design and Analysis of QoS Routing Framework integrated with OLSR protocol for Multimedia Traffic in Mobile Adhoc Networks

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S. Soni

2017-06-01

Full Text Available MANETs (Mobile Ad-hoc Networks is the self organizing wireless structure of mobile hosts. Wireless media is used for communication in MANETs. Considering the developing requirements for multimedia and real-time traffic applications in real world, QoS (Quality-of-Service support is essential in MANETs. But most of the characteristics of MANETs make QoS support a difficult problem. It is challenging to support QoS routing in MANET due to dynamic behavior and mobility of the hosts. The OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing protocol can be efficiently used in MANETs to provide QoS routing because of its dynamic MPR (Multi Point Relay selection criteria and proactive nature. In this paper, a design of QoS routing framework integrated with OLSR protocol is proposed and also analyzed using network simulator. Proposed QoS framework combines a bandwidth estimation algorithm with explicit resource reservation, QoS routing and connection admission control (CAC. OLSR protocol is extended for QoS framework to solve performance issues related to node mobility using cross layer approach. Results after simulation conclude about efficiency of the proposed QoS routing framework.

A Bio-Inspired QoS-Oriented Handover Model in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

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Daxin Tian

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a bio-inspired model for making handover decision in heterogeneous wireless networks. It is based on an extended attractor selection model, which is biologically inspired by the self-adaptability and robustness of cellular response to the changes in dynamic environments. The goal of the proposed model is to guarantee multiple terminals’ satisfaction by meeting the QoS requirements of those terminals’ applications, and this model also attempts to ensure the fairness of network resources allocation, in the meanwhile, to enable the QoS-oriented handover decision adaptive to dynamic wireless environments. Some numerical simulations are preformed to validate our proposed bio-inspired model in terms of adaptive attractor selection in different noisy environments. And the results of some other simulations prove that the proposed handover scheme can adapt terminals’ network selection to the varying wireless environment and benefits the QoS of multiple terminal applications simultaneously and automatically. Furthermore, the comparative analysis also shows that the bio-inspired model outperforms the utility function based handover decision scheme in terms of ensuring a better QoS satisfaction and a better fairness of network resources allocation in dynamic heterogeneous wireless networks.

Transmission Algorithm with QoS Considerations for a Sustainable MPEG Streaming Service

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sang-Hyong Kim

2017-03-01

Full Text Available With the proliferation of heterogeneous networks, there is a need to provide multimedia stream services in a sustainable manner. It is especially critical to maintain the Quality of Service (QoS standards. Existing multimedia streaming services have been studied to guarantee QoS on the receiving side. QoS has not been ensured due to the fact that the loss of streaming data to be transmitted has not been considered in network conditions. With an algorithm that considers the QoS and can reduce the overhead of the network, it will be possible to reduce the transmission error and wastage of communication network resources. In this paper, we propose a scheme that improves the reliability of multimedia transmissions by using an adaptive algorithm that switches between UDP (User Datagram Protocol and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol based on the size of the data. In addition, we present a method that retransmits essential portions of the multimedia data, thus improving transmission efficiency. We simulate an MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group stream service and evaluate the performance of the proposed adaptive MPEG stream service.

Similar Transition States Mediate the Q-cycle and Superoxide Production by the Cytochrome bc1 Complex

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Forquer, Isaac P.; Covian, Raul; Bowman, Michael K.; Trumpower, Bernard; Kramer, David M.

2006-01-01

The cytochrome bc complexes found in mitochondria, chloroplasts and many bacteria catalyze a critical reaction in their respective electron transport chains. The quinol oxidase (Qo) site in this complex oxidizes a hydroquinone (quinol), reducing two one-electron carriers, a low-potential cytochrome b heme and a ''Rieske'' iron-sulfur cluster. The overall electron transfer reactions are coupled to transmembrane translocation of protons via a ''Q-cycle'' mechanism, which generates proton motive force for ATP synthesis. Since semiquinone intermediates of quinol oxidation are generally highly reactive, one of the key questions in this field is: how does the Qo site oxidize quinol without the production of deleterious side reactions including superoxide production? We attempt to test three possible general models to account for this behavior: (1) The Qo site semiquinone (or quinol:imidazolate complex) is unstable and thus occurs at a very low steady-state concentration, limiting O2 reduction; (2) the Qo site semiquinone is highly stabilized making it unreactive towards oxygen; and (3) the Qo site catalyzes a quantum mechanically-coupled two-electron/two proton transfer without a semiquinone intermediate. Enthalpies of activation were found to be almost identical between the uninhibited Q-cycle and superoxide production in the presence of Antimycin A in wild type. This behavior was also preserved in a series of mutants with altered driving forces for quinol oxidation. Overall, the data supports models where the rate-limiting step for both Q-cycle and superoxide production are essentially identical, consistent with model 1 but requiring modifications to models 2 and 3

QoS INVESTIGATION ON MOODLE’S VIDEO CONFERENCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

LINAWATI LINAWATI

2011-06-01

Full Text Available Learning Management System (LMS supports e-learning as a distant learning. Moodle is one of open source LMS applications that allow embedding multimedia into learning activity in a course, such as video conference session. The paper investigates quality of service (QoS of video conference session embedded in Moodle, i.e. end-to-end delay, jitter, throughput, packet loss and PSNR. Three scenarios were implemented in the experiment. The scenarios were applied on both wire and wireless transmission, and p2p and p2m connections. The investigation results show that the QoS of video conference session meets the standards issued by ITU-T G.1010 and G.114, for minimum bandwidth of 128 kbps. Thus the application of video conferencing that is integrated in Moodle can run well with minimum bandwidth of 128 Kbps. 

The extended TRIP supporting VoIP routing reservation with distributed QoS

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Furong; Wu, Ye

2004-04-01

In this paper, an existing protocol, i.e. TRIP (Telephony Routing over IP) is developed to provide distributed QoS when making resource reservations for VoIP services such as H.323, SIP. Enhanced LSs (location servers) are deployed in ITADs (IP Telephony Administrative Domains) to take in charge of intra-domain routing policy because of small propagation price. It is an easy way to find an IP telephone route for intra-domain VoIP media association and simultaneously possess intra-domain load balancing features. For those routing reservations bridging domains, inter-domain routing policy is responsible for finding the shortest inter-domain route with enough resources. I propose the routing preference policy based on QoS price when the session traffic is shaped by a token bucket, related QoS messages, and message cooperation.

Expression of antibacterial resistance at the site of a delayed hypersensitivity reaction.

OpenAIRE

Patel, P J

1980-01-01

The site of a delayed hypersensitivity reaction to tuberculin or bovine serum ablumin was shown to contain mechanisms that expressed increased antibacterial activity, as evidenced by restricted growth of a local inoculum of Listeria monocytogenes. As was the case with a delayed hypersensitivity reaction, the local generation of antibacterial activity was antigen specific and T-cell dependent. Antibacterial resistance was always expressed at the site of injection of specific antigen in sensiti...

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.

Desempeño de la calidad del servicio (QoS sobre IPv6

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Octavio José Salcedo Parra

2011-06-01

Full Text Available New applications such as VoIP, e-commerce and video conferencing are sensitive to network performance, making the network capacity to provide quality of service is increasingly important. IPv6 was developed to solve some of the problems of IPv4, such as QoS, security and IP address exhaustion. Current IP networks provide better trafficdelivery effort, therefore, offer no guarantee of quality service. However, there are services, including voice, with stringent requirements for delay and delay variation (jitter, which makes it necessary to add functionality to IP networks based on this protocol are capable of supporting such services. For its part, IPv6 uses 2 fields that can be used to implement QoS, which are: Flow Label and Traffic Class. This article describes the mechanisms and architectures that are used to provide QoS on a network. Later, you specify the features that use both IPv4 and IPv6 to implement QoS. In the last sections present the results of the comparison of 2 scenarios, which are evaluated.

QoS Routing in Ad-Hoc Networks Using GA and Multi-Objective Optimization

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Admir Barolli

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Much work has been done on routing in Ad-hoc networks, but the proposed routing solutions only deal with the best effort data traffic. Connections with Quality of Service (QoS requirements, such as voice channels with delay and bandwidth constraints, are not supported. The QoS routing has been receiving increasingly intensive attention, but searching for the shortest path with many metrics is an NP-complete problem. For this reason, approximated solutions and heuristic algorithms should be developed for multi-path constraints QoS routing. Also, the routing methods should be adaptive, flexible, and intelligent. In this paper, we use Genetic Algorithms (GAs and multi-objective optimization for QoS routing in Ad-hoc Networks. In order to reduce the search space of GA, we implemented a search space reduction algorithm, which reduces the search space for GAMAN (GA-based routing algorithm for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks to find a new route. We evaluate the performance of GAMAN by computer simulations and show that GAMAN has better behaviour than GLBR (Genetic Load Balancing Routing.

Adaptive Radio Resource Allocation in Hierarchical QoS Scheduling for IEEE 802.16 Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Hua; Dittmann, Lars

2007-01-01

Future mobile communication systems such as IEEE 802.16 are expected to deliver a variety of multimedia services with diverse QoS requirements. To guarantee the QoS provision, appropriate scheduler architecture and scheduling algorithms have to be carefully designed. In this paper, we propose...

Resource management framework for QoS scheduling in IEEE 802.16 WiMAX networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Hua; Dittmann, Lars

2009-01-01

IEEE 802.16, also known as WiMAX, has received much attention recently for its capability to support multiple types of applications with diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. Beyond what the standard has defined, radio resource management (RRM) still remains an open issue, which plays...... an important role in QoS provisioning for different types of services. In this chapter, we propose a downlink resource management framework for QoS scheduling in OFDMA based WiMAX systems. Our framework consists of a dynamic resource allocation (DRA) module and a connection admission control (CAC) module...

Downlink resource management for QoS scheduling in IEEE 802.16 WiMAX networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wang, Hua; Dittmann, Lars

2010-01-01

IEEE 802.16, also known as WiMAX, has received much attention recently for its capability to support multiple types of applications with diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. Beyond what the standard has defined, radio resource management (RRM) still remains an open issue, which plays...... an important role in QoS provisioning for different types of services. In this paper, we propose a downlink resource management framework for QoS scheduling in OFDMA based WiMAX systems. Our framework consists of a dynamic resource allocation (DRA) module and a connection admission control (CAC) module. A two...

Buffer Management of Multi-Queue QoS Switches with Class Segregation

OpenAIRE

Itoh, Toshiya; Yoshimoto, Seiji

2013-01-01

In this paper, we focus on buffer management of multi-queue QoS switches in which packets of different values are segregated in different queues. Our model consists of $m$ queues and $m$ packet values $0 < v_{1} < v_{2} < ... < v_{m}$. Recently, Al-Bawani and Souza [IPL 113(4), pp.145-150, 2013] presented an online algorithm GREEDY for buffer management of multi-queue QoS switches with class segregation and showed thatif $m$ queues have the same size, then the competitive ratio of GREEDY is $...

Bidirectional QoS support for novelty detection applications based on hierarchical wireless sensor network model

Science.gov (United States)

Edwards, Mark; Hu, Fei; Kumar, Sunil

2004-10-01

The research on the Novelty Detection System (NDS) (called as VENUS) at the authors' universities has generated exciting results. For example, we can detect an abnormal behavior (such as cars thefts from the parking lot) from a series of video frames based on the cognitively motivated theory of habituation. In this paper, we would like to describe the implementation strategies of lower layer protocols for using large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to NDS with Quality-of-Service (QoS) support. Wireless data collection framework, consisting of small and low-power sensor nodes, provides an alternative mechanism to observe the physical world, by using various types of sensing capabilities that include images (and even videos using Panoptos), sound and basic physical measurements such as temperature. We do not want to lose any 'data query command' packets (in the downstream direction: sink-to-sensors) or have any bit-errors in them since they are so important to the whole sensor network. In the upstream direction (sensors-to-sink), we may tolerate the loss of some sensing data packets. But the 'interested' sensing flow should be assigned a higher priority in terms of multi-hop path choice, network bandwidth allocation, and sensing data packet generation frequency (we hope to generate more sensing data packet for that novel event in the specified network area). The focus of this paper is to investigate MAC-level Quality of Service (QoS) issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for Novelty Detection applications. Although QoS has been widely studied in other types of networks including wired Internet, general ad hoc networks and mobile cellular networks, we argue that QoS in WSN has its own characteristics. In wired Internet, the main QoS parameters include delay, jitter and bandwidth. In mobile cellular networks, two most common QoS metrics are: handoff call dropping probability and new call blocking probability. Since the main task of WSN is to detect and report

Formation of Broensted acids sites in the reaction of cyclohexanol on NaCeY zeolites

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vogt, O.; Nattich, M.; Datka, J.; Gil, B.

2002-01-01

This study was undertaken to elucidate why the catalytic activity of NaCeY in cyclohexanol reactions carried out in a pulse reactor increases with the pulse number. We studied therefore the effect of cyclohexanol and also of ethanol and water on catalytic activity NaCeY (of exchange degrees 36 and 72%) in cyclohexanol reactions: isomerization and disproportionation. We also studied the reaction of cyclohexanol and water with NaCeY zeolite by IR spectroscopy. Our results evidenced that new Broensted acid sites were formed by the reaction of cyclohexanol and water. This was shown by IR spectroscopy: the increase of Si-O 1 H-Al band 3638 cm -1 and in increase of ammonium ions band (upon ammonia adsorption). The new sites were formed by hydrolysis of Ce 3+ ions with water introduced in a pulse, or produced by dehydration of cyclohexanol catalyzed by acid sites. Formation of new Broensted acid sites resulted in an increase of catalytic activity of NaCeY in cyclohexane reaction as observed in this study and also in cyclohexanol reactions. (author)

Molecular mechanisms of riboflavin responsiveness in patients with ETF-QO variations and multiple acyl-CoA dehydrogenation deficiency.

Science.gov (United States)

Cornelius, Nanna; Frerman, Frank E; Corydon, Thomas J; Palmfeldt, Johan; Bross, Peter; Gregersen, Niels; Olsen, Rikke K J

2012-08-01

Riboflavin-responsive forms of multiple acyl-CoA dehydrogenation deficiency (RR-MADD) have been known for years, but with presumed defects in the formation of the flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) co-factor rather than genetic defects of electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) or electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO). It was only recently established that a number of RR-MADD patients carry genetic defects in ETF-QO and that the well-documented clinical efficacy of riboflavin treatment may be based on a chaperone effect that can compensate for inherited folding defects of ETF-QO. In the present study, we investigate the molecular mechanisms and the genotype-phenotype relationships for the riboflavin responsiveness in MADD, using a human HEK-293 cell expression system. We studied the influence of riboflavin and temperature on the steady-state level and the activity of variant ETF-QO proteins identified in patients with RR-MADD, or non- and partially responsive MADD. Our results showed that variant ETF-QO proteins associated with non- and partially responsive MADD caused severe misfolding of ETF-QO variant proteins when cultured in media with supplemented concentrations of riboflavin. In contrast, variant ETF-QO proteins associated with RR-MADD caused milder folding defects when cultured at the same conditions. Decreased thermal stability of the variants showed that FAD does not completely correct the structural defects induced by the variation. This may cause leakage of electrons and increased reactive oxygen species, as reflected by increased amounts of cellular peroxide production in HEK-293 cells expressing the variant ETF-QO proteins. Finally, we found indications of prolonged association of variant ETF-QO protein with the Hsp60 chaperonin in the mitochondrial matrix, supporting indications of folding defects in the variant ETF-QO proteins.

A new questionnaire for measuring quality of life - the Stark QoL.

Science.gov (United States)

Hardt, Jochen

2015-10-26

The Stark questionnaire measures health-related quality of life (QoL) using pictures almost exclusively. It is supplemented by a minimum of words. It comprises a mental and a physical health component. A German sample of n = 500 subjects, age and gender stratified, filled out the Stark Qol questionnaire along with various other questionnaires via internet. The physical component shows good reliability (Cronbach's alpha = McDonalds Omega = greatest lower bound = .93), the mental component can be improved (Cronbach's alpha = .63, McDonalds Omega = .72, greatest lower bound = .77). Confirmatory factor analysis shows a good fit (Bentlers CFI = .97). Construct validity was proven. The Stark QoL is a promising new development in measuring QoL, it is a short and easy to apply questionnaire. Additionally, it is particularly promising for international research.

QoS modelling and analysis with UML-statecharts: the StoCharts approach

OpenAIRE

Jansen, D.N.; Haverkort, Boudewijn R.H.M.; Hermanns, H.; Katoen, Joost P.

2005-01-01

The UML is an influential and widespread notation for high-level modelling of information processing systems. UML statechart diagrams are a graphical language to describe system behaviour. They consitute one of the most intensively-used formalisms comprised by the UML. However, statechart diagrams are lacking concepts for describing real-time, performance, dependability and quality of service (QoS) characteristics at a behavioural level.This note describes a QoS-oriented extension of UML stat...

Communication Framework for Tele-rehabilitation Systems with QoS Guarantee

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Dandanov Nikolay

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, there is great interest in developing telemedicine technologies. These technologies will provide health care from distance swiftly and lightly, as well as reduce the expenses for activities, such as rehabilitation. Telemedicine applications are possible due to the advances in information technologies and the ever-expanding communication network infrastructure. The network characteristics bandwidth, packet loss, latency, jitter and policies are crucial for the performance of tele-rehabilitation systems. Because in tele-rehabilitation human lives are at stake, guaranteeing the Quality of Service (QoS is important. In this paper, an approach for assuring the QoS for information transmission in tele-rehabilitation systems is proposed.

Towards Location Based QoS-Aware Network Selection Mechanism for the Nomadic Mobile Services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pawar, P.; van Beijnum, Bernhard J.F.; Wac, K.E.; Hermens, Hermanus J.; Konstantas, D.

The advances in the area of location based computing will soon make it feasible to predict the availability of wireless networks and their application level Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics along the location and time dimensions. Such predictions are referred to as QoS predictions which are

Quality of recovery after anaesthesia measured with QoR-40: a prospective observational study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luís Guimarães-Pereira

Full Text Available Abstract Background: QoR-40, a 40-item questionnaire on quality of recovery from anaesthesia, has been shown to measure health status after surgery. Our aim was to evaluate the incidence of poor quality of recovery in our Post Anaesthesia Care Unit and to compare their QoR-40 scores before surgery and 3 months later. Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in adult patients consecutively admitted from 18 June to 12 July 2012. The follow-up period was 3 months. We exclude patients submitted to cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, obstetric surgery and with a mini-mental state examination test score lower than 25. The primary endpoint was quality of recovery measured with the validated Portuguese for Portugal version of the QoR-40 before surgery (T0, 24 h after surgery (T1 and 3 months after (T2. Results: A total of 114 patients completed the study. Mean QoR-40 score was 169 and patients with poor quality of recovery were identified if their QoR-40 score was lesser than 142. This occurred in 26 patients (24%. Global median scores for patients with poor quality of recovery were lower at T0 (121 vs. 184, p < 0.001, at T1 (120 vs. 177, p < 0.001 and at T2 (119 vs. 189, p < 0.001. Conclusion: Patients with poor quality of recovery had lower quality of life. This fact may allow earlier and more effective interventions, in order to improve quality of life after surgery. Beside its utility after surgery, QoR-40 may be important prior to surgery to identify patients who will develop a poor quality of recovery.

Identification of QoI fungicide-resistant genotypes of the wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici in Algeria

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Nora ALLIOUI

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Septoria tritici blotch caused by Zymoseptoria tritici is currently one of the most damaging diseases on bread and durum wheat crops worldwide. A total of 120 monoconidial isolates of this fungus were sampled in 2012 from five distinct geographical locations of Algeria (Guelma, Annaba, Constantine, Skikda and Oran and assessed for resistance to Quinone outside Inhibitors (QoI, a widely used class of fungicides for the control of fungal diseases of wheat. Resistance was screened using a mismatch PCR assay that identified the G143A mitochondrial cytochrome b substitution associated with QoI resistance. The isolates were QoI-sensitive, since all possessed the G143 wild-type allele, except for three isolates (two from Guelma and one from Annaba, which had fungicide resistance and possessed the A143 resistant allele. QoI resistance was confirmed phenotypically using a microplate bioassay in which the resistant isolates displayed high levels of half-maximal inhibitory azoxystrobin concentrations (IC50s when compared to sensitive reference isolates. Genetic fingerprinting of all isolates with microsatellite markers revealed that the three resistant isolates were distinct haplotypes, and were are not genetically distinguishable from the sensitive isolates. This study highlights QoI-resistant genotypes of Z. tritici in Algeria for the first time, and proposes a management strategy for QoI fungicide application to prevent further spread of resistance across the country or to other areas of Northern Africa.

Integrating QoS and security functions in an IP-VPN gateway

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Kuo-Pao; Chang, Shu-Hsin; Lin, Kuan-Ming; Pen, Mau-Jy

2001-10-01

IP-based Virtual Private Network becomes more and more popular. It can not only reduce the enterprise communication cost but also increase the revenue of the service provider. The common IP-VPN application types include Intranet VPN, Extranet VPN, and remote access VPN. For the large IP-VPN market, some vendors develop dedicated IP-VPN devices; while some vendors add the VPN functions into their existing network equipment such as router, access gateway, etc. The functions in the IP-VPN device include security, QoS, and management. The common security functions supported are IPSec (IP Security), IKE (Internet Key Exchange), and Firewall. The QoS functions include bandwidth control and packet scheduling. In the management component, policy-based network management is under standardization in IETF. In this paper, we discuss issues on how to integrate the QoS and security functions in an IP-VPN Gateway. We propose three approaches to do this. They are (1) perform Qos first (2) perform IPSec first and (3) reserve fixed bandwidth for IPSec. We also compare the advantages and disadvantages of the three proposed approaches.

Maximization of the Supportable Number of Sensors in QoS-Aware Cluster-Based Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thi-Tham Nguyen

2014-03-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a practical low-complexity MAC (medium access control scheme for quality of service (QoS-aware and cluster-based underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN, in which the provision of differentiated QoS is required. In such a network, underwater sensors (U-sensor in a cluster are divided into several classes, each of which has a different QoS requirement. The major problem considered in this paper is the maximization of the number of nodes that a cluster can accommodate while still providing the required QoS for each class in terms of the PDR (packet delivery ratio. In order to address the problem, we first estimate the packet delivery probability (PDP and use it to formulate an optimization problem to determine the optimal value of the maximum packet retransmissions for each QoS class. The custom greedy and interior-point algorithms are used to find the optimal solutions, which are verified by extensive simulations. The simulation results show that, by solving the proposed optimization problem, the supportable number of underwater sensor nodes can be maximized while satisfying the QoS requirements for each class.

QoSS Hierarchical NoC-Based Architecture for MPSoC Dynamic Protection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Johanna Sepulveda

2012-01-01

Full Text Available As electronic systems are pervading our lives, MPSoC (multiprocessor system-on-chip security is becoming an important requirement. MPSoCs are able to support multiple applications on the same chip. The challenge is to provide MPSoC security that makes possible a trustworthy system that meets the performance and security requirements of all the applications. The network-on-chip (NoC can be used to efficiently incorporate security. Our work proposes the implementation of QoSS (quality of security service to overcome present MPSoC vulnerabilities. QoSS is a novel concept for data protection that introduces security as a dimension of QoS. QoSS takes advantage of the NoC wide system visibility and critical role in enabling system operation, exploiting the NoC components to detect and prevent a wide range of attacks. In this paper, we present the implementation of a layered dynamic security NoC architecture that integrates agile and dynamic security firewalls in order to detect attacks based on different security rules. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach over several MPSoCs scenarios and estimate their impact on the overall performance. We show that our architecture can perform a fast detection of a wide range of attacks and a fast configuration of different security policies for several MPSoC applications.

Quality of recovery after anaesthesia measured with QoR-40: a prospective observational study.

Science.gov (United States)

Guimarães-Pereira, Luís; Costa, Maria; Sousa, Gabriela; Abelha, Fernando

2016-01-01

QoR-40, a 40-item questionnaire on quality of recovery from anaesthesia, has been shown to measure health status after surgery. Our aim was to evaluate the incidence of poor quality of recovery in our Post Anaesthesia Care Unit and to compare their QoR-40 scores before surgery and 3 months later. A prospective observational study was conducted in adult patients consecutively admitted from 18 June to 12 July 2012. The follow-up period was 3 months. We exclude patients submitted to cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, obstetric surgery and with a mini-mental state examination test score lower than 25. The primary endpoint was quality of recovery measured with the validated Portuguese for Portugal version of the QoR-40 before surgery (T0), 24h after surgery (T1) and 3 months after (T2). A total of 114 patients completed the study. Mean QoR-40 score was 169 and patients with poor quality of recovery were identified if their QoR-40 score was lesser than 142. This occurred in 26 patients (24%). Global median scores for patients with poor quality of recovery were lower at T0 (121 vs. 184, p<0.001), at T1 (120 vs. 177, p<0.001) and at T2 (119 vs. 189, p<0.001). Patients with poor quality of recovery had lower quality of life. This fact may allow earlier and more effective interventions, in order to improve quality of life after surgery. Beside its utility after surgery, QoR-40 may be important prior to surgery to identify patients who will develop a poor quality of recovery. Copyright © 2015 Sociedade Brasileira de Anestesiologia. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

[Quality of recovery after anaesthesia measured with QoR-40: a prospective observational study].

Science.gov (United States)

Guimarães-Pereira, Luís; Costa, Maria; Sousa, Gabriela; Abelha, Fernando

2016-01-01

QoR-40, a 40-item questionnaire on quality of recovery from anaesthesia, has been shown to measure health status after surgery. Our aim was to evaluate the incidence of poor quality of recovery in our Post Anaesthesia Care Unit and to compare their QoR-40 scores before surgery and 3 months later. A prospective observational study was conducted in adult patients consecutively admitted from 18 June to 12 July 2012. The follow-up period was 3 months. We exclude patients submitted to cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, obstetric surgery and with a mini-mental state examination test score lower than 25. The primary endpoint was quality of recovery measured with the validated Portuguese for Portugal version of the QoR-40 before surgery (T0), 24h after surgery (T1) and 3 months after (T2). A total of 114 patients completed the study. Mean QoR-40 score was 169 and patients with poor quality of recovery were identified if their QoR-40 score was lesser than 142. This occurred in 26 patients (24%). Global median scores for patients with poor quality of recovery were lower at T0 (121 vs. 184, p<0.001), at T1 (120 vs. 177, p<0.001) and at T2 (119 vs. 189, p<0.001). Patients with poor quality of recovery had lower quality of life. This fact may allow earlier and more effective interventions, in order to improve quality of life after surgery. Beside its utility after surgery, QoR-40 may be important prior to surgery to identify patients who will develop a poor quality of recovery. Copyright © 2015 Sociedade Brasileira de Anestesiologia. Publicado por Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

Quality of life for parents of children with influenza-like illness: development and validation of Care-ILI-QoL.

Science.gov (United States)

Chow, Maria Yui Kwan; Morrow, Angela; Heron, Leon; Yin, Jiehui Kevin; Booy, Robert; Leask, Julie

2014-04-01

Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) cause paediatric morbidity and affect the quality of life (QoL) of children and their parents. We have developed a disease-specific questionnaire (Care-ILI-QoL) to measure the QoL of caregivers of children with ILI. The drafting of the Care-ILI-QoL questionnaire was based on a systematic review, a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews with parents, and meetings with paediatricians. Children aged 6-48 months recruited from childcare centres in Sydney, Australia, were followed up during the 2011 influenza season. Care-ILI-QoL and SF-12v2 Acute Form were administered to the parent of a sick child 2 weeks after the onset of ILI, and again 2 weeks after the child had recovered. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Internal consistency, concurrent validity, discriminant validity, homogeneity of items, and responsiveness were tested. Out of the 125 children enrolled from 48 childcare centres, 55 children had ILI (total 75 ILI episodes). Care-ILI-QoL was reduced from 25 to 16 items covering four factors: Daily Activities, Perceived Support, Social Life, and Emotions (Cronbach's alphas 0.90, 0.92, 0.78, and 0.72, respectively). Care-ILI-QoL has satisfactory concurrent and discriminant validity, good internal consistency, and excellent responsiveness. Total QoL and factor scores correlated well with SF-12v2 scores. Total QoL scores were significantly lower in parents who perceived their child as very/extremely sick, sacrificed 10 hours or more in work or recreation in caring for the child, or whose child had two or more general practitioner visits. Total QoL and factor scores were significantly higher after the child had recovered than when the child had ILI. Care-ILI-QoL is the first ILI-specific QoL instrument for parents and is demonstrated to be valid and reliable in a developed country setting where the child is affected by ILI. It has the potential to be applied in clinical and research settings to assist measurement of

Single-Site Palladium(II) Catalyst for Oxidative Heck Reaction: Catalytic Performance and Kinetic Investigations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Duan, Hui; Li, Mengyang; Zhang, Guanghui; Gallagher, James R.; Huang, Zhiliang; Sun, Yu; Luo, Zhong; Chen, Hongzhong; Miller, Jeffrey T.; Zou, Ruqiang; Lei, Aiwen; Zhao, Yanli

2015-01-01

ABSTRACT: The development of organometallic single-site catalysts (SSCs) has inspired the designs of new heterogeneous catalysts with high efficiency. Nevertheless, the application of SSCs in certain modern organic reactions, such as C-C bond formation reactions, has still been less investigated. In this study, a single-site Pd(II) catalyst was developed, where 2,2'-bipyridine-grafted periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) was employed as the support of a Pd(II) complex. The overall performance of the single-site Pd(II) catalyst in the oxidative Heck reaction was then investigated. The investigation results show that the catalyst displays over 99% selectivity for the product formation with high reaction yield. Kinetic profiles further confirm its high catalytic efficiency, showing that the rate constant is nearly 40 times higher than that for the free Pd(II) salt. X-ray absorption spectroscopy reveals that the catalyst has remarkable lifetime and recyclability.

Relationship Between Student QoL With Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Related Factors at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Asadi

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Background Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS is one of the most common functional disorders of the lower gastrointestinal tract characterized by abdominal pain and changes in bowel habits. This disorder changes the QoL (QoL for patients. Objectives This study examines the relationship between QoL for nursing students with other associated factors. Patients and Methods These descriptive-analytic studies indicate a census for 57 senior nursing students of the School of Nursing-Midwifery, Ahvaz in 2013–2014. The data from the demographic questionnaire and QoL questionnaire (QOL-34 was collected. Data using ANOVA and t-tests with significance level of P 0.05.While for QoL and academic Grade Point Average (P = 0.048, ethnicity (P = 0.006, disease duration (P = 0.049, and disease severity (P = 0.030 were significantly related . Conclusions It seems important to pay attention to health problems and to apply interventions that will influence QoL. Lifestyle changes and staying away from activities that are associated with tension stress can help to eliminate the symptoms and disease severity and improve the QoL for student.

Research on the business QoS and trustworthy and controllable strategies mechanism for energy internet

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Geng; Lu, Meiling; Zhang, Dahua; Zhou, Liang; Li, Likang

2017-01-01

Energy internet is a kind of power sharing network, which can realize the bidirectional flow of energy information on the basis of the existing power grid. It puts forward higher requirements for reliability and controllability of information communication, and all kinds of business QoS of the backbone network. So the research of business QoS and trustworthy and controllable strategies mechanism have an important significance for the development of energy internet. This paper mainly studies how to use the software defined network (SDN) to achieve business QoS, and provide QoS support for all kinds of business of the energy internet. Combined with the current development situation of the energy internet in our country, this paper researches the trustworthy and controllable strategies mechanism for energy internet, and proposes the transition scheme of the IPv6 credible network architecture based on SDN. This coordinates the contradiction between the growing demand for energy internet applications and the limitations of the energy internet technology itself.

Current review of the SarQoL®: a health-related quality of life questionnaire specific to sarcopenia.

Science.gov (United States)

Beaudart, Charlotte; Reginster, Jean-Yves; Geerinck, Anton; Locquet, Médéa; Bruyère, Olivier

2017-08-01

Sarcopenia, defined by a progressive and generalized loss of muscle mass and muscle function, is associated with many harmful clinical consequences. Several studies have reported the impact of sarcopenia on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using generic quality of life (QoL) questionnaires. The results of these observational studies are quite heterogenous. Indeed, generic tools may not be able to detect subtle effects of sarcopenia on QoL. Recently, a sarcopenia-specific HRQoL questionnaire was developed and validated in a population of sarcopenic subjects to more accurately assess the impact of sarcopenia on QoL. Areas covered: The purpose of this review is to present evidence regarding the impact of sarcopenia on QoL and to introduce a new specific HRQoL questionnaire, the SarQoL®. Expert commentary: The self-administered SarQoL®, initially developed in French, comprises 55 items translated into 22 questions. The questionnaire has been shown to be understandable, valid, consistent, and reliable and can therefore be recommended for clinical and research purposes. The questionnaire is now available in 11 different languages with another 20 translations in progress. The instrument's sensitivity to change still needs to be assessed in future longitudinal studies.

QoS Support Polling Scheme for Multimedia Traffic in Wireless LAN MAC Protocol

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

YANG Zhijun; ZHAO Dongfeng

2008-01-01

Quality of service (QoS) support is a key attribute for multimedia traffic including video, voice, and data in wireless local area networks (LANs) but is limited in 802.11-based wireless LANs. A polling-based scheme called the point coordination function (PCF) was developed for 802.11 LANs to support the trans-mission of multimedia traffic. However, the PCF is not able to meet the desired practical traffic differentiation requirements for real-time data. This paper describes a QoS support polling scheme based on the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol. The scheme uses a two-level polling mechanism with the QoS classes differentiated by two different access policies. Stations with higher priority traffic such as key or real-time data form the first level and can access the common channel through an exhaustive access policy. Other stations with lower priority traffic form the second level and can access the channel through a gated access policy. A system model based on imbedded Markov chain theory and a generation function were setup to explicitly analyze the mean information packet waiting time of the two-level polling scheme. Theo-retical and simulation results show that the new scheme efficiently differentiates services to guarantee better QoS and system stability.

Validity and reliability of the Brief version of Quality of Life in Bipolar Disorder" (Bref QoL.BD) among Chinese bipolar patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Xiao, Lin; Gao, Yulin; Zhang, Lili; Chen, Peiyun; Sun, Xiaojia; Tang, Siyuan

2016-03-15

Previous literatures on quality of life (QoL) in bipolar disorder (BD) strongly suggested that a disease-specific QoL measure for patients with BD should be developed to evaluate QoL more specifically and reliably. To our knowledge, "Quality of Life in Bipolar Disorder" (QoL.BD) is the first and only questionnaire produced to specifically measure QoL in people with BD. In China, there is no disease-targeted measure available to specifically measure QoL in Chinese patients with BD. The aim of the study is to revise and validate the brief version of the QoL.BD (Bref QoL.BD ) into Chinese version. All the items of the Bref QoL.BD was translated into Chinese language, using the Brislin translation mode. The questionnaire was administered to a total sample of 231 subjects, including 101 BD patients and 130 healthy controls, to test the psychometric properties of Bref QoL.BD (e.g. internal consistency, retest reliability, content validity, item analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, criterion validity, convergent validity, discriminative validity and feasibility). The Chinese version of the Bref QoL.BD had very high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=0.815) and retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC )=0.808). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated the original one-factor structure. The direction and magnitude of correlations with 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36; rs= 0.313, Psize from only one tertiary care center. And BD patients enrolled were euthymic, excluding the acute BD patients. The Chinese version of the Bref QoL.BD is a feasible, reliable and valid tool for the assessment of QoL for Chinese BD patients. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Personalized QoS Prediction Approach for CPS Service Recommendation Based on Reputation and Location-Aware Collaborative Filtering.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuang, Li; Yu, Long; Huang, Lan; Wang, Yin; Ma, Pengju; Li, Chuanbin; Zhu, Yujia

2018-05-14

With the rapid development of cyber-physical systems (CPS), building cyber-physical systems with high quality of service (QoS) has become an urgent requirement in both academia and industry. During the procedure of building Cyber-physical systems, it has been found that a large number of functionally equivalent services exist, so it becomes an urgent task to recommend suitable services from the large number of services available in CPS. However, since it is time-consuming, and even impractical, for a single user to invoke all of the services in CPS to experience their QoS, a robust QoS prediction method is needed to predict unknown QoS values. A commonly used method in QoS prediction is collaborative filtering, however, it is hard to deal with the data sparsity and cold start problem, and meanwhile most of the existing methods ignore the data credibility issue. Thence, in order to solve both of these challenging problems, in this paper, we design a framework of QoS prediction for CPS services, and propose a personalized QoS prediction approach based on reputation and location-aware collaborative filtering. Our approach first calculates the reputation of users by using the Dirichlet probability distribution, so as to identify untrusted users and process their unreliable data, and then it digs out the geographic neighborhood in three levels to improve the similarity calculation of users and services. Finally, the data from geographical neighbors of users and services are fused to predict the unknown QoS values. The experiments using real datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms other existing methods in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and robustness.

Combining Wired and Wireless Networks for a QoS-Aware Broadband Infrastructure

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Jens Myrup; Riaz, Muhammad Tahir; Knudsen, Thomas Phillip

2004-01-01

We show how integrated planning of wired and wireless infrastructures can be used to build a QoS-aware broadband infrastructure. The outset is a case study of the municipality of Hals, a rural community in Denmark, where the objective is to establish a broadband infrastructure reaching all househ...... To The Home for primary connections and Fixed Wireless Access for backup. This is implemented over 15 years, during which temporary solutions ensure sufficient QoS and reliability for all users. These temporary solutions form parts of the final solutions....

QoS testing of service-based applications

OpenAIRE

Driss , Maha; Jamoussi , Yassine; Ben Ghézala , Henda Hajjami

2008-01-01

International audience; Web services (WSs) are becoming increasingly popular because of their potential in several application domains including e-Enterprise, e-Business, e-Government, and e-Science. Based on open XML standards, WS technology allows the construction of massively distributed and loosely coupled applications. A service composition mechanism should satisfy not only functional properties but also non-functional Quality of Service (QoS) ones. In this paper, we introduce a discrete...

Cross-layer protocol design for QoS optimization in real-time wireless sensor networks

Science.gov (United States)

Hortos, William S.

2010-04-01

The metrics of quality of service (QoS) for each sensor type in a wireless sensor network can be associated with metrics for multimedia that describe the quality of fused information, e.g., throughput, delay, jitter, packet error rate, information correlation, etc. These QoS metrics are typically set at the highest, or application, layer of the protocol stack to ensure that performance requirements for each type of sensor data are satisfied. Application-layer metrics, in turn, depend on the support of the lower protocol layers: session, transport, network, data link (MAC), and physical. The dependencies of the QoS metrics on the performance of the higher layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) reference model of the WSN protocol, together with that of the lower three layers, are the basis for a comprehensive approach to QoS optimization for multiple sensor types in a general WSN model. The cross-layer design accounts for the distributed power consumption along energy-constrained routes and their constituent nodes. Following the author's previous work, the cross-layer interactions in the WSN protocol are represented by a set of concatenated protocol parameters and enabling resource levels. The "best" cross-layer designs to achieve optimal QoS are established by applying the general theory of martingale representations to the parameterized multivariate point processes (MVPPs) for discrete random events occurring in the WSN. Adaptive control of network behavior through the cross-layer design is realized through the parametric factorization of the stochastic conditional rates of the MVPPs. The cross-layer protocol parameters for optimal QoS are determined in terms of solutions to stochastic dynamic programming conditions derived from models of transient flows for heterogeneous sensor data and aggregate information over a finite time horizon. Markov state processes, embedded within the complex combinatorial history of WSN events, are more computationally

Adaptive QoS provision for IEEE 802.16e BWA networks based on cross-layer design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kuo GS

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract This article proposes an integrated framework for adaptive QoS provision in IEEE 802.16e broadband wireless access networks based on cross-layer design. On one hand, an efficient admission control (AC algorithm is proposed along with a semi-reservation scheme to guarantee the connection-level QoS. First, to guarantee the service continuity for handoff connections and resource efficiency, our semi-reservation scheme considers both users' handoff probability and average resource consumption together, which effectively avoids resource over-reservation and insufficient reservation. For AC, a new/handoff connection is accepted only when the target cell has enough resource to afford both instantaneous and average resource consumption to meet the average source rate request. On the other hand, a joint resource allocation and packet scheduling scheme is designed to provide packet-level QoS guarantee in term of "QoS rate", which can ensure fairness for the services with identical priority level in case of bandwidth shortage. Particularly, an enhanced bandwidth request scheme is designed to reduce unnecessary BR delay and redundant signaling overhead caused by the existing one in IEEE 802.16e, which further improves the packet-level QoS performance and resource efficiency for uplink transmission. Simulation results show that the proposed approach not only balances the tradeoff among connection blocking rate, connection dropping rate, and connection failure rate, but also achieves low mean packet dropping rate (PDR, small deviation of PDR, and low QoS outage rate. Moreover, high resource efficiency is ensured.

QoS Parameters Evaluation in a VPN-MPLS Diffserv Network under a Complete Free Software Emulation Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miroslava Aracely Zapata Rodríguez

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The use of Virtual Private Network – Multi Protocol Label Switching (VPN-MPLS networks has become very common inside enterprises thanks to their multiple advantages; such as, the private communication across a public network infrastructure between geographically diverse sites. This leads to a need for an efficient network in terms of Quality of Service (QoS to guarantee reliability and security of information. However, the implementation of a VPN-MPLS network is neither easy nor cheap for small and medium companies; hence, in most cases, it is required the use of emulators that are not free either. In this paper, we analyze a VPN-MPLS network in terms of QoS metrics: delay, jitter and packet loss. This evaluation was performed in a virtual environment using only free software tools under two test scenarios, with and without Differentiated Services (DiffServ. The results showed that a VPN-MPLS DiffServ network reduces the delay by approximately 96.78% in VoIP, 39.21% in Data and 66.83% in Streaming; furthermore, the jitter was reduced by approximately 27.88% in VoIP and 41.09% in Data.

Optimal capacity and buffer size estimation under Generalized Markov Fluids Models and QoS parameters

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bavio, José; Marrón, Beatriz

2014-01-01

Quality of service (QoS) for internet traffic management requires good traffic models and good estimation of sharing network resource. A link of a network processes all traffic and it is designed with certain capacity C and buffer size B. A Generalized Markov Fluid model (GMFM), introduced by Marrón (2011), is assumed for the sources because describes in a versatile way the traffic, allows estimation based on traffic traces, and also consistent effective bandwidth estimation can be done. QoS, interpreted as buffer overflow probability, can be estimated for GMFM through the effective bandwidth estimation and solving the optimization problem presented in Courcoubetis (2002), the so call inf-sup formulas. In this work we implement a code to solve the inf-sup problem and other optimization related with it, that allow us to do traffic engineering in links of data networks to calculate both, minimum capacity required when QoS and buffer size are given or minimum buffer size required when QoS and capacity are given

Statistical Delay QoS Provisioning for Energy-Efficient Spectrum-Sharing Based Wireless Ad Hoc Sensor Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yichen Wang

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we develop the statistical delay quality-of-service (QoS provisioning framework for the energy-efficient spectrum-sharing based wireless ad hoc sensor network (WAHSN, which is characterized by the delay-bound violation probability. Based on the established delay QoS provisioning framework, we formulate the nonconvex optimization problem which aims at maximizing the average energy efficiency of the sensor node in the WAHSN while meeting PU’s statistical delay QoS requirement as well as satisfying sensor node’s average transmission rate, average transmitting power, and peak transmitting power constraints. By employing the theories of fractional programming, convex hull, and probabilistic transmission, we convert the original fractional-structured nonconvex problem to the additively structured parametric convex problem and obtain the optimal power allocation strategy under the given parameter via Lagrangian method. Finally, we derive the optimal average energy efficiency and corresponding optimal power allocation scheme by employing the Dinkelbach method. Simulation results show that our derived optimal power allocation strategy can be dynamically adjusted based on PU’s delay QoS requirement as well as the channel conditions. The impact of PU’s delay QoS requirement on sensor node’s energy efficiency is also illustrated.

QoE-Driven D2D Media Services Distribution Scheme in Cellular Networks

OpenAIRE

Chen, Mingkai; Wang, Lei; Chen, Jianxin; Wei, Xin

2017-01-01

Device-to-device (D2D) communication has been widely studied to improve network performance and considered as a potential technological component for the next generation communication. Considering the diverse users’ demand, Quality of Experience (QoE) is recognized as a new degree of user’s satisfaction for media service transmissions in the wireless communication. Furthermore, we aim at promoting user’s Mean of Score (MOS) value to quantify and analyze user’s QoE in the dynamic cellular netw...

Further improvements in competitive guarantees for QoS buffering

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bansal, N.; Fleischer, L.K.; Kimbrel, T.; Mahdian, M.; Schieber, B.; Sviridenko, M.; Diaz, J.; Karhumäki, J.; Lepistö, A.; Sannella, D.

2004-01-01

We study the behavior of algorithms for buffering packets weighted by different levels of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees in a single queue. Buffer space is limited, and packet loss occurs when the buffer overflows. We describe a modification of the previously proposed ``preemptive greedy{''}

QoS Supported IPTV Service Architecture over Hybrid-Tree-Based Explicit Routed Multicast Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chih-Chao Wen

2012-01-01

Full Text Available With the rapid advance in multimedia streaming and multicast transport technology, current IP multicast protocols, especially PIM-SM, become the major channel delivery mechanism for IPTV system over Internet. The goals for IPTV service are to provide two-way interactive services for viewers to select popular program channel with high quality for watching during fast channel surfing period. However, existing IP multicast protocol cannot meet above QoS requirements for IPTV applications between media server and subscribers. Therefore, we propose a cooperative scheme of hybrid-tree based on explicit routed multicast, called as HT-ERM to combine the advantages of shared tree and source tree for QoS-supported IPTV service. To increase network utilization, the constrained shortest path first (CSPF routing algorithm is designed for construction of hybrid tree to deliver the high-quality video stream over watching channel and standard quality over surfing channel. Furthermore, the Resource Reservation Protocol- Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE is used as signaling mechanism to set up QoS path for multicast channel admission control. Our simulation results demonstrated that the proposed HT-ERM scheme outperforms other multicast QoS-based delivery scheme in terms of channel switching delay, resource utilization, and blocking ratio for IPTV service.

An Analysis of QoS in ZigBee Network Based on Deviated Node Priority

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Md. Jaminul Haque Biddut

2016-01-01

Full Text Available ZigBee is an IEEE 802.15.4 standardized communication protocol. It forms a flawless Wireless Sensor Network (WSN standard for interoperability at all levels of the network, particularly the application level which most closely touches the user. A large number of devices from different vendors can work seamlessly. These devices act as a network and send huge data traffic to the Coordinator. End devices at different zones have different roles in communication with each other. There has been a lack in executing their requests in a synchronized way based on task priority. This lack leads to massive data traffic loss and degrades the Quality of Service (QoS. One of the challenges is to analyze the QoS parameters in ZigBee network that help to detect the overall network performance. The contribution of this paper is twofold; first, a ZigBee Network is implemented based on node priority. It demonstrates a method to generate a new priority of devices with respect to their existing priority and zones’ priority as well. Second, the QoS is analyzed based on the new priority status for tasks preference purposes. The outcome of this paper shows that the QoS of the network is more conspicuous than non-priority based network.

A Novel Prioritization Scheme to Improve QoS in IEEE 802.11e Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Navid Tadayon

2010-01-01

Full Text Available IEEE 802.11 WLAN utilizes a distributed function at its MAC layer, namely, DCF to access the wireless medium. Due to its distributed nature, DCF is able to guarantee working stability in a wireless medium while maintaining the assembling and maintenance cost in a low level. However, DCF is inefficient in dealing with real-time traffics due to its incapability on providing QoS. IEEE 802.11e was introduced as a supplementary standard to cope with this problem. This standard introduces an Enhanced Distributed Coordination Function (EDCF that works based on diff-Serve model and can serve multiple classes of traffics (by using different prioritizations schemes. With the emergence of new time-sensitive applications, EDCF has proved to be yet inefficient in dealing with these kinds of traffics because it could not provide network with well-differentiated QoS. In this study, we propose a novel prioritization scheme to improve QoS level in IEEE 802.11e network. In this scheme, we replace Uniform PDF with Gamma PDF, which has salient differentiating properties. We investigate the suitability and superiority of this scheme on furnishing network with well-differentiated QoS using probabilistic analysis. We strengthen our claims by extensive simulation runs.

QoS-Guaranteed Admission Control for OFDMA-based Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ramkumar, Venkata; Anggorojati, Bayu; Lucian, Stefan P. Andrei

2010-01-01

This paper proposes a novel admission control (AC) algorithm for guaranteed quality of service (QoS) to all users. The proposed solution provides better utilization of system capacity using adaptive modulation (AM). A scheduler based on a per user priority function is also given in this paper. Th...

Internal consistency and construct validity of the Quality of Life in Alzheimer's Disease (QoL-AD) proxy – a secondary data analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Hylla, Jonas; Schwab, Christian G G; Isfort, Michael; Halek, Margareta; Dichter, Martin N

2016-07-01

Background: The maintenance and promotion of Quality of Life (QoL) of people with dementia is a major outcome in intervention studies and health care. The Quality of Life Alzheimer's Disease (QoL-AD) is an internationally recommended QoL measurement also available in German language. Until now, only a few results on the psychometric properties of the German QoL-AD were available. Objective: Evaluation of internal consistency and construct validity of the QoL-AD proxy. Method: A principal component analysis (secondary data analysis) of the 13 QoL-AD items was carried out based on the total sample of 234 people with dementia from nine nursing homes in Germany. Subsequently, the internal consistency of the identified factors was examined using Cronbach's alpha. Results: Two factors physical and mental health and social network were determined. Both factors explain 53 % of the total variance. The stability of both factors was validated in two sensitivity analyses. The internal consistency is good for both factors with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.88 (physical and mental health) and 0.75 (social network). Conclusion: The QoL-AD proxy allows the assessment of two relevant health-related QoL domains of people with dementia. However, in future studies especially the inter-rater reliability of the QoL-AD proxy has to be examined.

Observations on the Behaviour of Different Populations of Plasmopara viticola Resistant to QoI Fungicides in Italian Vineyards

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M.L. Gullino

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Grapevine downy mildew, caused by Plasmopara viticola, is probably the most damaging fungal disease of grapevine world-wide. Among the fungicides recently developed for downy mildew control is the QoI class of fungicides, which inhibits mitochondrial respiration. Since 1999, selected P. viticola populations in northern Italy have been monitored for resistance to QoI fungicides. Detached leaf discs and whole potted plants were used under controlled conditions to test the sampled populations. QoI-resistant populations of P. viticola were found in all the vineyards sampled in 2001 and 2002 in Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia, where failure in QoI control was reported. Many of the populations had minimum inhibition concentration (MIC values 3– 30 times higher than those of sensitive reference populations. Populations of P. viticola sampled from vineyards in Piedmont, where no QoI fungicides had previously been used, showed MIC values equal to, or lower than those of the reference populations. Most of the P. viticola populations collected in Trentino Alto Adige in 2001 showed high virulence in leaf disc test and were not controlled by QoI fungicides, applied both at field and double field rates in the whole plant test. Most of these populations retained their virulence in the subsequent leaf disc test in water.

OPNET Modeler Simulation Testing of the New Model Used to Cooperation Between QoS and Security Mechanisms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan Papaj

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this article the performance analysis of the new model, used to integration between QoS and Security, is introduced. OPNET modeler simulation testing of the new model with comparation with the standard model is presented. This new model enables the process of cooperation between QoS and Security in MANET. The introduction how the model is implemented to the simulation OPNET modeler is also showed. Model provides possibilities to integration and cooperation of QoS and security by the cross layer design (CLD with modified security service vector (SSV. An overview of the simulation tested of the new model, comparative study in mobile ad-hoc networks, describe requirements and directions for adapted solutions are presented. Main idea of the testing is to show how QoS and Security related services could be provided simultaneously with using minimal interfering with each service.

Evaluating QoS-enabled information management services in a Navy operational context

Science.gov (United States)

Paulos, Aaron M.; Sinclair, Asher; Loyall, Joseph P.

2011-06-01

Information Management (IM) services support the discovery, brokering, and dissemination of mission-critical information based on the information's content and characteristics. IM services support the dissemination of future information (through subscriptions) and past information (through queries) regardless of its source. To be useful across enterprise and tactical environments, IM services need mission-driven Quality of Service (QoS) features as part of their core functionality. We have developed QoS management features, QoS Enabled Dissemination (QED), that extend an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) developed set of IM services, Phoenix. This paper describes the results of a joint services experiment evaluating QED and Phoenix in a US Navy scenario involving multiple ships connected by a Disconnected, Intermittent, Limited (DIL) satellite network. Experiments evaluate QED and Phoenix's ability to (1) provide IM in the Wide Area Network (WAN) context of the satellite communications, which includes long latencies and background traffic not under QED control; (2) control and utilize active-precedence and queue management features provided by the WAN; (3) handle severe network overload, network disruptions, and dynamic changes in policies; and (4) successfully enforce deadlines and information replacement policies.

QoS Negotiation in Real-Time Systems and its Application to Automated Flight Control

Science.gov (United States)

2000-11-01

QoS Negotiation in Real - Time Systems and Its Application to Automated Flight Control Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Member, IEEE, Ella M. Atkins, Member, IEEE...been committed to those that arrived earlier. In hard- real - time systems , a static analysis may be performed to guarantee a priori that all requests be...DATE 2000 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2000 to 00-00-2000 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE QoS Negotiation in Real - Time Systems and its

User-Level QoS-Adaptive Resource Management in Server End-Systems

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Abdelzaher, Tarek F; Shin, Kang G; Bhatti, Nina

2003-01-01

Proliferation of QoS-sensitive client-server Internet applications such as high-quality audio, video-on-demand, e-commerce, and commercial web hosting has generated an impetus to provide performance guarantees...

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.

Vapor-Phase Hydrodeoxygenation of Guaiacol to Aromatics over Pt/HBeta: Identification of the Role of Acid Sites and Metal Sites on the Reaction Pathway

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Nie, Lei [Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 P.R. China; Institute for Integrated Catalysis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, P.O. Box 999 Richland WA 99352 USA; Peng, Bo [Institute for Integrated Catalysis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, P.O. Box 999 Richland WA 99352 USA; Zhu, Xinli [Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 P.R. China

2018-02-05

Hydrodeoxygenation of guaiacol, a phenolic compound derived from lignin fraction of biomass, over a Pt/HBeta catalyst at 350 °C and atmospheric pressure produces benzene, toluene, xylenes, and C9+ aromatics with yield of 42%, 29%, 12%, and 5%, respectively. Reaction pathways for conversion of two functional groups (hydroxyl and methoxyl) over the bifunctional catalyst were studied. Both guaiacol and intermediate products (catechol and cyclopentanone) were fed onto zeolite HBeta and Pt/SiO2 to identify the individual role of acid site and metal site. Acid sites (mainly Brønsted acid site, BAS) catalyze transalkylation and dehydroxylation reactions in sequence, producing phenol, cresols and xylenols as the major products at high conversion. Pt sites catalyze demethylation reaction resulting in catechol as the primary product, which can either be deoxygenated to phenol followed by phenol to benzene, or decarbonylated to cyclopentanone and further to butane. The close proximity of Pt and BAS in bifunctional Pt/HBeta enables both transalkylation and deoxygenation reactions with inhibited demethylation and decarbonylation reactions, producing aromatics as major final products with a total yield > 85%. Both activity and stability of bifunctional Pt/HBeta during hydrodeoxygenation of guaiacol is improved compared to HBeta and Pt/SiO2. The addition of water to the feed further improves the activity and stability via hydrolysis of O-CH3 bond of guaiacol on BAS and removing coke around Pt.

ANCS: Achieving QoS through Dynamic Allocation of Network Resources in Virtualized Clouds

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheol-Ho Hong

2016-01-01

Full Text Available To meet the various requirements of cloud computing users, research on guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS is gaining widespread attention in the field of cloud computing. However, as cloud computing platforms adopt virtualization as an enabling technology, it becomes challenging to distribute system resources to each user according to the diverse requirements. Although ample research has been conducted in order to meet QoS requirements, the proposed solutions lack simultaneous support for multiple policies, degrade the aggregated throughput of network resources, and incur CPU overhead. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism, called ANCS (Advanced Network Credit Scheduler, to guarantee QoS through dynamic allocation of network resources in virtualization. To meet the various network demands of cloud users, ANCS aims to concurrently provide multiple performance policies; these include weight-based proportional sharing, minimum bandwidth reservation, and maximum bandwidth limitation. In addition, ANCS develops an efficient work-conserving scheduling method for maximizing network resource utilization. Finally, ANCS can achieve low CPU overhead via its lightweight design, which is important for practical deployment.

QoS Differential Scheduling in Cognitive-Radio-Based Smart Grid Networks: An Adaptive Dynamic Programming Approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Rong; Zhong, Weifeng; Xie, Shengli; Zhang, Yan; Zhang, Yun

2016-02-01

As the next-generation power grid, smart grid will be integrated with a variety of novel communication technologies to support the explosive data traffic and the diverse requirements of quality of service (QoS). Cognitive radio (CR), which has the favorable ability to improve the spectrum utilization, provides an efficient and reliable solution for smart grid communications networks. In this paper, we study the QoS differential scheduling problem in the CR-based smart grid communications networks. The scheduler is responsible for managing the spectrum resources and arranging the data transmissions of smart grid users (SGUs). To guarantee the differential QoS, the SGUs are assigned to have different priorities according to their roles and their current situations in the smart grid. Based on the QoS-aware priority policy, the scheduler adjusts the channels allocation to minimize the transmission delay of SGUs. The entire transmission scheduling problem is formulated as a semi-Markov decision process and solved by the methodology of adaptive dynamic programming. A heuristic dynamic programming (HDP) architecture is established for the scheduling problem. By the online network training, the HDP can learn from the activities of primary users and SGUs, and adjust the scheduling decision to achieve the purpose of transmission delay minimization. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed priority policy ensures the low transmission delay of high priority SGUs. In addition, the emergency data transmission delay is also reduced to a significantly low level, guaranteeing the differential QoS in smart grid.

Testing QoE in Different 3D HDTV Technologies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Slanina

2012-04-01

Full Text Available The three dimensional (3D display technology has started flooding the consumer television market. There is a number of different systems available with different marketing strategies and different advertised advantages. The main goal of the experiment described in this paper is to compare the systems in terms of achievable Quality of Experience (QoE in different situations. The display systems considered are the liquid crystal display using polarized light and passive lightweight glasses for the separation of the left- and right-eye images, a plasma display with time multiplexed images and active shutter glasses and a projection system with time multiplexed images and active shutter glasses. As no standardized test methodology has been defined for testing of stereoscopic systems, we develop our own approach to testing different aspects of QoE on different systems without reference using semantic differential scales. We present an analysis of scores with respect to different phenomena under study and define which of the tested aspects can really express a difference in the performance of the considered display technologies.

Glutaric acidemia type II: gene structure and mutations of the electron transfer flavoprotein:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF:QO) gene.

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, Stephen I; Binard, Robert J; Woontner, Michael R; Frerman, Frank E

2002-01-01

Glutaric acidemia type II is a human inborn error of metabolism which can be due to defects in either subunit of electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) or in ETF:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF:QO), but few disease-causing mutations have been described. The ETF:QO gene is located on 4q33, and contains 13 exons. Primers to amplify these exons are presented, together with mutations identified by molecular analysis of 20 ETF:QO-deficient patients. Twenty-one different disease-causing mutations were identified on 36 of the 40 chromosomes.

The development of an instrument to measure quality of vision: the Quality of Vision (QoV) questionnaire.

Science.gov (United States)

McAlinden, Colm; Pesudovs, Konrad; Moore, Jonathan E

2010-11-01

To develop an instrument to measure subjective quality of vision: the Quality of Vision (QoV) questionnaire. A 30-item instrument was designed with 10 symptoms rated in each of three scales (frequency, severity, and bothersome). The QoV was completed by 900 subjects in groups of spectacle wearers, contact lens wearers, and those having had laser refractive surgery, intraocular refractive surgery, or eye disease and investigated with Rasch analysis and traditional statistics. Validity and reliability were assessed by Rasch fit statistics, principal components analysis (PCA), person separation, differential item functioning (DIF), item targeting, construct validity (correlation with visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, total root mean square [RMS] higher order aberrations [HOA]), and test-retest reliability (two-way random intraclass correlation coefficients [ICC] and 95% repeatability coefficients [R(c)]). Rasch analysis demonstrated good precision, reliability, and internal consistency for all three scales (mean square infit and outfit within 0.81-1.27; PCA >60% variance explained by the principal component; person separation 2.08, 2.10, and 2.01 respectively; and minimal DIF). Construct validity was indicated by strong correlations with visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and RMS HOA. Test-retest reliability was evidenced by a minimum ICC of 0.867 and a minimum 95% R(c) of 1.55 units. The QoV Questionnaire consists of a Rasch-tested, linear-scaled, 30-item instrument on three scales providing a QoV score in terms of symptom frequency, severity, and bothersome. It is suitable for measuring QoV in patients with all types of refractive correction, eye surgery, and eye disease that cause QoV problems.

Adaptation of the QoL-AGHDA scale for adults with growth hormone deficiency in four Slavic languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

McKenna Stephen P

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Purpose The Quality of Life in Adult Growth Hormone Deficiency Assessment (QoL-AGHDA is a disease-specific quality of life measure specific to individuals who are growth hormone deficient. The present study describes the adaptation of the QoL-AGHDA for use in the following four Slavic languages; Czech, Polish, Serbian and Slovakian. Methods The study involved three stages in each language; translation, cognitive debriefing and validation. The validation stage assessed internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, reproducibility (test-retest reliability using Spearman's rank correlations, convergent and divergent validity (Correlations with the NHP and known group validity. Results The QoL-AGHDA was successfully translated into the target languages with minimal problems. Cognitive debriefing interviewees (n = 15-18 found the measures easy to complete and identified few problems with the content. Internal consistency (Czech Republic = 0.91, Poland = 0.91, Serbia = 0.91 and Slovakia = 0.89 and reproducibility (Czech Republic = 0.91, Poland = 0.91, Serbia = 0.88 and Slovakia = 0.93 were good in all adaptations. Convergent and divergent validity and known group validity data were not available for Slovakia. The QoL-AGHDA correlated as expected with the NHP scales most relevant to GHD. The QoL-AGHDA was able to distinguish between participants based on a range of variables. Conclusions The QoL-AGHDA was successfully adapted for use in the Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia. Further validation of the Slovakian version would be beneficial. The addition of these new lanaguage versions will prove valuable to multinational clinical trials and to clinical practice in the respective countries.

Summary scores captured changes in subjects' QoL as measured by the multiple scales of the EORTC QLQ-C30.

Science.gov (United States)

Phillips, Rachel; Gandhi, Mihir; Cheung, Yin Bun; Findlay, Michael P; Win, Khin Maung; Hai, Hoang Hoa; Yang, Jin Mo; Lobo, Rolley Rey; Soo, Khee Chee; Chow, Pierce K H

2015-08-01

To examine the performance of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) global health status/quality of life (QoL) scale and two summary scores to detect changes in the QoL profile over time, according to changes in the individual scales. Data came from 167 clinical trial patients with unresectable (advanced) hepatocellular carcinoma. The global health status/QoL scale of the questionnaire contained two items: overall health and overall QoL. Nordin and Hinz proposed summary scores for the questionnaire. A mixed-effect model was fitted to estimate trends in scores over time. Predominantly the individual scale scores declined over time; however, the global health status/QoL score was stable [rate of change = -0.3 per month; 95% confidence interval (CI): -1.2, 0.6]. Nordin's summary score, which gave equal weight to the 15 questionnaire scales, and Hinz's summary score, which gave equal weight to the 30 questionnaire items, showed a statistically significant decline over time, 3.4 (95% CI: -4.5, -2.4) and 4.2 (95% CI: -5.3, -3.0) points per month, respectively. In contrast to the global health status/QoL scale, the summary scores proposed by Nordin and Hinz detected changes in subjects' QoL profile described by the EORTC QLQ-C30 individual scales. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cross-cultural equivalence of the patient- and parent-reported quality of life in short stature youth (QoLISSY) questionnaire.

Science.gov (United States)

Bullinger, Monika; Quitmann, Julia; Silva, Neuza; Rohenkohl, Anja; Chaplin, John E; DeBusk, Kendra; Mimoun, Emmanuelle; Feigerlova, Eva; Herdman, Michael; Sanz, Dolores; Wollmann, Hartmut; Pleil, Andreas; Power, Michael

2014-01-01

Testing cross-cultural equivalence of patient-reported outcomes requires sufficiently large samples per country, which is difficult to achieve in rare endocrine paediatric conditions. We describe a novel approach to cross-cultural testing of the Quality of Life in Short Stature Youth (QoLISSY) questionnaire in five countries by sequentially taking one country out (TOCO) from the total sample and iteratively comparing the resulting psychometric performance. Development of the QoLISSY proceeded from focus group discussions through pilot testing to field testing in 268 short-statured patients and their parents. To explore cross-cultural equivalence, the iterative TOCO technique was used to examine and compare the validity, reliability, and convergence of patient and parent responses on QoLISSY in the field test dataset, and to predict QoLISSY scores from clinical, socio-demographic and psychosocial variables. Validity and reliability indicators were satisfactory for each sample after iteratively omitting one country. Comparisons with the total sample revealed cross-cultural equivalence in internal consistency and construct validity for patients and parents, high inter-rater agreement and a substantial proportion of QoLISSY variance explained by predictors. The TOCO technique is a powerful method to overcome problems of country-specific testing of patient-reported outcome instruments. It provides an empirical support to QoLISSY's cross-cultural equivalence and is recommended for future research.

Xerostomia Quality of Life Scale (XeQoLS) questionnaire: validation of Italian version in head and neck cancer patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Lastrucci, Luciana; Bertocci, Silvia; Bini, Vittorio; Borghesi, Simona; De Majo, Roberta; Rampini, Andrea; Gennari, Pietro Giovanni; Pernici, Paola

2018-01-01

To translate the Xerostomia Quality-of-Life Scale (XeQoLS) into Italian language (XeQoLS-IT). Xerostomia is the most relevant acute and late toxicity in patients with head and neck cancer treated with radiotherapy (RT). Patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments are subjective report on patient perception of health status. The XeQoLS consists of 15 items and measures the impact of salivary gland dysfunction and xerostomia on the four major domains of oral health-related QoL. The XeQoLS-IT was created through a linguistic validation multi-step process: forward translation (TF), backward translation (TB) and administration of the questionnaire to 35 Italian patients with head and neck cancer. Translation was independently carried out by two radiation oncologists who were Italian native speakers. The two versions were compared and adapted to obtain a reconciled version, version 1 (V1). V1 was translated back into English by an Italian pro skilled in teaching English. After review of discrepancies and choice of the most appropriate wording for clarity and similarity to the original, version 2 (V2) was reached by consensus. To evaluate version 2, patients completed the XeQoLS-IT questionnaire and also underwent a cognitive debriefing. The questionnaire was considered simple by the patients. The clarity of the instructions and the easiness to answer questions had a mean value of 4.5 (± 0.71) on a scale from 1 to 5. A valid multi-step process led to the creation of the final version of the XeQoLS-IT, a suitable instrument for the perception of xerostomia in patients treated with RT.

Impact of VoIP and QoS on Open and Distance Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sanjay JASOLA

2006-07-01

Full Text Available Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP is becoming a reality in many organizations. The potential for mobility in voice over wi-fi networks will derive demand for the technology. Wireless VoIP is poised to rival VoIP as an alternative telephony tool. Internet has been used to transport data in the form of packet. In the past, Internet did not support any kind of sophisticated quality of service (QoS mechanism. Although the type of service (TOS field in the Internet protocol (IP header has been existing and has been allowing the differentiated treatment of packets, it was never really used on a large scale. The voice is sensitive to delay and jitter so bandwidth must be guaranteed while transporting it. With the extensive use of Internet for carrying voice, there is a need to add QoS functionality in it. QoS with reference to VoIP has been discussed in the paper. Limited bandwidth and network latency are the issues which need to be considered while using wireless LAN for packetized voice data. Efforts of standards like 802.11e which will take care of these issues, have also been explored. The impact of these technologies on distance education has also been explored in the paper.

Personal goals and factors related to QoL in Dutch homeless people: what is the role of goal-related self-efficacy?

Science.gov (United States)

van der Laan, Jorien; Boersma, Sandra N; van Straaten, Barbara; Rodenburg, Gerda; van de Mheen, Dike; Wolf, Judith R L M

2017-05-01

Very little is known about the personal goals of homeless people and how these relate to their quality of life (QoL). By using survey data on 407 homeless adults upon entry to the social relief system in 2011, we examined the personal goals of homeless adults and the association between their perceived goal-related self-efficacy and their QoL. A hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse the association between QoL and goal-related self-efficacy, relative to factors contributing to QoL, such as demographic characteristics, socioeconomic resources, health and service use. Results indicate that the majority of homeless adults had at least one personal goal for the coming 6 months and that most goals concerned housing and daily life (94.3%) and finances (83.6%). The QoL of homeless adults appeared to be lower in comparison with general population samples. General goal-related self-efficacy was positively related to QoL (β = 0.09, P = 0.042), independent of socioeconomic resources (i.e. income and housing), health and service use. The strongest predictors of QoL were psychological distress (β = -0.45, P people as the starting point of integrated service programmes and to promote their goal-related self-efficacy by strength-based interventions. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

McMAC: Towards a MAC Protocol with Multi-Constrained QoS Provisioning for Diverse Traffic in Wireless Body Area Networks

OpenAIRE

Monowar, Muhammad; Hassan, Mohammad; Bajaber, Fuad; Al-Hussein, Musaed; Alamri, Atif

2012-01-01

The emergence of heterogeneous applications with diverse requirements for resource-constrained Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) poses significant challenges for provisioning Quality of Service (QoS) with multi-constraints (delay and reliability) while preserving energy efficiency. To address such challenges, this paper proposes McMAC, a MAC protocol with multi-constrained QoS provisioning for diverse traffic classes in WBANs. McMAC classifies traffic based on their multi-constrained QoS de...

A Scalable Approach for QoS-Based Web Service Selection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alrifai, Mohammad; Risse, Thomas; Dolog, Peter

2009-01-01

QoS-based service selection aims at finding the best component services that satisfy the end-to-end quality requirements. The problem can be modeled as a multi-dimension multi-choice 0-1 knapsack problem, which is known as NP-hard. Recently published solutions propose using linear programming...

On Designing Thermal-Aware Localized QoS Routing Protocol for in-vivo Sensor Nodes in Wireless Body Area Networks

OpenAIRE

Monowar, Muhammad Mostafa; Bajaber, Fuad

2015-01-01

In this paper, we address the thermal rise and Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning issue for an intra-body Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) having in-vivo sensor nodes. We propose a thermal-aware QoS routing protocol, called TLQoS, that facilitates the system in achieving desired QoS in terms of delay and reliability for diverse traffic types, as well as avoids the formation of highly heated nodes known as hotspot(s), and keeps the temperature rise along the network to an acceptable level....

Adult Students' Perceptions in Distance Education Learning Environments Based on a Videoconferencing Platform – QoE Analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Toni Malinovski

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Distance education learning environments provide tremendous convenience and flexibility, allowing busy, mobile adult learners to engage in education while coping with their limited resources in terms of time, energy and finances. Following a student-centered approach this study investigates adult students’ subjective perceptions while using distance education systems based on a videoconferencing platform as Quality of Experience (QoE. Based on a literature review, sociological behavior and expectations, we have constructed a structural equation model (SEM illustrating relations among different variables that can predict positive levels of adult students’ QoE, thus providing guidelines for proper development. We have tested the model using a survey of 198 primary education school teachers involved in a videoconferencing-based learning program for teacher enhancement. Results show a good fit to the model developed. The analysis showed that adult students’ QoE is directly influenced by appropriateness of teacher-student interaction and ease of participation, as well predicted by students’ motivation to attend similar trainings. Additionally, we found that variances in technical quality did not directly influence their QoE from the learning sessions.

Dynamic QoS Evaluation of Multimedia Contents in Wireless Networks by “Double-Boomerang” Watermarking

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Gaetano Giunta

2010-03-01

Full Text Available This work presents a cooperative network-aware processing of multimedia content for dynamic quality of service management in wireless IP networks. Our technique can be also used for quality control in UMTS environments, exploiting the tracing watermarking recently introduced in literature. In this work, we use the transmitted video-sequences to monitor the QoS in a videoconference call. The video-sequence of every active user travels on the communication link, one time as video (transparent mode, one time as watermark (hidden mode describing a boomerang trajectory. The results obtained through our simulation trials confirm the validity of such approach. In fact, the advantages of distributing the management process are (i an easier and more precise localization of the cause of QoS problems, (ii a better knowledge of local situations, (iii a lower complexity for a single QoS agent and (iv an increase in possible actions.

Identification of the G143A mutation associated with QoI resistance in Cercospora beticola field isolates from Michigan, United States.

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Bolton, Melvin D; Rivera, Viviana; Secor, Gary

2013-01-01

Cercospora leaf spot (CLS), caused by the fungus Cercospora beticola, is the most serious foliar disease of sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) worldwide. Disease control is mainly achieved by timely fungicide applications. In 2011, CLS control failures were reported in spite of application of quinone outside inhibitor (QoI) fungicide in several counties in Michigan, United States. The purpose of this study was to confirm the resistant phenotype and identify the molecular basis for QoI resistance of Michigan C. beticola isolates. Isolates collected in Michigan in 1998 and 1999 that had no previous exposure to the QoI fungicides trifloxystrobin or pyraclostrobin exhibited QoI EC(50) values of ≤ 0.006 µg mL(-1) . In contrast, all isolates obtained in 2011 exhibited EC(50) values of > 0.92 µg mL(-1) to both fungicides and harbored a mutation in cytochrome b (cytb) that led to an amino acid exchange from glycine to alanine at position 143 (G143A) compared with baseline QoI-sensitive isolates. Microsatellite analysis of the isolates suggested that QoI resistance emerged independently in multiple genotypic backgrounds at multiple locations. A real-time PCR assay utilizing dual-labeled fluorogenic probes was developed to detect and differentiate QoI-resistant isolates harboring the G143A mutation from sensitive isolates. The G143A mutation in cytb is associated with QoI resistance in C. beticola. Accurate monitoring of this mutation will be essential for fungicide resistance management in this pathosystem. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Published 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An Efficient and QoS Supported Multichannel MAC Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Caixia; Tan, Guozhen; Yu, Chao

2017-10-09

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) employ multichannel to provide a variety of safety and non-safety (transport efficiency and infotainment) applications, based on the IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609.4 protocols. Different types of applications require different levels Quality-of-Service (QoS) support. Recently, transport efficiency and infotainment applications (e.g., electronic map download and Internet access) have received more and more attention, and this kind of applications is expected to become a big market driver in a near future. In this paper, we propose an Efficient and QoS supported Multichannel Medium Access Control (EQM-MAC) protocol for VANETs in a highway environment. The EQM-MAC protocol utilizes the service channel resources for non-safety message transmissions during the whole synchronization interval, and it dynamically adjusts minimum contention window size for different non-safety services according to the traffic conditions. Theoretical model analysis and extensive simulation results show that the EQM-MAC protocol can support QoS services, while ensuring the high saturation throughput and low transmission delay for non-safety applications.

An Efficient and QoS Supported Multichannel MAC Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caixia Song

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs employ multichannel to provide a variety of safety and non-safety (transport efficiency and infotainment applications, based on the IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609.4 protocols. Different types of applications require different levels Quality-of-Service (QoS support. Recently, transport efficiency and infotainment applications (e.g., electronic map download and Internet access have received more and more attention, and this kind of applications is expected to become a big market driver in a near future. In this paper, we propose an Efficient and QoS supported Multichannel Medium Access Control (EQM-MAC protocol for VANETs in a highway environment. The EQM-MAC protocol utilizes the service channel resources for non-safety message transmissions during the whole synchronization interval, and it dynamically adjusts minimum contention window size for different non-safety services according to the traffic conditions. Theoretical model analysis and extensive simulation results show that the EQM-MAC protocol can support QoS services, while ensuring the high saturation throughput and low transmission delay for non-safety applications.

A Quantitative Study of Quality of Experience (QoE) for Decreasing and Increasing Network Performance.

OpenAIRE

Dhungana, Ramesh; Shahi, Deepak

2011-01-01

Currently, user satisfaction is becoming one of the major concerns for the service provider in accommodating user demand. This paper evaluates the user’s perception (Quality of Experience, QoE) of the increasing and decreasing response times (Quality of Service, QoS), in particular a login to web login page by the implementation of Mean Opinion Score (MOS). By comparing the results to user perception of web login performance, we show that the users perceive web login for increasing and decrea...

Characterization of mitochondrial proteome in a severe case of ETF-QO deficiency.

Science.gov (United States)

Rocha, H; Ferreira, R; Carvalho, J; Vitorino, R; Santa, C; Lopes, L; Gregersen, N; Vilarinho, L; Amado, F

2011-12-10

Multiple acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (MADD) is a mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation disorder caused by mutations that affect electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) or ETF:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) or even due to unidentified disturbances of riboflavin metabolism. Besides all the available data on the molecular basis of FAO disorders, including MADD, the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying clinical phenotype development, namely at the mitochondrial level, are poorly understood. In order to contribute to the elucidation of these mechanisms, we isolated mitochondria from cultured fibroblasts, from a patient with a severe MADD presentation due to ETF-QO deficiency, characterize its mitochondrial proteome and compare it with normal controls. The used approach (2-DE-MS/MS) allowed the positive identification of 287 proteins in both patient and controls, presenting 35 of the significant differences in their relative abundance. Among the differentially expressed are proteins associated to binding/folding functions, mitochondrial antioxidant enzymes as well as proteins associated to apoptotic events. The overexpression of chaperones like Hsp60 or mitochondrial Grp75, antioxidant enzymes and apoptotic proteins reflects the mitochondrial response to a complete absence of ETF-QO. Our study provides a global perspective of the mitochondrial proteome plasticity in a severe case of MADD and highlights the main molecular pathways involved in its pathogenesis. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Implementation of QoSS (Quality-of-Security Service) for NoC-Based SoC Protection

Science.gov (United States)

Sepúlveda, Johanna; Pires, Ricardo; Strum, Marius; Chau, Wang Jiang

Many of the current electronic systems embedded in a SoC (System-on-Chip) are used to capture, store, manipulate and access critical data, as well as to perform other key functions. In such a scenario, security is considered as an important issue. The Network-on-chip (NoC), as the foreseen communication structure of next-generation SoC devices, can be used to efficiently incorporate security. Our work proposes the implementation of QoSS (Quality of Security Service) to overcome present SoC vulnerabilities. QoSS is a novel concept for data protection that introduces security as a dimension of QoS. In this paper, we present the implementation of two security services (access control and authentication), that may be configured to assume one from several possible levels, the implementation of a technique to avoid denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, evaluate their effectiveness and estimate their impact on NoC performance.

Multi-Class load balancing scheme for QoS and energy ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Multi-Class load balancing scheme for QoS and energy conservation in cloud computing. ... If you would like more information about how to print, save, and work with PDFs, Highwire Press provides a helpful Frequently Asked Questions about PDFs. Alternatively, you can download the PDF file directly to your computer, from ...

[Local reactions after diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccines in mice; changes in histopathology at the injection site].

Science.gov (United States)

Nagaoka, Chiharu; Katsuta, Tomohiro; Honjo, Ayako; Tateyama, Satoshi; Tokutake, Tadaomi; Arimoto, Yutaka; Nakajima, Natsuki; Goshima, Toshiro; Kato, Tatsuo

2006-03-01

Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP) developed in Japan is now widely used worldwide. DTaP is safer than the diphtheria-tetanus-whole-cell pertussis vaccine (DTwP) and has fewer severe side effects, but local reactions such as redness, swelling, and induration are still reported. The pathophysiological mechanism of these reactions is controversial. To clarify the cause of local reactions, we conducted studies using the mouse model. After administering either one or two abdominal subcutaneous DTaP inoculations, we observed changes in histopathology at the injection site at 24h, 48h, and 7 days. The control group, inoculated with physiologic saline, showed no significant changes either pathologically or with the naked eye. All mice after DTaP vaccination showed indurations at the injection site. Pathologically, we watched leukocyte invasion into or around the site, especially neutrophils and eosinophils. After the first vaccination, the extent of the invasion was strong 24h and 7 days later. At 24h following the second vaccination, a dramatic leukocyte invasion seen persisted at 7days. At 7 days after the first vaccination, peripheral fibrosis had begun, and when a second vaccination was administered, it began even earlier at the second site. These histopathological changes show that local reactions are caused by both inflammatory and allergic responses. Because this mouse study resulted in the same pattern of reactions observed in humans, this method will be useful for studies focusing on local reactions.

Determinants of quality of life (QoL) and quality of university life (QuL) in Malaysian public university students

Science.gov (United States)

Haron, Halilah; Osman, Balkish Mohd; Maidinsah, Hamidah; Sari, Maznita Maksari @ Md; Zaki, Nurul Qusna Mohd

2015-02-01

Quality of life (QoL) refers to the degree of satisfaction, or the sense of well being, people experience in organizations including universities. The quality of life students experience in a university increases when they believe their needs are aligned with the goals of the university because they perceive that the university is responsive to their needs. Quality of University Life (QuL) refers to the students' ability to stabilize their life regarding social activities, academic performance, health and spiritual. A study was undertaken to investigate the accountability of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia, in terms of teaching and learning. The objective of this paper is to identify and evaluate the determinants of QoL and QuL measurement models. Data from 788 students who responded to a set of questionnaire were collected from nine faculties. Factor analysis performed on the data resulted in six determinants for QuL; friendly, skills, satisfaction, interest, learning and feeling. Only two determinants, environment and quality represented QoL. Results indicated that the measures were highly reliable (in terms of internal consistency) based on Cronbach Alpha values ranging from 0.705 to 0.905 for QuL and 0.826 to 0.888 for QoL. Construct validity was supported by Average Variance Extraction values of more than 0.5 for QuL (0.481 - 0.724) and QoL. (0.503 and 0.519). The construct reliability (CR) values ranging between 0.623 to 0.882 for QuL and 0.731 to 0.815 for QoL suggested good reliability construct.

A framework for QoS & mobility in the Internet next generation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rexhepi, Vlora; Karagiannis, Georgios; Heijenk, Geert; Pras, Aiko

2000-01-01

It is expected that the Internet next generation architecture will support applications with different quality of service requirements, independently of whether their location is fixed or mobile. However, enabling QoS in Internet is a tough challenge, and it gets even tougher when the mobile

A framework for QoS & mobility in the Internet next generation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Karagiannis, Georgios; Rexhepi, Vlora; Heijenk, Geert

It is expected that the next generation Internet architecture will support applications with different quality of service requirements, independently of whether their location is fixed or movable. However, enabling QoS in Internet is a tough challenge, and it gets even tougher when the mobile

Catalytic asymmetric diels-alder reaction of quinone imine ketals: a site-divergent approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Hashimoto, Takuya; Nakatsu, Hiroki; Maruoka, Keiji

2015-04-07

The catalytic asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction of quinone imine ketals with diene carbamates catalyzed by axially chiral dicarboxylic acids is reported herein. A variety of primary and secondary alkyl-substituted quinone derivatives which have not been applied in previous asymmetric quinone Diels-Alder reactions could be employed using this method. More importantly, we succeeded in developing a strategy to divert the reaction site in unsymmetrical 3-alkyl quinone imine ketals from the inherently favored unsubstituted C=C bond to the disfavored alkyl-substituted C=C bond. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Diels-Alder reactions in confined spaces: the influence of catalyst structure and the nature of active sites for the retro-Diels-Alder reaction.

Science.gov (United States)

Cantín, Ángel; Gomez, M Victoria; de la Hoz, Antonio

2016-01-01

Diels-Alder cycloaddition between cyclopentadiene and p -benzoquinone has been studied in the confined space of a pure silica zeolite Beta and the impact on reaction rate due to the concentration effect within the pore and diffusion limitations are discussed. Introduction of Lewis or Brønsted acid sites on the walls of the zeolite strongly increases the reaction rate. However, contrary to what occurs with mesoporous molecular sieves (MCM-41), Beta zeolite does not catalyse the retro-Diels-Alder reaction, resulting in a highly selective catalyst for the cycloaddition reaction.

Cooperative Optimization QoS Cloud Routing Protocol Based on Bacterial Opportunistic Foraging and Chemotaxis Perception for Mobile Internet

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shujuan Wang

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In order to strengthen the mobile Internet mobility management and cloud platform resources utilization, optimizing the cloud routing efficiency is established, based on opportunistic bacterial foraging bionics, and puts forward a chemotaxis perception of collaborative optimization QoS (Quality of Services cloud routing mechanism. The cloud routing mechanism is based on bacterial opportunity to feed and bacterial motility and to establish the data transmission and forwarding of the bacterial population behavior characteristics. This mechanism is based on the characteristics of drug resistance of bacteria and the structure of the field, and through many iterations of the individual behavior and population behavior the bacteria can be spread to the food gathering area with a certain probability. Finally, QoS cloud routing path would be selected and optimized based on bacterial bionic optimization and hedge mapping relationship between mobile Internet node and bacterial population evolution iterations. Experimental results show that, compared with the standard dynamic routing schemes, the proposed scheme has shorter transmission delay, lower packet error ratio, QoS cloud routing loading, and QoS cloud route request overhead.

Fairness as a QoS Measure for Web Services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stefano Bistarelli

2009-06-01

Full Text Available Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs are component-based architectures, characterized by reusability, modularization and composition, usually offered by HTTP (web services and often equipped with a Quality of Services (QoS measure. In order to guarantee the fairness property to each client requesting a service, we propose a fair version of the (Soft Concurrent Constraint language to deal with the negotiation phases of the Service Level Agreement (SLA protocol.

The Development and Validation of a Generic Instrument, QoDoS, for Assessing the Quality of Decision Making.

Science.gov (United States)

Donelan, Ronan; Walker, Stuart; Salek, Sam

2016-01-01

The impact of decision-making during the development and the regulatory review of medicines greatly influences the delivery of new medicinal products. Currently, there is no generic instrument that can be used to assess the quality of decision-making. This study describes the development of the Quality of Decision-Making Orientation Scheme QoDoS(©) instrument for appraising the quality of decision-making. Semi-structured interviews about decision-making were carried out with 29 senior decision makers from the pharmaceutical industry (10), regulatory authorities (9) and contract research organizations (10). The interviews offered a qualified understanding of the subjective decision-making approach, influences, behaviors and other factors that impact such processes for individuals and organizations involved in the delivery of new medicines. Thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews was carried out using NVivo8® software. Content validity was carried out using qualitative and quantitative data by an expert panel, which led to the developmental version of the QoDoS. Further psychometric evaluations were performed, including factor analysis, item reduction, reliability testing and construct validation. The thematic analysis of the interviews yielded a 94-item initial version of the QoDoS(©) with a 5-point Likert scale. The instrument was tested for content validity using a panel of experts for language clarity, completeness, relevance and scaling, resulting in a favorable agreement by panel members with an intra-class correlation coefficient value of 0.89 (95% confidence interval = 0.56, 0.99). A 76-item QoDoS(©) (version 2) emerged from content validation. Factor analysis produced a 47-item measure with four domains. The 47-item QoDoS(©) (version 3) showed high internal consistency (n = 120, Cronbach's alpha = 0.89), high reproducibility (n = 20, intra-class correlation = 0.77) and a mean completion time of 10 min. Reliability testing and construct

The influence of the "cage" effect on the mechanism of reversible bimolecular multistage chemical reactions proceeding from different sites in solutions.

Science.gov (United States)

Doktorov, Alexander B

2016-08-28

Manifestations of the "cage" effect at the encounters of reactants have been theoretically treated on the example of multistage reactions (including bimolecular exchange reactions as elementary stages) proceeding from different active sites in liquid solutions. It is shown that for reactions occurring near the contact of reactants, consistent consideration of quasi-stationary kinetics of such multistage reactions (possible in the framework of the encounter theory only) can be made on the basis of chemical concepts of the "cage complex," just as in the case of one-site model described in the literature. Exactly as in the one-site model, the presence of the "cage" effect gives rise to new channels of reactant transformation that cannot result from elementary event of chemical conversion for the given reaction mechanism. Besides, the multisite model demonstrates new (as compared to one-site model) features of multistage reaction course.

Dynamic Resource Allocation and QoS Control Capabilities of the Japanese Academic Backbone Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michihiro Aoki

2010-08-01

Full Text Available Dynamic resource control capabilities have become increasingly important for academic networks that must support big scientific research projects at the same time as less data intensive research and educational activities. This paper describes the dynamic resource allocation and QoS control capabilities of the Japanese academic backbone network, called SINET3, which supports a variety of academic applications with a wide range of network services. The article describes the network architecture, networking technologies, resource allocation, QoS control, and layer-1 bandwidth on-demand services. It also details typical services developed for scientific research, including the user interface, resource control, and management functions, and includes performance evaluations.

Leveraging the BPEL Event Model to Support QoS-aware Process Execution

Science.gov (United States)

Zaid, Farid; Berbner, Rainer; Steinmetz, Ralf

Business processes executed using compositions of distributed Web Services are susceptible to different fault types. The Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is widely used to execute such processes. While BPEL provides fault handling mechanisms to handle functional faults like invalid message types, it still lacks a flexible native mechanism to handle non-functional exceptions associated with violations of QoS levels that are typically specified in a governing Service Level Agreement (SLA), In this paper, we present an approach to complement BPEL's fault handling, where expected QoS levels and necessary recovery actions are specified declaratively in form of Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules. Our main contribution is leveraging BPEL's standard event model which we use as an event space for the created ECA rules. We validate our approach by an extension to an open source BPEL engine.

QoS Provisioning Techniques for Future Fiber-Wireless (FiWi Access Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Maier

2010-04-01

Full Text Available A plethora of enabling optical and wireless access-metro network technologies have been emerging that can be used to build future-proof bimodal fiber-wireless (FiWi networks. Hybrid FiWi networks aim at providing wired and wireless quad-play services over the same infrastructure simultaneously and hold great promise to mitigate the digital divide and change the way we live and work by replacing commuting with teleworking. After overviewing enabling optical and wireless network technologies and their QoS provisioning techniques, we elaborate on enabling radio-over-fiber (RoF and radio-and-fiber (R&F technologies. We describe and investigate new QoS provisioning techniques for future FiWi networks, ranging from traffic class mapping, scheduling, and resource management to advanced aggregation techniques, congestion control, and layer-2 path selection algorithms.

QoS-aware self-adaptation of communication protocols in a pervasive service middleware

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Weishan; Hansen, Klaus Marius; Fernandes, João

2010-01-01

Pervasive computing is characterized by heterogeneous devices that usually have scarce resources requiring optimized usage. These devices may use different communication protocols which can be switched at runtime. As different communication protocols have different quality of service (Qo......S) properties, this motivates optimized self-adaption of protocols for devices, e.g., considering power consumption and other QoS requirements, e.g. round trip time (RTT) for service invocations, throughput, and reliability. In this paper, we present an extensible approach for self-adaptation of communication...... protocols for pervasive web services, where protocols are designed as reusable connectors and our middleware infrastructure can hide the complexity of using different communication protocols to upper layers. We also propose to use Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to find optimized configurations at runtime...

Investigation of the 33S(d,p)34S reaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baan, J.G. van der; Sikora, B.R.

1971-01-01

Angular distributions have been measured of proton groups, corresponding to 34S states up to Ex = 6.63 MeV excited in the reaction 33S(d, p)34S at Ed = 12 MeV, with the use of a split-pole magnetic spectrograph. The ground state Q-value has been measured as Qo = 9195±6 keV. A DWBA analysis yields ln

Dynamic allocation and admission policies for QoS-aware provisioning systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mazzucco, M.; Mazzara, M.; Dragoni, Nicola

2013-01-01

We present an architecture of a hosting system consisting of a set of hosted web services subject to QoS constraints, and a certain number of servers used to run user's demand. The traffic is session–based, while provider and users agree on SLAs specifying the expected level of service performance...

A Multi-QoS Aggregation Mechanism for Improved Fairness in WLAN

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gatnau, Marta; Catania, Davide; Cattoni, Andrea Fabio

2013-01-01

The 802.11e and subsequently the 802.11n amendments brought Quality of Service (QoS) into the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) arena, in order to provide higher access priority to certain types of traffic such as video and voice. Unfortunately these improvements are not enough, since in very...

Closure of the condensed-phase organic-nitrate reaction unreviewed safety question at Hanford site

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

COWLEY, W.L.

1999-01-01

A discovery Unreviewed Safety Question (USQ) was declared on the underground waste storage tanks at the Hanford Site in May 1996. The USQ was for condensed-phase organic-nitrate reactions (sometimes called organic complexant reactions) in the tanks. This paper outlines the steps taken to close the USQ, and resolve the related safety issue. Several processes were used at the Hanford Site to extract and/or process plutonium. These processes resulted in organic complexants (for chelating multivalent cations) and organic extraction solvents being sent to the underground waste storage tanks. This paper addresses the organic complexant hazard. The organic complexants are in waste matrices that include inert material, diluents, and potential oxidizers. In the presence of oxidizing material, the complexant salts can be made to react exothermically by heating to high temperatures or by applying an external ignition source of sufficient energy. The first organic complexant hazard assessments focused on determining whether a hulk runaway reaction could occur, similar to the 1957 accident at Kyshtm (a reprocessing plant in the former U.S.S.R.). Early analyses (1977 through 1994) examined organic-nitrate reaction onset temperatures and concluded that a bulk runaway reaction could not occur at the Hanford Site because tank temperatures were well below that necessary for bulk runaway. Therefore, it was believed that organic-nitrate reactions were adequately described in the then current Authorization Basis (AB). Subsequent studies examined a different accident scenario, propagation resulting from an external ignition source (e.g., lightning or welding slag) that initiates a combustion front that propagates through the organic waste. A USQ evaluation determined that localized high energy ignition sources were credible, and that point source ignition of organic complexant waste was not adequately addressed i n the then existing AB. Consequently, the USQ was declared on the

Assignment of electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) to human chromosome 4q33 by fluorescence in situ hybridization and somatic cell hybridization.

Science.gov (United States)

Spector, E B; Seltzer, W K; Goodman, S I

1999-08-01

Electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is a nuclear-encoded protein located in the inner mitochondrial membrane. Inherited defects of ETF-QO cause glutaric acidemia type II. We here describe the localization of the ETF-QO gene to human chromosome 4q33 by somatic cell hybridization and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

On Designing Thermal-Aware Localized QoS Routing Protocol for in-vivo Sensor Nodes in Wireless Body Area Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Monowar, Muhammad Mostafa; Bajaber, Fuad

2015-06-15

In this paper, we address the thermal rise and Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning issue for an intra-body Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) having in-vivo sensor nodes. We propose a thermal-aware QoS routing protocol, called TLQoS, that facilitates the system in achieving desired QoS in terms of delay and reliability for diverse traffic types, as well as avoids the formation of highly heated nodes known as hotspot(s), and keeps the temperature rise along the network to an acceptable level. TLQoS exploits modular architecture wherein different modules perform integrated operations in providing multiple QoS service with lower temperature rise. To address the challenges of highly dynamic wireless environment inside the human body. TLQoS implements potential-based localized routing that requires only local neighborhood information. TLQoS avoids routing loop formation as well as reduces the number of hop traversal exploiting hybrid potential, and tuning a configurable parameter. We perform extensive simulations of TLQoS, and the results show that TLQoS has significant performance improvements over state-of-the-art approaches.

McMAC: Towards a MAC Protocol with Multi-Constrained QoS Provisioning for Diverse Traffic in Wireless Body Area Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muhammad Mostafa Monowar

2012-11-01

Full Text Available The emergence of heterogeneous applications with diverse requirements forresource-constrained Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs poses significant challengesfor provisioning Quality of Service (QoS with multi-constraints (delay and reliability whilepreserving energy efficiency. To address such challenges, this paper proposes McMAC,a MAC protocol with multi-constrained QoS provisioning for diverse traffic classes inWBANs. McMAC classifies traffic based on their multi-constrained QoS demands andintroduces a novel superframe structure based on the "transmit-whenever-appropriate"principle, which allows diverse periods for diverse traffic classes according to their respectiveQoS requirements. Furthermore, a novel emergency packet handling mechanism is proposedto ensure packet delivery with the least possible delay and the highest reliability. McMACis also modeled analytically, and extensive simulations were performed to evaluate itsperformance. The results reveal that McMAC achieves the desired delay and reliabilityguarantee according to the requirements of a particular traffic class while achieving energyefficiency.

McMAC: towards a MAC protocol with multi-constrained QoS provisioning for diverse traffic in Wireless Body Area Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Monowar, Muhammad Mostafa; Hassan, Mohammad Mehedi; Bajaber, Fuad; Al-Hussein, Musaed; Alamri, Atif

2012-11-12

The emergence of heterogeneous applications with diverse requirements for resource-constrained Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) poses significant challenges for provisioning Quality of Service (QoS) with multi-constraints (delay and reliability) while preserving energy efficiency. To address such challenges, this paper proposes McMAC,a MAC protocol with multi-constrained QoS provisioning for diverse traffic classes in WBANs. McMAC classifies traffic based on their multi-constrained QoS demands and introduces a novel superframe structure based on the "transmit-whenever-appropriate"principle, which allows diverse periods for diverse traffic classes according to their respective QoS requirements. Furthermore, a novel emergency packet handling mechanism is proposedto ensure packet delivery with the least possible delay and the highest reliability. McMAC is also modeled analytically, and extensive simulations were performed to evaluate its performance. The results reveal that McMAC achieves the desired delay and reliability guarantee according to the requirements of a particular traffic class while achieving energy efficiency.

Simulation of Routing Protocol with CoS/QoS Enhancements in Heterogeneous Communication Network

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Kubera, Emil; Sliwa, Joanna; Zubel, Krzysztof; Mroczko, Adrian

2006-01-01

The article describes the subject of QoS routing mechanism in tactical heterogeneous communication network consisting of network elements built in different technologies and connected following rules...

Implementation and Evaluation of Multichannel Multi-Interface Routing Mechanism with QoS-Consideration for Ad-Hoc Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Satoh Hiroki

2010-01-01

Full Text Available To accommodate real-time multimedia application while satisfying application-level QoS requirements in a wireless ad-hoc network, we need QoS control mechanisms. We proposed a new routing mechanism for a wireless ad-hoc network composed of nodes equipped with multiple network interfaces. By embedding information about channel usage in control messages of OLSRv2, each node obtains a view of topology and bandwidth information of the whole network. Based on the obtained information, a source node determines a logical path with the maximum available bandwidth to satisfy application-level QoS requirements. In this paper, we evaluated feasibility of the proposal through simulation and practical experiments and confirmed that our proposal effectively transferred multimedia packets over a logical path avoiding congested links. The load on a network is well distributed and the network can accommodate more sessions than OLSRv2 and QOLSR.

Collaborative QoS Prediction for Mobile Service with Data Filtering and SlopeOne Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuyu Yin

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The mobile service is a widely used carrier for mobile applications. With the increase of the number of mobile services, for service recommendation and selection, the nonfunctional properties (also known as quality of service, QoS become increasingly important. However, in many cases, the number of mobile services invoked by a user is quite limited, which leads to the large number of missing QoS values. In recent years, many prediction algorithms, such as algorithms extended from collaborative filtering (CF, are proposed to predict QoS values. However, the ideas of most existing algorithms are borrowed from the recommender system community, not specific for mobile service. In this paper, we first propose a data filtering-extended SlopeOne model (filtering-based CF, which is based on the characteristics of a mobile service and considers the relation with location. Also, using the data filtering technique in FB-CF and matrix factorization (MF, this paper proposes another model FB-MF (filtering-based MF. We also build an ensemble model, which combines the prediction results of FB-CF model and FB-MF model. We conduct sufficient experiments, and the experimental results demonstrate that our models outperform all compared methods and achieve good results in high data sparsity scenario.

An Automatic Web Service Composition Framework Using QoS-Based Web Service Ranking Algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Mallayya, Deivamani; Ramachandran, Baskaran; Viswanathan, Suganya

2015-01-01

Web service has become the technology of choice for service oriented computing to meet the interoperability demands in web applications. In the Internet era, the exponential addition of web services nominates the "quality of service" as essential parameter in discriminating the web services. In this paper, a user preference based web service ranking (UPWSR) algorithm is proposed to rank web services based on user preferences and QoS aspect of the web service. When the user's request cannot be fulfilled by a single atomic service, several existing services should be composed and delivered as a composition. The proposed framework allows the user to specify the local and global constraints for composite web services which improves flexibility. UPWSR algorithm identifies best fit services for each task in the user request and, by choosing the number of candidate services for each task, reduces the time to generate the composition plans. To tackle the problem of web service composition, QoS aware automatic web service composition (QAWSC) algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the QoS aspects of the web services and user preferences. The proposed framework allows user to provide feedback about the composite service which improves the reputation of the services.

Validity of LupusQoL-China for the assessment of health related quality of life in Chinese patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Su-li Wang

Full Text Available OBJECTIVES: To adapt and assess the validity and reliability of LupusQoL for use in Chinese patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE. METHODS: Debriefing interviews of subjects with SLE guided the language modifications of the tool. The process of adaptation proceeded according to the guideline and pre-testing results of LupusQoL-China. 220 SLE patients completed LupusQoL-China and a generic preference-based measurement of health EuroQoL scale (EQ-5D, and 20 patients repeated them after 2 weeks. Internal consistency (ICR and test-retest (TRT reliability, convergent and discriminant validity were examined. Factor analysis and Rasch analysis were performed. RESULTS: The mean (SD age of the 208 subjects with SLE was 33.93 (± 9.19 years. ICR and TRT of the eight domains ranged from 0.811 to 0.965 and 0.836 to 0.974, respectively. The LupusQoL-China domains demonstrated substantial evidence of construct validity when compared with equivalent domains on the EQ-5D (physical health and usual activities r = -0.63, pain and pain/discomfort r = -0.778, emotional health and anxiety/depression r = -0.761, planning and usual activities r = -0.560. Most LupusQoL-China domains could discriminate patients with varied disease activities and end-organ damage (according to SELENA-SLEDAI and SLICC-DI. The principal component analysis revealed six factors, and confirmatory factor analysis result of which is similar to eight factors model. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide evidence that the LupusQoL-China is valid as a disease-specific HRQoL assessment tool for Chinese patients with SLE.

Using latency as a QoS indicator for global cloud computing services

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Jens Myrup; Riaz, Tahir; Dubalski, Bozydar

2013-01-01

Many globally distributed cloud computing (CC) applications and services running over the Internet, between globally dispersed clients and servers, will require certain levels of QoS in order to deliver and give a sufficiently smooth user experience. This would be essential for real-time streaming...

Public reactions to nuclear waste: Citizens' views of repository siting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rosa, E.A.

1993-01-01

This book presents revised and updated papers from a panel of social scientists, at the 1989 AAAS meetings, that examined the public's reactions to nuclear waste disposal and the repository siting process. The papers report the results of original empirical research on citizens' views of nuclear waste repository siting. Topics covered include the following: content analysis of public testimony; sources of public concern about nuclear waste disposal in Texas agricultural communities; local attitudes toward high-level waste repository at Hanford; perceived risk and attitudes toward nuclear wastes; attitudes of Nevada urban residents toward a nuclear waste repository; attitudes of rural community residents toward a nuclear waste respository. An introductory chapter provides background and context, and a concluding chapter summarizes the implications of the reports. Two additional chapters cover important features of high-level waste disposal: long term trends in public attitudes toward nuclear energy and nuclear waste policy and assessment of the effects on the Los Vegas convention business if a high-level nuclear waste depository were sited in Nevada

Traffic Agents for Improving QoS in Mixed Infrastructure and Ad Hoc Modes Wireless LAN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuan Hai-Feng

2006-01-01

Full Text Available As an important complement to infrastructured wireless networks, mobile ad hoc networks (MANET are more flexible in providing wireless access services, but more difficult in meeting different quality of service (QoS requirements for mobile customers. Both infrastructure and ad hoc network structures are supported in wireless local area networks (WLAN, which can offer high data-rate wireless multimedia services to the mobile stations (MSs in a limited geographical area. For those out-of-coverage MSs, how to effectively connect them to the access point (AP and provide QoS support is a challenging issue. By mixing the infrastructure and the ad hoc modes in WLAN, we propose in this paper a new coverage improvement scheme that can identify suitable idle MSs in good service zones as traffic agents (TAs to relay traffic from those out-of-coverage MSs to the AP. The service coverage area of WLAN is then expanded. The QoS requirements (e.g., bandwidth of those MSs are considered in the selection process of corresponding TAs. Mathematical analysis, verified by computer simulations, shows that the proposed TA scheme can effectively reduce blocking probability when traffic load is light.

Joint NC-ARQ and AMC for QoS-Guaranteed Mobile Multicast

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Toftegaard, Thomas Skjødeberg; Wang, Haibo; Schwefel, Hans-Peter

2010-01-01

the scalability problem of applying ARQ in multicast. Then we propose two joint NC-ARQ-AMC schemes, namely, the Average PER-based AMC (AvgPER-AMC) with Opt-ARQ and AvgPER-AMC with SubOpt-ARQ in a cross-layer design framework to maximize the average spectral efficiency per receiver under specific QoS constraints...

A New Resources Provisioning Method Based on QoS Differentiation and VM Resizing in IaaS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rongdong Hu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In order to improve the host energy efficiency in IaaS, we proposed an adaptive host resource provisioning method, CoST, which is based on QoS differentiation and VM resizing. The control model can adaptively adjust control parameters according to real time application performance, in order to cope with changes in load. CoST takes advantage of the fact that different types of applications have different sensitivity degrees to performance and cost. It places two different types of VMs on the same host and dynamically adjusts their sizes based on the load forecasting and QoS feedback. It not only guarantees the performance defined in SLA, but also keeps the host running in energy-efficient state. Real Google cluster trace and host power data are used to evaluate the proposed method. Experimental results show that CoST can provide performance-sensitive application with a steady QoS and simultaneously speed up the overall processing of performance-tolerant application by 20~66%. The host energy efficiency is significantly improved by 7~23%.

Service Migration from Cloud to Multi-tier Fog Nodes for Multimedia Dissemination with QoE Support.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosário, Denis; Schimuneck, Matias; Camargo, João; Nobre, Jéferson; Both, Cristiano; Rochol, Juergen; Gerla, Mario

2018-01-24

A wide range of multimedia services is expected to be offered for mobile users via various wireless access networks. Even the integration of Cloud Computing in such networks does not support an adequate Quality of Experience (QoE) in areas with high demands for multimedia contents. Fog computing has been conceptualized to facilitate the deployment of new services that cloud computing cannot provide, particularly those demanding QoE guarantees. These services are provided using fog nodes located at the network edge, which is capable of virtualizing their functions/applications. Service migration from the cloud to fog nodes can be actuated by request patterns and the timing issues. To the best of our knowledge, existing works on fog computing focus on architecture and fog node deployment issues. In this article, we describe the operational impacts and benefits associated with service migration from the cloud to multi-tier fog computing for video distribution with QoE support. Besides that, we perform the evaluation of such service migration of video services. Finally, we present potential research challenges and trends.

Joint QoS and Congestion Control Based on Traffic Prediction in SDN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammad Mahdi Tajiki

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Due to the various network requirements of applications, quality of service (QoS-aware routing plays an important role in the networks. Recently proposed resource allocation algorithms focus on the current traffic matrix, which is not applicable for dynamic networks. In this paper, we exploit an estimation of flow matrix that gives our scheme the ability to sufficiently reduce the total packet loss and simultaneously raise the network throughput. In this way, we mathematically formulate the QoS-aware resource reallocation in software-defined networking (SDN networks based on the traffic prediction. To solve this optimization problem, two schemes are proposed: (i exact solution; and (ii fast suboptimal one. The proposed schemes are compared with the accuracy perspective. Moreover, the impact of prediction on resource reallocation is discussed. In this regard, it is shown that, compared with the conventional scheme, the proposed scheme decreases the packet loss and increases the throughput significantly.

Learning-Based QoS Control Algorithms for Next Generation Internet of Things

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sungwook Kim

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The Internet has become an evolving entity, growing in importance and creating new value through its expansion and added utilization. The Internet of Things (IoT is a new concept associated with the future Internet and has recently become popular in a dynamic and global network infrastructure. However, in an IoT implementation, it is difficult to satisfy different Quality of Service (QoS requirements and achieve rapid service composition and deployment. In this paper, we propose a new QoS control scheme for IoT systems. Based on the Markov game model, the proposed scheme can effectively allocate IoT resources while maximizing system performance. In multiagent environments, a game theory approach can provide an effective decision-making framework for resource allocation problems. To verify the results of our study, we perform a simulation and confirm that the proposed scheme can achieve considerably improved system performance compared to existing schemes.

Psychometric properties of HeartQoL, a core heart disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in Danish implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zangger, Graziella; Zwisler, Ann-Dorthe; Kikkenborg Berg, Selina

2018-01-01

disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients. Design This study involved cross-sectional and test-retest study designs. Method Implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients in the cross-sectional study completed the Heart......QoL, the Short-Form 36 Health Survey, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The HeartQoL structure, construct-related validity (convergent and discriminative) and reliability (internal consistency) were assessed. HeartQoL reproducibility (test-retest) was assessed in an independent sample of implantable...... psychometric attributes of validity and reliability in this implantable cardioverter defibrillator population. This study adds support for the HeartQoL as a core heart-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire in a broad group of patients with heart disease including implantable cardioverter...

Joint terminals and relay optimization for two-way power line information exchange systems with QoS constraints

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Xiaolin; Rong, Yue

2015-12-01

The quality-of-service (QoS) criteria (measured in terms of the minimum capacity requirement in this paper) are very important to practical indoor power line communication (PLC) applications as they greatly affect the user experience. With a two-way multicarrier relay configuration, in this paper we investigate the joint terminals and relay power optimization for the indoor broadband PLC environment, where the relay node works in the amplify-and-forward (AF) mode. As the QoS-constrained power allocation problem is highly non-convex, the globally optimal solution is computationally intractable to obtain. To overcome this challenge, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) method to decompose this problem into three convex/quasi-convex sub-problems. Simulation results demonstrate the fast convergence of the proposed algorithm under practical PLC channel conditions. Compared with the conventional bidirectional direct transmission (BDT) system, the relay-assisted two-way information exchange (R2WX) scheme can meet the same QoS requirement with less total power consumption.

On Designing Thermal-Aware Localized QoS Routing Protocol for in-vivo Sensor Nodes in Wireless Body Area Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muhammad Mostafa Monowar

2015-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we address the thermal rise and Quality-of-Service (QoS provisioning issue for an intra-body Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN having in-vivo sensor nodes. We propose a thermal-aware QoS routing protocol, called TLQoS, that facilitates the system in achieving desired QoS in terms of delay and reliability for diverse traffic types, as well as avoids the formation of highly heated nodes known as hotspot(s, and keeps the temperature rise along the network to an acceptable level. TLQoS exploits modular architecture wherein different modules perform integrated operations in providing multiple QoS service with lower temperature rise. To address the challenges of highly dynamic wireless environment inside the human body. TLQoS implements potential-based localized routing that requires only local neighborhood information. TLQoS avoids routing loop formation as well as reduces the number of hop traversal exploiting hybrid potential, and tuning a configurable parameter. We perform extensive simulations of TLQoS, and the results show that TLQoS has significant performance improvements over state-of-the-art approaches.

Systematic review of the QoR-15 score, a patient- reported outcome measure measuring quality of recovery after surgery and anaesthesia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kleif, J; Waage, J; Christensen, K B

2018-01-01

patients undergoing a variety of surgical elective procedures. The QoR-15 was validated in English, Danish, Chinese, and Portuguese. High-quality evidence for good content validity, good internal consistency (Cronbach's α of 0.836), and essential unidimensionality of the QoR-15 as a measurement...

QoE loss score value for service migration in context aware environment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Saeed, Aamir; Pedersen, Jens Myrup; Olsen, Rasmus Løvenstein

2014-01-01

. This paper has identified the factors that contribute to the loss of user experience for seamless application migration in a context aware environment. These are the context information updates, transfer time and resumption time. To quantify the loss of user experience, a Quality of experience (QoE) Loss...

Site selectivity of specific reaction steps important for catalysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Kenneth

) overlayer system. In the STM study of the structure sensitivity of the CO dissociation reaction on the Ru(0 1 54) sample, it was determined that after cooling the sample from 700K to 400K in 10-8Torr of CO or in the CO that was left after a TPD, the sample displayed periodic decorations on every other...... site, is the most stable conguration after dissociation. Preliminary results where the sample was exposed to high doses of CO, at a CO pressure of 10-5 Torr and a temperature of 550K (dissociation conditions) indicated that especially every other step had a very rough appearance after 7 min exposure...

AN APPROACH FOR REVIEWING AND RANKING THE CUSTOMERS’ REVIEWS THROUGH QUALITY OF REVIEW (QoR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sumit Kawate

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Quality is referred as the degree of excellence that means the expected product or service being considered to achieve desired requirements. Whereas, Quality of Reviews (QoR relates to the task of determining the quality, efficiency, suitability, or utility of each review by addressing Quality of Product (QoP and Quality of Service (QoS. It is an essential task of ranking, the reviews based on the quality and efficiency of the reviews given by the users. Whatever the reviews are provided to the particular product or services are from user experiences. The Quality of Reviews (QoR is one of a kind method that defines how the customer’s standpoint for the service or product that he/she experienced. The main issue while reviewing any product, the reviewer provides his/her opinion in the form of reviews and might be a few of those reviews are malicious spam entries to skew the rating of the product. Also in another case, many times customers provide the reviews which are quite common and that won’t helpful for the buyer to interpret the helpful feedback on their products because of too many formal reviews from distinct customers. Hence, we proposed novel approaches: i to statistical analyzes the customer reviews on products by Amazon to identify top most useful or helpful reviewers; ii to analyze the products and its reviews associated for malicious reviews ratings that skewed the overall product ranking. As this is one of the efficient approaches to avoid spam reviewers somehow from reviewing the products. With this, we can use this method for distinguishing between nominal users and spammers. This method helps to quest for helpful reviewers not only to make the product better from best quality reviewers, but also these quality reviewers themselves can able to review future products.

Conceptualization, development and validation of T-QoL© (Teenagers' Quality of Life): a patient-focused measure to assess quality of life of adolescents with skin diseases.

Science.gov (United States)

Basra, M K A; Salek, M S; Fenech, D; Finlay, A Y

2018-01-01

Skin disease can affect the quality of life (QoL) of teenagers in a variety of different ways, some being unique to this age group. To develop and validate a dermatology-specific QoL instrument for adolescents with skin diseases. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with adolescents with skin disease to gain in-depth understanding of how skin diseases affect their QoL. A prototype instrument based on the themes identified from content analysis of interviews was tested in several stages, using classical test theory and item response theory models to develop this new tool and conduct its psychometric evaluation. Thirty-three QoL issues were identified from semistructured interviews with 50 adolescents. A questionnaire based on items derived from content analysis of interviews was subjected to Rasch analysis: factor analysis identified three domains, therefore not supporting the validity of T-QoL as a unidimensional measure. Psychometric evaluation of the final 18-item questionnaire was carried out in a cohort of 203 adolescents. Convergent validity was demonstrated by significant correlation with Skindex-Teen and Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) or Children's DLQI. The T-QoL showed excellent internal consistency reliability: Cronbach's α = 0·89 for total scale score and 0·85, 0·60 and 0·74, respectively, for domains 1, 2 and 3. Test-retest reliability was high in stable volunteers. T-QoL showed sensitivity to change in two subgroups of patients who indicated change in their self-assessed disease severity. Built on rich qualitative data from patients, the T-QoL is a simple and valid tool to quantify the impact of skin disease on adolescents' QoL; it could be used as an outcome measure in both clinical practice and clinical research. © 2017 British Association of Dermatologists.

Psychometric properties of HeartQoL, a core heart disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in Danish implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zangger, Graziella; Zwisler, Ann-Dorthe; Kikkenborg Berg, Selina

2017-01-01

Background Patient-reported health-related quality of life is increasingly used as an outcome measure in clinical trials and as a performance measure to evaluate quality of care. The objective of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Danish HeartQoL questionnaire, a core heart...... disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients. Design This study involved cross-sectional and test-retest study designs. Method Implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients in the cross-sectional study completed the Heart......QoL, the Short-Form 36 Health Survey, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The HeartQoL structure, construct-related validity (convergent and discriminative) and reliability (internal consistency) were assessed. HeartQoL reproducibility (test-retest) was assessed in an independent sample of implantable...

High-dose radiotherapy or concurrent chemo-radiation in lung cancer patients only induces a temporary, reversible decline in QoL

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pijls-Johannesma, Madelon; Houben, Ruud; Boersma, Liesbeth; Grutters, Janneke; Seghers, Katarina; Lambin, Philippe; Wanders, Rinus; De Ruysscher, Dirk

2009-01-01

Background and purpose: Aggressive radiotherapy or concurrent chemo-radiation therapy for lung cancer leads to a high incidence of severe, mostly esophageal, toxicity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution of quality of life (QoL) in patients with lung cancer, selected for curative radiotherapy (RT) or chemo-RT. Methods: Seventy-five lung cancer patients completed a longitudinal the EORTC QLQ-C30 and LC13. Linear mixed regression models were fitted to investigate the impact of different factors on overall QoL. Results: Overall QoL decreased shortly after the end of RT (4 points, p = 0.19), but increased back to baseline within 3 months. Mean scores of role functioning (p = 0.018), cognitive functioning (p = 0.002), dyspnoea (EORTC QLQ-LC13; p = 0.043), dysphagia (p = 0.005) and hoarseness (p = 0.029), showed a significant worsening over time. Emotional functioning (p = 0.033) improved significantly over time. Severe esophagitis (≥grade 2) was reported in only 12% of the patients. Next to maximal esophageal toxicity ≥grade 2 (p = .0.010), also tumor stage IIIA (p < 0.001), tumor stage IIIB (p = 0.003), gender (p = 0.042) and fatigue (p < 0.001) appeared to be significant predictors of QoL. Conclusion: High-dose radiotherapy or concurrent chemo-radiation in the treatment of lung cancer seems to be a well-tolerated treatment option with preservation of QoL.

Impact of mutations on the midpoint potential of the [4Fe-4S]+1,+2 cluster and on catalytic activity in electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO).

Science.gov (United States)

Usselman, Robert J; Fielding, Alistair J; Frerman, Frank E; Watmough, Nicholas J; Eaton, Gareth R; Eaton, Sandra S

2008-01-08

Electron-transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is an iron-sulfur flavoprotein that accepts electrons from electron-transfer flavoprotein (ETF) and reduces ubiquinone from the Q-pool. ETF-QO contains a single [4Fe-4S]2+,1+ cluster and one equivalent of FAD, which are diamagnetic in the isolated oxidized enzyme and can be reduced to paramagnetic forms by enzymatic donors or dithionite. Mutations were introduced by site-directed mutagenesis of amino acids in the vicinity of the iron-sulfur cluster of Rhodobacter sphaeroides ETF-QO. Y501 and T525 are equivalent to Y533 and T558 in the porcine ETF-QO. In the porcine protein, these residues are within hydrogen-bonding distance of the Sgamma of the cysteine ligands to the iron-sulfur cluster. Y501F, T525A, and Y501F/T525A substitutions were made to determine the effects on midpoint potential, activity, and EPR spectral properties of the cluster. The integrity of the mutated proteins was confirmed by optical spectra, EPR g-values, and spin-lattice relaxation rates, and the cluster to flavin point-dipole distance was determined by relaxation enhancement. Potentiometric titrations were monitored by changes in the CW EPR signals of the cluster and semiquinone. Single mutations decreased the midpoint potentials of the iron-sulfur cluster from +37 mV for wild type to -60 mV for Y501F and T525A and to -128 mV for Y501F/T525A. Lowering the midpoint potential resulted in a decrease in steady-state ubiquinone reductase activity and in ETF semiquinone disproportionation. The decrease in activity demonstrates that reduction of the iron-sulfur cluster is required for activity. There was no detectable effect of the mutations on the flavin midpoint potentials.

QoS-Aware Resource Allocation for Network Virtualization in an Integrated Train Ground Communication System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Li Zhu

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Urban rail transit plays an increasingly important role in urbanization processes. Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC Systems, Passenger Information Systems (PIS, and Closed Circuit Television (CCTV are key applications of urban rail transit to ensure its normal operation. In existing urban rail transit systems, different applications are deployed with independent train ground communication systems. When the train ground communication systems are built repeatedly, limited wireless spectrum will be wasted, and the maintenance work will also become complicated. In this paper, we design a network virtualization based integrated train ground communication system, in which all the applications in urban rail transit can share the same physical infrastructure. In order to better satisfy the Quality of Service (QoS requirement of each application, this paper proposes a virtual resource allocation algorithm based on QoS guarantee, base station load balance, and application station fairness. Moreover, with the latest achievement of distributed convex optimization, we exploit a novel distributed optimization method based on alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM to solve the virtual resource allocation problem. Extensive simulation results indicate that the QoS of the designed integrated train ground communication system can be improved significantly using the proposed algorithm.

The binding of quinone to the photosynthetic reaction centers: kinetics and thermodynamics of reactions occurring at the QB-site in zwitterionic and anionic liposomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Mavelli, Fabio; Trotta, Massimo; Ciriaco, Fulvio; Agostiano, Angela; Giotta, Livia; Italiano, Francesca; Milano, Francesco

2014-07-01

Liposomes represent a versatile biomimetic environment for studying the interaction between integral membrane proteins and hydrophobic ligands. In this paper, the quinone binding to the QB-site of the photosynthetic reaction centers (RC) from Rhodobacter sphaeroides has been investigated in liposomes prepared with either the zwitterionic phosphatidylcholine (PC) or the negatively charged phosphatidylglycerol (PG) to highlight the role of the different phospholipid polar heads. Quinone binding (K Q) and interquinone electron transfer (L AB) equilibrium constants in the two type of liposomes were obtained by charge recombination reaction of QB-depleted RC in the presence of increasing amounts of ubiquinone-10 over the temperature interval 6-35 °C. The kinetic of the charge recombination reactions has been fitted by numerically solving the ordinary differential equations set associated with a detailed kinetic scheme involving electron transfer reactions coupled with quinone release and uptake. The entire set of traces at each temperature was accurately fitted using the sole quinone release constants (both in a neutral and a charge separated state) as adjustable parameters. The temperature dependence of the quinone exchange rate at the QB-site was, hence, obtained. It was found that the quinone exchange regime was always fast for PC while it switched from slow to fast in PG as the temperature rose above 20 °C. A new method was introduced in this paper for the evaluation of constant K Q using the area underneath the charge recombination traces as the indicator of the amount of quinone bound to the QB-site.

Fault-tolerant and QoS based Network Layer for Security Management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohamed Naceur Abdelkrim

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Wireless sensor networks have profound effects on many application fields like security management which need an immediate, fast and energy efficient route. In this paper, we define a fault-tolerant and QoS based network layer for security management of chemical products warehouse which can be classified as real-time and mission critical application. This application generate routine data packets and alert packets caused by unusual events which need a high reliability, short end to end delay and low packet loss rate constraints. After each node compute his hop count and build his neighbors table in the initialization phase, packets can be routed to the sink. We use FELGossiping protocol for routine data packets and node-disjoint multipath routing protocol for alert packets. Furthermore, we utilize the information gathering phase of FELGossiping to update the neighbors table and detect the failed nodes, and we adapt the network topology changes by rerun the initialization phase when chemical units were added or removed from the warehouse. Analysis shows that the network layer is energy efficient and can meet the QoS constraints of unusual events packets.

Enabling Broadband as Commodity within Access Networks: A QoS Recipe

Science.gov (United States)

Areizaga, Enrique; Foglar, Andreas; Elizondo, Antonio J.; Geilhardt, Frank

This paper describes the QoS features that will transform the access networks landscape in order to bring “Broadband” as a commodity while setting up the pillars of the “Future Media Internet”. Quality of Experience is obviously key for emerging and future services. Broadcasting services will first need to equal the QoE of their counterparts in the Open-air market (for IP-TV examples would be artifact-free, no picture freezing, fast zapping times) and offer new features often using interactivity (Time-shifted TV, access to more content, 3DTV with feeling of presence). The huge variety of communications alternatives will lead to different requirements per customer, whose needs will also be dependent on parameters like where the connection is made, the time of the day/day of the week/period of the year or even his/her mood. Today’s networks, designed for providing just Broadband connectivity, will not be enough to satisfy customer’s needs and will necessarily support the introduction of new and innovative services. The Networks of the future should learn from the way the users are communicating, what services they are using, where, when, and how, and adapt accordingly.

Stochastic Packet Loss Model to Evaluate QoE Impairments

Science.gov (United States)

Hohlfeld, Oliver

With provisioning of broadband access for mass market—even in wireless and mobile networks—multimedia content, especially real-time streaming of high-quality audio and video, is extensively viewed and exchanged over the Internet. Quality of Experience (QoE) aspects, describing the service quality perceived by the user, is a vital factor in ensuring customer satisfaction in today's communication networks. Frameworks for accessing quality degradations in streamed video currently are investigated as a complex multi-layered research topic, involving network traffic load, codec functions and measures of user perception of video quality.

First report of QoI insensitive Cercospora beticola on sugarbeet in Ontario, Canada

Science.gov (United States)

Cercospora beticola causes Cercospora leaf spot (CLS) of sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris) and is the most destructive foliar disease of sugarbeet worldwide. The QoI fungicide pyraclostrobin has been an important management tool for CLS in Canada since 2003. Beginning in 2010 some growers reported unsatisf...

Quality of life in patients with vitiligo: a cross-sectional study based on Vitiligo Quality of Life index (VitiQoL).

Science.gov (United States)

Hedayat, Kosar; Karbakhsh, Mojgan; Ghiasi, Maryam; Goodarzi, Azadeh; Fakour, Yousef; Akbari, Zahra; Ghayoumi, Afsaneh; Ghandi, Narges

2016-06-07

Vitiligo is a multi-factorial pigmentary skin disorder. Recently, the importance of emotional and psychological issues is proposed in incidence, progression, relapse and remission of vitiligo. There are limited studies conducted in developing countries, which assess life quality of patients with vitiligo. The aim of this study was the application and evaluation of a disease-specific quality of life index in Iranian patients, for the first time. This cross-sectional biphasic study was conducted on 25 patients as a pilot and another 173 patients as the main study group, in Razi Hospital, Tehran, Iran, 2013-2014. Persian version of Vitiligo Quality of Life index (VitiQoL) was developed with backward-forward method. Based on the pilot study, the validity and reliability were assessed. The Vitiligo Area and Score Index (VASI), VitiQoL, and their relationship, demographic and clinical characteristic of patients were measured. The Mean and standard deviation of the VitiQoL score was 30.5 ± 14.5 (range 0-60 in Persian version). There was a significant relationship between VASI score and VitiQoL (p = 0.015, r = 0.187). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed three important factors within VitiQoL: participation limitation, stigma, and behavior. In subscale analysis based on behavior factor, female patients had poorer quality of life (p = 0.02). Concomitant psychiatric problems, e.g. anxiety and depression, were not associated with QOL; however, they were near to being meaningful (p = 0.06, r = 0.14). VitiQoL is a valid index in estimating life quality of vitiligo patients and has proper relation to disease severity. Focusing on patient's life quality is an important entity in the management of vitiligo patients; relevant supportive group-based consultations and therapies are also important arms when approaching vitiligo.

Validation of reaction time as a measure of cognitive function and quality of life in healthy subjects and patients

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Lene Holm; Sorensen, Janice Marie; Rask, Ingeborg Krarup

2011-01-01

Malnutrition is a common problem in hospitalized patients and is related to decreased cognitive function and impaired quality of life (QoL). We investigated the validity of reaction time as a simple bedside tool for measuring cognitive function in healthy subjects and patients, and additionally...

Rapid on-site evaluation of the development of resistance to quinone outside inhibitors in Botrytis cinerea.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, X R; Dai, D J; Wang, H D; Zhang, C Q

2017-10-24

Botrytis cinerea, a typical "high-risk" pathogenic fungus that rapidly develops resistance to fungicides, affects more than 1,000 species of 586 plant genera native to most continents and causes great economic losses. Therefore, a rapid and sensitive assay of fungicide resistance development in B. cinerea populations is crucial for scientific management. In this study, we established a Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) system for the monitoring and evaluation of the risk of development of B. cinerea resistance to QoI fungicides; the method uses two LAMP assays. The first assay detects G143A mutants of B. cinerea, which are highly resistance to QoI fungicides. BCbi143/144 introns in B. cinerea are then detected by the second assay. HNB acts as a visual LAMP reaction indicator. The optimum reaction conditions of the LAMP assays were 61 °C for 50 min, and the detection limit of the LAMP assays was 100 × 10 -4  ng/μl. We directly pre-treated the field samples by using All-DNA-Fast-Out to extract DNA within ten minutes, then performed the LAMP assay to achieve one-step rapid detection. In conclusion, we established a rapid and sensitive LAMP assay system for resistance risk assessment and for monitoring QoI-resistance of B. cinerea in the field.

Impact of Mutations on the Midpoint Potential of the [4Fe-4S]+1,+2 Cluster and on Catalytic Activity in Electron Transfer Flavoprotein-ubiquinone Oxidoreductase (ETF-QO)†

Science.gov (United States)

Usselman, Robert J.; Fielding, Alistair J.; Frerman, Frank E.; Watmough, Nicholas J.; Eaton, Gareth R.; Eaton, Sandra S.

2011-01-01

Electron transfer flavoprotein - ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is an iron-sulfur flavoprotein that accepts electrons from electron-transfer flavoprotein (ETF) and reduces ubiquinone from the Q-pool. ETF-QO contains a single [4Fe-4S]2+,1+ cluster and one equivalent of FAD, which are diamagnetic in the isolated oxidized enzyme and can be reduced to paramagnetic forms by enzymatic donors or dithionite. Mutations were introduced by site-directed mutagenesis of amino acids in the vicinity of the iron-sulfur cluster of Rhodobacter sphaeroides ETF-QO. Y501 and T525 are equivalent to Y533 and T558 in the porcine ETF-QO. In the porcine protein, these residues are within hydrogen bonding distance of the Sγ of the cysteine ligands to the iron-sulfur cluster. Y501F, T525A, and Y501F/T525A substitutions were made to determine the effects on midpoint potential, activity, and EPR spectral properties of the cluster. The integrity of the mutated proteins was confirmed by optical spectra, EPR g-values, and spin-lattice relaxation rates, and the cluster to flavin point-dipole distance was determined by relaxation enhancement. Potentiometric titrations were monitored by changes in the CW EPR signals of the cluster and semiquinone. Single mutations decreased the mid-point potentials of the iron-sulfur cluster from +37 mV for wild type to −60 mV for Y501F and T525A and to −128 mV for Y501F/T525A. Lowering the midpoint potential resulted in a decrease in steady-state ubiquinone reductase activity and in ETF semiquinone disproportionation. The decrease in activity demonstrates that reduction of the iron-sulfur cluster is required for activity. There was no detectable effect of the mutations on the flavin midpoint potentials. PMID:18069858

End User Perceptual Distorted Scenes Enhancement Algorithm Using Partition-Based Local Color Values for QoE-Guaranteed IPTV

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Jinsul

In this letter, we propose distorted scenes enhancement algorithm in order to provide end user perceptual QoE-guaranteed IPTV service. The block edge detection with weight factor and partition-based local color values method can be applied for the degraded video frames which are affected by network transmission errors such as out of order, jitter, and packet loss to improve QoE efficiently. Based on the result of quality metric after using the distorted scenes enhancement algorithm, the distorted scenes have been restored better than others.

A QoS Optimization Approach in Cognitive Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmed, Tauseef; Le Moullec, Yannick

2017-04-06

Wireless body area networks are increasingly featuring cognitive capabilities. This work deals with the emerging concept of cognitive body area networks. In particular, the paper addresses two important issues, namely spectrum sharing and interferences. We propose methods for channel and power allocation. The former builds upon a reinforcement learning mechanism, whereas the latter is based on convex optimization. Furthermore, we also propose a mathematical channel model for off-body communication links in line with the IEEE 802.15.6 standard. Simulation results for a nursing home scenario show that the proposed approach yields the best performance in terms of throughput and QoS for dynamic environments. For example, in a highly demanding scenario our approach can provide throughput up to 7 Mbps, while giving an average of 97.2% of time QoS satisfaction in terms of throughput. Simulation results also show that the power optimization algorithm enables reducing transmission power by approximately 4.5 dBm, thereby sensibly and significantly reducing interference.

Fuzzy Logic-based Intelligent Scheme for Enhancing QoS of Vertical Handover Decision in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Azzali, F.; Ghazali, O.; Omar, M. H.

2017-08-01

The design of next generation networks in various technologies under the “Anywhere, Anytime” paradigm offers seamless connectivity across different coverage. A conventional algorithm such as RSSThreshold algorithm, that only uses the received strength signal (RSS) as a metric, will decrease handover performance regarding handover latency, delay, packet loss, and handover failure probability. Moreover, the RSS-based algorithm is only suitable for horizontal handover decision to examine the quality of service (QoS) compared to the vertical handover decision in advanced technologies. In the next generation network, vertical handover can be started based on the user’s convenience or choice rather than connectivity reasons. This study proposes a vertical handover decision algorithm that uses a Fuzzy Logic (FL) algorithm, to increase QoS performance in heterogeneous vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET). The study uses network simulator 2.29 (NS 2.29) along with the mobility traffic network and generator to implement simulation scenarios and topologies. This helps the simulation to achieve a realistic VANET mobility scenario. The required analysis on the performance of QoS in the vertical handover can thus be conducted. The proposed Fuzzy Logic algorithm shows improvement over the conventional algorithm (RSSThreshold) in the average percentage of handover QoS whereby it achieves 20%, 21% and 13% improvement on handover latency, delay, and packet loss respectively. This is achieved through triggering a process in layer two and three that enhances the handover performance.

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

Soporte de QoS con 802.11e para tráfico heterogéneo en ambientes MANET

OpenAIRE

Murazzo, María Antonia; Rodríguez, Nelson R.; Guevara, Miguel José; Scheffer, María

2014-01-01

Hoy en día existe una gran necesidad de mejorar la calidad de servicio (QoS) ofrecida en redes móviles Ad Hoc (Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks -MANET-) que actualmente sólo ofrecen servicio best effort. Esto posee gran impacto en las aplicaciones que se corren, las cuales generan tráficos con diferentes requerimientos de recursos de la red. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo fundamental analizar el comportamiento de la implementación de QoS en la sub capa MAC mediante 802.11e en ambientes con trá...

Quality of Life (QoL) Survey in Hong Kong: Understanding the Importance of Housing Environment and Needs of Residents from Different Housing Sectors.

Science.gov (United States)

Gou, Zhonghua; Xie, Xiaohuan; Lu, Yi; Khoshbakht, Maryam

2018-01-27

This study presents a Quality of Life (QoL) survey to understand the influence of the housing environment and needs of residents from different housing sectors. The research focuses on Hong Kong where living conditions have become the main affect for people's QoL. Through a household survey using a standard instrument "Word Health Organisation (WHO) Quality of Life-BREF", the article found that among the four WHO QoL domains (Physical Health, Psychological Health, Social Relations And Environment), Environment, particularly its constitute aspect housing environment was the most influential factor for overall quality of life for the public rental housing sector where low-income people live. This research also found that different groups of people have differing needs of their housing environments: the low-income group needs better location and privacy while the medium and high-income groups need better architectural quality. Based on differentiating their needs and wants, this research argues for prioritizing the low-income group's needs for effectively improving their QoL.

Evaluation of a Clinical Decision Support System for Dyslipidemia Treatment (HTE-DLPR by QoE questionnaire

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto Zamora

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Clinical decision support systems (CDSS are computer systems designed to assist clinicians with patient-related decision making, such as diagnosis and treatment. CDSS have shown to improve both patient outcomes and cost of care.Methods: A multi-center observational prospective study was conducted. Ten physicians agreed to participate. Seventy-seven patients with high or very high cardiovascular risk were included. After using CDSS for dyslipidemia (HTE-DLPR for a 3 months period, participants were asked to evaluate their experience with HTE-DLPR using a quality of experience questionnaire (QoE tool for mHealth applications.Results: Total score on the QoE was 3.89 out of 5. The highest scores were received for precision, ease of use and content quality. The lowest scores were given to security, appearance and performance. Physicians were in strong agreement with the 1st HTEDLPR recommendation in 86.1% and the system’s use was described as comfortablein 85% of cases. Users positively evaluated the development of a new version of HTEDLPR in the future receiving a total score of 4.25 out of 5.Conclusions: A CDSS for dyslipidemia (HTE-DLP has been positively evaluated by physicians using QoE questionnaire.

Calidad de servicio (QoS en procesos: Escenarios de procesamiento con aspectos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hector Manuel Soto Pérez

2016-12-01

En resumen el presente trabajo estudia conceptos básicos de calidad de servicio y algunos de sus marcos de aplicación siguiendo un enfoque aspectual. Planteando posibles casos de uso genéricos para aplicar mejoras en la prestación de la QoS mediante aspectos en la planificación y gestión de recursos de aplicaciones tradicionales.

Tuning a Protein-Labeling Reaction to Achieve Highly Site Selective Lysine Conjugation.

Science.gov (United States)

Pham, Grace H; Ou, Weijia; Bursulaya, Badry; DiDonato, Michael; Herath, Ananda; Jin, Yunho; Hao, Xueshi; Loren, Jon; Spraggon, Glen; Brock, Ansgar; Uno, Tetsuo; Geierstanger, Bernhard H; Cellitti, Susan E

2018-04-16

Activated esters are widely used to label proteins at lysine side chains and N termini. These reagents are useful for labeling virtually any protein, but robust reactivity toward primary amines generally precludes site-selective modification. In a unique case, fluorophenyl esters are shown to preferentially label human kappa antibodies at a single lysine (Lys188) within the light-chain constant domain. Neighboring residues His189 and Asp151 contribute to the accelerated rate of labeling at Lys188 relative to the ≈40 other lysine sites. Enriched Lys188 labeling can be enhanced from 50-70 % to >95 % by any of these approaches: lowering reaction temperature, applying flow chemistry, or mutagenesis of specific residues in the surrounding protein environment. Our results demonstrated that activated esters with fluoro-substituted aromatic leaving groups, including a fluoronaphthyl ester, can be generally useful reagents for site-selective lysine labeling of antibodies and other immunoglobulin-type proteins. © 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Impact of the codec and various QoS methods on the final quality of the transferred voice in an IP network

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Slavata, Oldřich; Holub, Jan

2015-01-01

This paper deals with an analysis of the relation between the codec that is used, the QoS method, and the final voice transmission quality. The Cisco 2811 router is used for adjusting QoS. VoIP client Linphone is used for adjusting the codec. The criterion for transmission quality is the MOS parameter investigated with the ITU-T P.862 PESQ and P.863 POLQA algorithms

Injection-Site Reactions in Wild Horses (Equus caballus) Receiving an Immunocontraceptive Vaccine

Science.gov (United States)

Roelle, James E.; Ransom, Jason I.

2009-01-01

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Land Management are conducting research on the efficacy of the immunocontraceptive agent porcine zona pellucida (PZP) in reducing fertility of wild horses (Equus caballus). As an antigen, PZP stimulates antibody production when injected into many mammalian species. These antibodies bind to the external surface of the ovum, preventing fertilization. By itself, PZP is only weakly immunogenic and is therefore delivered with an adjuvant, most commonly one of the Freund adjuvants, designed to further stimulate antibody production. Freund's complete adjuvant (FCA) in particular is known to be very effective, but may also be associated with undesirable side effects such as formation of abscesses at injection sites. Such reactions may be exacerbated when accompanied by the additional trauma of a remotely delivered dart. Because horses in our three study herds were individually identifiable by color markings and harem association, we were able to monitor mares for injection-site reactions (abscesses, nodules, swelling, and stiffness) following inoculation with PZP. In 100 injections delivered by hand we observed a single nodule, two instances of swelling, and no other reactions. In two herds that received remotely delivered (dart) injections, the frequency of reactions was about 1 and 6 percent for abscesses, 25 percent for nodules (both herds), 11 and 33 percent for swelling, and 1 and 12 percent for stiffness. Abscesses were too infrequent to allow meaningful analysis of the relation to covariates, but for the other types of reactions we used logistic regression to examine the relation of occurrence to the delivery method (rifle or CO2-powered blowgun), adjuvant (FCA, Freund's modified adjuvant, and Freund's incomplete adjuvant), dart trauma (normal or abnormal), and age of mare. Abnormal dart trauma included cases where the dart hit bone or the needle broke off. We found strong evidence (odds ratio = 5.023, P = 0.001) for a

Seamless interworking architecture for WBAN in heterogeneous wireless networks with QoS guarantees.

Science.gov (United States)

Khan, Pervez; Ullah, Niamat; Ullah, Sana; Kwak, Kyung Sup

2011-10-01

The IEEE 802.15.6 standard is a communication standard optimized for low-power and short-range in-body/on-body nodes to serve a variety of medical, consumer electronics and entertainment applications. Providing high mobility with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) to a WBAN user in heterogeneous wireless networks is a challenging task. A WBAN uses a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to gather data from body sensors and forwards it to a remote server through wide range wireless networks. In this paper, we present a coexistence study of WBAN with Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs). The main issue is interworking of WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks including seamless handover, QoS, emergency services, cooperation and security. We propose a Seamless Interworking Architecture (SIA) for WBAN in heterogenous wireless networks based on a cost function. The cost function is based on power consumption and data throughput costs. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms typical approaches in terms of throughput, delay and packet loss rate.

SABER: a computational method for identifying active sites for new reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Nosrati, Geoffrey R; Houk, K N

2012-05-01

A software suite, SABER (Selection of Active/Binding sites for Enzyme Redesign), has been developed for the analysis of atomic geometries in protein structures, using a geometric hashing algorithm (Barker and Thornton, Bioinformatics 2003;19:1644-1649). SABER is used to explore the Protein Data Bank (PDB) to locate proteins with a specific 3D arrangement of catalytic groups to identify active sites that might be redesigned to catalyze new reactions. As a proof-of-principle test, SABER was used to identify enzymes that have the same catalytic group arrangement present in o-succinyl benzoate synthase (OSBS). Among the highest-scoring scaffolds identified by the SABER search for enzymes with the same catalytic group arrangement as OSBS were L-Ala D/L-Glu epimerase (AEE) and muconate lactonizing enzyme II (MLE), both of which have been redesigned to become effective OSBS catalysts, demonstrated by experiments. Next, we used SABER to search for naturally existing active sites in the PDB with catalytic groups similar to those present in the designed Kemp elimination enzyme KE07. From over 2000 geometric matches to the KE07 active site, SABER identified 23 matches that corresponded to residues from known active sites. The best of these matches, with a 0.28 Å catalytic atom RMSD to KE07, was then redesigned to be compatible with the Kemp elimination using RosettaDesign. We also used SABER to search for potential Kemp eliminases using a theozyme predicted to provide a greater rate acceleration than the active site of KE07, and used Rosetta to create a design based on the proteins identified. Copyright © 2012 The Protein Society.

ATM QoS Experiments Using TCP Applications: Performance of TCP/IP Over ATM in a Variety of Errored Links

Science.gov (United States)

Frantz, Brian D.; Ivancic, William D.

2001-01-01

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Quality of Service (QoS) experiments using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) were performed for various link delays. The link delay was set to emulate a Wide Area Network (WAN) and a Satellite Link. The purpose of these experiments was to evaluate the ATM QoS requirements for applications that utilize advance TCP/IP protocols implemented with large windows and Selective ACKnowledgements (SACK). The effects of cell error, cell loss, and random bit errors on throughput were reported. The detailed test plan and test results are presented herein.

Parental perception of health-related quality of life in children and adolescents with short stature: literature review and introduction of the parent-reported QoLISSY instrument.

Science.gov (United States)

Quitmann, Julia; Rohenkohl, Anja; Bullinger, Monika; Chaplin, John E; Herdman, Michael; Sanz, Dolores; Mimoun, Emmanuelle; Feigerlova, Eva; DeBusk, Kendra; Power, Michael; Wollmann, Hartmut; Pleil, Andreas

2013-12-01

Health-related quality of life (HrQoL) of the child diagnosed with short stature is an important outcome to be assessed both from the patient as well as from the parental perspective. The objective of this study was to review the literature on parent-reported HrQoL and to subsequently develop and psychometrically test the parent-reported version of the Quality of Life in Short Stature Youth (QoLISSY) instrument for use in clinical and epidemiologic research. A review of the literature on parental assessment of child HrQoL via PUBMED was followed by a psychometric analysis of data collected within the European QoLISSY study, in which 686 eligible parents of short statured children/adolescents (aged 4-18 years) meeting inclusion criteria participated. Patient inclusion criteria were a height below -2 SD, a diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency (GHD) or idiopathic short stature (ISS), and treatment status in terms of receiving or not receiving recombinant human growth hormone therapy. Focus groups eliciting parental HrQoL statements, pilot testing with cognitive debriefing, and a field test in 317 parents with a retest in 148 parents were conducted simultaneously in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The psychometric performance of the parent-reported instrument, developed in parallel to the child/ adolescent self-report version, was assessed using standard tests of reliability and validity. Literature search failed to identify a cross-culturally developed height specific instrument available for both patient self-report and parental observer report. Analysis of the QoLISSY focus group phase conducted separately in children, adolescents and parents yielded 169 items generated from parent focus groups. A cognitive debriefing exercise followed by a pilot test of preliminary psychometric characteristics resulted in deleting poorly performing items. Field testing of the parent-reported version suggested a three-domain core HrQoL structure with 22 items

rTMS in fibromyalgia: a randomized trial evaluating QoL and its brain metabolic substrate

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boyer, L.; Dousset, A.; Roussel, P.; Dossetto, N.; Cammilleri, S.; Piano, V.M.M.; Khalfa, S.; Mundler, O.; Donnet, A.; Guedj, E.

2014-01-01

OBJECTIVE: This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study investigated the impact of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on quality of life (QoL) of patients with fibromyalgia, and its possible brain metabolic substrate. METHODS: Thirty-eight patients were randomly assigned

Serum magnesium and not vitamin D is associated with better QoL in COPD

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hashim Ali Hussein, Sarah; Nielsen, Lars Peter; Dolberg, Mette K.Bøgebjerg

2015-01-01

BACKGROUND: Deficiency of serum levels of vitamin D3 (se vitD), magnesium (se Mg) and calcium (se Ca) may be associated with increased exacerbation risk in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, associations with other aspects of COPD, e.g. lung function and quality of life (QoL),...

Trust-Enhanced Cloud Service Selection Model Based on QoS Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Pan, Yuchen; Ding, Shuai; Fan, Wenjuan; Li, Jing; Yang, Shanlin

2015-01-01

Cloud computing technology plays a very important role in many areas, such as in the construction and development of the smart city. Meanwhile, numerous cloud services appear on the cloud-based platform. Therefore how to how to select trustworthy cloud services remains a significant problem in such platforms, and extensively investigated owing to the ever-growing needs of users. However, trust relationship in social network has not been taken into account in existing methods of cloud service selection and recommendation. In this paper, we propose a cloud service selection model based on the trust-enhanced similarity. Firstly, the direct, indirect, and hybrid trust degrees are measured based on the interaction frequencies among users. Secondly, we estimate the overall similarity by combining the experience usability measured based on Jaccard's Coefficient and the numerical distance computed by Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Then through using the trust degree to modify the basic similarity, we obtain a trust-enhanced similarity. Finally, we utilize the trust-enhanced similarity to find similar trusted neighbors and predict the missing QoS values as the basis of cloud service selection and recommendation. The experimental results show that our approach is able to obtain optimal results via adjusting parameters and exhibits high effectiveness. The cloud services ranking by our model also have better QoS properties than other methods in the comparison experiments.

Depression, quality of life (QoL) and will to live of community-dwelling postmenopausal women in three Asian countries: Korea, China and Japan.

Science.gov (United States)

Ina, Koichiro; Hayashi, Toshio; Nomura, Hideki; Ishitsuka, Asako; Hirai, Hisako; Iguchi, Akihisa

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of screening-detected depression and the association of depression with QoL in community-dwelling postmenopausal women living in three Asian countries. We examined self-reported questionnaires and conducted the study. A total of 698 community-dwelling postmenopausal women living in three Asian countries participated in this study. The mean age was 59.4±6.6 years (±SD) Depressive symptoms were assessed using a 15-item geriatric depression scale (GDS-15). Using the cut-off of 5/6 for the GDS-15, the percentages of subjects with depression were 39.0% of the Korean subjects, 29.2% of the Chinese subjects, and 33.9% of the Japanese subjects. For the assessment of QoL, we used the EQ-5D of the EuroQoL Group. The following five dimensions were assessed: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression. The proportions of subjects reporting problems for each dimension were examined. Subjects with depression had significantly lower levels of some dimensions of QoL than those without depression in all three countries. In all three countries, 29.2-39.0% of community-dwelling postmenopausal women had screening-detected depression, which was significantly associated with a lower level of some dimensions of QoL. These results suggest that clinicians should pay more attention to depression in community-dwelling postmenopausal women. Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Thermal-Aware Multiconstrained Intrabody QoS Routing for Wireless Body Area Networks

OpenAIRE

Muhammad Mostafa Monowar; Mohammad Mehedi Hassan; Fuad Bajaber; Md. Abdul Hamid; Atif Alamri

2014-01-01

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) can be formed including implanted biosensors for health monitoring and diagnostic purposes. However, implanted biosensors could cause thermal damages on human tissue as it exhibits temperature rise due to wireless communication and processing tasks inside the human body. Again, Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning with multiconstraints (delay and reliability) is a striking requirement for diverse application types in WBANs to meet their objectives. This pa...

Context-aware QoS provisioning for an M-health service platform

OpenAIRE

Wac, K.E.; Delgado Kloos, C.; Larrabeiti, D.; van Halteren, Aart; Bults, Richard G.A.; Lopez, A.M.; Broens, T.H.F.

2007-01-01

Inevitably, healthcare goes mobile. Recently developed mobile healthcare (i.e., m-health) services allow healthcare professionals to monitor mobile patient’s vital signs and provide feedback to this patient anywhere at any time. Due to the nature of current supporting mobile service platforms, m-health services are delivered with a best-effort, i.e., there are no guarantees on the delivered Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper, we argue that the use of context information in an m-health se...

An Agent-based Simulation of a QoS-oriented Supply Chain

OpenAIRE

Gumzej, Roman; Rosi, Bojan

2017-01-01

With adaptive customer-orientation the efficiency of supply chain management is improved substantially. By the introduction of service quality-based decision-making into supply chain management the quality of service (QoS) within supply chains is expected to improve autonomously and continuously up- and downstream. In the paper the main characteristics of quality of service oriented supply chain management are outlined. The quality of service criterion, introduced into the adaptive supply cha...

Evaluation of the incidence of the G143A mutation and cytb intron presence in the cytochrome bc-1 gene conferring QoI resistance in Botrytis cinerea populations from several hosts.

Science.gov (United States)

Samuel, Stylianos; Papayiannis, Lambros C; Leroch, Michaela; Veloukas, Thomas; Hahn, Matthias; Karaoglanidis, George S

2011-08-01

Previous studies have shown that resistance of Botrytis cinerea to QoI fungicides has been attributed to the G143A mutation in the cytochrome b (cytb) gene, while, in a part of the fungal population, an intron has been detected at codon 143 of the gene, preventing QoI resistance. During 2005-2009, 304 grey mould isolates were collected from strawberry, tomato, grape, kiwifruit, cucumber and apple in Greece and screened for resistance to pyraclostrobin and for the presence of the cytb intron, using a novel real-time TaqMan PCR assay developed in the present study. QoI-resistant phenotypes existed only within the population collected from strawberries. All resistant isolates possessed the G143A mutation. Differences were observed in the genotypic structure of cytb. Individuals possessing the intron were found at high incidence in apple fruit and greenhouse-grown tomato and cucumber populations, whereas in the strawberry population the intron frequency was lower. Cultivation of QoI-resistant and QoI-sensitive isolates for ten culture cycles on artificial nutrient medium in the presence or absence of fungicide selection showed that QoI resistance was stable. The results of the study suggest that a high risk for selection of QoI-resistant strains exists in crops heavily treated with QoIs, in spite of the widespread occurrence of the cytb intron in B. cinerea populations. The developed real-time TaqMan PCR constitutes a powerful tool to streamline detection of the mutation by reducing pre- and post-amplification manipulations, and can be used for rapid screening and quantification of QoI resistance. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry.

QoS-Aware Active Queue Management for Multimedia Services over the Internet

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hwang I-Shyan

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Recently, with multimedia services such as IPTV, video conferencing has emerged as a main traffic source. When UDP coexists with TCP, it induces not only congestion collapse but also an unfairness problem. In this paper, a new Active Queue Management algorithm, called Traffic Sensitive Active Queue Management (TSAQM, is proposed for providing multimedia services in routers. The TSAQM is comprised of Dynamic Weight Allocate Scheme (DWAS and Service Guarantee Scheme (SGS. The purpose of DWAS is to fairly allocate resources with high end-user utility, and the SGS is to determine the satisfactory threshold (TH and threshold region (TR. Besides, a multiqueue design for different priority traffic, and threshold TH and threshold region TR is proposed to achieve the different QoS requirements. Several objectives of this proposed scheme include achieving high end user utility for video services, considering the multicast as well as unicast proprieties to meet interclass fairness, and achieving the QoS requirement by adaptively adjusting the thresholds based on the traffic situations. Performance comparisons with the GRED-I are in terms of packet dropping rate and throughput to highlight the better behavior of the proposed schemes due to taking into account the fairness and different weights for video layers.

The validity and reliability of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Quality of Life Questionnaire (L-QoL) in a Turkish population.

Science.gov (United States)

Duruöz, M T; Unal, C; Toprak, C Sanal; Sezer, I; Yilmaz, F; Ulutatar, F; Atagündüz, P; Baklacioglu, H S

2017-12-01

Background Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) may have a profound impact on quality of life. There is increasing interest in measuring quality of life in lupus patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity and reliability of SLE Quality of Life Questionnaire (L-QoL) in Turkish SLE patients. Methods SLE according to 2012 Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics Classification Criteria were recruited into the study. Demographic data, clinical parameters and disease activity measured with the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index-2000 (SLEDAI-2K); were noted. Nottingham Health Profile and Health Assessment Questionnaire were filled out in addition to the Turkish L-QoL (LQoL-TR). Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity were evaluated. Results The mean age of participants was 43.55 ± 14.33 years and the mean disease duration was 89.8 ± 92.1 months. The patients filled out LQoL-TR in 2.5 min. Strong correlation of LQoL-TR with all subgroups of the Nottingham Health Profile and the Health Assessment Questionnaire were established showing the convergent validity. The highest correlation was demonstrated with emotional reactions (rho = 0.72) and sleep component (rho = 0.65) of the Nottingham Health Profile scale ( p < 0.0001). Its poor and not significant correlation with nonfunctional parameters (age, disease duration, perceived general health, SLEDAI-2K) showed its discriminative properties. LQoL-TR demonstrated good internal reliability with a Cronbach's α of 0.93 and test-retest reliability with intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.87. Conclusion The LQoL-TR is a practical and useful tool which demonstrates good validity and reliability.

An adaptive distributed admission approach in Bluetooth network with QoS provisions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Son, L.T.; Schiøler, Henrik; Madsen, Ole Brun

2002-01-01

In this paper, a method of adaptive distributed admission with end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) provisions for real time and non real time tra°cs in Blue-tooth networks is highlighted, its mathematic background is analyzed and a simulation with bursty tra°c sources, Interrupted Bernoulli Process...... (IBP), is carried out. The simulation results show that the performance of Bluetooth network is improved when applying the distributed admission method...

Change in quality of life in patients with acromegaly after treatment with octreotide LAR: first application of AcroQoL in Korea

Science.gov (United States)

Chin, Sang Ouk; Chung, Choon Hee; Chung, Yoon-Sok; Kim, Byung-Joon; Kim, Hee Young; Kim, In-Ju; Kim, Jung Guk; Kim, Min-Seon; Kim, Seong-Yeon; Lee, Eun Jig; Lee, Ki Young; Kim, Sung-Woon

2015-01-01

Objectives This study was designed to investigate changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients with acromegaly in Korea after medical treatment with octreotide LAR using the validated Korean version of the acromegaly quality of life questionnaire (AcroQoL). Design A prospective, open-label, single-arm study. Setting 11 tertiary centres in Korea. Participants 58 Korean patients (aged 21–72 years) who were newly diagnosed with acromegaly between 2009 and 2012 were prescribed octreotide LAR 20 mg at the time of enrolment. During 24 weeks of observation, AcroQoL survey questionnaires and measurement of growth hormone insulin-like growth factor 1(GH/IGF-I) were performed at baseline, week 12 and week 24. Main outcome measures We assessed the HRQoL of Korean patients with acromegaly after medical treatment with octreotide LAR using the validated Korean version of the AcroQoL questionnaire. Results Patients had a mean age of 47.2 years (29 males), and GH and IGF-I significantly decreased during the first 12 weeks (GH: 4.8 vs 1.9 μg/L, pacromegaly has a limited contribution to HRQoL as assessed by the AcroQoL. PMID:26063564

An Improved MOEA/D for QoS Oriented Multimedia Multicasting with Network Coding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhaoyuan Wang

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Recent years witness a significant growth in multimedia applications. Among them, a stream of applications is real-time and requires one-to-many fast data transmission with stringent quality-of-service (QoS requirements, where multicast is an important supporting technology. In particular, with more and more mobile end users requesting real-time broadband multimedia applications, it is of vital importance to provide them with satisfied quality of experience. As network coding can offer higher bandwidth to users and accommodate more flows for networks than traditional routing, this paper studies the multicast routing problem with network coding and formulates it as a multi-objective optimization problem. As delay and packet loss ratio (PLR are two important performance indicators for QoS, we consider them as the two objectives for minimization. To address the problem above, we present a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D, where an all population updating rule is devised to address the problem of lacking feasible solutions in the search space. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and it outperforms a number of state-of-the-art algorithms.

Self-reported quality of life and functional outcome in patients with rectal cancer--QoLiRECT

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Asplund, Dan; Heath, Jane; González, Elisabeth

2014-01-01

international multicentre study based on a comprehensive, validated questionnaire on functional impairments and QoL administered to an unselected population of 1,500 patients with rectal cancer at diagnosis and after one, two and five years. The clinical characteristics are retrieved from the national quality......INTRODUCTION: The treatment of rectal cancer has improved, and survival rates today exceed those of colon cancer, but functional impairments and other adverse effects of treatment are common among patients. The impact of treatment on patients' quality of life (QoL) remains unclear. Many...... registers. A total of 14 hospitals in Sweden and Denmark are currently involved in the study. Inclusion is ongoing, and new including hospitals are welcome to join. Full accrual is expected within two years. CONCLUSION: This study will provide detailed knowledge about the challenges that patients face...

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.

A Descriptive Study Assessing Quality of Life for Adults With a Permanent Ostomy and the Influence of Preoperative Stoma Site Marking.

Science.gov (United States)

Maydick, Diane

2016-05-01

Diseases or anomalies of the genitourinary or gastrointestinal tract often require removal of organs and creation of an artificial opening (stoma) to allow for elimination of urine or stool. Preoperative stoma site marking can affect quality of life (QoL). A descriptive study was conducted to assess the relationship between QoL and preoperative stoma site marking in adults with a permanent ostomy. Using convenience sampling methods, 230 eligible participants attending a United Ostomy Association of America conference were invited to complete a survey of demographics regarding age, gender, time since surgeries, and ostomy type and the City of Hope National Medical Center Quality of Life Ostomy Questionnaire. The latter contains 2 sections of 30 and 43 items each that address life impact and quality of life, respectively. The researcher explained the study and provided a study packet to volunteers who were interested in participating. Volunteers were to complete the surveys over a 4-day period while at the conference; the investigator collected all study materials. Inclusion criteria stipulated study participants must be English writing/reading persons at least 18 years of age with a colostomy, ileostomy, or urostomy. All descriptive statistics (means, standard deviation, frequency, and percents) used to describe demographic and surgical history and quantitative data (logistic regression, cross-tabulation, Pearson product moment correlations, and analysis of covariance) used to determine relationships among factors were entered and analyzed using a computer software program. Of the 140 participants who met inclusion criteria and provided data, the majority (85, 60.7%) had their stoma site marked by a wound, ostomy, continence (WOC) nurse. WOC nurse marking was more likely in recent years, and WOC nurse marking was 1.03 times more likely for each year since stoma surgery (M = 13.44, SD = 13.48). Mean QoL was 7.56 (SD = 1.59, range 3.84-10.00) and was positively

Model checking and evaluating QoS of batteries in MPSoC dataflow applications via hybrid automata

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ahmad, W.; Jongerden, M.R.; Stoelinga, Mariëlle Ida Antoinette; van de Pol, Jan Cornelis

2016-01-01

System lifetime is a major design constraint for battery-powered mobile embedded systems. The increasing gap between the energy demand of portable devices and their battery capacities is further limiting durability of mobile devices. Thus, the guarantees over Quality of Service (QoS) of

Effects of Aqua Exercises Towards Improving The Quality of Life (QoL) of Obese Women in Malaysia

Science.gov (United States)

Karim, Noor Liyana Binti; Jalil, Asma Diyana binti Abd; Hasri, Noor Haninah Binti; Rahman, Hezlin Aryani Binti Abd; Shari, Maisarah Binti; Idris, Nur Izzati Binti

2018-05-01

Aqua exercise is a form of water exercise, done in the water which is beneficial for weight loss as well as improving the quality of life. It is suitable for all age group and fitness levels whereby due to the water buoyancy makes it easier to perform exercises especially for obese and knee-injured people. However, there was not much study done to measure the effectiveness of the aqua exercises in improving the quality life. Thus, this study aims to investigate and compare the effectiveness of aqua exercises towards obese women within eight domains of the Quality of Life (QoL). This study uses the 36-Items Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) questionnaire and a purposive sample of 61 participants to measure the effectiveness of the aqua exercise before and after 36 days of aqua workout. As the nature of the data collected was not normally distributed, hence the Wilcoxon signed rank test was used as the statistical method of analysis. The findings of this study showed that there was a significant difference between the overall QoL pre and post since the p-value physical functioning, general health, social functioning, mental health, and health transition were the domains showing significant difference between the pre and post-test (p-value < 0.05), and where majority of the participants showed a significant improvement after the aqua workouts. Thus, it can be concluded that aqua exercises is effective in improving the general QoL of obese women.

QoS Management and Control for an All-IP WiMAX Network Architecture: Design, Implementation and Evaluation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thomas Michael Bohnert

2008-01-01

Full Text Available The IEEE 802.16 standard provides a specification for a fixed and mobile broadband wireless access system, offering high data rate transmission of multimedia services with different Quality-of-Service (QoS requirements through the air interface. The WiMAX Forum, going beyond the air interface, defined an end-to-end WiMAX network architecture, based on an all-IP platform in order to complete the standards required for a commercial rollout of WiMAX as broadband wireless access solution. As the WiMAX network architecture is only a functional specification, this paper focuses on an innovative solution for an end-to-end WiMAX network architecture offering in compliance with the WiMAX Forum specification. To our best knowledge, this is the first WiMAX architecture built by a research consortium globally and was performed within the framework of the European IST project WEIRD (WiMAX Extension to Isolated Research Data networks. One of the principal features of our architecture is support for end-to-end QoS achieved by the integration of resource control in the WiMAX wireless link and the resource management in the wired domains in the network core. In this paper we present the architectural design of these QoS features in the overall WiMAX all-IP framework and their functional as well as performance evaluation. The presented results can safely be considered as unique and timely for any WiMAX system integrator.

Self-reported quality of life and functional outcome in patients with rectal cancer – QoLiREC

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Asplund, Dan; Heath, Jane; González, Elisabeth

2014-01-01

international multicentre study based on a comprehensive, validated questionnaire on functional impairments and QoL administered to an unselected population of 1,500 patients with rectal cancer at diagnosis and after one, two and five years. The clinical characteristics are retrieved from the national quality......INTRODUCTION: The treatment of rectal cancer has improved, and survival rates today exceed those of colon cancer, but functional impairments and other adverse effects of treatment are common among patients. The impact of treatment on patients' quality of life (QoL) remains unclear. Many...... registers. A total of 14 hospitals in Sweden and Denmark are currently involved in the study. Inclusion is ongoing, and new including hospitals are welcome to join. Full accrual is expected within two years. CONCLUSION: This study will provide detailed knowledge about the challenges that patients face...

QoS-aware ant routing with security constraints in optical fibre networks by using RGB pheromones

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Al-Momin, Mohammad; Lazaridis, Pavlos; Cosmas, John

2016-01-01

for these different traffic types. In this paper, a novel technology is proposed to satisfy the requirements of different traffic types which vary in terms of bandwidth, latency and security. Oyster Optics Technology has been used to introduce the security as a new significant QoS factor....

Analysis of infusion-site reactions in renal transplant recipients receiving peripherally administered rabbit antithymocyte globulin as compared with basiliximab.

Science.gov (United States)

Erickson, Abbie L; Roberts, Keri; Malek, Sayeed K; Chandraker, Anil K; Tullius, Stefan G; Gabardi, Steven

2010-06-01

Antithymocyte globulin rabbit (r-ATG) has been used for the treatment and prevention of acute rejection in renal transplant recipients (RTR). Current manufacturer recommendations for r-ATG dictate the need for administration through a high-flow vein (central line). Previous studies have shown peripheral administration of r-ATG to be safe; however, these studies suggest the co-administration of heparin and hydrocortisone and did not compare the infusion-site reaction rates to a control group. A retrospective analysis was conducted of adult RTR receiving r-ATG or basiliximab between January 2004 and October 2006. Each agent was administered through a dedicated peripheral line. The primary endpoint was the incidence of infusion-site reactions. Other endpoints included the need to replace the intravenous catheter and the incidence of systemic thrombosis within 1 month of transplantation. During the study period, 152 peripheral infusions of r-ATG and 92 peripheral infusions of basiliximab were administered. No difference in infusion-site reactions was noted between the groups. There was also no difference either in the need for peripheral line replacement or the rates of systemic thrombosis. Peripheral administration of r-ATG is safe and can be infused without concomitant heparin and hydrocortisone. This method of r-ATG infusion was shown to be as safe as peripherally administered basiliximab.

Evaluasi Kinerja IEEE 802.11e HCCA untuk Dukungan QoS pada WLAN Menggunakan NS-2

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amry Daulat Gultom

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN digunakan oleh trafik multimedia yang seharusnya memerlukan persyaratan jaringan yang lebih baik terhadap delay, jitter dan packet losses. IEEE 802.11 Task Group E memperkenalkan perbaikan protokol MAC 802.11, yaitu Hybrid Coordination Function (HCF, yang terdiri dari dua mekanisme akses: Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA dan HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA yang memberikan dukungan Kualitas Layanan/Quality of Service (QoS bagi trafik multimedia. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk memahami algoritma protokol MAC IEEE 802.11e HCCA pada jaringan WLAN, dan menganalisis kinerja protokol MAC 802.11e HCCA pada aplikasi multimedia dengan menggunakan metode simulasi pada NS-2. Metrik kinerja yang diukur adalah jitter dan throughput-nya. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa protokol MAC HCCA dapat memberikan jaminan QoS dibanding protokol MAC DCF, dimana jitter HCCA lebih stabil dari pada jitter DCF. Begitupula dengan throughput HCCA yang tidak berubah selama trafik berlangsung, tidak seperti pada DCF yang masih mengalami fluktuasi yang besar.

Designing area optimized application-specific network-on-chip architectures while providing hard QoS guarantees.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sajid Gul Khawaja

Full Text Available With the increase of transistors' density, popularity of System on Chip (SoC has increased exponentially. As a communication module for SoC, Network on Chip (NoC framework has been adapted as its backbone. In this paper, we propose a methodology for designing area-optimized application specific NoC while providing hard Quality of Service (QoS guarantees for real time flows. The novelty of the proposed system lies in derivation of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model which is then used to generate a resource optimal Network on Chip (NoC topology and architecture while considering traffic and QoS requirements. We also present the micro-architectural design features used for enabling traffic and latency guarantees and discuss how the solution adapts for dynamic variations in the application traffic. The paper highlights the effectiveness of proposed method by generating resource efficient NoC solutions for both industrial and benchmark applications. The area-optimized results are generated in few seconds by proposed technique, without resorting to heuristics, even for an application with 48 traffic flows.

Toward Mobile Web 2.0-based business methods: Collaborative QoS-information sharing for mobile service users

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wac, K.E.; Bults, Richard G.A.; van Beijnum, Bernhard J.F.; Chen, Hong; Konstantas, D.; Head, M.; Li, Eldon

2009-01-01

Mobile service providers (MoSPs) emerge, driven by the ubiquitous availability of mobile devices and wireless communication infrastructures. MoSPs’ customers satisfaction and consequently their revenues, largely depend on the quality of service (QoS) provided by wireless network providers (WNPs)

QoS Self-Provisioning and Interference Management for Co-Channel Deployed 3G Femtocells

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kolding, Troels; Ochal, Pawel; Jørgensen, Niels T.K.

2013-01-01

A highly efficient self-provisioning interference management scheme is derived for 3G Home Node-Bs (HNB). The proposed scheme comprises self-adjustment of the HNB transmission parameters to meet the targeted QoS (quality of service) requirements in terms of downlink and uplink guaranteed minimum ...... live 3G high-speed packet access (HSPA) HNB field-trials, confirming the validity of major simulation results and assumptions....

Quality of life in Indian women with fertility problems as assessed by the FertiQoL questionnaire: a single center cross sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Desai, Hema Jagdish; Gundabattula, Sirisha Rao

2017-11-24

Infertility and its treatment can significantly impact an individual's physical and psychological health; however, this has not been well-studied in the Indian population. This study aimed to assess the quality of life in women with infertility at a teaching hospital in Hyderabad, India. In this cross sectional study of women with infertility, the quality of life was measured using the 'FertiQoL International' questionnaire (English/Hindi). The age ranged from 20 to 38 years and polycystic ovary syndrome was the most common cause of infertility. Core FertiQoL scores were analyzed in 215 women and Treatment FertiQoL in 156. The mean Total FertiQoL score in the study population was 66.1 (SD 13.0) and this overall score was not influenced by socio-demographic or infertility-specific factors. However, on subscale analysis, women who had living children and were university-educated had significantly better emotional scores while obese (≥35 kg/m 2 ) women and those on ovulation induction treatment had poorer mind body and relational scores, respectively. Women with associated co-morbidities had worse quality of life on the Treatment Environment scale than those without. The results provide a baseline quality of life score in these women. Infertility had the greatest impact on the emotional domain.

Characterization and reaction behavior of ferrocyanide simulants and Hanford Site high-level ferrocyanide waste

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jeppson, D.W.; Simpson, B.C.

1994-02-01

Nonradioactive waste simulants and initial ferrocyanide tank waste samples were characterized to assess potential safety concerns associated with ferrocyanide high-level radioactive waste stored at the Hanford Site in underground single-shell tanks (SSTs). Chemical, physical, thermodynamic, and reaction properties of the waste simulants were determined and compared to properties of initial samples of actual ferrocyanide wastes presently in the tanks. The simulants were shown to not support propagating reactions when subjected to a strong ignition source. The simulant with the greatest ferrocyanide concentration was shown to not support a propagating reaction that would involve surrounding waste because of its high water content. Evaluation of dried simulants indicated a concentration limit of about 14 wt% disodium mononickel ferrocyanide, below which propagating reactions could not occur in the ambient temperature bulk tank waste. For postulated localized hot spots where dried waste is postulated to be at an initial temperature of 130 C, a concentration limit of about 13 wt% disodium mononickel ferrocyanide was determined, below which propagating reactions could not occur. Analyses of initial samples of the presently stored ferrocyanide waste indicate that the waste tank ferrocyanide concentrations are considerably lower than the limit for propagation for dry waste and that the water content is near that of the as-prepared simulants. If the initial trend continues, it will be possible to show that runaway ferrocyanide reactions are not possible under present tank conditions. The lower ferrocyanide concentrations in actual tank waste may be due to tank waste mixing and/or degradation from radiolysis and/or hydrolysis, which may have occurred over approximately 35 years of storage

Development of Patient-reported Outcomes Measure of Pharmaceutical Therapy for Quality of Life (PROMPT-QoL): A novel instrument for medication management.

Science.gov (United States)

Sakthong, Phantipa; Suksanga, Phattrapa; Sakulbumrungsil, Rungpetch; Winit-Watjana, Win

2015-01-01

Medicines can affect a patient's health-related quality of life (HRQoL), but there exists no standardized HRQoL measure for medication management. To develop the new HRQoL instrument "Patient-reported Outcomes Measure of Pharmaceutical Therapy for Quality of Life" (PROMPT-QoL), and to evaluate its content validity and preliminary psychometrics using a Rasch model. The PROMPT-QoL questionnaire was developed through the concept review, item generation, cognitive interviews, and initial psychometric evaluation. Its first draft was initially tested by Round-1 interviews of 120 adult outpatients taking their medicines at least three months continuously. The final draft with 43 items was then constructed and checked by 10 physicians and 5 pharmacists for the questionnaire importance and content validity. Round-2 interviews in six patient groups with 10 patients of each were conducted to elicit patients' understanding of the questionnaire and assess preliminary psychometrics using the Rasch analysis, including fit statistics, person and item reliabilities. The 43-item PROMPT-QoL comprised 10 domains: General Attitude toward Medication Use, Medicine Information, Disease Information, Medicine Effectiveness, Impacts of Medicines and Side-effects, Psychological Impacts of Medication Use, Convenience, Availability and Accessibility, Therapeutic Relationship with Healthcare Providers, and Overall QoL. Based on the patient interviews and expert review, the questionnaire was considered important, useful, and comprehensive. All items and domains yielded content validity indexes above the acceptable values of 0.80 and 0.90, respectively. In Round 2, thirty-nine problems identified in Group 1 were reduced to two issues in Group 6 after amendments. The Rasch analysis revealed eight items were misfit and two domains were reliable for both personal and item aspects (Medicine Information and Psychological Impacts of Medication Use). The newly developed PROMPT-QoL has favorable content

QoE-Aware Device-to-Device Multimedia Communications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liang ZHOU

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Multimedia services over mobile device-to-device (D2D networks has recently received considerable attention. In this scenario, each device is equipped with a cellular communication interface, as well as a D2D interface over a shared medium. In this work, we study the performance properties of the mobile D2D communications in the framework of user satisfaction, and develop a fully distributed QoE-aware multimedia communication scheme (QAMCS. Specifically, we translate the opportunistic multimedia communications issue into a stochastic optimization problem, which opens up a new degree of performance to exploit. Moreover, QAMCS is designed for a heterogeneous and dynamic environment, in which user demand, device mobility, and transmission fashion may vary across different devices and applications. Importantly, QAMCS is able to maximize the user satisfaction and only needs each device to implement its own scheme individually in the absence of a central controller.

Semantic Network Adaptation Based on QoS Pattern Recognition for Multimedia Streams

Science.gov (United States)

Exposito, Ernesto; Gineste, Mathieu; Lamolle, Myriam; Gomez, Jorge

This article proposes an ontology based pattern recognition methodology to compute and represent common QoS properties of the Application Data Units (ADU) of multimedia streams. The use of this ontology by mechanisms located at different layers of the communication architecture will allow implementing fine per-packet self-optimization of communication services regarding the actual application requirements. A case study showing how this methodology is used by error control mechanisms in the context of wireless networks is presented in order to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach.

Study of QoS control and reliable routing method for utility communication network. Application of differentiated service to the network and alternative route establishment by the IP routing protocol; Denryokuyo IP network no QoS seigyo to shinraisei kakuho no hoho. DiffServ ni yoru QoS seigyo no koka to IP ni yoru fuku root ka no kento

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Oba, E.

2000-05-01

QoS control method which satisfies utilities communication network requirement and alternative route establishment method which is for sustaining communication during a failure are studied. Applicability of DiffServ (Differentiated Service), one of the most promising QoS control method on IP network and studying energetically in IETF WG, is studied and it is found most application used in the utility communication network except for relaying system information could he accommodated to the DiffServ network. An example of the napping of the utility communication applications to the DiffServ PHB (Per Hop Behavior) is shown in this paper. Regarding to the alternative route, usual IP routing protocol cannot establish alternative route which doesn't have common links and nodes in their paths for a destination. IP address duplication with some modification of routing protocol enables such alternative route establishment. MPLS, distance vector algorithm and link state algorithm are evaluated qualitatively, and as a result, we found MPLS is promising way to establish the route. Quantitative evaluation will be future work. (author)

In vitro sensitivity reduction of Fusarium graminearum to DMI and QoI fungicides

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Aveline Avozani

2014-12-01

Full Text Available In Brazil, Fusarium head blight (FHB affecting wheat can cause up to 39.8% damage. Resistant cultivars are not available yet; thus, short-term disease control relies on the use of fungicides. The first step to improve control is to monitor fungal populations that are sensitivity to chemicals in order to achieve efficient FHB management. In vitro experiments were conducted to evaluate the inhibitory concentration (IC50 of fungicides for both mycelial growth and conidial germination of ten Fusarium graminearum isolates. The following demethylation inhibitor (DMI fungicides were tested: metconazole, prothioconazole and tebuconazole. In addition, pyraclostrobin and trifloxystrobin were included, representing QoI fungicides, as well as three co-formulations containing metconazole + pyraclostrobin, prothioconazole + trifloxystrobin, and tebuconazole + trifloxystrobin. For mycelial growth, the overall mean IC50 of isolates was: metconazole 0.07, prothioconazole 0.1, and tebuconazole 0.19 mg/L. For the co-formulations, it was: prothioconazole + trifloxystrobin 0.08, tebuconazole + trifloxystrobin 0.12, and metconazole + pyraclostrobin 0.14 mg/L. Regarding spore germination inhibition, IC50 for prothioconazole + trifloxystrobin was 0.06, for tebuconazole + trifloxystrobin, 0.12 mg/L, for QoI alone pyraclostrobin, was 0.09, and for trifloxystrobin, 0.28 mg/L. There was a sensitivity shift among isolates and the highest fungitoxicity to F. graminearum was confirmed for prothioconazole, metconazole and tebuconazole .

Tracheobronchial puncture-site nodular reaction (TPNR following endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA: Systematic review of case reports

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Karan Madan

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA is a minimally invasive and efficacious diagnostic modality for lung cancer staging and evaluation of undiagnosed mediastinal lymphadenopathy. Procedure-related complications are uncommon. We herein report an infrequently described phenomenon following EBUS-TBNA in which two patients developed nodular granulation tissue at the tracheobronchial puncture site. On systematic review, we found description of such phenomena by terminologies such as endobronchial inflammatory polyp, granuloma, and endobronchial mass. The endobronchial inflammatory polyp has been one of the most commonly used terminologies for these; but in most cases, the classical features of an inflammatory polyp are lacking. We propose the term, tracheobronchial puncture-site nodular reaction (TPNR with further classification into granulomatous and nongranulomatous subtypes, for standardized reporting of such reactions following transbronchial needle aspiration procedures. Knowledge of this entity and standardized nomenclature shall help in better characterization of the outcomes and risk factors for the occurrence of these reactions.

Food allergy QoL questionnaire for children aged 0-12 years : content, construct, and cross-cultural validity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

DunnGalvin, A.; de BlokFlokstra, B. M. J.; Burks, A. W.; Dubois, A. E. J.; Hourihane, J. O'B.

Background To date, there is no food allergy-specific questionnaire that allows parents to report children's health-related QoL (HRQL) from the child's perspective. Objective The aim of this study was to develop a sensitive, multi-dimensional measure to assess parental perception of HRQL in children

Device Centric Throughput and QoS Optimization for IoTsin a Smart Building Using CRN-Techniques

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saleem Aslam

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The Internet of Things (IoT has gained an incredible importance in the communication and networking industry due to its innovative solutions and advantages in diverse domains. The IoT’ network is a network of smart physical objects: devices, vehicles, buildings, etc. The IoT has a number of applications ranging from smart home, smart surveillance to smart healthcare systems. Since IoT consists of various heterogeneous devices that exhibit different traffic patterns and expect different quality of service (QoS in terms of data rate, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel, therefore, in this paper, we formulated an optimization problem to assign channels to heterogeneous IoT devices within a smart building for the provisioning of their desired QoS. To solve this problem, a novel particle swarm optimization-based algorithm is proposed. Then, exhaustive simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the supremacy of our proposed algorithm over the existing ones in terms of throughput, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel.

Probing surface sites of TiO2: reactions with [HRe(CO)5] and [CH3Re(CO)5].

Science.gov (United States)

Lobo-Lapidus, Rodrigo J; Gates, Bruce C

2010-10-04

Two carbonyl complexes of rhenium, [HRe(CO)(5)] and [CH(3)Re(CO)(5)], were used to probe surface sites of TiO(2) (anatase). These complexes were adsorbed from the gas phase onto anatase powder that had been treated in flowing O(2) or under vacuum to vary the density of surface OH sites. Infrared (IR) spectra demonstrate the variation in the number of sites, including Ti(+3)-OH and Ti(+4)-OH. IR and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra show that chemisorption of the rhenium complexes led to their decarbonylation, with formation of surface-bound rhenium tricarbonyls, when [HRe(CO)(5)] was adsorbed, or rhenium tetracarbonyls, when [CH(3)Re(CO)(5)] was adsorbed. These reactions were accompanied by the formation of water and surface carbonates and removal of terminal hydroxyl groups associated with Ti(+3) and Ti(+4) ions on the anatase. Data characterizing the samples after adsorption of [HRe(CO)(5)] or [CH(3)Re(CO)(5)] determined a ranking of the reactivity of the surface OH sites, with the Ti(+3)-OH groups being the more reactive towards the rhenium complexes but the less likely to be dehydroxylated. The two rhenium pentacarbonyl probes provided complementary information, suggesting that the carbonate species originate from carbonyl ligands initially bonded to the rhenium and from hydroxyl groups of the titania surface, with the reaction leading to the formation of water and bridging hydroxyl groups on the titania. The results illustrate the value of using a family of organometallic complexes as probes of oxide surface sites.

A brief instrument to measure health-related quality of life in patients with bone metastasis: validation of the German version of Bone Metastases Quality-of-Life-10 (BOMET-QoL-10).

Science.gov (United States)

Marschner, Norbert; Wilke, Jochen; Reschke, Daniel; Kaiser, Florian; Schmoor, Claudia; Grugel, Renate; Boller, Emil

2018-06-06

This prospective, epidemiologic study was designed to translate the original Spanish Bone Metastases Quality-of-Life-10 (BOMET-QoL-10) questionnaire and undertake a validation of the translated German version of BOMET-QoL-10 in Germany to assess health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with bone metastases (BM). The translation process included forward and backward translations, and a linguistic validation. Patients aged ≥18 years with histological confirmation of cancer, diagnosed with BM, life expectancy ≥6 months, and fluency in German were eligible for this study (enrolled consecutively in 33 outpatient centers in Germany). Patients were given the German version of BOMET-QoL-10 together with European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Questionnaire QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-BM22 questionnaires at inclusion, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after inclusion. A debriefing questionnaire was administered at inclusion to determine patient acceptability and understanding. Data include 364 patients with BM (median age: 68 years; female sex: 71.7%). The BOMET-QoL-10 is brief and clear (median completion time: 5 minutes; >90% of patients completed the questionnaire without assistance). The BOMET-QoL-10 forms only one overall scale. All 10 items showed a substantial correlation with the first factor (factor loading, range: 0.58 - 0.86). BOMET-QoL-10 exhibits high internal consistency and reproducibility (Cronbach's alpha: 0.91; intra-class correlation coefficient: 0.76). BOMET-QoL-10 showed significant correlations (range: 0.69 - 0.79) both with EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-BM22 within the functioning (physical, social, interference) and symptom (fatigue, pain) scales, displayed significant sensitivity to change in EORTC QLQ-BM22 scores, and proved potential ability to detect change in HRQoL in patients with different disease status. There was a high proportion of females in our study which might represent a limitation. The

Leveraging 802.11n frame aggregation to enhance QoS and power consumption in Wi-Fi networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Camps-Mur, D.; Gomony, M.D.; Perez-Costa, X.; Sallent-Ribes, S.

2012-01-01

The Wi-Fi technology, driven by its tremendous success, is expanding into a wide variety of devices and applications. However, many of these new devices, like handheld devices, pose new challenges in terms of QoS and energy efficiency. In order to address these challenges, in this paper we study how

Correlation of physical aptitude; functional capacity, corporal balance and quality of life (QoL) among elderly women submitted to a post-menopausal physical activities program.

Science.gov (United States)

de Souza Santos, César Augusto; Dantas, Estélio Enrique Martin; Moreira, Maria Helena Rodrigues

2011-01-01

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of physical activity from the "Menopause in Form" program on physical aptitude, functional capacity, corporal balance and QoL among elderly women. In addition, correlations among these variables were examined. The present work was a longitudinal study that was quasi-experimental and correlational. A total of 323 elderly women (age: 69.0±5.53 years) participated in this study. Subjects were non-institutionalized, post-menopausal individuals residing at the Elderly Care Center in Belém Municipality (Pará, Brazil) and practiced one activity (i.e., dancing or walking) over a 10-month period. The assessment protocols used were the following: the Fullerton functional fitness test battery (physical aptitude); the activities of daily living (ADL) indices (functional capacity); the Tinetti-scale (corporal balance); and the WHOQOL-OLD questionnaire (QoL). The adopted significance level was p<0.05. Results from the Wilcoxon test demonstrated significant differences for the post-test assessment of functional capacity (Δ%=5.63%; p=0.0001) and general QoL (Δ%=9.19%; p=0.001). These results suggest that the physical activities employed during the "Menopause in Form" program resulted in significant improvements in the functional capacity and QoL of post-menopausal elderly women. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exquisite Modulation of the Active Site of Methanocaldococcus jannaschii Adenylosuccinate Synthetase in Forward Reaction Complexes.

Science.gov (United States)

Karnawat, Vishakha; Mehrotra, Sonali; Balaram, Hemalatha; Puranik, Mrinalini

2016-05-03

In enzymes that conduct complex reactions involving several substrates and chemical transformations, the active site must reorganize at each step to complement the transition state of that chemical step. Adenylosuccinate synthetase (ADSS) utilizes a molecule each of guanosine 5'-monophosphate (GTP) and aspartate to convert inosine 5'-monophosphate (IMP) into succinyl adenosine 5'-monophosphate (sAMP) through several kinetic intermediates. Here we followed catalysis by ADSS through high-resolution vibrational spectral fingerprints of each substrate and intermediate involved in the forward reaction. Vibrational spectra show differential ligand distortion at each step of catalysis, and band positions of substrates are influenced by binding of cosubstrates. We found that the bound IMP is distorted toward its N1-deprotonated form even in the absence of any other ligands. Several specific interactions between GTP and active-site amino acid residues result in large Raman shifts and contribute substantially to intrinsic binding energy. When both IMP and GTP are simultaneously bound to ADSS, IMP is converted into an intermediate 6-phosphoryl inosine 5'-monophosphate (6-pIMP). The 6-pIMP·ADSS complex was found to be stable upon binding of the third ligand, hadacidin (HDA), an analogue of l-aspartate. We find that in the absence of HDA, 6-pIMP is quickly released from ADSS, is unstable in solution, and converts back into IMP. HDA allosterically stabilizes ADSS through local conformational rearrangements. We captured this complex and determined the spectra and structure of 6-pIMP in its enzyme-bound state. These results provide important insights into the exquisite tuning of active-site interactions with changing substrate at each kinetic step of catalysis.

Validation of the "Quality of Life related to function, aesthetics, socialization, and thoughts about health-behavioural habits (QoLFAST-10)" scale for wearers of implant-supported fixed partial dentures.

Science.gov (United States)

Castillo-Oyagüe, Raquel; Perea, Carmen; Suárez-García, María-Jesús; Río, Jaime Del; Lynch, Christopher D; Preciado, Arelis

2016-12-01

To validate the 'Quality of Life related to function, aesthetics, socialization, and thoughts about health-behavioural habits (QoLFAST-10)' questionnaire for assessing the whole concept of oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) of implant-supported fixed partial denture (FPD) wearers. 107 patients were assigned to: Group 1 (HP; n=37): fixed-detachable hybrid prostheses (control); Group 2 (C-PD, n=35): cemented partial dentures; and Group 3 (S-PD, n=35): screwed partial dentures. Patients answered the QoLFAST-10 and the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14sp) scales. Information on global oral satisfaction, socio-demographic, prosthetic, and clinical data was gathered. The psychometric capacity of the QoLFAST-10 was investigated. The correlations between both indices were explored by the Spearman's rank test. The effect of the study variables on the OHRQoL was evaluated by descriptive and non-parametric probes (α=0.05). The QoLFAST-10 was reliable and valid for implant-supported FPD wearers, who attained comparable results regardless of the connection system being cement or screws. Both fixed partial groups demonstrated significantly better social, functional, and total satisfaction than did HP wearers with this index. All groups revealed similar aesthetic-related well-being and consciousness about the importance of health-behavioural habits. Several study variables modulated the QoLFAST-10 scores. Hybrid prostheses represent the least predictable treatment option, while cemented and screwed FPDs supplied equal OHRQoL as estimated by the QoLFAST-10 scale. The selection of cemented or screwed FPDs should mainly rely on clinical factors, since no differences in patient satisfaction may be expected between both types of implant rehabilitations. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Step sites in syngas catalysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rostrup-Nielsen, J.; Nørskov, Jens Kehlet

2006-01-01

Step sites play an important role in many catalytic reactions. This paper reviews recent results on metal catalysts for syngas reactions with emphasis on steam reforming. Modern characterization techniques (STEM, HREM...) and theoretical calculations (DFT) has allowed a more quantitative explanat......Step sites play an important role in many catalytic reactions. This paper reviews recent results on metal catalysts for syngas reactions with emphasis on steam reforming. Modern characterization techniques (STEM, HREM...) and theoretical calculations (DFT) has allowed a more quantitative...... explanation of the impact of step sites on catalyst activity and side reactions such as carbon formation. This leads to a discussion of principles for catalyst promotion....

Pre-diagnosis quality of life (QoL) in patients with hematuria : Comparison of bladder cancer with other causes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goossens-Laan, C.A.; Kil, P.J.M.; Bosch, J.L.; de Vries, J.

2013-01-01

Purpose To examine quality of life (QoL), health status, sexual function, and anxiety in patients with primary hematuria who later appear to have bladder cancer (BC) and patients with other diagnoses. Methods From July 2007 to July 2010, 598 patients with primary hematuria were enrolled in this

Development of a self-administrated quality of life questionnaire for sarcopenia in elderly subjects: the SarQoL.

Science.gov (United States)

Beaudart, Charlotte; Biver, Emmanuel; Reginster, Jean-Yves; Rizzoli, René; Rolland, Yves; Bautmans, Ivan; Petermans, Jean; Gillain, Sophie; Buckinx, Fanny; Van Beveren, Julien; Jacquemain, Marc; Italiano, Patrick; Dardenne, Nadia; Bruyere, Olivier

2015-11-01

The impact of sarcopenia on quality of life is currently assessed by generic tools. However, these tools may not detect subtle effects of this specific condition on quality of life. The aim of this study was to develop a sarcopenia-specific quality of life questionnaire (SarQoL, Sarcopenia Quality of Life) designed for community-dwelling elderly subjects aged 65 years and older. Participants were recruited in an outpatient clinic in Liège, Belgium. Sarcopenic subjects aged 65 years or older. The study was articulated in the following four stages: (i) Item generation-based on literature review, sarcopenic subjects' opinion, experts' opinion, focus groups; (ii) Item reduction-based on sarcopenic subjects' and experts' preferences; (iii) Questionnaire generation-developed during an expert meeting; (iv) Pretest of the questionnaire-based on sarcopenic subjects' opinion. The final version of the questionnaire consists of 55 items translated into 22 questions rated on a 4-point Likert scale. These items are organised into seven domains of dysfunction: Physical and mental health, Locomotion, Body composition, Functionality, Activities of daily living, Leisure activities and Fears. In view of the pretest, the SarQoL is easy to complete, independently, in ∼10 min. The first version of the SarQoL, a specific quality of life questionnaire for sarcopenic subjects, has been developed and has been shown to be comprehensible by the target population. Investigations are now required to test the psychometric properties (internal consistency, test-retest reliability, divergent and convergent validity, discriminant validity, floor and ceiling effects) of this questionnaire. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society.

Observations concerning the quinol oxidation site of the cytochrome bc{sub 1} complex

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Berry, Edward A.; Huang, Li-Shar

2003-09-07

A direct hydrogen bond between ubiquinone/quinol bound at the QO site and a cluster-ligand histidine of the iron-sulfur protein (ISP) is described as a major determining factor explaining much experimental data on position of the ISP ectodomain, EPR lineshape and midpoint potential of the iron-sulfur cluster, and the mechanism of the bifurcated electron transfer from ubiquinol to the high and low potential chains of the bc1 complex.

A game theoretical approach for QoS provisioning in heterogeneous networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A.S.M. Zadid Shifat

2015-09-01

Full Text Available With the proliferation of mobile phone users, interference management is a big concern in this neoteric years. To cope with this problem along with ensuring better Quality of Service (QoS, femtocell plays an imperious preamble in heterogeneous networks (HetNets for some of its noteworthy characteristics. In this paper, we propose a game theoretic algorithm along with dynamic channel allocation and hybrid access mechanism with self-organizing power control scheme. With a view to resolving prioritized access issue, the concept of primary and secondary users is applied. Existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium (NE has been investigated and comes to a perfection that our proposed scheme can be adopted both increasing capacity and increasing revenue of operators considering optimal price for consumers.

Reaction rate constants of H-abstraction by OH from large ketones: measurements and site-specific rate rules.

Science.gov (United States)

Badra, Jihad; Elwardany, Ahmed E; Farooq, Aamir

2014-06-28

Reaction rate constants of the reaction of four large ketones with hydroxyl (OH) are investigated behind reflected shock waves using OH laser absorption. The studied ketones are isomers of hexanone and include 2-hexanone, 3-hexanone, 3-methyl-2-pentanone, and 4-methl-2-pentanone. Rate constants are measured under pseudo-first-order kinetics at temperatures ranging from 866 K to 1375 K and pressures near 1.5 atm. The reported high-temperature rate constant measurements are the first direct measurements for these ketones under combustion-relevant conditions. The effects of the position of the carbonyl group (C=O) and methyl (CH3) branching on the overall rate constant with OH are examined. Using previously published data, rate constant expressions covering, low-to-high temperatures, are developed for acetone, 2-butanone, 3-pentanone, and the hexanone isomers studied here. These Arrhenius expressions are used to devise rate rules for H-abstraction from various sites. Specifically, the current scheme is applied with good success to H-abstraction by OH from a series of n-ketones. Finally, general expressions for primary and secondary site-specific H-abstraction by OH from ketones are proposed as follows (the subscript numbers indicate the number of carbon atoms bonded to the next-nearest-neighbor carbon atom, the subscript CO indicates that the abstraction is from a site next to the carbonyl group (C=O), and the prime is used to differentiate different neighboring environments of a methylene group):

The Impact of Hyposalivation on Quality of Life (QoL and Oral Health in the Aging Population of Al Madinah Al Munawarrah

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Mohammad S. Ahmad

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Hyposalivation (HS affects aging individuals by causing pain and discomfort in the oral cavity. The aim here was to determine the impact of hyposalivation and the saliva pH on the quality of life and caries status of geriatrics population. A total of 138 male outpatients attending the Taibah University College of Dentistry (TUCoD dental clinic were included in the study. The saliva flow, pH, Quality of Life (QoL, and caries status were recorded. The QoL was measured using the Arabic version of the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14, and the caries status was recorded using the Decayed, Missed, Filled Teeth (DMFT index. The mean age was 67.5 years and 64% were classified as having hyposalivation. The older respondents tended to have a lower saliva flow and pH compared to their younger counterparts. There was a significant inverse association (p = 0.02 between the caries status and mean saliva flow rate. There was also a significant (p < 0.001 positive correlation between caries and the OHIP-14 scores (Spearman’s ρ = 0.293. The prevalence of hyposalivation was relatively high and there was an inverse relationship between the age, the saliva flow, and pH. Those with more caries reported significantly poor QoL.

TREHALOSE-BASED ADDITIVE IMPROVED INTER-PRIMER BINDING SITE REACTIONS FOR DNA ISOLATED FROM RECALCITRANT PLANTS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Veronika Lancíková

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Trehalose-based (TBT-PAR additive was tested in order to optimize PCR amplification for DNA isolated from recalcitrant plants. Retrotransposon-based inter-primer binding site reactions were significantly improved with TBT-PAR solution using genomic DNA isolated from flax (Linum usitatissimum L., genotypes Kyivskyi, Bethune grown in radio-contaminated and non-radioactive remediated Chernobyl experimental fields. Additionally, similar improvements were observed using 19 recalcitrant genotypes of maize (Zea mays L. and three genotypes of yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius, Poepp. et Endl., genotypes PER05, ECU45, BOL22 grown in standard field conditions.

Phyllosticta species on citrus: Risk estimation of resistance to QoI fungicides and identification of species with cytochrome b gene sequences

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stammler, G.; Schutte, G.C.; Speakman, J.; Miessner, S.; Crous, P.W.

2013-01-01

Isolates of three fungal species associated with citrus, Phyllosticta citricarpa, Phyllosticta citriasiana and Phyllosticta capitalensis, collected from different citrus growing countries of the world, were investigated for their sensitivities to the QoI fungicides pyraclostrobin and azoxystrobin.

Ferrocyanide Safety Program: Analysis of postulated energetic reactions and resultant aerosol generation in Hanford Site Waste Tanks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Postma, A.K.; Dickinson, D.R.

1995-09-01

This report reviews work done to estimate the possible consequences of postulated energetic reactions in ferrocyanide waste stored in underground tanks at the Hanford Site. The issue of explosive reactions was raised in the 1987 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), where a detonation-like explosion was postulated for the purpose of defining an upper bound on dose consequences for various disposal options. A review of the explosion scenario by the General Accounting Office (GAO) indicated that the aerosol generation and consequent radioactive doses projected for the explosion postulated in the EIS were understated by one to two orders of magnitude. The US DOE has sponsored an extensive study of the hazard posed by uncontrolled exothermic reactions in ferrocyanide waste, and results obtained during the past three years have allowed this hazard to be more realistically assessed. The objective of this report is to summarize the improved knowledge base that now indicates that explosive or vigorous chemical reactions are not credible in the ferrocyanide waste stored in underground tanks. This improved understanding supports the decision not to proceed with further analyses or predictions of the consequences of such an event or with aerosol tests in support of such predictions. 53 refs., 2 tabs

Thin layer chromatography coupled with surface-enhanced Raman scattering as a facile method for on-site quantitative monitoring of chemical reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Zong-Mian; Liu, Jing-Fu; Liu, Rui; Sun, Jie-Fang; Wei, Guo-Hua

2014-08-05

By coupling surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) with thin layer chromatography (TLC), a facile and powerful method was developed for on-site monitoring the process of chemical reactions. Samples were preseparated on a TLC plate following a common TLC procedure, and then determined by SERS after fabricating a large-area, uniform SERS substrate on the TLC plate by spraying gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Reproducible and strong SERS signals were obtained with substrates prepared by spraying 42-nm AuNPs at a density of 5.54 × 10(10) N/cm(2) on the TLC plate. The capacity of this TLC-SERS method was evaluated by monitoring a typical Suzuki coupling reaction of phenylboronic acid and 2-bromopyridine as a model. Results showed that this proposed method is able to identify reaction product that is invisible to the naked eye, and distinguish the reactant 2-bromopyridine and product 2-phenylpyridine, which showed almost the same retention factors (R(f)). Under the optimized conditions, the peak area of the characteristic Raman band (755 cm(-1)) of the product 2-phenylpyridine showed a good linear correlation with concentration in the range of 2-200 mg/L (R(2) = 0.9741), the estimated detection limit (1 mg/L 2-phenylpyridine) is much lower than the concentration of the chemicals in the common organic synthesis reaction system, and the product yield determined by the proposed TLC-SERS method agreed very well with that by UPLC-MS/MS. In addition, a new byproduct in the reaction system was found and identified through continuous Raman detection from the point of sample to the solvent front. This facile TLC-SERS method is quick, easy to handle, low-cost, sensitive, and can be exploited in on-site monitoring the processes of chemical reactions, as well as environmental and biological processes.

Reaction of some macrolide antibiotics with the ribosome. Labeling of the binding site components

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tejedor, F.; Ballesta, J.P.

1986-01-01

Radioactive carbomycin A, niddamycin, tylosin, and spiramycin, but not erythromycin, can be covalently bound to Escherichia coli ribosomes by incubation at 37 degrees C. The incorporation of radioactivity into the particles is inhibited by SH- and activated double bond containing compounds but not by amino groups, suggesting that the reactions may take place by addition to the double bond present in the reactive antibiotics. This thermic reaction must be different from the photoreaction described for some of these macrolides [Tejedor, F., and Ballesta, J. P. G. (1985) Biochemistry 24, 467-472] since tylosin, which is not photoincorporated, is thermically bound to ribosomes. Most of the radioactivity is incorporated into the ribosomal proteins. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of proteins labeled by carbomycin A, niddamycin, and tylosin indicates that about 40% of the radioactivity is bound to protein L27; the rest is distributed among several other proteins such as L8, L2, and S12, to differing extents depending on the drug used. These results indicate, in accordance with previous data, that protein L27 plays an important role in the macrolide binding site, confirming that these drugs bind near the peptidyl transferase center of the ribosome

Ratiometric analysis in hyperpolarized NMR (I): test of the two-site exchange model and the quantification of reaction rate constants.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Lin Z; Kadlececk, Stephen; Xu, He N; Daye, Dania; Pullinger, Benjamin; Profka, Harrilla; Chodosh, Lewis; Rizi, Rahim

2013-10-01

Conventional methods for the analysis of in vivo hyperpolarized (13) C NMR data from the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) reaction usually make assumptions on the stability of rate constants and/or the validity of the two-site exchange model. In this study, we developed a framework to test the validity of the assumption of stable reaction rate constants and the two-site exchange model in vivo via ratiometric fitting of the time courses of the signal ratio L(t)/P(t). Our analysis provided evidence that the LDH enzymatic kinetics observed by hyperpolarized NMR are in near-equilibrium and satisfy the two-site exchange model for only a specific time window. In addition, we quantified both the forward and reverse exchange rate constants of the LDH reaction for the transgenic and mouse xenograft models of breast cancer using the ratio fitting method developed, which includes only two modeling parameters and is less sensitive to the influence of instrument settings/protocols, such as flip angles, degree of polarization and tracer dosage. We further compared the ratio fitting method with a conventional two-site exchange modeling method, i.e. the differential equation fitting method, using both the experimental and simulated hyperpolarized NMR data. The ratio fitting method appeared to fit better than the differential equation fitting method for the reverse rate constant on the mouse tumor data, with less relative errors on average, whereas the differential equation fitting method also resulted in a negative reverse rate constant for one tumor. The simulation results indicated that the accuracy of both methods depends on the width of the transport function, noise level and rate constant ratio; one method may be more accurate than the other based on the experimental/biological conditions aforementioned. We were able to categorize our tumor models into specific conditions of the computer simulation and to estimate the errors of rate quantification. We also discussed possible

Fitness and competition studies of QoI resistant and sensitive Cercospora sojina isolates, the causal agent of frogeye leaf spot

Science.gov (United States)

Frogeye leaf spot (FLS), caused by Cercospora sojina, is a yearly foliar disease of soybean in Tennessee and causes substantial economic losses if not properly managed. Quinone outside inhibitor (QoI) fungicides are often used to manage FLS, but C. sojina isolates have developed resistance to this c...

Telephony Over IP: A QoS Measurement-Based End to End Control Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luigi Alcuri

2004-12-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a method for admitting voice calls in Telephony over IP (ToIP scenarios. This method, called QoS-Weighted CAC, aims to guarantee Quality of Service to telephony applications. We use a measurement-based call admission control algorithm, which detects network congested links through a feedback on overall link utilization. This feedback is based on the measures of packet delivery latencies related to voice over IP connections at the edges of the transport network. In this way we introduce a close loop control method, which is able to auto-adapt the quality margin on the basis of network load and specific service level requirements. Moreover we evaluate the difference in performance achieved by different Queue management configurations to guarantee Quality of Service to telephony applications, in which our goal was to evaluate the weight of edge router queue configuration in complex and real-like telephony over IP scenario. We want to compare many well-know queue scheduling algorithms, such as SFQ, WRR, RR, WIRR, and Priority. This comparison aims to locate queue schedulers in a more general control scheme context where different elements such as DiffServ marking and Admission control algorithms contribute to the overall Quality of Service required by real-time voice conversations. By means of software simulations we want to compare this solution with other call admission methods already described in scientific literature in order to locate this proposed method in a more general control scheme context. On the basis of the results we try to evidence the possible advantages of this QoS-Weighted solution in comparison with other similar CAC solutions ( in particular Measured Sum, Bandwidth Equivalent with Hoeffding Bounds, and Simple Measure CAC, on the planes of complexity, stability, management, tune-ability to service level requirements, and compatibility with actual network implementation.

Agmatine, an endogenous ligand at imidazoline binding sites, does not antagonize the clonidine-mediated blood pressure reaction

Science.gov (United States)

Raasch, Walter; Schäfer, Ulrich; Qadri, Fatimunnisa; Dominiak, Peter

2002-01-01

Since agmatine has been identified as a clonidine displacing substance (CDS), the aim of this study was to investigate whether agmatine can mimic CDS-induced cardiovascular reactions in organ bath experiments, pithed spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and anaesthetized SHR.Intravenously-administered agmatine significantly reduced the blood pressure and heart rate of anaesthetized SHR at doses higher than 1 and 3 mg kg−1, respectively. These effects are probably mediated via central mechanisms, since there was an approximate 8 fold rightward shift of the dose-response curve in the pithed SHR (indicating a weakened cardiovascular effect). Moreover, in organ bath experiments, agmatine failed to alter the contractility of intact or endothelium-denuded aortal rings. When agmatine was administered i.c.v. to anaesthetized SHR, blood pressure was increased without any alteration of heart rate, whereas blood pressure was unchanged and heart rate was increased after injection into the 4th brain ventricle. This suggests that haemodynamic reaction patterns after central application are related to distinct influences on central cardiovascular mechanisms.Agmatine reduces noradrenaline release in pithed SHR while α2-adrenoceptors are irreversibly blocked with phenoxybenzamine, but not while I1-binding sites are selectively blocked with AGN192403. This suggests that agmatine may modulate noradrenaline release in the same way that clonidine does, i.e. via imidazoline binding sites; this involves a reduction in sympathetic tone which in turn reduces blood pressure and heart rate.Finally, CDS-like cardiovascular activity appears not to be due to agmatine, since (i) blood pressure in anaesthetized SHR is decreased by agmatine and clonidine, and (ii) agmatine did not antagonize the blood pressure reaction to clonidine in pithed or anaesthetized SHR. PMID:11834614

Translation and validation of the Danish version of the postoperative quality of recovery score QoR-15

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kleif, J; Edwards, H M; Sort, R

2015-01-01

.12 to -0.43, P half reliability was 0.90 and 0.88. Test-retest reliability was 0.99 (95% CI: 0......BACKGROUND: Patient perceived quality of recovery is an important outcome after surgery and should be measured in clinical trials. Quality of recovery after surgery and general anaesthesia can be measured by the QoR-15. A high score indicates a good recovery and the score ranges from 0 to 150...

The effectiveness of osteopathic manipulative treatment in an abnormal uterine bleeding related pain and health related quality of life (HR-QoL) - A case report.

Science.gov (United States)

Goyal, Kanu; Goyal, Manu; Narkeesh, Kanimozhi; John Samuel, Asir; Sharma, Sorabh; Chatterjee, Subhasish; Arumugam, Narkeesh

2017-07-01

Abnormal uterine bleeding is characterized by painful and/or excessive menorrhea, chronic pelvic pain due to the endometriosis (Em). Osteopathic treatment is commonly used in the gynecological dysfunctions. The aim of the present case study was to explore the effect of osteopathic treatment (OT) for a woman with abnormal uterine bleeding related pain and quality of life (QoL). We reported a case of 29 year old female who presented with chief complaints of increased flow during periods, lower abdominal pain, leukorrhoea, lower back pain and with occasional constipation for the last 3 years. Patient is a mother of 6 years old male child born with normal delivery. On diagnostic ultrasonography the uterus was found bulky with insignificant endometriosis and no other abnormality was detected. She did not have any relevant past medical and surgical history. The pre and post osteopathic treatment measurements were measured using Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and the health related quality of life (HR-QoL) questionnaire called short form Endometriosis Health Profile Questionnaire (EHP) - 5. In the present case the pain due to the endometriosis was treated with the osteopathic treatment consists of all the major diaphragms' release (release of pelvic diaphragm, abdominal diaphragm, thoracic outlet release and hyoid diaphragm) during the first session and in the second session gastro-esophageal (GE) junction release, sigmoid colon release, cranial therapy to the occiput, sacral release and dural tube rocking. Following that improvement of pain from VAS 8.3/10 to 3.9/10 and QoL improvement from EHP-5, 72/100 to 26/100 was noted. Osteopathic manipulative approach (OMA) in the patient with Em might improve the abnormal uterine bleeding related pain and health related quality of life (HR-QoL). Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ligand-tailored single-site silica supported titanium catalysts: Synthesis, characterization and towards cyanosilylation reaction

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xu, Wei; Li, Yani; Yu, Bo; Yang, Jindou; Zhang, Ying; Chen, Xi; Zhang, Guofang; Gao, Ziwei

2015-01-01

A successive anchoring of Ti(NMe 2 ) 4 , cyclopentadiene and a O-donor ligand, 1-hydroxyethylbenzene (PEA), 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol (Binol) or 2,3-dihydroxybutanedioic acid diethyl ester (Tartrate), on silica was conducted by SOMC strategy in moderate conditions. The silica, monitored by in-situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (in-situ FT-IR), was pretreated at different temperatures (200, 500 and 800 °C). The ligand tailored silica-supported titanium complexes were characterized by in-situ FT-IR, 13 C CP MAS-NMR, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and elemental analysis in detail, verifying that the surface titanium species are single sited. The catalytic activity of the ligand tailored single-site silica supported titanium complexes was evaluated by a cyanosilylation of benzaldehyde. The results showed that the catalytic activity is dependent strongly on the dehydroxylation temperatures of silica and the configuration of the ligands. - Graphical abstract: The ligand-tailored silica supported “single site” titanium complexes were synthesized by SOMC strategy and fully characterized. Their catalytic activity were evaluated by benzaldehyde silylcyanation. - Highlights: • Single-site silica supported Ti active species was prepared by SOMC technique. • O-donor ligand tailored Ti surface species was synthesized. • The surface species was characterized by XPS, 13 C CP-MAS NMR, XANES etc. • Catalytic activity of the Ti active species in silylcyanation reaction was evaluated

Ligand-tailored single-site silica supported titanium catalysts: Synthesis, characterization and towards cyanosilylation reaction

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Xu, Wei; Li, Yani; Yu, Bo; Yang, Jindou; Zhang, Ying; Chen, Xi; Zhang, Guofang, E-mail: gfzhang@snnu.edu.cn; Gao, Ziwei, E-mail: zwgao@snnu.edu.cn

2015-01-15

A successive anchoring of Ti(NMe{sub 2}){sub 4}, cyclopentadiene and a O-donor ligand, 1-hydroxyethylbenzene (PEA), 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol (Binol) or 2,3-dihydroxybutanedioic acid diethyl ester (Tartrate), on silica was conducted by SOMC strategy in moderate conditions. The silica, monitored by in-situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (in-situ FT-IR), was pretreated at different temperatures (200, 500 and 800 °C). The ligand tailored silica-supported titanium complexes were characterized by in-situ FT-IR, {sup 13}C CP MAS-NMR, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and elemental analysis in detail, verifying that the surface titanium species are single sited. The catalytic activity of the ligand tailored single-site silica supported titanium complexes was evaluated by a cyanosilylation of benzaldehyde. The results showed that the catalytic activity is dependent strongly on the dehydroxylation temperatures of silica and the configuration of the ligands. - Graphical abstract: The ligand-tailored silica supported “single site” titanium complexes were synthesized by SOMC strategy and fully characterized. Their catalytic activity were evaluated by benzaldehyde silylcyanation. - Highlights: • Single-site silica supported Ti active species was prepared by SOMC technique. • O-donor ligand tailored Ti surface species was synthesized. • The surface species was characterized by XPS, {sup 13}C CP-MAS NMR, XANES etc. • Catalytic activity of the Ti active species in silylcyanation reaction was evaluated.

Site-specific reaction rate constant measurements for various secondary and tertiary H-abstraction by OH radicals

KAUST Repository

Badra, Jihad

2015-02-01

Reaction rate constants for nine site-specific hydrogen atom (H) abstraction by hydroxyl radicals (OH) have been determined using experimental measurements of the rate constants of Alkane+OH→Products reactions. Seven secondary (S 20, S 21, S 22, S 30, S 31, S 32, and S 33) and two tertiary (T 100 and T 101) site-specific rate constants, where the subscripts refer to the number of carbon atoms (C) connected to the next-nearest-neighbor (N-N-N) C atom, were obtained for a wide temperature range (250-1450K). This was done by measuring the reaction rate constants for H abstraction by OH from a series of carefully selected large branched alkanes. The rate constant of OH with four different alkanes, namely 2,2-dimethyl-pentane, 2,4-dimethyl-pentane, 2,2,4-trimethyl-pentane (iso-octane), and 2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-pentane were measured at high temperatures (822-1367K) using a shock tube and OH absorption diagnostic. Hydroxyl radicals were detected using the narrow-line-width ring-dye laser absorption of the R1(5) transition of OH spectrum near 306.69nm.Previous low-temperature rate constant measurements are added to the current data to generate three-parameter rate expressions that successfully represent the available direct measurements over a wide temperature range (250-1450. K). Similarly, literature values of the low-temperature rate constants for the reaction of OH with seven normal and branched alkanes are combined with the recently measured high-temperature rate constants from our group [1]. Subsequent to that, site-specific rate constants for abstractions from various types of secondary and tertiary H atoms by OH radicals are derived and have the following modified Arrhenius expressions:. S20=8.49×10-17T1.52exp(73.4K/T)cm3molecule-1s-1(250-1450K) S21=1.07×10-15T1.07exp(208.3K/T)cm3molecule-1s-1(296-1440K) S22=2.88×10-13T0.41exp(-291.5K/T)cm3molecule-1s-1(272-1311K) S30=3.35×10-18T1.97exp(323.1K/T)cm3molecule-1s-1(250-1366K) S31=1.60×10-18T2.0exp(500.0K/T)cm3

Electron spin relaxation enhancement measurements of interspin distances in human, porcine, and Rhodobacter electron transfer flavoprotein ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF QO)

Science.gov (United States)

Fielding, Alistair J.; Usselman, Robert J.; Watmough, Nicholas; Simkovic, Martin; Frerman, Frank E.; Eaton, Gareth R.; Eaton, Sandra S.

2008-02-01

Electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is a membrane-bound electron transfer protein that links primary flavoprotein dehydrogenases with the main respiratory chain. Human, porcine, and Rhodobacter sphaeroides ETF-QO each contain a single [4Fe-4S] 2+,1+ cluster and one equivalent of FAD, which are diamagnetic in the isolated enzyme and become paramagnetic on reduction with the enzymatic electron donor or with dithionite. The anionic flavin semiquinone can be reduced further to diamagnetic hydroquinone. The redox potentials for the three redox couples are so similar that it is not possible to poise the proteins in a state where both the [4Fe-4S] + cluster and the flavoquinone are fully in the paramagnetic form. Inversion recovery was used to measure the electron spin-lattice relaxation rates for the [4Fe-4S] + between 8 and 18 K and for semiquinone between 25 and 65 K. At higher temperatures the spin-lattice relaxation rates for the [4Fe-4S] + were calculated from the temperature-dependent contributions to the continuous wave linewidths. Although mixtures of the redox states are present, it was possible to analyze the enhancement of the electron spin relaxation of the FAD semiquinone signal due to dipolar interaction with the more rapidly relaxing [4Fe-4S] + and obtain point-dipole interspin distances of 18.6 ± 1 Å for the three proteins. The point-dipole distances are within experimental uncertainty of the value calculated based on the crystal structure of porcine ETF-QO when spin delocalization is taken into account. The results demonstrate that electron spin relaxation enhancement can be used to measure distances in redox poised proteins even when several redox states are present.

Electron spin relaxation enhancement measurements of interspin distances in human, porcine, and Rhodobacter electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO).

Science.gov (United States)

Fielding, Alistair J; Usselman, Robert J; Watmough, Nicholas; Simkovic, Martin; Frerman, Frank E; Eaton, Gareth R; Eaton, Sandra S

2008-02-01

Electron transfer flavoprotein-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF-QO) is a membrane-bound electron transfer protein that links primary flavoprotein dehydrogenases with the main respiratory chain. Human, porcine, and Rhodobacter sphaeroides ETF-QO each contain a single [4Fe-4S](2+,1+) cluster and one equivalent of FAD, which are diamagnetic in the isolated enzyme and become paramagnetic on reduction with the enzymatic electron donor or with dithionite. The anionic flavin semiquinone can be reduced further to diamagnetic hydroquinone. The redox potentials for the three redox couples are so similar that it is not possible to poise the proteins in a state where both the [4Fe-4S](+) cluster and the flavoquinone are fully in the paramagnetic form. Inversion recovery was used to measure the electron spin-lattice relaxation rates for the [4Fe-4S](+) between 8 and 18K and for semiquinone between 25 and 65K. At higher temperatures the spin-lattice relaxation rates for the [4Fe-4S](+) were calculated from the temperature-dependent contributions to the continuous wave linewidths. Although mixtures of the redox states are present, it was possible to analyze the enhancement of the electron spin relaxation of the FAD semiquinone signal due to dipolar interaction with the more rapidly relaxing [4Fe-4S](+) and obtain point-dipole interspin distances of 18.6+/-1A for the three proteins. The point-dipole distances are within experimental uncertainty of the value calculated based on the crystal structure of porcine ETF-QO when spin delocalization is taken into account. The results demonstrate that electron spin relaxation enhancement can be used to measure distances in redox poised proteins even when several redox states are present.

Comparison of calculated and experimental isotope edited FTIR difference spectra for purple bacterial photosynthetic reaction centers with different quinones incorporated into the QA binding site.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nan eZhao

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Previously we have shown that ONIOM type (QM/MM calculations can be used to simulate isotope edited FTIR difference spectra for neutral ubiquinone in the QA binding site in Rhodobacter sphaeroides photosynthetic reaction centers. Here we considerably extend upon this previous work by calculating isotope edited FTIR difference spectra for reaction centers with a variety of unlabeled and 18O labeled foreign quinones incorporated into the QA binding site. Isotope edited spectra were calculated for reaction centers with 2,3-dimethoxy-5,6-dimethyl-1,4-benzoquinone (MQ0, 2,3,5,6-tetramethyl-1,4-benzoquinone (duroquinone, DQ, and 2,3-dimethyl-l,4-naphthoquinone (DMNQ incorporated, and compared to corresponding experimental spectra. The calculated and experimental spectra agree well, further demonstrating the utility and applicability of our ONIOM approach for calculating the vibrational properties of pigments in protein binding sites.The normal modes that contribute to the bands in the calculated spectra, their composition, frequency and intensity, and how these quantities are modified upon 18O labeling, are presented. This computed information leads to a new and more detailed understanding/interpretation of the experimental FTIR difference spectra. Hydrogen bonding to the carbonyl groups of the incorporated quinones is shown to be relatively weak. It is also shown that there is some asymmetry in hydrogen bonding, accounting for 10-13 cm-1 separation in the frequencies of the carbonyl vibrational modes of the incorporated quinones. The extent of asymmetry H-bonding could only be established by considering the spectra for various types of quinones incorporated into the QA binding site. The quinones listed above are tail-less. Spectra were also calculated for reaction centers with corresponding tail containing quinones incorporated, and it is found that replacement of the quinone methyl group by a phytyl or prenyl chain does not alter ONIOM calculated s

A Combined Probe-Molecule, Mössbauer, Nuclear Resonance Vibrational Spectroscopy, and Density Functional Theory Approach for Evaluation of Potential Iron Active Sites in an Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalyst

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kneebone, Jared L. [Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States); Daifuku, Stephanie L. [Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States); Kehl, Jeffrey A. [Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States); Wu, Gang [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Chung, Hoon T. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Hu, Michael Y. [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Alp, E. Ercan [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); More, Karren L. [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Zelenay, Piotr [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Holby, Edward F. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Neidig, Michael L. [Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States)

2017-07-06

While non-precious metal M-N-C (M = Fe or Co) catalysts have been developed that are effective for the oxygen reduction reaction in polymer electrolyte fuel cells, no consensus has yet been reached regarding the nature of the M sites in these heterogeneous catalysts that are responsible for reaction with dioxygen (O₂). While multiple studies have developed correlations between Fe distributions in as-prepared catalysts and ORR activity, the direct identification of sites reactive towards O₂ or O₂-analog molecules remains a significant challenge. In the present study, we demonstrate a new approach to identifying and characterizing potential Fe active sites in complex ORR catalysts that combines an effective probe molecule (NO_(g)) Mössbauer spectroscopy and nuclear resonance vibrational spectroscopy (NRVS) with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Mössbauer spectroscopic studies demonstrate that NO_(g) treatment of electrochemically reduced PANI-57Fe-C leads to selective reaction with only a sub-set of the Fe species present. Nuclear resonance vibrational spectroscopic studies identified new Fe-ligand vibrations associated with the site reactive towards NO_(g). DFT calculations of vibrational properties of a small selection of previously proposed active site structures suggest that graphene zig-zag edge hosted Fe-N structures may be responsible for the observed vibrational behavior with NO_(g) probe molecules. Moreover, such sites are likely also reactive to O₂, possibly serving as the ORR active sites in the synthesized materials.

Multilevel QoS-policy-based routing management architecture appropriate for heterogeneous network environments

Science.gov (United States)

Chatzaki, Magda; Sartzetakis, Stelios

1998-09-01

As telecom providers introduce new and more sophisticated services the necessity of a global, unified view of the network infrastructure becomes demanding. Today, heterogenous backbone networks are interconnected in order to provide global connectivity. Due to technological impairments the cost of network operation, the maintenance complexity and the overuse of resources are extremely high under the goal of supporting the diverting customer requirements. We propose a scheme for ATM QoS support in such heterogenous, multi-domain, multi-technology network environment. The objective is to optimize users' and networks' profits by giving them the opportunity to satisfy their requirements. Our approach introduces a manager able to take routing decisions supporting quality of service guarantees for the customers, while making efficient use of network resources.

Decreased physical activity, reduced QoL and presence of debilitating fatigue in patients with Addison's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

van der Valk, Eline S; Smans, Lisanne C C J; Hofstetter, Hedwig; Stubbe, Janine H; de Vries, Marieke; Backx, Frank J G; Hermus, Ad R M M; Zelissen, Pierre M J

2016-09-01

Health-related quality of life in patients with Addison's disease has been assessed in various European countries, indicating a reduced quality of life. However, no studies have addressed the impact of Addison's disease on physical activity. The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of life in Dutch patients with Addison's disease particularly regarding the presence of fatigue and the ability to be physically active. In this cross-sectional study, a postal survey was performed among Dutch patients with Addison's disease on stable glucocorticoid replacement therapy with hydrocortisone or cortisone acetate. For quality of life and physical activity assessment, patients completed general and health-related quality of life and physical activity questionnaires, and scores were compared to Dutch controls. A total of 328 patients with Addison's disease were studied. In patients with Addison's disease, only 45·7% met the standard of physical activity (Combinorm) compared to 67·8% of Dutch controls (P < 0·01). Forty-eight per cent of patients showed abnormal fatigue, while 61% had severe fatigue. The CIS fatigue scores were significantly higher compared to controls (P < 0·01). We found reduced general subjective health-related QoL scores in both male and female patients, especially in younger patients <65 years of age. Physical activity is decreased in patients with Addison's disease, combined with a reduced subjective health-related QoL and increased fatigue. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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.

Metal-free bioconjugation reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

van Berkel, Sander S; van Delft, Floris L

2013-01-01

The recent strategy to apply chemical reactions to address fundamental biological questions has led to the emergence of entirely new conjugation reactions that are fast and irreversible, yet so mild and selective that they can be performed even in living cells or organisms. These so-called bioorthogonal reactions open novel avenues, not only in chemical biology research, but also in many other life sciences applications, including the modulation of biopharmaceuticals by site-specific modification approaches.

Post liposuction Mycobacterium abscessus surgical site infection in a returned medical tourist complicated by a paradoxical reaction during treatment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Siong H. Hui

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Rapidly growing mycobacterial skin and soft tissue infections are known to complicate cosmetic surgical procedures. Treatment consists of more surgery and prolonged antibiotic therapy guided by drug susceptibility testing. Paradoxical reactions occurring during antibiotic therapy can further complicate treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections. We report a case of post liposuction Mycobacterium abscessus surgical site infection in a returned medical tourist and occurrence of paradox during treatment.

Quantum mechanical design of enzyme active sites.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xiyun; DeChancie, Jason; Gunaydin, Hakan; Chowdry, Arnab B; Clemente, Fernando R; Smith, Adam J T; Handel, T M; Houk, K N

2008-02-01

The design of active sites has been carried out using quantum mechanical calculations to predict the rate-determining transition state of a desired reaction in presence of the optimal arrangement of catalytic functional groups (theozyme). Eleven versatile reaction targets were chosen, including hydrolysis, dehydration, isomerization, aldol, and Diels-Alder reactions. For each of the targets, the predicted mechanism and the rate-determining transition state (TS) of the uncatalyzed reaction in water is presented. For the rate-determining TS, a catalytic site was designed using naturalistic catalytic units followed by an estimation of the rate acceleration provided by a reoptimization of the catalytic site. Finally, the geometries of the sites were compared to the X-ray structures of related natural enzymes. Recent advances in computational algorithms and power, coupled with successes in computational protein design, have provided a powerful context for undertaking such an endeavor. We propose that theozymes are excellent candidates to serve as the active site models for design processes.

'Save the North Sea' Fulmar Study 2002-2004: a regional pilot project for the Fulmar-Litter-EcoQO in the OSPAR area

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Franeker, van J.A.; Heubeck, M.; Fairclough, K.; Turner, D.M.; Grantham, M.; Stienen, E.W.M.; Guse, N.; Pedersen, J.; Olsen, K.O.; Andersson, P.J.; Olsen, B.

2005-01-01

North Sea Ministers at the Bergen Conference in 2002 decided that monitoring of marine plastic litter in stomachs of seabirds should become one of the 'Ecological Quality Objectives for the North Sea (EcoQO's)'. The task of implementation was delegated to OSPAR, which covers the wider northeast

Chemical repair activity of free radical scavenger edaravone. Reduction reactions with dGMP hydroxyl radical adducts and suppression of base lesions and AP sites on irradiated plasmid DNA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hata, Kuniki; Katsumura, Yosuke; Urushibara, Ayumi; Yamashita, Shinichi; Lin Mingzhang; Muroya, Yusa; Shikazono, Naoya; Yokoya, Akinari; Fu Haiying

2015-01-01

Reactions of edaravone (3-methyl-1-phenyl-2-pyrazolin-5-one) with deoxyguanosine monophosphate (dGMP) hydroxyl radical adducts were investigated by pulse radiolysis technique. Edaravone was found to reduce the dGMP hydroxyl radical adducts through electron transfer reactions. The rate constants of the reactions were greater than 4 × 10 8 dm 3 mol -1 s -1 and similar to those of the reactions of ascorbic acid, which is a representative antioxidant. Yields of single-strand breaks, base lesions, and abasic sites produced in pUC18 plasmid DNA by gamma ray irradiation in the presence of low concentrations (10–1000 μmol dm -3 ) of edaravone were also quantified, and the chemical repair activity of edaravone was estimated by a method recently developed by the authors. By comparing suppression efficiencies to the induction of each DNA lesion, it was found that base lesions and abasic sites were suppressed by the chemical repair activity of edaravone, although the suppression of single-strand breaks was not very effective. This phenomenon was attributed to the chemical repair activity of edaravone toward base lesions and abasic sites. However, the chemical repair activity of edaravone for base lesions was lower than that of ascorbic acid. (author)

Quality of life themes in Canadian adults and street youth who are homeless or hard-to-house: a multi-site focus group study.

Science.gov (United States)

Palepu, Anita; Hubley, Anita M; Russell, Lara B; Gadermann, Anne M; Chinni, Mary

2012-08-15

The aim of this study was to identify what is most important to the quality of life (QoL) of those who experience homelessness by directly soliciting the views of homeless and hard-to-house Canadians themselves. These individuals live within a unique social context that differs considerably from that of the general population. To understand the life areas that are most important to them, it is critical to have direct input from target populations of homeless and hard-to-house persons. Focus groups were conducted with 140 individuals aged 15 to 73 years who were homeless or hard-to-house to explore the circumstances in which they were living and to capture what they find to be important and relevant domains of QoL. Participants were recruited in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Six major content themes emerged: Health/health care; Living conditions; Financial situation; Employment situation; Relationships; and Recreational and leisure activities. These themes were linked to broader concepts that included having choices, stability, respect, and the same rights as other members of society. These findings not only aid our understanding of QoL in this group, but may be used to develop measures that capture QoL in this population and help programs and policies become more effective in improving the life situation for persons who are homeless and hard-to-house. Quality of life themes in Canadian adults and street youth who are homeless or hard-to-house: A multi-site focus group study.

Requirement of histidine 217 for ubiquinone reductase activity (Qi site) in the cytochrome bc1 complex.

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, K A; Dutton, P L; Daldal, F

1994-01-25

Folding models suggest that the highly conserved histidine 217 of the cytochrome b subunit from the cytochrome bc1 complex is close to the quinone reductase (Qi) site. This histidine (bH217) in the cytochrome b polypeptide of the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus has been replaced with three other residues, aspartate (D), arginine (R), and leucine (L). bH217D and bH217R are able to grow photoheterotrophically and contain active cytochrome bc1 complexes (60% of wild-type activity), whereas the bH217L mutant is photosynthetically incompetent and contains a cytochrome bc1 complex that has only 10% of the wild-type activity. Single-turnover flash-activated electron transfer experiments show that cytochrome bH is reduced via the Qo site with near native rates in the mutant strains but that electron transfer between cytochrome bH and quinone bound at the Qi site is greatly slowed. These results are consistent with redox midpoint potential (Em) measurements of the cytochrome b subunit hemes and the Qi site quinone. The Em values of cyt bL and bH are approximately the same in the mutants and wild type, although the mutant strains have a larger relative concentration of what may be the high-potential form of cytochrome bH, called cytochrome b150. However, the redox properties of the semiquinone at the Qi site are altered significantly. The Qi site semiquinone stability constant of bH217R is 10 times higher than in the wild type, while in the other two strains (bH217D and bH217L) the stability constant is much lower than in the wild type. Thus H217 appears to have major effects on the redox properties of the quinone bound at the Qi site. These data are incorporated into a suggestion that H217 forms part of the binding pocket of the Qi site in a manner reminiscent of the interaction between quinone bound at the Qb site and H190 of the L subunit of the bacterial photosynthetic reaction center.

Multidisciplinary approaches to managing osteoarthritis in multiple joint sites: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Finney, Andrew; Healey, Emma; Jordan, Joanne L; Ryan, Sarah; Dziedzic, Krysia S

2016-07-08

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's Osteoarthritis (OA) guidelines recommended that future research should consider the benefits of combination therapies in people with OA across multiple joint sites. However, the clinical effectiveness of such approaches to OA management is unknown. This systematic review therefore aimed to identify the clinical and cost effectiveness of multidisciplinary approaches targeting multiple joint sites for OA in primary care. A systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Computerised bibliographic databases were searched (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, BNI, HBE, HMIC, AMED, Web of Science and Cochrane). Studies were included if they met the following criteria; a randomised controlled trial (RCT), a primary care population with OA across at least two different peripheral joint sites (multiple joint sites), and interventions undertaken by at least two different health disciplines (multidisciplinary). The Cochrane 'Risk of Bias' tool and PEDro were used for quality assessment of eligible studies. Clinical and cost effectiveness was determined by extracting and examining self-reported outcomes for pain, function, quality of life (QoL) and health care utilisation. The date range for the search was from database inception until August 2015. The search identified 1148 individual titles of which four were included in the review. A narrative review was conducted due to the heterogeneity of the included trials. Each of the four trials used either educational or exercise interventions facilitated by a range of different health disciplines. Moderate clinical benefits on pain, function and QoL were reported across the studies. The beneficial effects of exercise generally decreased over time within all studies. Two studies were able to show a reduction in healthcare utilisation due to a reduction in visits to a physiotherapist or a reduction in x-rays and orthopaedic referrals. The intervention that showed the most

Optimization of Task Scheduling Algorithm through QoS Parameters for Cloud Computing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Monika

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Cloud computing is an incipient innovation which broadly spreads among analysts. It furnishes clients with foundation, stage and programming as enhancement which is easily available by means of web. A cloud is a sort of parallel and conveyed framework comprising of a gathering of virtualized PCs that are utilized to execute various tasks to accomplish good execution time, accomplish due date and usage of its assets. The scheduling issue can be seen as the finding an ideal task of assignments over the accessible arrangement of assets with the goal that we can accomplish the wanted objectives for tasks. This paper presents an optimal algorithm for scheduling tasks to get their waiting time as a QoS parameter. The algorithm is simulated using Cloudsim simulator and experiments are carried out to help clients to make sense of the bottleneck of utilizing no. of virtual machine parallely.

Two-dimensional priority-based dynamic resource allocation algorithm for QoS in WDM/TDM PON networks

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Yixin; Liu, Bo; Zhang, Lijia; Xin, Xiangjun; Zhang, Qi; Rao, Lan

2018-01-01

Wavelength division multiplexing/time division multiplexing (WDM/TDM) passive optical networks (PON) is being viewed as a promising solution for delivering multiple services and applications. The hybrid WDM / TDM PON uses the wavelength and bandwidth allocation strategy to control the distribution of the wavelength channels in the uplink direction, so that it can ensure the high bandwidth requirements of multiple Optical Network Units (ONUs) while improving the wavelength resource utilization. Through the investigation of the presented dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms, these algorithms can't satisfy the requirements of different levels of service very well while adapting to the structural characteristics of mixed WDM / TDM PON system. This paper introduces a novel wavelength and bandwidth allocation algorithm to efficiently utilize the bandwidth and support QoS (Quality of Service) guarantees in WDM/TDM PON. Two priority based polling subcycles are introduced in order to increase system efficiency and improve system performance. The fixed priority polling subcycle and dynamic priority polling subcycle follow different principles to implement wavelength and bandwidth allocation according to the priority of different levels of service. A simulation was conducted to study the performance of the priority based polling in dynamic resource allocation algorithm in WDM/TDM PON. The results show that the performance of delay-sensitive services is greatly improved without degrading QoS guarantees for other services. Compared with the traditional dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms, this algorithm can meet bandwidth needs of different priority traffic class, achieve low loss rate performance, and ensure real-time of high priority traffic class in terms of overall traffic on the network.

Multiple resistance of Botrytis cinerea from kiwifruit to SDHIs, QoIs and fungicides of other chemical groups.

Science.gov (United States)

Bardas, George A; Veloukas, Thomas; Koutita, Olga; Karaoglanidis, George S

2010-09-01

Botrytis cinerea Pers.: Fr. is a high-risk pathogen for fungicide resistance development that has caused resistance problems on many crops throughout the world. This study investigated the fungicide sensitivity profile of isolates from kiwifruits originating from three Greek locations with different fungicide use histories. Sensitivity was measured by in vitro fungitoxicity tests on artificial nutrient media. Seventy-six single-spore isolates were tested for sensitivity to the SDHI fungicide boscalid, the QoI pyraclostrobin, the anilinopyrimidine cyprodinil, the hydroxyanilide fenhexamid, the phenylpyrrole fludioxonil, the dicarboxamide iprodione and the benzimidazole carbendazim. All isolates from Thessaloniki showed resistance to both boscalid and pyraclostrobin, while in the other two locations the fungal population was sensitive to these two fungicides. Sensitive isolates showed EC(50) values to boscalid and pyraclostrobin ranging from 0.9 to 5.2 and from 0.04 to 0.14 mg L(-1) respectively, while the resistant isolates showed EC(50) values higher than 50 mg L(-1) for boscalid and from 16 to > 50 mg L(-1) for pyraclostrobin. All QoI-resistant isolates carried the G143A mutation in cytb. Sensitivity determinations to the remaining fungicides revealed in total eight resistance phenotypes. No isolates were resistant to the fungicides fenhexamid and fludioxonil. This is the first report of B. cinerea field isolates with resistance to both boscalid and pyraclostrobin, and it strongly suggests that there may be a major problem in controlling this important pathogen on kiwifruit. (c) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry.

Patient-reported adverse drug reactions and their influence on adherence and quality of life of chronic myeloid leukemia patients on per oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kekäle M

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Meri Kekäle,1 Marikki Peltoniemi,2 Marja Airaksinen1 1Clinical Pharmacy Group, Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, 2Division of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Purpose: To evaluate adverse drug reactions (ADRs experienced by chronic myeloid leukemia (CML patients during per oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI treatment and correlation of ADR symptoms with medication adherence and perceived quality of life (QoL.Patients and methods: Eighty-six adult, chronic-phase CML patients who had been on TKI treatment (79% on imatinib, 10.5% dasatinib, and 10.5% nilotinib for at least 6 months participated in the study (mean age: 57.8 years, 52% males. The mean time from diagnosis was 5.1 years. All patients were interviewed, and patient-reported ADRs were obtained using a structured list. Adherence was assessed using Morisky’s 8-item Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS. The symptoms’ interference with patient’s daily QoL was measured by asking patients about the influence of symptom(s on their mood, general condition, enjoyment of life, walking, relationships, and work.Results: Ninety-seven percent of the patients were suffering from at least one ADR. The mean number of different symptoms was seven (range: 0–15, median 6. The most commonly perceived ADRs were muscle soreness or cramp (69/86, 80%; swelling of hands, legs, feet, or around the eyes (59/86, 69%; and fatigue (43/86, 50%. No correlation was found between adherence and ADRs, because symptoms were equally common in each MMAS adherence class. Half of the patients felt that the ADRs had a negative influence on their daily QoL. A quarter of the patients reported that ADRs affected either their mood, general condition, or enjoyment of life. The incidence of almost all ADRs was much higher among patients reporting negative influence of ADRs on their daily life compared to total study population (P=0.016.Conclusion

Analysis of In-to-Out Wireless Body Area Network Systems: Towards QoS-Aware Health Internet of Things Applications

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Yangzhe Liao

2016-07-01

Full Text Available In this paper, an analytical and accurate in-to-out (I2O human body path loss (PL model at 2.45 GHz is derived based on a 3D heterogeneous human body model under safety constraints. The bit error rate (BER performance for this channel using multiple efficient modulation schemes is investigated and the link budget is analyzed based on a predetermined satisfactory BER of 10−3. In addition, an incremental relay-based cooperative quality of service-aware (QoS-aware routing protocol for the proposed I2O WBAN is presented and compared with an existing scheme. Linear programming QoS metric expressions are derived and employed to maximize the network lifetime, throughput, minimizing delay. Results show that binary phase-shift keying (BPSK outperforms other modulation techniques for the proposed I2O WBAN systems, enabling the support of a 30 Mbps data transmission rate up to 1.6 m and affording more reliable communication links when the transmitter power is increased. Moreover, the proposed incremental cooperative routing protocol outperforms the existing two-relay technique in terms of energy efficiency. Open issues and on-going research within the I2O WBAN area are presented and discussed as an inspiration towards developments in health IoT applications.

Spanish translation and linguistic validation of the quality of life in neurological disorders (Neuro-QoL) measurement system.

Science.gov (United States)

Correia, H; Pérez, B; Arnold, B; Wong, Alex W K; Lai, J S; Kallen, M; Cella, D

2015-03-01

The quality of life in neurological disorders (Neuro-QoL) measurement system is a 470-item compilation of health-related quality of life domains for adults and children with neurological disorders. It was developed and cognitively debriefed in English and Spanish, with general population and clinical samples in the USA. This paper describes the Spanish translation and linguistic validation process. The translation methodology combined forward and back-translations, multiple reviews, and cognitive debriefing with 30 adult and 30 pediatric Spanish-speaking respondents in the USA. The adult Fatigue bank was later also tested in Spain and Argentina. A universal approach to translation was adopted to produce a Spanish version that can be used in various countries. Translators from several countries were involved in the process. Cognitive debriefing results indicated that most of the 470 Spanish items were well understood. Translations were revised as needed where difficulty was reported or where participants' comments revealed misunderstanding of an item's intended meaning. Additional testing of the universal Spanish adult Fatigue item bank in Spain and Argentina confirmed good understanding of the items and that no country-specific word changes were necessary. All the adult and pediatric Neuro-QoL measures have been linguistically validated with Spanish speakers in the USA. Instruments are available for use at www.assessmentcenter.net.

Chemical repair activity of free radical scavenger edaravone: reduction reactions with dGMP hydroxyl radical adducts and suppression of base lesions and AP sites on irradiated plasmid DNA.

Science.gov (United States)

Hata, Kuniki; Urushibara, Ayumi; Yamashita, Shinichi; Lin, Mingzhang; Muroya, Yusa; Shikazono, Naoya; Yokoya, Akinari; Fu, Haiying; Katsumura, Yosuke

2015-01-01

Reactions of edaravone (3-methyl-1-phenyl-2-pyrazolin-5-one) with deoxyguanosine monophosphate (dGMP) hydroxyl radical adducts were investigated by pulse radiolysis technique. Edaravone was found to reduce the dGMP hydroxyl radical adducts through electron transfer reactions. The rate constants of the reactions were greater than 4 × 10(8) dm(3) mol(-1) s(-1) and similar to those of the reactions of ascorbic acid, which is a representative antioxidant. Yields of single-strand breaks, base lesions, and abasic sites produced in pUC18 plasmid DNA by gamma ray irradiation in the presence of low concentrations (10-1000 μmol dm(-3)) of edaravone were also quantified, and the chemical repair activity of edaravone was estimated by a method recently developed by the authors. By comparing suppression efficiencies to the induction of each DNA lesion, it was found that base lesions and abasic sites were suppressed by the chemical repair activity of edaravone, although the suppression of single-strand breaks was not very effective. This phenomenon was attributed to the chemical repair activity of edaravone toward base lesions and abasic sites. However, the chemical repair activity of edaravone for base lesions was lower than that of ascorbic acid. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Japan Radiation Research Society and Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology.

Competing irreversible cooperative reactions on polymer chains

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Evans, J.W.; Hoffman, D.K.; Burgess, D.R.

1984-01-01

We analyze model processes involving competition between several irreversible reactions at the sites of a 1D, infinite, uniform polymer chain. These reactions can be cooperative, i.e., the corresponding rates depend on the state of the surrounding sites. An infinite hierarchy of rate equations is readily derived for the probabilities of various subconfigurations. By exploiting a shielding property of suitable blocks of unreacted sites, we show how exact hierarchy truncation and solution is sometimes possible. The behavior of solutions is illustrated in several cases by plotting families of ''reaction trajectories'' for varying ratios of reactant concentrations. As a specific application, we consider competition between coordination of ZnCl 2 to pairs of oxygen atoms and to single oxygen atoms in poly(propylene oxide). The observed glass transition temperature behavior is eludicated

QoE-Oriented Mobile Edge Service Management Leveraging SDN and NFV

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Shuping Peng

2017-01-01

Full Text Available 5G envisages a “hyperconnected society” where trillions of diverse entities could communicate with each other anywhere and at any time, some of which will demand extremely challenging performance requirements such as submillisecond low latency. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC concept where application computing resources are deployed at the edge of the mobile network in proximity of an end user is a promising solution to improve quality of online experience. To make MEC more flexible and cost-effective Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV and Software-Defined Networking (SDN technologies are widely adopted. It leads to significant CAPEX and OPEX reduction with the help of a joint radio-cloud management and orchestration logic. In this paper we discuss and develop a reference architecture for the orchestration and management of the MEC ecosystem. Along with the lifecycle management flows of MEC services, indicating the interactions among the functional modules inside the Orchestrator and with external elements, QoS management with a focus on the channel state information technique is presented.

Multicast Services of QoS-Aware Active Queue Management over IP Multimedia Applications

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang, I.-Shyan; Hwang, Bor-Jiunn; Chang, Pen-Ming

2010-10-01

Recently, the multimedia services such as IPTV, video conference emerges to be the main traffic source. When UDP coexists with TCP, it induces not only congestion collapse but also unfairness problem. In this paper, a new Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithm, called Traffic Sensitive Active Queue Management (TSAQM), is proposed for providing multimedia services. The TSAQM comprise Dynamic Weight Allocate Scheme (DWAS) and Service Guarantee Scheme (SGS), the purpose of DWAS is to allocate resource with fairness and high end-user utility, and the purpose of SGS is to determine the satisfactory threshold (TH) and threshold region (TR). Several objectives of this proposed scheme include achieving high end-user utility for video service, considering the multicast as well as unicast proprieties to meet inter-class fairness and achieving the QoS requirement by adjusting the thresholds adaptively based on traffic situations.

QoE-based transmission strategies for multi-user wireless information and power transfer

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Taehun Jung

2015-12-01

Full Text Available One solution to the problem of supplying energy to wireless networks is wireless power transfer. One such technology–electromagnetic radiation enabled wireless power transfer–will change traditional wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate a transmission strategy for multi-user wireless information and power transfer. We consider a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO channel that includes one base station (BS and two user terminals (UT consisting of one energy harvesting (EH receiver and one information decoding (ID receiver. Our system provides transmission strategies that can be executed and implemented in practical scenarios. The paper then analyzes the rate–energy (R–E pair of our strategies and compares them to those of the theoretical optimal strategy. We furthermore propose a QoE-based mode selection algorithm by mapping the R–E pair to the utility functions.

Quality of life themes in Canadian adults and street youth who are homeless or hard-to-house: A multi-site focus group study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Palepu Anita

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The aim of this study was to identify what is most important to the quality of life (QoL of those who experience homelessness by directly soliciting the views of homeless and hard-to-house Canadians themselves. These individuals live within a unique social context that differs considerably from that of the general population. To understand the life areas that are most important to them, it is critical to have direct input from target populations of homeless and hard-to-house persons. Methods Focus groups were conducted with 140 individuals aged 15 to 73 years who were homeless or hard-to-house to explore the circumstances in which they were living and to capture what they find to be important and relevant domains of QoL. Participants were recruited in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Results Six major content themes emerged: Health/health care; Living conditions; Financial situation; Employment situation; Relationships; and Recreational and leisure activities. These themes were linked to broader concepts that included having choices, stability, respect, and the same rights as other members of society. Conclusions These findings not only aid our understanding of QoL in this group, but may be used to develop measures that capture QoL in this population and help programs and policies become more effective in improving the life situation for persons who are homeless and hard-to-house. Quality of life themes in Canadian adults and street youth who are homeless or hard-to-house: A multi-site focus group study.

Reaction mechanisms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nguyen Trong Anh

1988-01-01

The 1988 progress report of the Reaction Mechanisms laboratory (Polytechnic School, France), is presented. The research topics are: the valence bond methods, the radical chemistry, the modelling of the transition states by applying geometric constraints, the long range interactions (ion - molecule) in gaseous phase, the reaction sites in gaseous phase and the mass spectroscopy applications. The points of convergence between the investigations of the mass spectroscopy and the theoretical chemistry teams, as well as the purposes guiding the research programs, are discussed. The published papers, the conferences, the congress communications and the thesis, are also reported [fr

Tunable, Chemo- and Site-Selective Nitrene Transfer Reactions through the Rational Design of Silver(I) Catalysts.

Science.gov (United States)

Alderson, Juliet M; Corbin, Joshua R; Schomaker, Jennifer M

2017-09-19

Carbon-nitrogen (C-N) bonds are ubiquitous in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, diverse bioactive natural products, and ligands for transition metal catalysts. An effective strategy for introducing a new C-N bond into a molecule is through transition metal-catalyzed nitrene transfer chemistry. In these reactions, a metal-supported nitrene can either add across a C═C bond to form an aziridine or insert into a C-H bond to furnish the corresponding amine. Typical catalysts for nitrene transfer include Rh 2 L n and Ru 2 L n complexes supported by bridging carboxylate and related ligands, as well as complexes based on Cu, Co, Ir, Fe, and Mn supported by porphyrins and related ligands. A limitation of metal-catalyzed nitrene transfer is the ability to predictably select which specific site will undergo amination in the presence of multiple reactive groups; thus, many reactions rely primarily on substrate control. Achieving true catalyst-control over nitrene transfer would open up exciting possibilities for flexible installation of new C-N bonds into hydrocarbons, natural product-inspired scaffolds, existing pharmaceuticals or biorenewable building blocks. Silver-catalyzed nitrene transfer enables flexible control over the position at which a new C-N bond is introduced. Ag(I) supported by simple N-donor ligands accommodates a diverse range of coordination geometries, from linear to tetrahedral to seesaw, enabling the electronic and steric parameters of the catalyst to be tuned independently. In addition, the ligand, Ag salt counteranion, Ag/ligand ratio and the solvent all influence the fluxional and dynamic behavior of Ag(I) complexes in solution. Understanding the interplay of these parameters to manipulate the behavior of Ag-nitrenes in a predictable manner is a key design feature of our work. In this Account, we describe successful applications of a variety of design principles to tunable, Ag-catalyzed aminations, including (1) changing Ag/ligand ratios to influence

GRIDCC: A Real-Time Grid Workflow System with QoS

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A. Stephen McGough

2007-01-01

Full Text Available The over-arching aim of Grid computing is to move computational resources from individual institutions where they can only be used for in-house work, to a more open vision of vast online ubiquitous `virtual computational' resources which support individuals and collaborative projects. A major step towards realizing this vision is the provision of instrumentation – such as telescopes, accelerators or electrical power stations – as Grid resources, and the tools to manage these resources online. The GRIDCC project attempts to satisfy these requirements by providing the following four co-dependent components; a flexible wrapper for publishing instruments as Grid resources; workflow support for the orchestration of multiple Grid resources in a timely manner; the machinery to make reservation agreements on Grid resources; and the facility to satisfy quality of service (QoS requirements on elements within workflows. In this paper we detail the set of services developed as part of the GRIDCC project to provide the last three of these components. We provide a detailed architecture for these services along with experimental results from load testing experiments. These services are currently deployed as a test-bed at a number of institutions across Europe, and are poised to provide a 'virtual lab' to production level applications.

Direct instrumental identification of catalytically active surface sites

Science.gov (United States)

Pfisterer, Jonas H. K.; Liang, Yunchang; Schneider, Oliver; Bandarenka, Aliaksandr S.

2017-09-01

The activity of heterogeneous catalysts—which are involved in some 80 per cent of processes in the chemical and energy industries—is determined by the electronic structure of specific surface sites that offer optimal binding of reaction intermediates. Directly identifying and monitoring these sites during a reaction should therefore provide insight that might aid the targeted development of heterogeneous catalysts and electrocatalysts (those that participate in electrochemical reactions) for practical applications. The invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) and the electrochemical STM promised to deliver such imaging capabilities, and both have indeed contributed greatly to our atomistic understanding of heterogeneous catalysis. But although the STM has been used to probe and initiate surface reactions, and has even enabled local measurements of reactivity in some systems, it is not generally thought to be suited to the direct identification of catalytically active surface sites under reaction conditions. Here we demonstrate, however, that common STMs can readily map the catalytic activity of surfaces with high spatial resolution: we show that by monitoring relative changes in the tunnelling current noise, active sites can be distinguished in an almost quantitative fashion according to their ability to catalyse the hydrogen-evolution reaction or the oxygen-reduction reaction. These data allow us to evaluate directly the importance and relative contribution to overall catalyst activity of different defects and sites at the boundaries between two materials. With its ability to deliver such information and its ready applicability to different systems, we anticipate that our method will aid the rational design of heterogeneous catalysts.

Fragrance allergy and quality of life - a case-control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Heisterberg, Maria V; Menné, Torkil; Johansen, Jeanne D

2014-02-01

Fragrance ingredients can cause contact allergy, which may affect quality of life (QoL). However, few studies have investigated this topic. To investigate QoL life among subjects with a fragrance allergy as compared with other eczema patients. A case-control survey was sent to subjects with a positive patch test reaction to a fragrance ingredient/marker (n = 550) and to a control group (n = 1100). It contained questions on eczema and the newly developed fragrance QoL index. Participants had been consecutively patch tested at Gentofte University Hospital (2000-2010). The response rate was 65.7%. Information on patch test data was retrieved from the National Contact Dermatitis Database. An increase in impairment of QoL was observed in women with fragrance allergy as compared with the control group (p = 0.042), which was not found among men. Several factors played a significant role in impairment of QoL in women: (i) number of fragrance allergies, (ii) severity of the patch test reaction, (iii) age combined with recent diagnosis; and (iv) allergy to specific fragrance ingredients/markers. Fragrance-allergic subjects are just as affected in their QoL as other eczema patients. However, women, and in particular recently diagnosed young women, seem to be more impaired in their QoL than other eczema patients. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Laparo-Endoscopic Single-Site Surgery for Radical and Cytoreductive Nephrectomy, Renal Vein Thrombectomy, and Partial Nephrectomy: A Prospective Pilot Evaluation

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Ithaar H. Derweesh

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction. Laparo-endoscopic single-site surgery (LESS may diminish morbidity of laparoscopic surgery. We prospectively evaluated feasibility and outcomes of LESS-Radical Nephrectomy (LESS-RN and Partial Nephrectomy (LESS-PN. Methods. 10 patients underwent LESS-RN (6 and LESS-PN (4 between 2/2009-5/2009. LESS-RN included 2 with renal vein thrombectomy, one of which was also cytoreductive. Transperitoneal LESS access was obtained by periumbilical incision. Patient/tumor characteristics, oncologic, and quality of life (QoL outcomes were analyzed. Results. 3 Men/7 Women (mean age 58.7 years, median follow-up 9.8 months underwent LESS. 9/10 cases were completed successfully. All had negative margins. Mean operative time was 161 minutes, estimated blood loss was 125 mL, and incision size was 4.4 cm. Median tumor size for LESS-RN and -PN was 5.0 and 1.7 cm (=.045. Median LESS-PN ischemia time was 24 minutes; mean preoperative/postoperative creatinine were 0.7/0.8 mg/dL (=.19. Mean pain score at discharge was 1.3. Mean preoperative, 3-, and 6-month postoperative SF-36 QoL Score was 73.8, 74.4 and 77.1 (=.222. All patients are currently alive. Conclusions. LESS-RN, renal vein thrombectomy, and PN are technically feasible and safe while maintaining adherence to oncologic principles, with excellent QoL preservation and low discharge pain scores. Further study is requisite.

Reaction rate constants of H-abstraction by OH from large ketones: Measurements and site-specific rate rules

KAUST Repository

Badra, Jihad

2014-01-01

Reaction rate constants of the reaction of four large ketones with hydroxyl (OH) are investigated behind reflected shock waves using OH laser absorption. The studied ketones are isomers of hexanone and include 2-hexanone, 3-hexanone, 3-methyl-2-pentanone, and 4-methl-2-pentanone. Rate constants are measured under pseudo-first-order kinetics at temperatures ranging from 866 K to 1375 K and pressures near 1.5 atm. The reported high-temperature rate constant measurements are the first direct measurements for these ketones under combustion-relevant conditions. The effects of the position of the carbonyl group (CO) and methyl (CH3) branching on the overall rate constant with OH are examined. Using previously published data, rate constant expressions covering, low-to-high temperatures, are developed for acetone, 2-butanone, 3-pentanone, and the hexanone isomers studied here. These Arrhenius expressions are used to devise rate rules for H-abstraction from various sites. Specifically, the current scheme is applied with good success to H-abstraction by OH from a series of n-ketones. Finally, general expressions for primary and secondary site-specific H-abstraction by OH from ketones are proposed as follows (the subscript numbers indicate the number of carbon atoms bonded to the next-nearest-neighbor carbon atom, the subscript CO indicates that the abstraction is from a site next to the carbonyl group (CO), and the prime is used to differentiate different neighboring environments of a methylene group):P1,CO = 7.38 × 10-14 exp(-274 K/T) + 9.17 × 10-12 exp(-2499 K/T) (285-1355 K)S10,CO = 1.20 × 10-11 exp(-2046 K/T) + 2.20 × 10-13 exp(160 K/T) (222-1464 K)S11,CO = 4.50 × 10-11 exp(-3000 K/T) + 8.50 × 10-15 exp(1440 K/T) (248-1302 K)S11′,CO = 3.80 × 10-11 exp(-2500 K/T) + 8.50 × 10-15 exp(1550 K/T) (263-1370 K)S 21,CO = 5.00 × 10-11 exp(-2500 K/T) + 4.00 × 10-13 exp(775 K/T) (297-1376 K) © 2014 the Partner Organisations.

Distortion-Based Slice Level Prioritization for Real-Time Video over QoS-Enabled Wireless Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ismail A. Ali

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a prioritization scheme based on an analysis of the impact on objective video quality when dropping individual slices from coded video streams. It is shown that giving higher-priority classified packets preference in accessing the wireless media results in considerable quality gain (up to 3 dB in tests over the case when no prioritization is applied. The proposed scheme is demonstrated for an IEEE 802.11e quality-of-service- (QoS- enabled wireless LAN. Though more complex prioritization systems are possible, the proposed scheme is crafted for mobile interactive or user-to-user video services and is simply implemented within the Main or the Baseline profiles of an H.264 codec.

A novel PON based UMTS broadband wireless access network architecture with an algorithm to guarantee end to end QoS

Science.gov (United States)

Sana, Ajaz; Hussain, Shahab; Ali, Mohammed A.; Ahmed, Samir

2007-09-01

In this paper we proposes a novel Passive Optical Network (PON) based broadband wireless access network architecture to provide multimedia services (video telephony, video streaming, mobile TV, mobile emails etc) to mobile users. In the conventional wireless access networks, the base stations (Node B) and Radio Network Controllers (RNC) are connected by point to point T1/E1 lines (Iub interface). The T1/E1 lines are expensive and add up to operating costs. Also the resources (transceivers and T1/E1) are designed for peak hours traffic, so most of the time the dedicated resources are idle and wasted. Further more the T1/E1 lines are not capable of supporting bandwidth (BW) required by next generation wireless multimedia services proposed by High Speed Packet Access (HSPA, Rel.5) for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Evolution Data only (EV-DO) for Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA2000). The proposed PON based back haul can provide Giga bit data rates and Iub interface can be dynamically shared by Node Bs. The BW is dynamically allocated and the unused BW from lightly loaded Node Bs is assigned to heavily loaded Node Bs. We also propose a novel algorithm to provide end to end Quality of Service (QoS) (between RNC and user equipment).The algorithm provides QoS bounds in the wired domain as well as in wireless domain with compensation for wireless link errors. Because of the air interface there can be certain times when the user equipment (UE) is unable to communicate with Node B (usually referred to as link error). Since the link errors are bursty and location dependent. For a proposed approach, the scheduler at the Node B maps priorities and weights for QoS into wireless MAC. The compensations for errored links is provided by the swapping of services between the active users and the user data is divided into flows, with flows allowed to lag or lead. The algorithm guarantees (1)delay and throughput for error-free flows,(2)short term fairness

Effects of air pollution and seasonality on the respiratory symptoms and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) of outpatients with chronic respiratory disease in Ulaanbaatar: pilot study for the comparison of the cold and warm seasons.

Science.gov (United States)

Nakao, Motoyuki; Yamauchi, Keiko; Ishihara, Yoko; Solongo, Bandi; Ichinnorov, Dashtseren

2016-01-01

This study was performed to investigate the effects of air pollution and seasonality on the respiratory symptoms and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) of outpatients with respiratory diseases in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Subjects were outpatients who visited the hospital with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) or bronchial asthma (BA) in March. Their symptoms and HR-QoL were evaluated using a questionnaire including the SF-36v2 and COOP/WONCA charts in March, May and July. PM2.5 was sampled in March and July in Ulaanbaatar, and its composition was analyzed. Patients with COPD or BA showed higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms than the control subjects in each month. For HR-QoL, all subscales worsened in the patients than in the control group in March. Although the HR-QoL of the COPD and control groups were not significantly changed through the surveys, some subscales of the BA group showed remarkable improvement in July as compared to March. Daily means of PM2.5 in March were significantly higher than those in July. Carbon and ionic component concentrations, except for magnesium and calcium ions, were significantly higher in March than July. Mass concentrations of some metallic components were also significantly higher in March than July. The percentage of nitrate ion in PM2.5 was significantly higher in March when compared to that in July. These results suggested that the symptoms in the COPD and BA groups were caused by the disease, and the association with air pollution or seasonality remained unclear. However, the effects of air pollution and seasonality on the HR-QoL were significant in the patients with BA.

Conformational differences between the methoxy groups of QA and QB site ubisemiquinones in bacterial reaction centers: a key role for methoxy group orientation in modulating ubiquinone redox potential.

Science.gov (United States)

Taguchi, Alexander T; O'Malley, Patrick J; Wraight, Colin A; Dikanov, Sergei A

2013-07-09

Ubiquinone is an almost universal, membrane-associated redox mediator. Its ability to accept either one or two electrons allows it to function in critical roles in biological electron transport. The redox properties of ubiquinone in vivo are determined by its environment in the binding sites of proteins and by the dihedral angle of each methoxy group relative to the ring plane. This is an attribute unique to ubiquinone among natural quinones and could account for its widespread function with many different redox complexes. In this work, we use the photosynthetic reaction center as a model system for understanding the role of methoxy conformations in determining the redox potential of the ubiquinone/semiquinone couple. Despite the abundance of X-ray crystal structures for the reaction center, quinone site resolution has thus far been too low to provide a reliable measure of the methoxy dihedral angles of the primary and secondary quinones, QA and QB. We performed 2D ESEEM (HYSCORE) on isolated reaction centers with ubiquinones (13)C-labeled at the headgroup methyl and methoxy substituents, and have measured the (13)C isotropic and anisotropic components of the hyperfine tensors. Hyperfine couplings were compared to those derived by DFT calculations as a function of methoxy torsional angle allowing estimation of the methoxy dihedral angles for the semiquinones in the QA and QB sites. Based on this analysis, the orientation of the 2-methoxy groups are distinct in the two sites, with QB more out of plane by 20-25°. This corresponds to an ≈50 meV larger electron affinity for the QB quinone, indicating a substantial contribution to the experimental difference in redox potentials (60-75 mV) of the two quinones. The methods developed here can be readily extended to ubiquinone-binding sites in other protein complexes.

Enhancement of User Quality of Experience (QoE) for Service Migration in Context Aware Environment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Saeed, Aamir

condition, device resources utilization and user mobility may be outdated, and have potential to invoke an unnecessary migration which impacts the satisfaction level of user. Firstly, the work presented in this thesis propose a service migration framework (SMF) for designing application with migration...... decision for massively multiplayer online game server (MMOG) was simulated. Due to communication delay and load transfer delay, the shared context is often outdated, and may trigger unnecessary migration. A prediction based approach was presented, to use estimated future server state as additional context...... individual user responsiveness. In summary, the thesis identified core elements of migration process. The mapping of loss of user experience as QoE loss score value, provides a performance metric for measuring performance of migratory application. Furthermore, the impact of out dated information in dynamic...

Site-specific growth of Au-Pd alloy horns on Au nanorods: A platform for highly sensitive monitoring of catalytic reactions by surface enhancement raman spectroscopy

KAUST Repository

Huang, Jianfeng

2013-06-12

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a highly sensitive probe for molecular detection. The aim of this study was to develop an efficient platform for investigating the kinetics of catalytic reactions with SERS. To achieve this, we synthesized a novel Au-Pd bimetallic nanostructure (HIF-AuNR@AuPd) through site-specific epitaxial growth of Au-Pd alloy horns as catalytic sites at the ends of Au nanorods. Using high-resolution electron microscopy and tomography, we successfully reconstructed the complex three-dimensional morphology of HIF-AuNR@AuPd and identified that the horns are bound with high-index {11l} (0.25 < l < 0.43) facets. With an electron beam probe, we visualized the distribution of surface plasmon over the HIF-AuNR@AuPd nanorods, finding that strong longitudinal surface plasmon resonance concentrated at the rod ends. This unique crystal morphology led to the coupling of high catalytic activity with a strong SERS effect at the rod ends, making HIF-AuNR@AuPd an excellent bifunctional platform for in situ monitoring of surface catalytic reactions. Using the hydrogenation of 4-nitrothiophenol as a model reaction, we demonstrated that its first-order reaction kinetics could be accurately determined from this platform. Moreover, we clearly identified the superior catalytic activity of the rod ends relative to that of the rod bodies, owing to the different SERS activities at the two positions. In comparison with other reported Au-Pd bimetallic nanostructures, HIF-AuNR@AuPd offered both higher catalytic activity and greater detection sensitivity. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

Substrate-Directed Catalytic Selective Chemical Reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Sawano, Takahiro; Yamamoto, Hisashi

2018-05-04

The development of highly efficient reactions at only the desired position is one of the most important subjects in organic chemistry. Most of the reactions in current organic chemistry are reagent- or catalyst-controlled reactions, and the regio- and stereoselectivity of the reactions are determined by the inherent nature of the reagent or catalyst. In sharp contrast, substrate-directed reaction determines the selectivity of the reactions by the functional group on the substrate and can strictly distinguish sterically and electronically similar multiple reaction sites in the substrate. In this Perspective, three topics of substrate-directed reaction are mainly reviewed: (1) directing group-assisted epoxidation of alkenes, (2) ring-opening reactions of epoxides by various nucleophiles, and (3) catalytic peptide synthesis. Our newly developed synthetic methods with new ligands including hydroxamic acid derived ligands realized not only highly efficient reactions but also pinpointed reactions at the expected position, demonstrating the substrate-directed reaction as a powerful method to achieve the desired regio- and stereoselective functionalization of molecules from different viewpoints of reagent- or catalyst-controlled reactions.

Introducing the Body-QoL®: A New Patient-Reported Outcome Instrument for Measuring Body Satisfaction-Related Quality of Life in Aesthetic and Post-bariatric Body Contouring Patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Danilla, Stefan; Cuevas, Pedro; Aedo, Sócrates; Dominguez, Carlos; Jara, Rocío; Calderón, María E; Al-Himdani, Sarah; Rios, Marco A; Taladriz, Cristián; Rodriguez, Diego; Gonzalez, Rolando; Lazo, Ángel; Erazo, Cristián; Benitez, Susana; Andrades, Patricio; Sepúlveda, Sergio

2016-02-01

To develop a new patient-reported outcome instrument (PRO) to measure body-related satisfaction quality of life (QoL). Standard 3-phase PRO design was followed; in the first phase, a qualitative design was used in 45 patients to develop a conceptual framework and to create preliminary scale domains and items. In phase 2, large-scale population testing on 1340 subjects was performed to reduce items and domains. In phase 3, final testing of the developed instrument on 34 patients was performed. Statistics used include Factor, RASCH, and multivariate regression analysis. Psychometric properties measured were internal reliability, item-rest, item-test, and test-retest correlations. The PRO-developed instrument is composed of four domains (satisfaction with the abdomen, sex life, self-esteem and social life, and physical symptoms) and 20 items in total. The score can range from 20 (worst) to 100 (best). Responsiveness was 100 %, internal reliability 93.3 %, and test-retest concordance 97.7 %. Body image-related QoL was superior in men than women (p instrument (p measured reliably with the Body-QoL instrument. It can be used to quantify the improvement in cosmetic and post-bariatric patients including non- or minimally invasive procedures, suction assisted lipectomy, abdominoplasty, lipoabdominoplasty, and lower body lift and to give an evidence-based approach to standard practice. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.

Site-specific chemical conjugation of human Fas ligand extracellular domain using trans-cyclooctene - methyltetrazine reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Muraki, Michiro; Hirota, Kiyonori

2017-07-03

Fas ligand plays a key role in the human immune system as a major cell death inducing protein. The extracellular domain of human Fas ligand (hFasLECD) triggers apoptosis of malignant cells, and therefore is expected to have substantial potentials in medical biotechnology. However, the current application of this protein to clinical medicine is hampered by a shortage of the benefits relative to the drawbacks including the side-effects in systemic administration. Effective procedures for the engineering of the protein by attaching useful additional functions are required to overcome the problem. A procedure for the site-specific chemical conjugation of hFasLECD with a fluorochrome and functional proteins was devised using an inverse-electron-demand Diels-Alder reaction between trans-cyclooctene group and methyltetrazine group. The conjugations in the present study were attained by using much less molar excess amounts of the compounds to be attached as compared with the conventional chemical modification reactions using maleimide derivatives in the previous study. The isolated conjugates of hFasLECD with sulfo-Cy3, avidin and rabbit IgG Fab' domain presented the functional and the structural integrities of the attached molecules without impairing the specific binding activity toward human Fas receptor extracellular domain. The present study provided a new fundamental strategy for the production of the engineered hFasLECDs with additional beneficial functions, which will lead to the developments of the improved diagnostic systems and the effective treatment methods of serious diseases by using this protein as a component of novel molecular tools.

Kinetics of oxygen consumption after a single flash of light in photoreceptors of the drone (Apis mellifera)

OpenAIRE

1982-01-01

The time course of the rate of oxygen consumption (QO2) after a single flash of light has been measured in 300-micrometers slices of drone retina at 22 degrees C. To measure delta QO2(t), the change in QO2 from its level in darkness, the transients of the partial pressure of O2 (PO2) were recorded with O2 microelectrodes simultaneously in two sites in the slice and delta QO2 was calculated by a computer using Fourier transforms. After a 40-ms flash of intense light, delta QO2, reached a peak ...

QoS-based experience-aware adaptation in multimedia e-learning - A learner, is a learner, is a user, is a customer

OpenAIRE

Moebs, Sabine

2011-01-01

One of the challenges for the future of technology-enhanced learning is the retention of learners. On-line learning environments should engage learners and provide an appropriate “Quality of Experience” (QoE). For more than a decade, adaptive hypermedia systems have been used to adapt content and instruction to individual knowledge, goals and preferences in an effort to engage learners. However, even if the content is highly engaging it can be very difficult to achieve good Quality ...

On QoS guarantee in MPLS network with software deadline awareness

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Yu; Jin, Yaohui; Cheng, Hong; Yu, Yingdi; Sun, Weiqiang; Guo, Wei; Hu, Weisheng

2007-11-01

With the increasing number of internet users, more and more real-time services are added into the network, such as IPTV, online-video, Voice over IP, etc. As we know, throughput is a highly important performance criterion for scheduling algorithms of networks. Besides throughput, these growing real-time services are very sensitive to delay variance termed as jitter. Therefore, high performance scheduling algorithm should achieve good performance in terms of throughput, delay, jitter and fairness together. Scheduling algorithm with deadline-awareness employed in packet switching plays a key role in QoS guarantees. Although traditional hard-deadline can provide guarantee on in-node delay-deadline criteria, the end-to-end delay-deadline criteria cannot be guaranteed due to the characteristic of hard-deadline, while the delay-deadline guaranteed throughput is low. Thus, soft-deadline scheduling algorithm has been proposed. In this paper, we investigate and compare the classical hard-deadline and soft-deadline switching algorithm. A new scheme "Bonus System" is proposed in order to realize the idea of soft-deadline switching algorithm. Bonus System based on soft-deadline is compared with classical Early-Deadline First scheme based on hard-deadline, which shows that Bonus System has better performance in End-to-End deadline guarantee.

Subcutaneously administered Menopur(R, a new highly purified human menopausal gonadotropin, causes significantly fewer injection site reactions than Repronex(R in subjects undergoing in vitro fertilization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Somkuti Stephen

2005-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The safety and tolerability of a new highly purified, urine-derived human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG preparation [Menopur(R] was compared with a currently available hMG [Repronex (R] in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF. Methods This was a randomized, open-label, parallel-group, multicenter study conducted in subjects undergoing IVF. Women (N = 125, 18–39 years of age, underwent pituitary down-regulation with leuprolide acetate beginning 7 days prior to onset of menses and continuing up to the day before hCG administration. Subjects were randomized to receive subcutaneous (SC Menopur (R (n = 61 or Repronex (R SC (n = 64 for a maximum of 12 days. All adverse events (AEs were recorded and subject self-assessments of injection site reactions were recorded in a daily diary. Results Significantly fewer subjects in the Menopur (R group reported injection site reactions (P Conclusion Menopur (R SC offers a greater safety and tolerability profile compared to Repronex (R SC.

Controlling site selectivity in Pd-catalyzed oxidative cross-coupling reactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Lyons, Thomas W; Hull, Kami L; Sanford, Melanie S

2011-03-30

This paper presents a detailed investigation of the factors controlling site selectivity in the Pd-mediated oxidative coupling of 1,3-disubstituted and 1,2,3-trisubstituted arenes (aryl-H) with cyclometalating substrates (L~C-H). The influence of both the concentration and the steric/electronic properties of the quinone promoter are studied in detail. In addition, the effect of steric/electronic modulation of the carboxylate ligand is discussed. Finally, we demonstrate that substitution of the carboxylate for a carbonate X-type ligand leads to a complete reversal in site selectivity for many arene substrates. The origins of these trends in site selectivity are discussed in the context of the mechanism of Pd-catalyzed oxidative cross-coupling.

An Experimental QoE Performance Study for the Efficient Transmission of High Demanding Traffic over an Ad Hoc Network Using BATMAN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ramon Sanchez-Iborra

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Multimedia communications are attracting great attention from the research, industry, and end-user communities. The latter are increasingly claiming for higher levels of quality and the possibility of consuming multimedia content from a plethora of devices at their disposal. Clearly, the most appealing gadgets are those that communicate wirelessly to access these services. However, current wireless technologies raise severe concerns to support extremely demanding services such as real-time multimedia transmissions. This paper evaluates from QoE and QoS perspectives the capability of the ad hoc routing protocol called BATMAN to support Voice over IP and video traffic. To this end, two test-benches were proposed, namely, a real (emulated testbed and a simulation framework. Additionally, a series of modifications was proposed on both protocols’ parameters settings and video-stream characteristics that contributes to further improving the multimedia quality perceived by the users. The performance of the well-extended protocol OLSR is also evaluated in detail to compare it with BATMAN. From the results, a notably high correlation between real experimentation and computer simulation outcomes was observed. It was also found out that, with the proper configuration, BATMAN is able to transmit several QCIF video-streams and VoIP calls with high quality. In addition, BATMAN outperforms OLSR supporting multimedia traffic in both experimental and simulated environments.

Aqueous complexation, precipitation, and adsorption reactions of cadmium in the geologic environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zachara, J.M.; Rai, D.; Felmy, A.R.; Cowan, C.E.; Smith, S.C.; Moore, D.A.; Resch, C.T.

1992-06-01

This report contains new laboratory data and equilibrium constants for important solubility and adsorption reactions of Cd that occur in soil and groundwater and attenuate Cd migration. In addition, extensive interaction experiments with Cd and soils from electric utility sites are described. These experiments show the importance of precipitation and adsorption reactions in soil and demonstrate how such reactions can be modeled to predict Cd attenuation near utility sites

QoS Differentiated and Fair Packet Scheduling in Broadband Wireless Access Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhang Yan

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper studies the packet scheduling problem in Broadband Wireless Access (BWA networks. The key difficulties of the BWA scheduling problem lie in the high variability of wireless channel capacity and the unknown model of packet arrival process. It is difficult for traditional heuristic scheduling algorithms to handle the situation and guarantee satisfying performance in BWA networks. In this paper, we introduce learning-based approach for a better solution. Specifically, we formulate the packet scheduling problem as an average cost Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP. Then, we solve the SMDP by using reinforcement learning. A feature-based linear approximation and the Temporal-Difference learning technique are employed to produce a near optimal solution of the corresponding SMDP problem. The proposed algorithm, called Reinforcement Learning Scheduling (RLS, has in-built capability of self-training. It is able to adaptively and timely regulate its scheduling policy according to the instantaneous network conditions. Simulation results indicate that RLS outperforms two classical scheduling algorithms and simultaneously considers: (i effective QoS differentiation, (ii high bandwidth utilization, and (iii both short-term and long-term fairness.

QoS prediction for web services based on user-trust propagation model

Science.gov (United States)

Thinh, Le-Van; Tu, Truong-Dinh

2017-10-01

There is an important online role for Web service providers and users; however, the rapidly growing number of service providers and users, it can create some similar functions among web services. This is an exciting area for research, and researchers seek to to propose solutions for the best service to users. Collaborative filtering (CF) algorithms are widely used in recommendation systems, although these are less effective for cold-start users. Recently, some recommender systems have been developed based on social network models, and the results show that social network models have better performance in terms of CF, especially for cold-start users. However, most social network-based recommendations do not consider the user's mood. This is a hidden source of information, and is very useful in improving prediction efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a new model called User-Trust Propagation (UTP). The model uses a combination of trust and the mood of users to predict the QoS value and matrix factorisation (MF), which is used to train the model. The experimental results show that the proposed model gives better accuracy than other models, especially for the cold-start problem.

Investigation of transition metal-catalyzed nitrene transfer reactions in water.

Science.gov (United States)

Alderson, Juliet M; Corbin, Joshua R; Schomaker, Jennifer M

2018-04-11

Transition metal-catalyzed nitrene transfer is a powerful method for incorporating new CN bonds into relatively unfunctionalized scaffolds. In this communication, we report the first examples of site- and chemoselective CH bond amination reactions in aqueous media. The unexpected ability to employ water as the solvent in these reactions is advantageous in that it eliminates toxic solvent use and enables reactions to be run at increased concentrations with lower oxidant loadings. Using water as the reaction medium has potential to expand the scope of nitrene transfer to encompass a variety of biomolecules and highly polar substrates, as well as enable pH control over the site-selectivity of CH bond amination. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Framework for Smart Home Services with Secure and QoS-aware Communications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Markus Hager

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The scenario of smart home services will be discussed with regard to two important aspects: the quality of service problem for the in-house communication and the need for a security scheme for the whole system. We focus on an installation with smart computers in each flat interconnected using a switched Ethernet network. These smart devices are responsible for performing local services, user control and operate as a gateway for the different types of sensor and actor networks installed at each flat. We propose a QoS scheme to prevent congestion situation for the Ethernet network which is applicable to currently available cost-sensitive hardware. Furthermore, the whole system, all communication channels, user data and the access to the framework are secured by our proposed security architecture. Finally, we will present the latest improvements on Ethernet network standards, the ongoing work on this topics and our next steps for future work.

A QoS-Based Dynamic Queue Length Scheduling Algorithm in Multiantenna Heterogeneous Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Verikoukis Christos

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The use of real-time delay-sensitive applications in wireless systems has significantly grown during the last years. Therefore the designers of wireless systems have faced a challenging issue to guarantee the required Quality of Service (QoS. On the other hand, the recent advances and the extensive use of multiple antennas have already been included in several commercial standards, where the multibeam opportunistic transmission beamforming strategies have been proposed to improve the performance of the wireless systems. A cross-layer-based dynamically tuned queue length scheduler is presented in this paper, for the Downlink of multiuser and multiantenna WLAN systems with heterogeneous traffic requirements. To align with modern wireless systems transmission strategies, an opportunistic scheduling algorithm is employed, while a priority to the different traffic classes is applied. A tradeoff between the maximization of the throughput of the system and the guarantee of the maximum allowed delay is obtained. Therefore, the length of the queue is dynamically adjusted to select the appropriate conditions based on the operator requirements.

An Adaptive QoS Routing Solution for MANET Based Multimedia Communications in Emergency Cases

Science.gov (United States)

Ramrekha, Tipu Arvind; Politis, Christos

The Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) is a wireless network deprived of any fixed central authoritative routing entity. It relies entirely on collaborating nodes forwarding packets from source to destination. This paper describes the design, implementation and performance evaluation of CHAMELEON, an adaptive Quality of Service (QoS) routing solution, with improved delay and jitter performances, enabling multimedia communication for MANETs in extreme emergency situations such as forest fire and terrorist attacks as defined in the PEACE project. CHAMELEON is designed to adapt its routing behaviour according to the size of a MANET. The reactive Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) and proactive Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocols are deemed appropriate for CHAMELEON through their performance evaluation in terms of delay and jitter for different MANET sizes in a building fire emergency scenario. CHAMELEON is then implemented in NS-2 and evaluated similarly. The paper concludes with a summary of findings so far and intended future work.

Quality of life outcomes in patients with anal cancer after combined radiochemotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Welzel, Grit; Haegele, Verena; Wenz, Frederik; Mai, Sabine Kathrin

2011-01-01

Purpose: To assess self-reported quality of life (QoL) experienced by anal cancer patients after radiochemotherapy, and to identify patient- and disease-related factors associated with QoL. Patients and Methods: A total of 88 patients treated for anal cancer at our institution between 1990 and 2006 were identified from our database. Of these, 15 patients had died, and 4 were lost to follow-up. QoL was assessed using the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire (cancer-specific QoL) and the colorectal cancer module QLQ-CR38 (site-specific QoL); 52 responses were received. The median follow-up was 36 months (range, 5-137 months). Results: As for cancer-specific QoL, global health QoL score (mean 60.4) was similar to the general German population, whereas most of the function and symptom scale scores were considerably lower/higher in anal cancer patients. The most prominent mean score differences were observed in role functioning (-21.8 points), emotional functioning (-20.7 points), social functioning (-28.9 points), diarrhea (+34.6 points), and financial difficulties (+26.9 points; p < 0.001). As for site-specific QoL, the mean function scale scores ranged from 22.1 (sexual function) to 63.2 (body image), and the mean symptom scale scores from 14.7 (weight loss) to 69.0 (stoma-related problems, 4 patients) and 67.9 (male sexual dysfunction), respectively. Most of the QoL scores were not affected by late toxicity, patient- or disease-related factors. Fatigue (+18.2 points) emerged as the strongest predictor of impaired QoL. Conclusion: The global health QoL of anal cancer patients is comparable with that of the general German population, but there are specific limitations, e.g., sexual dysfunction, urological/gastrointestinal complaints, financial difficulties, fatigue, and a reduction in emotional and social well-being. (orig.)

Quality of life outcomes in patients with anal cancer after combined radiochemotherapy

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Welzel, Grit; Haegele, Verena; Wenz, Frederik; Mai, Sabine Kathrin [Universitaetsklinikum Heidelberg, Mannheim (Germany). Dept. of Radiation Oncology

2011-03-15

Purpose: To assess self-reported quality of life (QoL) experienced by anal cancer patients after radiochemotherapy, and to identify patient- and disease-related factors associated with QoL. Patients and Methods: A total of 88 patients treated for anal cancer at our institution between 1990 and 2006 were identified from our database. Of these, 15 patients had died, and 4 were lost to follow-up. QoL was assessed using the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire (cancer-specific QoL) and the colorectal cancer module QLQ-CR38 (site-specific QoL); 52 responses were received. The median follow-up was 36 months (range, 5-137 months). Results: As for cancer-specific QoL, global health QoL score (mean 60.4) was similar to the general German population, whereas most of the function and symptom scale scores were considerably lower/higher in anal cancer patients. The most prominent mean score differences were observed in role functioning (-21.8 points), emotional functioning (-20.7 points), social functioning (-28.9 points), diarrhea (+34.6 points), and financial difficulties (+26.9 points; p < 0.001). As for site-specific QoL, the mean function scale scores ranged from 22.1 (sexual function) to 63.2 (body image), and the mean symptom scale scores from 14.7 (weight loss) to 69.0 (stoma-related problems, 4 patients) and 67.9 (male sexual dysfunction), respectively. Most of the QoL scores were not affected by late toxicity, patient- or disease-related factors. Fatigue (+18.2 points) emerged as the strongest predictor of impaired QoL. Conclusion: The global health QoL of anal cancer patients is comparable with that of the general German population, but there are specific limitations, e.g., sexual dysfunction, urological/gastrointestinal complaints, financial difficulties, fatigue, and a reduction in emotional and social well-being. (orig.)

Tandem Reaction of Cationic Copolymerization and Concertedly Induced Hetero-Diels-Alder Reaction Preparing Sequence-Regulated Polymers.

Science.gov (United States)

Matsumoto, Suzuka; Kanazawa, Arihiro; Kanaoka, Shokyoku; Aoshima, Sadahito

2017-06-14

A unique tandem reaction of sequence-controlled cationic copolymerization and site-specific hetero-Diels-Alder (DA) reaction is demonstrated. In the controlled cationic copolymerization of furfural and 2-acetoxyethyl vinyl ether (AcOVE), only the furan ring adjacent to the propagating carbocation underwent the hetero-DA reaction with the aldehyde moiety of another furfural molecule. A further and equally important feature of the copolymerization is that the obtained copolymers had unprecedented 2:(1 + 1)-type alternating structures of repeating sequences of two VE and one furfural units in the main chain and one furfural unit in the side chain. The specific DA reaction is attributed to the delocalization of the positive charge to the side furan ring.

Half-of-the-sites reactivity of outer-membrane phospholipase A against an active-site-directed inhibitor.

Science.gov (United States)

Ubarretxena-Belandia, I; Cox, R C; Dijkman, R; Egmond, M R; Verheij, H M; Dekker, N

1999-03-01

The reaction of a novel active-site-directed phospholipase A1 inhibitor with the outer-membrane phospholipase A (OMPLA) was investigated. The inhibitor 1-p-nitrophenyl-octylphosphonate-2-tridecylcarbamoyl-3-et hanesulfonyl -amino-3-deoxy-sn-glycerol irreversibly inactivated OMPLA. The inhibition reaction did not require the cofactor calcium or an unprotonated active-site His142. The inhibition of the enzyme solubilized in hexadecylphosphocholine micelles was characterized by a rapid (t1/2 = 20 min) and complete loss of enzymatic activity, concurrent with the covalent modification of 50% of the active-site serines, as judged from the amount of p-nitrophenolate (PNP) released. Modification of the remaining 50% occurred at a much lower rate, indicative of half-of-the-sites reactivity against the inhibitor of this dimeric enzyme. Inhibition of monomeric OMPLA solubilized in hexadecyl-N,N-dimethyl-1-ammonio-3-propanesulfonate resulted in an equimolar monophasic release of PNP, concurrent with the loss of enzymatic activity (t1/2 = 14 min). The half-of-the-sites reactivity is discussed in view of the dimeric nature of this enzyme.

Calculation of reaction energies and adiabatic temperatures for waste tank reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burger, L.L.

1995-10-01

Continual concern has been expressed over potentially hazardous exothermic reactions that might occur in Hanford Site underground waste storage tanks. These tanks contain many different oxidizable compounds covering a wide range of concentrations. The chemical hazards are a function of several interrelated factors, including the amount of energy (heat) produced, how fast it is produced, and the thermal absorption and heat transfer properties of the system. The reaction path(s) will determine the amount of energy produced and kinetics will determine the rate that it is produced. The tanks also contain many inorganic compounds inert to oxidation. These compounds act as diluents and can inhibit exothermic reactions because of their heat capacity and thus, in contrast to the oxidizable compounds, provide mitigation of hazardous reactions. In this report the energy that may be released when various organic and inorganic compounds react is computed as a function of the reaction-mix composition and the temperature. The enthalpy, or integrated heat capacity, of these compounds and various reaction products is presented as a function of temperature; the enthalpy of a given mixture can then be equated to the energy release from various reactions to predict the maximum temperature which may be reached. This is estimated for several different compositions. Alternatively, the amounts of various diluents required to prevent the temperature from reaching a critical value can be estimated. Reactions taking different paths, forming different products such as N 2 O in place of N 2 are also considered, as are reactions where an excess of caustic is present. Oxidants other than nitrate and nitrite are considered briefly

Calculation of reaction energies and adiabatic temperatures for waste tank reactions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Burger, L.L.

1995-10-01

Continual concern has been expressed over potentially hazardous exothermic reactions that might occur in Hanford Site underground waste storage tanks. These tanks contain many different oxidizable compounds covering a wide range of concentrations. The chemical hazards are a function of several interrelated factors, including the amount of energy (heat) produced, how fast it is produced, and the thermal absorption and heat transfer properties of the system. The reaction path(s) will determine the amount of energy produced and kinetics will determine the rate that it is produced. The tanks also contain many inorganic compounds inert to oxidation. These compounds act as diluents and can inhibit exothermic reactions because of their heat capacity and thus, in contrast to the oxidizable compounds, provide mitigation of hazardous reactions. In this report the energy that may be released when various organic and inorganic compounds react is computed as a function of the reaction-mix composition and the temperature. The enthalpy, or integrated heat capacity, of these compounds and various reaction products is presented as a function of temperature; the enthalpy of a given mixture can then be equated to the energy release from various reactions to predict the maximum temperature which may be reached. This is estimated for several different compositions. Alternatively, the amounts of various diluents required to prevent the temperature from reaching a critical value can be estimated. Reactions taking different paths, forming different products such as N{sub 2}O in place of N{sub 2} are also considered, as are reactions where an excess of caustic is present. Oxidants other than nitrate and nitrite are considered briefly.

Spectrum Band Selection in Delay-QoS Constrained Cognitive Radio Networks

KAUST Repository

Yang, Yuli

2014-01-01

In this paper, a cognitive radio (CR) network with multiple spectrum bands available for secondary users (SUs) is considered. For the SU\\'s active spectrum-band selection, two criteria are developed. One is to select the band with the highest secondary channel power gain, and the other is to select the band with the lowest interference channel power gain to primary users (PUs). With the quality-of-service (QoS) requirement concerning delay, the effective capacity (EC) behaviors over secondary links are investigated for both criteria under two spectrum-sharing constraints. To begin by presenting full benefits in these criteria, the constraint imposed on the secondary transmitter (ST) is the average interference limitation to PUs only. Furthermore, taking into account the ST\\'s battery/energy budget, the ST is imposed by joint constraints on its average interference to PUs, as well as on its own average transmit power. For either constraint, we formulate the ST\\'s optimal transmit power allocation to maximize the SU\\'s EC with both band-selection criteria and, correspondingly, obtain the secondary\\'s power allocation and maximum EC in closed forms. Numerical results demonstrated subsequently substantiate the validity of our derivations and provide a powerful tool for the spectrum-band selection in CR networks with multiple bands available. © 1967-2012 IEEE.

On the adsorption/reaction of acetone on pure and sulfate-modified zirconias.

Science.gov (United States)

Crocellà, Valentina; Cerrato, Giuseppina; Morterra, Claudio

2013-08-28

In situ FTIR spectroscopy was employed to investigate some aspects of the ambient temperature (actually, IR-beam temperature) adsorption of acetone on various pure and sulfate-doped zirconia specimens. Acetone uptake yields, on all examined systems and to a variable extent, different types of specific molecular adsorption, depending on the kind/population of available surface sites: relatively weak H-bonding interaction(s) with surface hydroxyls, medium-strong coordinative interaction with Lewis acidic sites, and strong H-bonding interaction with Brønsted acidic centres. Moreover acetone, readily and abundantly adsorbed in molecular form, is able to undergo the aldol condensation reaction (yielding, as the main reaction product, adsorbed mesityl oxide) only if the adsorbing material possesses some specific surface features. The occurrence/non-occurrence of the acetone self-condensation reaction is discussed, and leads to conclusions concerning the sites that catalyze the condensation reaction that do not agree with either of two conflicting interpretations present in the literature of acetone uptake/reaction on, mainly, zeolitic systems. In particular, what turns out to be actually necessary for the acetone aldol condensation reaction to occur on the examined zirconia systems is the presence of coordinatively unsaturated O(2-) surface sites of basicity sufficient to lead to the extraction of a proton from one of the CH3 groups of adsorbed acetone.

SITE-94. Mineralogy of the Aespoe site

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Andersson, Karin

1996-12-01

The water composition has several impacts on the repository. It will influence the behaviour of the engineered materials (e.g. corrosion). It may also determine the possible solubility and speciation of released radionuclides. It also acts as a transport medium for the released elements. The groundwater composition and the potential development of the composition due to the presence of the repository as well as due to external variations is thus an important issue in a safety analysis. The development of the groundwater composition is strongly dependent on reactions with the minerals present in water bearing fractures. Here equilibrium chemistry may be of importance, but also reaction kinetics is important to the long-term behaviour. Within the SITE-94 project, a safety analysis is performed for the conditions at the Aespoe site. The mineralogy of the area has been evaluated from drill cores at various places at the site. In this report a recommendation for selection of mineralogy to be used in geochemical modelling of the repository is given. Calcite and iron containing minerals dominate the fracture filling mineralogy at the Aespoe site. Some typical fracture filling mineralogies may be identified in the fractures: epidote, chlorite, calcite, hematite, some illite/smectite + quartz, fluorite, pyrite and goethite. In addition to these a number of minor minerals are found in the fractures. Uncertainties in the fracture filling data may be due to problems when taking out the drill cores. Drilling water may remove important clay minerals and sealed fractures may be reopened mechanically and treated as water conducting fractures. The problem of determining the variability of the mineralogy along the flow paths also remains. This problem will never be solved when the investigation is performed by drilling investigation holes

77 FR 55108 - Explosive Siting Requirements

Science.gov (United States)

2012-09-07

... energy, or a chemical explosion requiring a chemical reaction. Furthermore, an accident may happen... for energetic liquids. \\4\\ Crowl, D.A., Understanding Explosions, AIAA Center for Chemical Process... chemical hazards of energetic liquids used at commercial launch sites. Finally, a site map must now be at a...

Monitoring mass transport in heterogeneously catalyzed reactions by field-gradient NMR for assessing reaction efficiency in a single pellet

Science.gov (United States)

Buljubasich, L.; Blümich, B.; Stapf, S.

2011-09-01

An important aspect in assessing the performance of a catalytically active reactor is the accessibility of the reactive sites inside the individual pellets, and the mass transfer of reactants and products to and from these sites. Optimal design often requires a suitable combination of micro- and macropores in order to facilitate mass transport inside the pellet. In an exothermic reaction, fluid exchange between the pellet and the surrounding medium is enhanced by convection, and often by the occurrence of gas bubbles. Determining mass flow in the vicinity of a pellet thus represents a parameter for quantifying the reaction efficiency and its dependence on time or external reaction conditions. Field gradient Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods are suggested as a tool for providing parameters sensitive to this mass flow in a contact-free and non-invasive way. For the example of bubble-forming hydrogen peroxide decomposition in an alumina pellet, the dependence of the mean-squared displacement of fluid molecules on spatial direction, observation time and reaction time is presented, and multi-pulse techniques are employed in order to separate molecular displacements from coherent and incoherent motion on the timescale of the experiment. The reaction progress is followed until the complete decomposition of H 2O 2.

Novel ion-molecular surface reaction to result in CH3 adsorbates on (111) surface of chemical vapor deposition diamond from ethane and surface anionic sites

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Komatsu, Shojiro; Okada, Katsuyuki; Shimizu, Yoshiki; Moriyoshi, Yusuke

2001-01-01

The existence of CH 3 adsorbates on (111) surface of chemical vapor deposited diamond, which was observed by scanning tunneling microscopy, was explained by the following S N 2 (bimolecular, substitutional, and nucleophilic) type surface reaction; C(s) - +C 2 H 6 ->C(s)-CH 3 +CH 3 - , where C(s) denotes a surface carbon atom. The activation energy was estimated to be 36.78 kcal/mol and the reaction proved to be exothermic with the enthalpy change of -9.250 kcal/mol, according to ab initio molecular orbital calculations at MP2/3-21+G * //RHF/3-21G * level; this result is consistent with typical substrate temperatures, namely about 900 degree C, for chemical vapor deposition of diamond. Charge transfer from the highest occupied molecular orbital of the surface anionic site to the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of ethane, that is antibonding at the CH 3 - CH 3 bond, has been clearly visualized. A characteristic configuration of an ethane molecule which is associated with an anionic vacant site C(s) - on hydrogenated (111) surface of diamond was also found. [copyright] 2001 American Institute of Physics

Theoretical insights into the sites and mechanisms for base catalyzed esterification and aldol condensation reactions over Cu.

Science.gov (United States)

Neurock, Matthew; Tao, Zhiyuan; Chemburkar, Ashwin; Hibbitts, David D; Iglesia, Enrique

2017-04-28

Condensation and esterification are important catalytic routes in the conversion of polyols and oxygenates derived from biomass to fuels and chemical intermediates. Previous experimental studies show that alkanal, alkanol and hydrogen mixtures equilibrate over Cu/SiO 2 and form surface alkoxides and alkanals that subsequently promote condensation and esterification reactions. First-principle density functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out herein to elucidate the elementary paths and the corresponding energetics for the interconversion of propanal + H 2 to propanol and the subsequent C-C and C-O bond formation paths involved in aldol condensation and esterification of these mixtures over model Cu surfaces. Propanal and hydrogen readily equilibrate with propanol via C-H and O-H addition steps to form surface propoxide intermediates and equilibrated propanal/propanol mixtures. Surface propoxides readily form via low energy paths involving a hydrogen addition to the electrophilic carbon center of the carbonyl of propanal or via a proton transfer from an adsorbed propanol to a vicinal propanal. The resulting propoxide withdraws electron density from the surface and behaves as a base catalyzing the activation of propanal and subsequent esterification and condensation reactions. These basic propoxides can readily abstract the acidic C α -H of propanal to produce the CH 3 CH (-) CH 2 O* enolate, thus initiating aldol condensation. The enolate can subsequently react with a second adsorbed propanal to form a C-C bond and a β-alkoxide alkanal intermediate. The β-alkoxide alkanal can subsequently undergo facile hydride transfer to form the 2-formyl-3-pentanone intermediate that decarbonylates to give the 3-pentanone product. Cu is unique in that it rapidly catalyzes the decarbonylation of the C 2n intermediates to form C 2n-1 3-pentanone as the major product with very small yields of C 2n products. This is likely due to the absence of Brønsted acid sites

Including lateral interactions into microkinetic models of catalytic reactions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hellman, Anders; Honkala, Johanna Karoliina

2007-01-01

In many catalytic reactions lateral interactions between adsorbates are believed to have a strong influence on the reaction rates. We apply a microkinetic model to explore the effect of lateral interactions and how to efficiently take them into account in a simple catalytic reaction. Three differ...... different approximations are investigated: site, mean-field, and quasichemical approximations. The obtained results are compared to accurate Monte Carlo numbers. In the end, we apply the approximations to a real catalytic reaction, namely, ammonia synthesis....

Hydrogen bonding between the QB site ubisemiquinone and Ser-L223 in the bacterial reaction centre – a combined spectroscopic and computational perspective^

OpenAIRE

Martin, Erik; Baldansuren, Amgalanbaatar; Lin, Tzu-Jen; Samoilova, Rimma I.; Wraight, Colin A.; Dikanov, Sergei A.; O’Malley, Patrick J.

2012-01-01

In the QB site of the Rba. sphaeroides photosynthetic reaction centre the donation of a hydrogen bond from the hydroxyl group of Ser-L223 to the ubisemiquinone formed after the first flash is debatable. In this study we use a combination of spectroscopy and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations to comprehensively explore this topic. We show that ENDOR, ESEEM and HYSCORE spectroscopic differences between the mutant L223SA and the wild type sample (WT) are negligible, indic...

Reaction-transport simulations of non-oxidative methane conversion with continuous hydrogen removal: Homogeneous-heterogeneous methane reaction pathways

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Lin; Borry, Richard W.; Iglesia, Enrique

2000-01-01

Detailed kinetic-transport models were used to explore thermodynamic and kinetic barriers in the non-oxidative conversion of CH4 via homogeneous and homogeneous-heterogeneous pathways and the effects of continuous hydrogen removal and of catalytic sites on attainable yields of useful C2-C10 products. The homogeneous kinetic model combines separately developed models for low-conversion pyrolysis and for chain growth to form large aromatics and carbon. The H2 formed in the reaction decreases CH4 pyrolysis rates and equilibrium conversions and it favors the formation of lighter products. The removal of H2 along tubular reactors with permeable walls increases reaction rates and equilibrium CH4 conversions. C2-C10 yields reach values greater than 90 percent at intermediate values of dimensionless transport rates (delta=1-10), defined as the ratio hydrogen transport and methane conversion rates. Homogeneous reactions require impractical residence times, even with H2 removal, because of slow initiation and chain transfer rates. The introduction of heterogeneous chain initiation pathways using surface sites that form methyl radicals eliminates the induction period without influencing the homogeneous product distribution. Methane conversion, however, occurs predominately in the chain transfer regime, within which individual transfer steps and the formation of C2 intermediates become limited by thermodynamic constraints. Catalytic sites alone cannot overcome these constraints. Catalytic membrane reactors with continuous H2 removal remove these thermodynamic obstacles and decrease the required residence time. Reaction rates become limited by homogeneous reactions of C2 products to form C6+ aromatics. Higher delta values lead to subsequent conversion of the desired C2-C10 products to larger polynuclear aromatics. We conclude that catalytic methane pyrolysis at the low temperatures required for restricted chain growth and the elimination of thermodynamics constraints via

Development of a two-step high-resolution melting (HRM) analysis for screening sequence variants associated with resistance to the QoIs, benzimidazoles and dicarboximides in airborne inoculum of Botrytis cinerea.

Science.gov (United States)

Chatzidimopoulos, Michael; Ganopoulos, Ioannis; Vellios, Evangelos; Madesis, Panagiotis; Tsaftaris, Athanasios; Pappas, Athanassios C

2014-11-01

A rapid, high-resolution melting (HRM) analysis protocol was developed to detect sequence variations associated with resistance to the QoIs, benzimidazoles and dicarboximides in Botrytis cinerea airborne inoculum. HRM analysis was applied directly in fungal DNA collected from air samplers with selective medium. Three and five different genotypes were detected and classified according to their melting profiles in BenA and bos1 genes associated with resistance to benzimidazoles and dicarboximides, respectively. The sensitivity of the methodology was evident in the case of the QoIs, where genotypes varying either by a single nucleotide polymorphism or an additional 1205-bp intron were separated accurately with a single pair of primers. The developed two-step protocol was completed in 82 min and showed reduced variation in the melting curves' formation. HRM analysis rapidly detected the major mutations found in greenhouse strains providing accurate data for successfully controlling grey mould. © 2014 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.

Kinetic modelling of hydro-treatment reactions by study of different chemical groups; Modelisation cinetique des reactions d`hydrotraitement par regroupement en familles chimiques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bonnardot, J

1998-11-19

Hydro-treatment of petroleum shortcuts permits elimination of unwanted components in order to increase combustion in engine and to decrease atmospheric pollution. Hydro-desulfurization (HDS), Hydro-denitrogenation (HDN) and Hydrogenation of aromatics (HDA) of a LCO (Light Cycle Oil)-Type gas oil have been studied using a new pilot at a fixed temperature with a NiMo/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} catalyst. A hydrodynamic study showed that reactions occurring in the up-flow fixed bed reactor that has been used during the experiments, were governed exclusively by chemical reaction rates and not by diffusion. Through detailed chemical analysis, height chemical groups have been considered: three aromatics groups, one sulfided group, one nitrogenized and NH{sub 3}, H{sub 2}S, H{sub 2}. Two Langmuir-Hinshelwood-type kinetic models with either one or two types of sites have been established. The model with two types of site - one site of hydrogenation and one site of hydrogenolysis - showed a better fit in the modeling of the experimental results. This model enables to forecast the influence of partial pressure of H{sub 2}S and partial pressure of H{sub 2} on hydro-treatment reactions of a LCO-type gas oil. (author) 119 refs.

Gas-phase rate coefficients for the OH + n-, i-, s-, and t-butanol reactions measured between 220 and 380 K: non-Arrhenius behavior and site-specific reactivity.

Science.gov (United States)

McGillen, Max R; Baasandorj, Munkhbayar; Burkholder, James B

2013-06-06

Butanol (C4H9OH) is a potential biofuel alternative in fossil fuel gasoline and diesel formulations. The usage of butanol would necessarily lead to direct emissions into the atmosphere; thus, an understanding of its atmospheric processing and environmental impact is desired. Reaction with the OH radical is expected to be the predominant atmospheric removal process for the four aliphatic isomers of butanol. In this work, rate coefficients, k, for the gas-phase reaction of the n-, i-, s-, and t-butanol isomers with the OH radical were measured under pseudo-first-order conditions in OH using pulsed laser photolysis to produce OH radicals and laser induced fluorescence to monitor its temporal profile. Rate coefficients were measured over the temperature range 221-381 K at total pressures between 50 and 200 Torr (He). The reactions exhibited non-Arrhenius behavior over this temperature range and no dependence on total pressure with k(296 K) values of (9.68 ± 0.75), (9.72 ± 0.72), (8.88 ± 0.69), and (1.04 ± 0.08) (in units of 10(-12) cm(3) molecule(-1) s(-1)) for n-, i-, s-, and t-butanol, respectively. The quoted uncertainties are at the 2σ level and include estimated systematic errors. The observed non-Arrhenius behavior is interpreted here to result from a competition between the available H-atom abstraction reactive sites, which have different activation energies and pre-exponential factors. The present results are compared with results from previous kinetic studies, structure-activity relationships (SARs), and theoretical calculations and the discrepancies are discussed. Results from this work were combined with available high temperature (1200-1800 K) rate coefficient data and room temperature reaction end-product yields, where available, to derive a self-consistent site-specific set of reaction rate coefficients of the form AT(n) exp(-E/RT) for use in atmospheric and combustion chemistry modeling.

Nucleation reactions during deformation and crystallization of metallic glass

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Perepezko, J.H.; Imhoff, S.D.; Chen, M.W.; Gonzalez, S.; Inoue, A.

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► New approach to the examination and analysis of shear band nucleation. ► Discovery of multiple shear band nucleation sites. ► Identification of a method of using transient kinetic behavior to provide a more realistic evaluation of the diffusivity that is relevant to nucleation. - Abstract: Nucleation reactions play a central role in the synthesis of both bulk metallic glasses and nanostructured materials. For nanostructured materials it is necessary to promote a high nucleation density without significant growth or coarsening. Beyond crystallization reactions nucleation of shear bands is critical for promoting a homogeneous flow and useful ductility for structural applications of bulk metallic glass. The study and analysis of nucleation reactions for these different situations requires a consideration of the stochastic nature of nucleation, the influence of heterogeneous sites, and the controlling transport properties. For shear band nucleation, the stochastic nature can be effectively probed by instrumented nanoindentation tests. The analysis of a statistically significant number of measurements of the first pop-in shear band nucleation events reveals at least two main nucleation sites. In nanostructured composites, the initial nucleation stage is influenced by transient effects as reflected in the delay time prior to steady state nucleation and by heterogeneous nucleation sites that are related to medium range order regions in Al-base amorphous alloys. Moreover, the early growth characteristics are linked to the maximum achievable particle density. The new developments and insight on the fundamental understanding of nanostructure reaction mechanisms offer valuable guidance for control of nanoscale microstructures and for promoting ductile deformation behavior.

On the Formation and Properties of Interstrand DNA-DNA Cross-links Forged by Reaction of an Abasic Site With the Opposing Guanine Residue of 5′-CAp Sequences in Duplex DNA

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Kevin M.; Price, Nathan E.; Wang, Jin; Fekry, Mostafa I.; Dutta, Sanjay; Seiner, Derrick R.; Wang, Yinsheng; Gates, Kent S.

2014-01-01

We recently reported that the aldehyde residue of an abasic (Ap) site in duplex DNA can generate an interstrand cross-link via reaction with a guanine residue on the opposing strand. This finding is intriguing because the highly deleterious nature of interstrand cross-links suggests that even small amounts of Ap-derived cross-links could make a significant contribution to the biological consequences stemming from the generation of Ap sites in cellular DNA. Incubation of 21-bp duplexes containing a central 5′-CAp sequence under conditions of reductive amination (NaCNBH3, pH 5.2) generated much higher yields of cross-linked DNA than reported previously. At pH 7, in the absence of reducing agents, these Ap-containing duplexes also produced cross-linked duplexes that were readily detected on denaturing polyacrylamide gels. Cross-link formation was not highly sensitive to reaction conditions and, once formed, the cross-link was stable to a variety of work-up conditions. Results of multiple experiments including MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, gel mobility, methoxyamine capping of the Ap aldehyde, inosine-for-guanine replacement, hydroxyl radical footprinting, and LCMS/MS were consistent with a cross-linking mechanism involving reversible reaction of the Ap aldehyde residue with the N2-amino group of the opposing guanine residue in 5′-CAp sequences to generate hemiaminal, imine, or cyclic hemiaminal cross-links (7-10) that were irreversibly converted under conditions of reductive amination (NaCNBH3/pH 5.2) to a stable amine linkage. Further support for the importance of the exocyclic N2-amino group in this reaction was provided by an experiment showing that installation of a 2-aminopurine-thymine base pair at the cross-linking site produced high yields (15-30%) of a cross-linked duplex at neutral pH, in the absence of NaCNBH3. PMID:23215239

A QoS-Guaranteed Coverage Precedence Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiun-Chuan Lin

2011-03-01

Full Text Available For mission-critical applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs involving extensive battlefield surveillance, medical healthcare, etc., it is crucial to have low-power, new protocols, methodologies and structures for transferring data and information in a network with full sensing coverage capability for an extended working period. The upmost mission is to ensure that the network is fully functional providing reliable transmission of the sensed data without the risk of data loss. WSNs have been applied to various types of mission-critical applications. Coverage preservation is one of the most essential functions to guarantee quality of service (QoS in WSNs. However, a tradeoff exists between sensing coverage and network lifetime due to the limited energy supplies of sensor nodes. In this study, we propose a routing protocol to accommodate both energy-balance and coverage-preservation for sensor nodes in WSNs. The energy consumption for radio transmissions and the residual energy over the network are taken into account when the proposed protocol determines an energy-efficient route for a packet. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is able to increase the duration of the on-duty network and provide up to 98.3% and 85.7% of extra service time with 100% sensing coverage ratio comparing with LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols, respectively.

Flows and chemical reactions in heterogeneous mixtures

CERN Document Server

Prud'homme, Roger

2014-01-01

This book - a sequel of previous publications 'Flows and Chemical Reactions' and 'Chemical Reactions in Flows and Homogeneous Mixtures' - is devoted to flows with chemical reactions in heterogeneous environments.  Heterogeneous media in this volume include interfaces and lines. They may be the site of radiation. Each type of flow is the subject of a chapter in this volume. We consider first, in Chapter 1, the question of the generation of environments biphasic individuals: dusty gas, mist, bubble flow.  Chapter 2 is devoted to the study at the mesoscopic scale: particle-fluid exchange of mom

Partial breast irradiation as sole therapy for low risk breast carcinoma: Early toxicity, cosmesis and quality of life results of a MammoSite brachytherapy phase II study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Belkacemi, Yazid; Chauvet, Marie-Pierre; Giard, Sylvia; Villette, Sylviane; Lacornerie, Thomas; Bonodeau, Francois; Baranzelli, Marie-Christine; Bonneterre, Jacques; Lartigau, Eric

2009-01-01

Purpose: The MammoSite is a device that was developed with the goal of making breast-conserving surgery (BCT) more widely available. Our objective was to evaluate the MammoSite device performances after an open cavity placement procedure and quality of life in highly selected patients with early-stage breast cancer. Methods and materials: From March 2003 to March 2005, 43 patients with T1 breast cancer were enrolled in a phase II study. The median age was 72 years. Twenty-five (58%) patients were treated with high-dose rate brachytherapy using the MammoSite applicator to deliver 34 Gy in 10 fractions. The main disqualifying factor was pathologic sentinel node involvement (10/43; 23%). There were no device malfunctions, migration or rupture of the balloon. Results: After a median follow-up of 13 months, there were no local recurrences and one contralateral lobular carcinoma. Seventeen (68%), 13 (52%), 8 (32%), 5 (20%) and 2 (8%) patients had erythema, seroma, inflammation, hematoma and sever infection, respectively. Only 2 patients developed telangiectasia. At 1 year the rate of 'good to excellent' cosmetic results was 84%. Significant changes in QoL were observed for emotional and social well-being between 3 and 12 months. At 24 months, only emotional well-being subscore changes were statistically significant (p = 0.015). Conclusions: Our data in patients older than 60 years support the previously published data. Histologic features were the main disqualifying criteria. With higher skin spacing levels we observed very low incidence of telangiectasia. QoL evaluation indicates that baseline scores were satisfactory. Changes concerned emotional and social well-being

Modelo de asignación predictivo de longitudes de ondas en redes WDM teniendo en cuenta dispersión residual y tráficos unicast/multicast con QoS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Javier Sierra

2009-01-01

Full Text Available El tráfico de Internet está en constante crecimiento y con él las aplicaciones del tipo unicast/multicast con diferentes requerimientos de Calidad de Servicio (QoS. Esto es motivo para que las Redes de Transporte Ópticas (OTN deban continuar su evolución hacia redes completamente ópticas (sin conversiones Óptico-Electrónico-Óptico: OEO. S/G Light-tree es una arquitectura de los nodos de las redes all-OTN que permite el optimo enrutamiento y/o manejo de tráficos unicast/multicast empleando el concepto de Traffic Grooming (TG, granularidad de tráfico en un ambiente óptico. Las técnicas de grooming así como los algoritmos de asignación y enrutamiento propuestos hasta el momento no tienen en cuenta los fenómenos que se pueden prestar en la fibra óptica, los cuales atenúan o alteran las diferentes longitudes de onda en las redes WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing. La dispersión cromática es un fenómeno que deforma los pulsos transmitidos en una fibra óptica y el efecto depende de la longitud de onda empleada en la transmisión. En este artículo, se propone un modelo predictivo de asignación de longitudes de ondas basado en cadenas de Markov que tiene en cuenta la dispersión residual en redes WDM que soportan traffic grooming y tráficos unicast/multicast con requerimientos de QoS. Los resultados de las simulaciones realizadas muestran que el modelo propuesto mejora la probabilidad de bloqueo de tráficos con requerimientos de QoS.

Metathesis of alkanes and related reactions

KAUST Repository

Basset, Jean-Marie; Copé ret, Christophe; Soulivong, Daravong; Taoufik, Mostafa; Thivolle-Cazat, Jean

2010-01-01

, the process proceeds at relatively low temperature (ambient conditions or higher). It was discovered through the use of a silica-supported tantalum hydride, (=SiO)2TaH, a multifunctional catalyst with a single site of action. This reaction completes the story

(La1-xSrx)0.98MnO3 perovskite with A-site deficiencies toward oxygen reduction reaction in aluminum-air batteries

Science.gov (United States)

Xue, Yejian; Miao, He; Sun, Shanshan; Wang, Qin; Li, Shihua; Liu, Zhaoping

2017-02-01

The strontium doped Mn-based perovskites have been proposed as one of the best oxygen reduction reaction catalysts (ORRCs) to substitute the noble metal. However, few studies have investigated the catalytic activities of LSM with the A-site deficiencies. Here, the (La1-xSrx)0.98MnO3 (LSM) perovskites with A-site deficiencies are prepared by a modified solid-liquid method. The structure, morphology, valence state and oxygen adsorption behaviors of these LSM samples are characterized, and their catalytic activities toward ORR are studied by the rotating ring-disk electrode (RRDE) and aluminum-air battery technologies. The results show that the appropriate doping with Sr and introducing A-site stoichiometry can effectively tailor the Mn valence and increase the oxygen adsorption capacity of LSM. Among all the LSM samples in this work, the (La0.7Sr0.3)0.98MnO3 perovskite composited with 50% carbon (50%LSM30) exhibits the best ORR catalytic activity due to the excellent oxygen adsorption capacity. Also, this catalyst has much higher durability than that of commercial 20%Pt/C. Moreover, the maximum power density of the aluminum-air battery using 50%LSM30 as the ORRC can reach 191.3 mW cm-2. Our work indicates that the LSM/C composite catalysts with A-site deficiencies can be used as a promising ORRC in the metal-air batteries.

Efficient oxygen electrocatalysis on special active sites

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Halck, Niels Bendtsen

throughout this thesis to understand these local structure effects and their influence on surface reactions. The concept of these special active sites is used to explain how oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts can have activities beyond the limits of what was previously thought possible. The concept...... stored in these bonds in an eco-friendly fashion in fuel cells. This thesis explores catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis and how carefully designed local structures on catalysts surfaces termed special active sites can influence the activity. Density functional theory has been used as a method...... is used to explain the increase in activity observed for the OER catalyst ruthenium dioxide when it is mixed with nickel or cobalt. Manganese and cobalt oxides when in the vicinity of gold also display an increase in OER activity which can be explained by locally created special active sites. Density...

Intelligent QoS routing algorithm based on improved AODV protocol for Ad Hoc networks

Science.gov (United States)

Huibin, Liu; Jun, Zhang

2016-04-01

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks were playing an increasingly important part in disaster reliefs, military battlefields and scientific explorations. However, networks routing difficulties are more and more outstanding due to inherent structures. This paper proposed an improved cuckoo searching-based Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing protocol (CSAODV). It elaborately designs the calculation methods of optimal routing algorithm used by protocol and transmission mechanism of communication-package. In calculation of optimal routing algorithm by CS Algorithm, by increasing QoS constraint, the found optimal routing algorithm can conform to the requirements of specified bandwidth and time delay, and a certain balance can be obtained among computation spending, bandwidth and time delay. Take advantage of NS2 simulation software to take performance test on protocol in three circumstances and validate the feasibility and validity of CSAODV protocol. In results, CSAODV routing protocol is more adapt to the change of network topological structure than AODV protocol, which improves package delivery fraction of protocol effectively, reduce the transmission time delay of network, reduce the extra burden to network brought by controlling information, and improve the routing efficiency of network.

Single site porphyrine-like structures advantages over metals for selective electrochemical CO2 reduction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bagger, Alexander; Ju, Wen; Varela, Ana Sofia

2017-01-01

Currently, no catalysts are completely selective for the electrochemical CO2 Reduction Reaction (CO2RR). Based on trends in density functional theory calculations of reaction intermediates we find that the single metal site in a porphyrine-like structure has a simple advantage of limiting...... the competing Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER). The single metal site in a porphyrine-like structure requires an ontop site binding of hydrogen, compared to the hollow site binding of hydrogen on a metal catalyst surface. The difference in binding site structure gives a fundamental energy-shift in the scaling...... relation of ∼0.3eV between the COOH* vs. H* intermediate (CO2RR vs. HER). As a result, porphyrine-like catalysts have the advantage over metal catalyst of suppressing HER and enhancing CO2RR selectivity....

Stereospecific suppression of active site mutants by methylphosphonate substituted substrates reveals the stereochemical course of site-specific DNA recombination

OpenAIRE

Rowley, Paul A.; Kachroo, Aashiq H.; Ma, Chien-Hui; Maciaszek, Anna D.; Guga, Piotr; Jayaram, Makkuni

2015-01-01

Tyrosine site-specific recombinases, which promote one class of biologically important phosphoryl transfer reactions in DNA, exemplify active site mechanisms for stabilizing the phosphate transition state. A highly conserved arginine duo (Arg-I; Arg-II) of the recombinase active site plays a crucial role in this function. Cre and Flp recombinase mutants lacking either arginine can be rescued by compensatory charge neutralization of the scissile phosphate via methylphosphonate (MeP) modificati...

Site-SpecificCu Labeling of the Serine Protease, Active Site Inhibited Factor Seven Azide (FVIIai-N), Using Copper Free Click Chemistry

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jeppesen, Troels E; Kristensen, Lotte K; Nielsen, Carsten H

2018-01-01

A method for site-specific radiolabeling of the serine protease active site inhibited factor seven (FVIIai) with64Cu has been applied using a biorthogonal click reaction. FVIIai binds to tissue factor (TF), a trans-membrane protein involved in hemostasis, angiogenesis, proliferation, cell migrati...

Model photo reaction centers via genetic engineering

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhiyu Wang; DiMagno, T.J.; Popov, M.; Norris, J.R. [Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)]|[Chicago Univ., IL (United States). Dept. of Chemistry; Chikin Chan; Fleming, G. [Chicago Univ., IL (United States). Dept. of Chemistry; Jau Tang; Hanson, D.; Schiffer, M. [Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)

1992-12-31

A series of reaction centers of Rhodococcus capsulatus isolated from a set of mutated organisms modified by site-directed mutagenesis at residues M208 and L181 are described. Changes in the amino acid at these sites affect both the energetics of the systems as well as the chemical kinetics for the initial ET event. Two empirical relations among the different mutants for the reduction potential and the ET rate are presented.

Model photo reaction centers via genetic engineering

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhiyu Wang; DiMagno, T.J.; Popov, M.; Norris, J.R. (Argonne National Lab., IL (United States) Chicago Univ., IL (United States). Dept. of Chemistry); Chikin Chan; Fleming, G. (Chicago Univ., IL (United States). Dept. of Chemistry); Jau Tang; Hanson, D.; Schiffer, M. (Argonne National Lab., IL (United States))

1992-01-01

A series of reaction centers of Rhodococcus capsulatus isolated from a set of mutated organisms modified by site-directed mutagenesis at residues M208 and L181 are described. Changes in the amino acid at these sites affect both the energetics of the systems as well as the chemical kinetics for the initial ET event. Two empirical relations among the different mutants for the reduction potential and the ET rate are presented.

Site Energies of Active and Inactive Pheophytins in the Reaction Center of Photosystem II from Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Acharya, K.; Neupane, B.; Zazubovich, V.; Sayre, R. T.; Picorel, R.; Seibert, M.; Jankowiak, R.

2012-03-29

It is widely accepted that the primary electron acceptor in various Photosystem II (PSII) reaction center (RC) preparations is pheophytin {alpha} (Pheo {alpha}) within the D1 protein (Pheo{sub D1}), while Pheo{sub D2} (within the D2 protein) is photochemically inactive. The Pheo site energies, however, have remained elusive, due to inherent spectral congestion. While most researchers over the past two decades placed the Q{sub y}-states of Pheo{sub D1} and Pheo{sub D2} bands near 678-684 and 668-672 nm, respectively, recent modeling [Raszewski et al. Biophys. J. 2005, 88, 986-998; Cox et al. J. Phys. Chem. B 2009, 113, 12364-12374] of the electronic structure of the PSII RC reversed the assignment of the active and inactive Pheos, suggesting that the mean site energy of Pheo{sub D1} is near 672 nm, whereas Pheo{sub D2} ({approx}677.5 nm) and Chl{sub D1} ({approx}680 nm) have the lowest energies (i.e., the Pheo{sub D2}-dominated exciton is the lowest excited state). In contrast, chemical pigment exchange experiments on isolated RCs suggested that both pheophytins have their Q{sub y} absorption maxima at 676-680 nm [Germano et al. Biochemistry 2001, 40, 11472-11482; Germano et al. Biophys. J. 2004, 86, 1664-1672]. To provide more insight into the site energies of both Pheo{sub D1} and Pheo{sub D2} (including the corresponding Q{sub x} transitions, which are often claimed to be degenerate at 543 nm) and to attest that the above two assignments are most likely incorrect, we studied a large number of isolated RC preparations from spinach and wild-type Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (at different levels of intactness) as well as the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutant (D2-L209H), in which the active branch Pheo{sub D1} is genetically replaced with chlorophyll {alpha} (Chl {alpha}). We show that the Q{sub x}-/Q{sub y}-region site energies of Pheo{sub D1} and Pheo{sub D2} are {approx}545/680 nm and {approx}541.5/670 nm, respectively, in good agreement with our previous assignment

Targets for high-resolution studies with heavy-ion reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Erskine, J.R.

1975-01-01

Target problems in heavy ion reaction studies are discussed, including non-uniformity in thickness effects and the inability to fully compensate for reaction-site effects, both problems becoming more serious the heavier the ion. For the non-uniformity effects, the flatness of the target is very critical. Other problems not yet solved are beam-spot heating and the buildup of carbon

Site-Specific Protein Labeling Utilizing Lipoic Acid Ligase (LplA) and Bioorthogonal Inverse Electron Demand Diels-Alder Reaction.

Science.gov (United States)

Baalmann, Mathis; Best, Marcel; Wombacher, Richard

2018-01-01

Here, we describe a two-step protocol for selective protein labeling based on enzyme-mediated peptide labeling utilizing lipoic acid ligase (LplA) and bioorthogonal chemistry. The method can be applied to purified proteins, protein in cell lysates, as well as living cells. In a first step a W37V mutant of the lipoic acid ligase (LplA W37V ) from Escherichia coli is utilized to ligate a synthetic chemical handle site-specifically to a lysine residue in a 13 amino acid peptide motif-a short sequence that can be genetically expressed as a fusion with any protein of interest. In a second step, a molecular probe can be attached to the chemical handle in a bioorthogonal Diels-Alder reaction with inverse electron demand (DA inv ). This method is a complementary approach to protein labeling using genetic code expansion and circumvents larger protein tags while maintaining label specificity, providing experimental flexibility and straightforwardness.

Mast cell subsets and neuropeptides in leprosy reactions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antunes Sérgio Luiz Gomes

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The immunohistochemical identification of neuropeptides (calcitonin gene-related peptide, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, substance P, alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone and gamma-melanocyte stimulating hormone quantification of mast cells and their subsets (tryptase/chymase-immunoreactive mast cells = TCMC and tryptase-immunoreactive mast cells = TMC were determined in biopsies of six patients with leprosy reactions (three patients with type I reaction and three with type II. Biopsies were compared with those taken from the same body site in the remission stage of the same patient. We found a relative increase of TMC in the inflammatory infiltrate of the reactional biopsies compared to the post-reactional biopsy. Also, the total number of mast cells and the TMC/TCMC ratio in the inflammatory infiltrate was significantly higher than in the intervening dermis of the biopsies of both periods. No significant difference was found regarding neuroptide expression in the reactional and post-reactional biopsies. The relative increase of TMC in the reactional infiltrates could implicate this mast cell subset in the reported increase of the immune response in leprosy reactions.

Site-selective three-component reaction for dual-functionalization of peptides

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Munch, Henrik Kofoed; Rasmussen, Jakob Ewald; Popa, Gina

2013-01-01

A site-selective dual-functionalization of peptides is presented, involving readily available maleimides as well as N-hydroxylamines. The modification proceeds through a three component 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition, forming a stable product. This was exemplified by the one-pot attachment of two...

Explorations into Chemical Reactions and Biochemical Pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Gasteiger, Johann

2016-12-01

A brief overview of the work in the research group of the present author on extracting knowledge from chemical reaction data is presented. Methods have been developed to calculate physicochemical effects at the reaction site. It is shown that these physicochemical effects can quite favourably be used to derive equations for the calculation of data on gas phase reactions and on reactions in solution such as aqueous acidity of alcohols or carboxylic acids or the hydrolysis of amides. Furthermore, it is shown that these physicochemical effects are quite effective for assigning reactions into reaction classes that correspond to chemical knowledge. Biochemical reactions constitute a particularly interesting and challenging task for increasing our understanding of living species. The BioPath.Database is a rich source of information on biochemical reactions and has been used for a variety of applications of chemical, biological, or medicinal interests. Thus, it was shown that biochemical reactions can be assigned by the physicochemical effects into classes that correspond to the classification of enzymes by the EC numbers. Furthermore, 3D models of reaction intermediates can be used for searching for novel enzyme inhibitors. It was shown in a combined application of chemoinformatics and bioinformatics that essential pathways of diseases can be uncovered. Furthermore, a study showed that bacterial flavor-forming pathways can be discovered. © 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Nuclear reactions in ultra-magnetized supernovae

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kondratyev, V.N.

2002-06-01

The statistical model is employed to investigate nuclear reactions in ultrastrong magnetic fields relevant for supernovae and neutron stars. For radiative capture processes the predominant mechanisms are argued to correspond to modifications of nuclear level densities, and γ-transition energies due to interactions of the field with magnetic moments of nuclei. The density of states reflects the nuclear structure and results in oscillations of reaction cross sections as a function of field strength, while magnetic interaction energy enhances radiative neutron capture process. Implications in the synthesis of r-process nuclei in supernova site are discussed. (author)

Family caregiver burden: the burden of caring for lung cancer patients according to the cancer stage and patient quality of life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eliana Lourenço Borges

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Objective: Patients with lung cancer experience different feelings and reactions, based on their family, social, cultural, and religious backgrounds, which are a source of great distress, not only for the patients but also for their family caregivers. This study aimed to evaluate the impact that lung cancer stage and quality of life (QoL of lung cancer patients have on caregiver burden. Methods: This was a prospective cross-sectional study. Consecutive patient-caregiver dyads were selected and asked to complete the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item ShortForm Health Survey (SF-36. Family caregivers also completed the Caregiver Burden Scale. Group-based modeling was used in order to identify patients with early- or advanced-stage cancer (IA to IIIA vs. IIIB to IV plus non-impaired or impaired QoL (SF36 total score > 50 vs. ≤ 50. Patient-caregiver dyads were stratified into four groups: early-stage cancer+non-impaired QoL; advanced-stage cancer+non-impaired QoL; early-stage cancer+impaired QoL; and advanced-stage cancer+impaired QoL. Results: We included 91 patient-caregiver dyads. The majority of the patients were male and heavy smokers. Family caregivers were younger and predominantly female. The burden, QoL, level of anxiety, and level of depression of caregivers were more affected by the QoL of the patients than by their lung cancer stage. The family caregivers of the patients with impaired QoL showed a higher median burden than did those of the patients with non-impaired QoL, regardless of disease stage. Conclusions: Caregiver burden is more affected by patient QoL than by lung cancer stage.

How is subjective well-being related to quality of life? Do we need two concepts and both measures?

Science.gov (United States)

Skevington, S M; Böhnke, J R

2018-06-01

Subjective well-being (SWB) and subjective quality of life (QoL) are key concepts describing experience, capacities, states, behaviours, appraisals, and emotional reactions to circumstances. Used widely in public discourse, policy, and research, their theoretical and empirical relations remain little explored. The present research aimed to develop an integrated model of SWB and QoL through empirically testing its overlapping and exclusive dimensions. Survey data was obtained from N = 2533 in 11 countries. Adults completed the WHOQOL Spirituality, Religion and Personal Beliefs (SRPB) instrument which assesses 33 QoL facets in 6 domains. The facets operationalize components of the hedonic SWB model, extended with eudaimonia, as SWB+. Network analyses, and regression models with random effect for cultural centre, assessed the differential contributions of SWB+ and QoL in predicting general QoL, explanatory power, and model parsimony. When all SWB+ and QoL variables are assessed together, the final model explains more variance in general QoL than either of the competing models; also it shows the most parsimonious fit. This fully integrated model contains only positive feelings from SWB+, with 13 other QoL facets drawn from all six domains, when adjusted for health status and educational level. These findings provide the foundation for a new Life Quality and Well-being (LQW) model that awaits confirmation. The LQW model improves on existing models of SWB+ and QoL by better explaining general QoL than facets of either model on its own. The 14 selected facets potentially offer a new, single measure with considerable conceptual breadth, and international foundations. Crown Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

MICROSPHERE SIZE INFLUENCES THE FOREIGN BODY REACTION

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zandstra, J.; Hiemstra, C.; Petersen, A. H.; Zuidema, J.; van Beuge, M. M.; Rodriguez, S.; Lathuile, A. A. R.; Veldhuis, G. J.; Steendam, R.; Bank, R. A.; Popa, E. R.

2014-01-01

Biodegradable poly-(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microspheres (MSP) are attractive candidate vehicles for site-specific or systemic sustained release of therapeutic compounds. This release may be altered by the host's foreign body reaction (FBR), which is dependent on the characteristics of the

Temperature effects on lithium-nitrogen reaction rates

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ijams, W.J.; Kazimi, M.S.

1985-08-01

A series of experiments have been run with the aim of measuring the reaction rate of lithium and nitrogen over a wide spectrum of lithium pool temperatures. In these experiments, pure nitrogen was blown at a controlled flow rate over a preheated lithium pool. The pool had a surface area of approximately 4 cm 2 and a total volume of approximately 6 cm 3 . The system pressure varied from 0 to 4 psig. The reaction rate was very small - approximately 0.002 to 0.003 g Li min cm 2 for lithium temperatures below 500 0 C. Above 500 0 C the reaction rate began to increase sharply, and reached a maximum of approximately 0.80 g Li min cm 2 above 700 0 C. It dropped off beyond 1000 0 C and seemed to approach zero at 1150 0 C. The maximum reaction rate observed in these forced convection experiments was higher by 60% than those previously observed in experiments where the nitrogen flowed to the reaction site by means of natural convection. During a reaction, a hard nitride layer built up on the surface of the lithium pool - its effect on the reaction rate was observed. The effect of the nitrogen flow rate on the reaction rate was also observed

A Practical Perspective on the Design and Implementation of Enterprise Integration Solution to improve QoS using SAP NetWeaver Platform

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K.Krishna Mohan

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Most of the enterprise operations require information from several systems within and outside the enterprise(s. The past few years have seen explosive growth in direct program to program interaction for application integration, removing manual steps yielding tremendous improvements in reliability and efficiency. This paper addresses the practical approach for the design and implementation of Enterprise Application Integration in a heterogeneous environment with SAP NetWeaver Platform (i.e. Exchange Infrastructure (XI/Process Integration (PI using a Customizable Tool named TEmplate based Functional Requirements for Integration Design (TEFRID developed by the author(s to improve the Quality of Service (QoS and reduce the development time and cost with the end-to-end scenario development.

QoE-Driven Energy-Aware Multipath Content Delivery Approach for MPTCP-Based Mobile Phones

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Yuanlong Cao; Shengyang Chen; Qinghua Liu; Yi Zuo; Hao Wang; Minghe Huang

2017-01-01

Mobile phones equipped with multiple wireless interfaces can increase their goodput performance by making use of concurrent transmissions over multiple paths,enabled by the Multipath TCP (MPTCP).However,utilizing MPTCP for data delivery may generally result in higher energy consumption,while the battery power of a mobile phone is limited.Thus,how to optimize the energy usage becomes very crucial and urgent.In this paper,we propose MPTCP-QE,a novel quality of experience (QoE)-driven energy-aware multipath content delivery approach for MPTCP-based mobile phones.The main idea of MPTCP-QE is described as follows:it first provides an application rate-aware energy-efficient subflow management strategy to tradeoff throughput performance and energy consumption for mobile phones;then uses an available bandwidth-aware congestion window fast recovery strategy to make a sender avoid unnecessary slow-start and utilize wireless resource quickly;and further introduces a novel receiver-driven energy-efficient SACK strategy to help a receiver possible to detect SACK loss timely and trigger loss recovery in a more energy-efficient way.The simulation results show that with the MPTCP-QE,the energy usage is enhanced while the performance level is maintained compared to existing MPTCP solutions.

Pinpointing Phosphorylation Sites: Quantitative Filtering and a Novel Site-specific x-Ion Fragment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kelstrup, Christian D; Hekmat, Omid; Francavilla, Chiara

2011-01-01

Phosphoproteomics deals with the identification and quantification of thousands of phosphopeptides. Localizing the phosphorylation site is however much more difficult than establishing the identity of a phosphorylated peptide. Further, recent findings have raised doubts of the validity of the site......-phase phosphate rearrangement reactions during collision-induced dissociation (CID) and used these spectra to devise a quantitative filter that by comparing signal intensities of putative phosphorylated fragment ions with their nonphosphorylated counterparts allowed us to accurately pinpoint which fragment ions...... contain a phosphorylated residue and which ones do not. We also evaluated higher-energy collisional dissociation (HCD) and found this to be an accurate method for correct phosphorylation site localization with no gas-phase rearrangements observed above noise level. Analyzing a large set of HCD spectra...

Molecular Design of a Chiral Brønsted Acid with Two Different Acidic Sites: Regio-, Diastereo-, and Enantioselective Hetero-Diels-Alder Reaction of Azopyridinecarboxylate with Amidodienes Catalyzed by Chiral Carboxylic Acid-Monophosphoric Acid.

Science.gov (United States)

Momiyama, Norie; Tabuse, Hideaki; Noda, Hirofumi; Yamanaka, Masahiro; Fujinami, Takeshi; Yamanishi, Katsunori; Izumiseki, Atsuto; Funayama, Kosuke; Egawa, Fuyuki; Okada, Shino; Adachi, Hiroaki; Terada, Masahiro

2016-09-07

A chiral Brønsted acid containing two different acidic sites, chiral carboxylic acid-monophosphoric acid 1a, was designed to be a new and effective concept in catalytic asymmetric hetero-Diels-Alder reactions of azopyridinecarboxylate with amidodienes. The multipoint hydrogen-bonding interactions among the carboxylic acid, monophosphoric acid, azopyridinecarboxylate, and amidodiene achieved high catalytic and chiral efficiency, producing substituted 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridazines with excellent stereocontrol in a single step. This constitutes the first example of regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselective azo-hetero-Diels-Alder reactions by chiral Brønsted acid catalysis.

Kinetic analysis of the reactions of hypobromous acid with protein components

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pattison, David I; Davies, Michael Jonathan

2004-01-01

available for HOBr. In this study, rate constants for reaction of HOBr with protein components have been determined. The second-order rate constants (22 degrees C, pH 7.4) for reaction with protein sites vary by 8 orders of magnitude and decrease in the order Cys > Trp approximately Met approximately His...

Development of Novel Electrode Materials for the Electrocatalysis of Oxygen-Transfer and Hydrogen-Transfer Reactions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Simpson, Brett Kimball [Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)

2002-01-01

Throughout this thesis, the fundamental aspects involved in the electrocatalysis of anodic O-transfer reactions and cathodic H-transfer reactions have been studied. The investigation into anodic O-transfer reactions at undoped and Fe(III)[doped MnO₂ films] revealed that MnO₂ film electrodes prepared by a cycling voltammetry deposition show improved response for DMSO oxidation at the film electrodes vs. the Au substrate. Doping of the MnO₂ films with Fe(III) further enhanced electrode activity. Reasons for this increase are believed to involve the adsorption of DMSO by the Fe(III) sites. The investigation into anodic O-transfer reactions at undoped and Fe(III)-doped RuO₂ films showed that the Fe(III)-doped RuO₂-film electrodes are applicable for anodic detection of sulfur compounds. The Fe(III) sites in the Fe-RuO₂ films are speculated to act as adsorption sites for the sulfur species while the Ru(IV) sites function for anodic discharge of H₂O to generate the adsorbed OH species. The investigation into cathodic H-transfer reactions, specifically nitrate reduction, at various pure metals and their alloys demonstrated that the incorporation of metals into alloy materials can create a material that exhibits bifunctional properties for the various steps involved in the overall nitrate reduction reaction. The Sb₁₀Sn₂₀Ti₇₀, Cu₆₃Ni₃₇ and Cu₂₅Ni₇₅ alloy electrodes exhibited improved activity for nitrate reduction as compared to their pure component metals. The Cu₆₃Ni₃₇ alloy displayed the highest activity for nitrate reduction. The final investigation was a detailed study of the electrocatalytic activity of cathodic H-transfer reactions (nitrate reduction) at various compositions of Cu-Ni alloy electrodes. Voltammetric response for NO₃^- at the Cu-Ni alloy electrode is superior to

CATALYTIC PERFORMANCES OF Fe2O3/TS-1 CATALYST IN PHENOL HYDROXYLATION REACTION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Didik Prasetyoko

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Hydroxylation reaction of phenol into diphenol, such as hydroquinone and catechol, has a great role in many industrial applications. Phenol hydroxylation reaction can be carried out using Titanium Silicalite-1 (TS-1 as catalyst and H2O2 as an oxidant. TS-1 catalyst shows high activity and selectivity for phenol hydroxylation reaction. However, its hydrophobic sites lead to slow H2O2 adsorption toward the active site of TS-1. Consequently, the reaction rate of phenol hydroxylation reaction is tends to be low. Addition of metal oxide Fe2O3 enhanced hydrophilicity of TS-1 catalyst. Liquid phase catalytic phenol hydroxylation using hydrogen peroxide as oxidant was carried out over iron (III oxide-modified TS-1 catalyst (Fe2O3/TS-1, that were prepared by impregnation method using iron (III nitrate as precursor and characterized by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption, pyridine adsorption, and hydrophilicity techniques. Catalysts 1Fe2O3/TS-1 showed maximum catalytic activity of hydroquinone product. In this research, the increase of hydroquinone formation rate is due to the higher hydrophilicity of Fe2O3/TS-1 catalysts compare to the parent catalyst, TS-1.   Keywords: Fe2O3/TS-1, hydrophilic site, phenol hydroxylation

Development and validation of a specific questionnaire to assess health-related quality of life in patients with home enteral nutrition: NutriQoL® development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cuerda MC

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Maria Cristina Cuerda,1 Antonio Apezetxea,2 Lourdes Carrillo,3 Felipe Casanueva,4 Federico Cuesta,5 Jose Antonio Irles,6 Maria Nuria Virgili,7 Miquel Layola,8 Luis Lizan9 1Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañon, Madrid, 2Organización Sanitaria Integrada Bilbao Basurto, Bilbao, 3Centro de Salud Victoria de Acentejo, Santa Cruz, 4Hospital Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, 5Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, 6Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de Valme, Seville, 7Hospital Universitario de Bellvitge, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, 8Nestlé Health Science, Barcelona, 9Outcomes’10, Universitat Jaume 1, Castellon, Spain Introduction: Home enteral nutrition (HEN is indicated in patients with a functional gastrointestinal tract but who are unable to meet their nutritional requirements with normally consumed foodstuffs. HEN allows patients to remain in their social and family environment, thus reducing complications and costs associated with hospital admission, while increasing health-related quality of life (HRQoL. HRQoL in patients with HEN is mainly evaluated by generic instruments, which are not sensitive enough to identify certain specific patient-related outcomes of HEN. Objective: To develop a specific instrument to measure HRQoL in patients receiving HEN whose results allow interpretation regardless of the underlying disease and nutritional support administration route: the NutriQoL® questionnaire. Materials and methods: The development of the NutriQoL entailed a literature review, focus groups with experts, semistructured interviews with patients, an assessment of face validity and feasibility, and Rasch analysis conducted on data from a sample of 141 patients and 24 caregivers. Results: Of the 52 items initially proposed on the basis of the literature review, expert focus group, and semi-structured interviews with patients and caregivers, 17 items were finally selected through the development process to make

Toward a catalytic site in DNA

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Ulla; Rohr, Katja; Vogel, Stefan

2007-01-01

A number of functionalized polyaza crown ether building blocks have been incorporated into DNA-conjugates as catalytic Cu(2+) binding sites. The effect of the DNA-conjugate catalyst on the stereochemical outcome of a Cu(2+)-catalyzed Diels-Alder reaction will be presented....

Surrogate models and optimal design of experiments for chemical kinetics applications

KAUST Repository

Bisetti, Fabrizio

2015-01-07

Kinetic models for reactive flow applications comprise hundreds of reactions describing the complex interaction among many chemical species. The detailed knowledge of the reaction parameters is a key component of the design cycle of next-generation combustion devices, which aim at improving conversion efficiency and reducing pollutant emissions. Shock tubes are a laboratory scale experimental configuration, which is widely used for the study of reaction rate parameters. Important uncertainties exist in the values of the thousands of parameters included in the most advanced kinetic models. This talk discusses the application of uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods to the analysis of shock tube data as well as the design of shock tube experiments. Attention is focused on a spectral framework in which uncertain inputs are parameterized in terms of canonical random variables, and quantities of interest (QoIs) are expressed in terms of a mean-square convergent series of orthogonal polynomials acting on these variables. We outline the implementation of a recent spectral collocation approach for determining the unknown coefficients of the expansion, namely using a sparse, adaptive pseudo-spectral construction that enables us to obtain surrogates for the QoIs accurately and efficiently. We first discuss the utility of the resulting expressions in quantifying the sensitivity of QoIs to uncertain inputs, and in the Bayesian inference key physical parameters from experimental measurements. We then discuss the application of these techniques to the analysis of shock-tube data and the optimal design of shock-tube experiments for two key reactions in combustion kinetics: the chain-brancing reaction H + O2 ←→ OH + O and the reaction of Furans with the hydroxyl radical OH.

Health-related Quality of life in 640 head and neck cancer survivors after radiotherapy using EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-H&N35 questionnaires

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wan Leung, Stephen; Lee, Tsair-Fwu; Chien, Chih-Yen; Chao, Pei-Ju; Tsai, Wen-Ling; Fang, Fu-Min

2011-01-01

With the advances in modern radiotherapy (RT), many patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) can be effectively cured, and their health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) has become an important issue. In this study, we evaluated the prognosticators of HR-QoL in a large cohort of HNC patients, with a focus on the result from technological advances in RT. A cross-sectional investigation was conducted to assess the HR-QoL of 640 HNC patients with cancer-free survival of more than 2 years. Among them, 371 patients were treated by two-dimensional RT (2DRT), 127 by three-dimensional conformal RT (3DCRT), and 142 by intensity-modulated RT (IMRT). The EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire and QLQ-H&N35 module were used. A general linear model multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the prognosticators of HR-QoL. By multivariate analysis, the variables of gender, annual family income, tumor site, AJCC stage, treatment methods, and RT technique were prognosticators for QLQ-C30 results, so were tumor site and RT technique for H&N35. Significant difference (p < 0.05) of HR-QoL outcome by different RT techniques was observed at 2 of the 15 scales in QLQ-C30 and 10 of the 13 scales in H&N35. Compared with 2DRT, IMRT had significant better outcome in the scales of global QoL, physical functioning, swallowing, senses (taste/smell), speech, social eating, social contact, teeth, opening mouth, dry mouth, sticky saliva, and feeling ill. The technological advance of RT substantially improves the head-and-neck related symptoms and broad aspects of HR-QoL for HNC survivors

Modification and characterization of sites giving acid cracking on aluminium oxide supports; Modification et caracterisation des sites responsables du craquage acide sur des supports a base d`alumine

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Guillaume, D

1997-10-23

The aim of this work is to characterize the surface acid properties of {gamma} alumina, especially the nature, the amount, the strength and the environment of acid sites. The techniques that have been used are: the thermo-desorption of trimethyl-phosphine followed by {sup 31}P MAS NMR, the infrared spectroscopy, the n-heptane cracking, the modification of {gamma} alumina by the addition of chlorine, silicon and alkali (K{sup +}, Na{sup +}), alkaline-earths (Mg{sup 2+}, Ca{sup 2+}), lanthanum (La{sup 3+}) cations. The combination of these techniques has allowed to identify the surface acid properties of {gamma} alumina through the n-heptane transformation reactions under reforming conditions. We have shown that Lewis acidity is responsible for cracking reactions leading to C{sub 1}-C{sub 6} and C{sub 2}-C{sub 5} whereas the cracking of n-heptane producing C{sub 3}-C{sub 4} is due to Broensted acid sites. The isomerization and cyclization reactions both require weaker Broensted acid sites than cracking leading to C{sub 3}-C{sub 4}. The mechanisms involved in the formation of products of these reactions have been identified. Despite the complexity of surface acid properties of {gamma} alumina, this study has determined the environment of catalytically active sites, considering the presence of cation vacancies. (author) 206 refs.

Energetics and kinetics of ferrocyanide and nitrate/nitrite reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Scheele, R.D.; Burger, L.L.; Sell, R.L.

1994-01-01

During the 1950's, radiocesium scavenging at the Hanford site resulted in radioactive waste sludges containing ferrocyanide, nitrate, and nitrite. These waters are a concern since certain mixtures of ferrocyanide and nitrate and/or nitrite are known to explode when heated. The authors have used differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, isothermal calorimetry and gravimetry, and accelerating rate calorimetry to measure the thermal behavior, the reaction enthalpies, and selected kinetic parameters for reactions between sodium nickel ferrocyanide, the suspected ferrocyanide form in Hanford wastes, and nitrate and/or nitrite. These studies indicate that the oxidation proceeds via multiple steps, the initial reaction begins near 200 degrees C, the initial step has a high activation energy (>200 kJ/mole-K), succeeding reaction steps have activation energies ranging from 90 to 160 kJ/mole-K, and that the oxidation yields about 50% of the theoretical heat of reaction for the most energetic reaction

Insights into reaction mechanisms in heterogeneous catalysis revealed by in situ NMR spectroscopy.

Science.gov (United States)

Blasco, Teresa

2010-12-01

This tutorial review intends to show the possibilities of in situ solid state NMR spectroscopy in the elucidation of reaction mechanisms and the nature of the active sites in heterogeneous catalysis. After a brief overview of the more usual experimental devices used for in situ solid state NMR spectroscopy measurements, some examples of applications taken from the recent literature will be presented. It will be shown that in situ NMR spectroscopy allows: (i) the identification of stable intermediates and transient species using indirect methods, (ii) to prove shape selectivity in zeolites, (iii) the study of reaction kinetics, and (iv) the determination of the nature and the role played by the active sites in a catalytic reaction. The approaches and methodology used to get this information will be illustrated here summarizing the most relevant contributions on the investigation of the mechanisms of a series of reactions of industrial interest: aromatization of alkanes on bifunctional catalysts, carbonylation reaction of methanol with carbon monoxide, ethylbenzene disproportionation, and the Beckmann rearrangement reaction. Special attention is paid to the research carried out on the role played by carbenium ions and alkoxy as intermediate species in the transformation of hydrocarbon molecules on solid acid catalysts.

Insights into the importance of oxygen functional groups in carbon reactions with oxygen containing gases

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

John Zhu, Max Lu

2005-01-01

The role of pore structure of carbon in carbon-related adsorptions and reactions has been extensively investigated. However the studies on the role of surface chemistry of carbon are limited. In this paper, we present the importance of oxygen functional groups in carbon reactions with oxygen-containing gases. It is found that there is a good correlation between the electronic structures and reactivities of carbon edge sites. Zigzag sites are more active in oxygen adsorption because of the unpaired electrons and armchair sites are less active in oxygen adsorption due to the triple character. However, the desorption of semi-quinone oxygen from zigzag sites needs a bond energy ca. 30% higher than that of o-quinone oxygen from armchair edge sites. CO 2 and H 2 O adsorb on carbon surface much less favorably than O 2 . H 2 O is first physically adsorbed on the virgin graphite surface followed by chemisorption through oxygen atom approaching the carbon edge site and the movements of two hydrogen atoms to produce H 2 . The adsorption mechanism of H 2 O is different from that for CO 2 , but the final result is quite similar, i.e. producing only semi-quinone oxygen. Based upon the above studies, a new generalized mechanism, as shown in Fig. 1, is developed and can account for all the important kinetic phenomena of carbon-gas reactions. The key point is that in CO 2 /H 2 O-carbon reaction only semi-quinone formed; while, in O 2 -carbon reaction, semi-quinone, o-quinone (at lower pressure), and off-plane epoxy oxygen (at relatively higher pressure) can be formed. This is the main reason for the different reaction kinetics of O 2 -carbon reaction and CO 2 /H 2 O-carbon reactions as observed experimentally. The oxygen functional groups of carbon can be characterized by XPS, PZC (point of zero charge), IEP (isoelectric point) and TPD (temperature-programmed desorption), which were used in our previous studies. We treated the carbon surface with different acids, finding that HNO 3

Coarse-Grain QoS-Aware Dynamic Instance Provisioning for Interactive Workload in the Cloud

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianxiong Wan

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Cloud computing paradigm renders the Internet service providers (ISPs with a new approach to deliver their service with less cost. ISPs can rent virtual machines from the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS provided by the cloud rather than purchasing them. In addition, commercial cloud providers (CPs offer diverse VM instance rental services in various time granularities, which provide another opportunity for ISPs to reduce cost. We investigate a Coarse-grain QoS-aware Dynamic Instance Provisioning (CDIP problem for interactive workload in the cloud from the perspective of ISPs. We formulate the CDIP problem as an optimization problem where the objective is to minimize the VM instance rental cost and the constraint is the percentile delay bound. Since the Internet traffic shows a strong self-similar property, it is hard to get an analytical form of the percentile delay constraint. To address this issue, we purpose a lookup table structure together with a learning algorithm to estimate the performance of the instance provisioning policy. This approach is further extended with two function approximations to enhance the scalability of the learning algorithm. We also present an efficient dynamic instance provisioning algorithm, which takes full advantage of the rental service diversity, to determine the instance rental policy. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Link Power Budget and Traffict QoS Performance Analysis of Gygabit Passive Optical Network

Science.gov (United States)

Ubaidillah, A.; Alfita, R.; Toyyibah

2018-01-01

Data service of telecommunication network is needed widely in the world; therefore extra wide bandwidth must be provided. For this case, PT. Telekomunikasi Tbk. applies GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) as optical fibre based on telecommunication network system. GPON is a point to a multipoint technology of FTTx (Fiber to The x) that transmits information signals to the subscriber over optical fibre. In GPON trunking system, from OLT (Optical Line Terminal), the network is split to many ONT (Optical Network Terminal) of the subscribers, so it causes path loss and attenuation. In this research, the GPON performance is measured from the link power budget system and the Quality of Service (QoS) of the traffic. And the observation result shows that the link power budget system of this GPON is in good condition. The link power budget values from the mathematical calculation and direct measurement are satisfy the ITU-T G984 Class B standard, that the power level must be between -8 dBm to -27 dBm. While from the traffic performance, the observation result shows that the network resource utility of the subscribers of the observed area is not optimum. The mean of subscriber utility rate is 27.985 bps for upstream and 79.687 bps for downstream. While maximally, It should be 60.800 bps for upstream and 486.400 bps for downstream.

Challenge for real-time and real-space resolved spectroscopy of surface chemical reactions. Aiming at trace of irreversible and inhomogeneous reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Amemiya, Kenta

2015-01-01

A novel experimental technique, time-resolved wavelength-dispersive soft X-ray imaging spectroscopy, is proposed in order to achieve real-time and real-space resolved spectroscopy for the observation of irreversible and inhomogeneous surface chemical reactions. By combining the wavelength-dispersed soft X rays, in which the X-ray wavelength (photon energy) changes as a function of position on the sample, with the photoelectron emission microscope, the soft X-ray absorption spectra are separately obtained at different positions on the sample without scanning the X-ray monochromator. Therefore, the real-time resolved measurement of site-selective soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy is realized in one event without repeating the chemical reaction. It is expected that the spatial distribution of different chemical species is traced during the surface chemical reaction, which is essential to understand the reaction mechanism. (author)

Insights into the mechanisms on chemical reactions: reaction paths for chemical reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dunning, T.H. Jr.; Rosen, E.; Eades, R.A.

1987-01-01

We report reaction paths for two prototypical chemical reactions: Li + HF, an electron transfer reaction, and OH + H 2 , an abstraction reaction. In the first reaction we consider the connection between the energetic terms in the reaction path Hamiltonian and the electronic changes which occur upon reaction. In the second reaction we consider the treatment of vibrational effects in chemical reactions in the reaction path formalism. 30 refs., 9 figs

Site-specific dissociation dynamics of H2/D2 on Ag(111) and Co(0001) and the validity of the site-averaging model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hu, Xixi; Jiang, Bin; Xie, Daiqian; Guo, Hua

2015-01-01

Dissociative chemisorption of polyatomic molecules on metal surfaces involves high-dimensional dynamics, of which quantum mechanical treatments are computationally challenging. A promising reduced-dimensional approach approximates the full-dimensional dynamics by a weighted average of fixed-site results. To examine the performance of this site-averaging model, we investigate two distinct reactions, namely, hydrogen dissociation on Co(0001) and Ag(111), using accurate first principles potential energy surfaces (PESs). The former has a very low barrier of ∼0.05 eV while the latter is highly activated with a barrier of ∼1.15 eV. These two systems allow the investigation of not only site-specific dynamical behaviors but also the validity of the site-averaging model. It is found that the reactivity is not only controlled by the barrier height but also by the topography of the PES. Moreover, the agreement between the site-averaged and full-dimensional results is much better on Ag(111), though quantitative in neither system. Further quasi-classical trajectory calculations showed that the deviations can be attributed to dynamical steering effects, which are present in both reactions at all energies

An Atypical Local Vesicular Reaction to the Yellow Fever Vaccine

OpenAIRE

Wauters, Robert H.; Hernandez, Camellia L.; Petersen, Maureen M.

2017-01-01

Yellow fever vaccine is a live attenuated viral inoculation indicated for patients traveling to endemic areas. The vaccine is generally well tolerated with minimal adverse effects. Typical side effects include malaise, pain at the injection site, and, albeit rarely, immediate hypersensitivity reactions. We present a case of a rare adverse reaction to yellow fever vaccine in which a patient developed vesicular lesions resulting in bullae and circumferential hyperpigmentation.

An Atypical Local Vesicular Reaction to the Yellow Fever Vaccine.

Science.gov (United States)

Wauters, Robert H; Hernandez, Camellia L; Petersen, Maureen M

2017-09-19

Yellow fever vaccine is a live attenuated viral inoculation indicated for patients traveling to endemic areas. The vaccine is generally well tolerated with minimal adverse effects. Typical side effects include malaise, pain at the injection site, and, albeit rarely, immediate hypersensitivity reactions. We present a case of a rare adverse reaction to yellow fever vaccine in which a patient developed vesicular lesions resulting in bullae and circumferential hyperpigmentation.

Protonation sites of aromatic compounds in (+) atmospheric pressure photoionization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Sung Hwan; Ahmed, Arif [Dept. of Chemistry, Kyungpoo k National University, Daegu (Korea, Republic of)

2017-02-15

Reaction enthalpy of hydrogen transfer reactions of aromatic compounds has been observed to be greatly affected by the exact location of the protonation site. Therefore, to clearly identify the protonation location, each candidate protonation site for 43 aromatic compounds were theoretically determined and their location was compared with that determined based on experimental MS data. Only the basic nitrogen atom is favorable as a protonation site for pyridine-type aromatic compounds, whereas carbon atoms are preferable for the protonation of pyrrole-type compounds. The most favorable protonation sites for aniline or methylated aniline-type aromatic compounds are either the nitrogen atom in the amine group or the carbon atom at the para-position to the amine group. Like pyrrole-type compounds, aromatic compounds with amine groups also favor protonation at the carbon atom instead of at the nitrogen atom. In addition, hydrocarbons having an anthracene structural motif without heteroatoms produced higher or equal percentages of protonated ions compared to that achieved with molecular ions. The results of this study can be used to improve the analyses of aromatic compounds.

Site-specific DNA Inversion by Serine Recombinases

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-01

Reversible site-specific DNA inversion reactions are widely distributed in bacteria and their viruses. They control a range of biological reactions that most often involve alterations of molecules on the surface of cells or phage. These programmed DNA rearrangements usually occur at a low frequency, thereby preadapting a small subset of the population to a change in environmental conditions, or in the case of phages, an expanded host range. A dedicated recombinase, sometimes with the aid of additional regulatory or DNA architectural proteins, catalyzes the inversion of DNA. RecA or other components of the general recombination-repair machinery are not involved. This chapter discusses site-specific DNA inversion reactions mediated by the serine recombinase family of enzymes and focuses on the extensively studied serine DNA invertases that are stringently controlled by the Fis-bound enhancer regulatory system. The first section summarizes biological features and general properties of inversion reactions by the Fis/enhancer-dependent serine invertases and the recently described serine DNA invertases in Bacteroides. Mechanistic studies of reactions catalyzed by the Hin and Gin invertases are then discussed in more depth, particularly with regards to recent advances in our understanding of the function of the Fis/enhancer regulatory system, the assembly of the active recombination complex (invertasome) containing the Fis/enhancer, and the process of DNA strand exchange by rotation of synapsed subunit pairs within the invertasome. The role of DNA topological forces that function in concert with the Fis/enhancer controlling element in specifying the overwhelming bias for DNA inversion over deletion and intermolecular recombination is emphasized. PMID:25844275

Characterization of reaction conditions providing rapid and specific cysteine alkylation for peptide-based mass spectrometry.

Science.gov (United States)

Paulech, Jana; Solis, Nestor; Cordwell, Stuart J

2013-01-01

Alkylation converts Cys thiols to thioethers and prevents unwanted side reactions, thus facilitating mass spectrometric identification of Cys-containing peptides. Alkylation occurs preferentially at Cys due to its high nucleophilicity, however reactions at other such sites are possible. N-ethylmaleimide (NEM) shows rapid reaction kinetics with Cys and careful definition of reaction conditions results in little reactivity at other sites. Analysis of a protein standard alkylated under differing reaction conditions (pH, NEM concentrations and reaction times) was performed using liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and selected reaction monitoring (SRM) of NEM-modified and unmodified peptide pairs. Mis-alkylation sites at primary and secondary amines were identified and limited to one equivalent of NEM. No evidence for hydroxyl or thioether alkylation was observed. Improved specificity was achieved by restricting the pH below neutral, NEM concentration below 10mM and/or reaction time to below 5min. Maximal removal of Cys activity was observed in tissue homogenates at 40mM NEM within 1min, dependent upon efficient protein denaturation. SRM assays identified peptide-specific levels of mis-alkylation, indicating that NEM-modified to unmodified ratios did not exceed 10%, with the exception of Cys alkylation that proceeded to 100%, and some Lys residues that resulted in tryptic missed cleavages. High reactivity was observed for His residues considering their relatively low abundance. These data indicate that rapid and specific Cys alkylation is possible with NEM under relatively mild conditions, with more abrasive conditions leading to increased non-specific alkylation without appreciable benefit for MS-based proteomics. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cognitive and psychological reactions of the general population three months after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yasushi Kyutoku

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The largest earthquake on record in Japan (magnitude 9.0 occurred on March 11, 2011, and the subsequent tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of Northern Japan. These further triggered the Fukushima I nuclear power plant accidents. Such a hugely complex disaster inevitably has negative psychological effects on general populations as well as on the direct victims. While previous disaster studies enrolled descriptive approaches focusing on direct victims, the structure of the psychological adjustment process of people from the general population has remained uncertain. The current study attempted to establish a path model that sufficiently reflects the early psychological adaptation process of the general population to large-scale natural disasters. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Participants from the primary disaster area (n = 1083 and other areas (n = 2372 voluntarily participated in an online questionnaire study. By constructing path models using a structural equation model procedure (SEM, we examined the structural relationship among psychological constructs known related to disasters. As post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS were significantly more present in people in the primarily affected area than in those in secondary- or non-affected areas, the path models were constructed for the primary victims. The parsimoniously depicted model with the best fit was achieved for the psychological-adjustment centered model with quality of life (QoL as a final outcome. CONCLUSION: The paths to QoL via negative routes (from negative cognitive appraisal, PTS, and general stress were dominant, suggesting the importance of clinical intervention for reducing negative cognitive appraisal, and for caring for general stress and PTS to maintain QoL at an early stage of psychological adaptation to a disaster. The model also depicted the presence of a positive route where positive cognitive appraisal facilitates post-traumatic growth (PTG to achieve a higher Qo

The role of phosphate in a multistep enzymatic reaction: reactions of the substrate and intermediate in pieces.

Science.gov (United States)

Kholodar, Svetlana A; Allen, C Leigh; Gulick, Andrew M; Murkin, Andrew S

2015-02-25

Several mechanistically unrelated enzymes utilize the binding energy of their substrate's nonreacting phosphoryl group to accelerate catalysis. Evidence for the involvement of the phosphodianion in transition state formation has come from reactions of the substrate in pieces, in which reaction of a truncated substrate lacking its phosphorylmethyl group is activated by inorganic phosphite. What has remained unknown until now is how the phosphodianion group influences the reaction energetics at different points along the reaction coordinate. 1-Deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP) reductoisomerase (DXR), which catalyzes the isomerization of DXP to 2-C-methyl-D-erythrose 4-phosphate (MEsP) and subsequent NADPH-dependent reduction, presents a unique opportunity to address this concern. Previously, we have reported the effect of covalently linked phosphate on the energetics of DXP turnover. Through the use of chemically synthesized MEsP and its phosphate-truncated analogue, 2-C-methyl-D-glyceraldehyde, the current study revealed a loss of 6.1 kcal/mol of kinetic barrier stabilization upon truncation, of which 4.4 kcal/mol was regained in the presence of phosphite dianion. The activating effect of phosphite was accompanied by apparent tightening of its interactions within the active site at the intermediate stage of the reaction, suggesting a role of the phosphodianion in disfavoring intermediate release and in modulation of the on-enzyme isomerization equilibrium. The results of kinetic isotope effect and structural studies indicate rate limitation by physical steps when the covalent linkage is severed. These striking differences in the energetics of the natural reaction and the reactions in pieces provide a deeper insight into the contribution of enzyme-phosphodianion interactions to the reaction coordinate.

Kinetics and mechanisms of photoinduced electron-transfer reaction of zinc myoglobin

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tsukahara, Keiichi; Asami, Satoko; Okada, Mihoko; Sakurai, Takeshi.

1994-01-01

Photoinduced electron transfer (ET) between zinc myoglobin (ZnPPMb) and a variety of quenchers, such as hexacyanoferrate(III)([Fe(CN) 6 ] 3- ) and hexaammineruthenium(III)(Ru(NH 3 ) 6 ] 3+ ions, cationic viologens, copper(II) protein (stellacyanin), and metmyoglobins, has been studied in aqueous degassed solutions. The excited triplet state of ZnPPMb( * ZnPPMb) was quenched by [Fe(CN) 6 ] 3- in a self-associated complex. Both quenching rate constant and formation constant of the self-associated complex decrease with increasing ionic strengths. The thermal backward ET reaction for this system was not observed; it is most likely that the backward ET step is much faster than the quenching reaction. All of the cationic quenchers examined in this work did not form a self-associated complex with * ZnPPMb, and the intermolecular quenching occurred. The thermal backward ET reaction was observed for these cationic quenchers. Not only photoinduced ET but also thermal backward ET reactions were insensitive to the driving force of the reactions, suggesting that the reactions are controlled by conformational changes in ZnPPMb. The quenching rate constants increase with increasing ionic strength for the cationic quenchers. The effects of poly-L-lysine hydrochloride, sodium poly-L-glutamate, and sodium cyclo-hexaphosphate were also examined. The active site of the * ZnPPMb toward both anionic and cationic quenchers is assumed to be the positively charged site near the heme pocket. (author)

Structural characterization of tartrate dehydrogenase: a versatile enzyme catalyzing multiple reactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Malik, Radhika; Viola, Ronald E.

2010-01-01

The first structure of an NAD-dependent tartrate dehydrogenase (TDH) has been solved to 2 (angstrom) resolution by single anomalous diffraction (SAD) phasing as a complex with the intermediate analog oxalate, Mg 2+ and NADH. This TDH structure from Pseudomonas putida has a similar overall fold and domain organization to other structurally characterized members of the hydroxy-acid dehydrogenase family. However, there are considerable differences between TDH and these functionally related enzymes in the regions connecting the core secondary structure and in the relative positioning of important loops and helices. The active site in these complexes is highly ordered, allowing the identification of the substrate-binding and cofactor-binding groups and the ligands to the metal ions. Residues from the adjacent subunit are involved in both the substrate and divalent metal ion binding sites, establishing a dimer as the functional unit and providing structural support for an alternating-site reaction mechanism. The divalent metal ion plays a prominent role in substrate binding and orientation, together with several active-site arginines. Functional groups from both subunits form the cofactor-binding site and the ammonium ion aids in the orientation of the nicotinamide ring of the cofactor. A lysyl amino group (Lys192) is the base responsible for the water-mediated proton abstraction from the C2 hydroxyl group of the substrate that begins the catalytic reaction, followed by hydride transfer to NAD. A tyrosyl hydroxyl group (Tyr141) functions as a general acid to protonate the enolate intermediate. Each substrate undergoes the initial hydride transfer, but differences in substrate orientation are proposed to account for the different reactions catalyzed by TDH.

Housing First improves subjective quality of life among homeless adults with mental illness: 12-month findings from a randomized controlled trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Science.gov (United States)

Patterson, Michelle; Moniruzzaman, Akm; Palepu, Anita; Zabkiewicz, Denise; Frankish, Charles J; Krausz, Michael; Somers, Julian M

2013-08-01

This study used an experimental design to examine longitudinal changes in subjective quality of life (QoL) among homeless adults with mental illness after assignment to different types of supported housing or to treatment as usual (TAU, no housing or supports through the study). We hypothesized that subjective QoL would improve over time among participants assigned to supported housing as compared to TAU, regardless of the type of supported housing received or participants' level of need. Participants (n = 497) were stratified by level of need ("high" or "moderate") and randomly assigned to Housing First (HF) in scattered-site apartments, HF in a congregate setting (high needs only), or TAU. Linear mixed-effects regression was used to model the association between study arm and self-reported QoL at baseline and at 6 and 12 months post-baseline by need level. Based on the adjusted overall score on the QoL measure, participants randomized to HF reported significantly greater overall QoL as compared to TAU, regardless of need level or type of supported housing at both 6 and 12 months post-baseline. Scores on the safety and living situation subscales were significantly greater for both high and moderate need participants assigned to supported housing regardless of type at both 6 and 12 months post-baseline as compared to TAU. Despite multiple health and social challenges faced by homeless individuals with mental illness, HF in both scattered-site and congregate models results in significantly greater perceived QoL as compared to individuals who do not receive HF even after a relatively short period of time.

The OH-initiated atmospheric chemical reactions of polyfluorinated dibenzofurans and polychlorinated dibenzofurans: A comparative theoretical study.

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Xiaolan; Chen, Jing; Qu, Ruijuan; Pan, Xiaoxue; Wang, Zunyao

2017-02-01

The atmospheric chemical reactions of some polyfluorinated dibenzofurans (PFDFs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), initiated by OH radical, were investigated by performing theoretical calculations using density functional theory (DFT) and B3LYP/6-311++G(2df,p) method. The obtained results indicate that OH addition reactions of PFDFs and PCDFs occurring at C 1∼4 and C A sites are thermodynamic spontaneous changes and the branching ratio of the PF(C)DF-OH adducts is decided primarily by kinetic factor. The OH addition reactions of PFDFs taking place at fluorinated C 1∼4 positions are kinetically comparable with those occurring at nonfluorinated C 1∼4 positions, while OH addition reactions of PCDFs occurring at chlorinated C 1∼4 sites are negligible. The total rate constants of the addition reactions of PFDFs or PCDFs become smaller with consecutive fluorination or chlorination, and substituting at C 1 position has more adverse effects than substitution at other sites. The succedent O 2 addition reactions of PF(C)DF-OH adducts are thermodynamic nonspontaneous processes under the atmospheric conditions, and have high Gibbs free energies of activation (Δ r G ≠ ). The substituted dibenzofuranols are the primary oxidation products for PCDFs under the atmospheric conditions. However, other oxidative products may also be available for PFDFs besides substituted dibenzofuranols. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Enzymatic Synthesis of Highly Fluorescent 8-Azapurine Ribosides Using a Purine Nucleoside Phosphorylase Reverse Reaction: Variable Ribosylation Sites

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Goran Mikleušević

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Various forms of purine-nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP were used as catalysts of enzymatic ribosylation of selected fluorescent 8-azapurines. It was found that the recombinant calf PNP catalyzes ribosylation of 2,6-diamino-8-azapurine in a phosphate-free medium, with ribose-1-phosphate as ribose donor, but the ribosylation site is predominantly N7 and N8, with the proportion of N8/N7 ribosylated products markedly dependent on the reaction conditions. Both products are fluorescent. Application of the E. coli PNP gave a mixture of N8 and N9-substituted ribosides. Fluorescence of the ribosylated 2,6-diamino-8-azapurine has been briefly characterized. The highest quantum yield, ~0.9, was obtained for N9-β-d-riboside (λmax 365 nm, while for N8-β-d-riboside, emitting at ~430 nm, the fluorescence quantum yield was found to be close to 0.4. Ribosylation of 8-azaguanine with calf PNP as a catalyst goes exclusively to N9. By contrast, the E. coli PNP ribosylates 8-azaGua predominantly at N9, with minor, but highly fluorescent products ribosylated at N8/N7.

Coarse-grained molecular simulation of epidermal growth factor receptor protein tyrosine kinase multi-site self-phosphorylation.

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John G Koland

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Upon the ligand-dependent dimerization of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, the intrinsic protein tyrosine kinase (PTK activity of one receptor monomer is activated, and the dimeric receptor undergoes self-phosphorylation at any of eight candidate phosphorylation sites (P-sites in either of the two C-terminal (CT domains. While the structures of the extracellular ligand binding and intracellular PTK domains are known, that of the ∼225-amino acid CT domain is not, presumably because it is disordered. Receptor phosphorylation on CT domain P-sites is critical in signaling because of the binding of specific signaling effector molecules to individual phosphorylated P-sites. To investigate how the combination of conventional substrate recognition and the unique topological factors involved in the CT domain self-phosphorylation reaction lead to selectivity in P-site phosphorylation, we performed coarse-grained molecular simulations of the P-site/catalytic site binding reactions that precede EGFR self-phosphorylation events. Our results indicate that self-phosphorylation of the dimeric EGFR, although generally believed to occur in trans, may well occur with a similar efficiency in cis, with the P-sites of both receptor monomers being phosphorylated to a similar extent. An exception was the case of the most kinase-proximal P-site-992, the catalytic site binding of which occurred exclusively in cis via an intramolecular reaction. We discovered that the in cis interaction of P-site-992 with the catalytic site was facilitated by a cleft between the N-terminal and C-terminal lobes of the PTK domain that allows the short CT domain sequence tethering P-site-992 to the PTK core to reach the catalytic site. Our work provides several new mechanistic insights into the EGFR self-phosphorylation reaction, and demonstrates the potential of coarse-grained molecular simulation approaches for investigating the complexities of self-phosphorylation in

Nitric Oxide Reduction by Carbon Monoxide over Supported Hexaruthenium Cluster Catalysts. 1. The Active Site Structure That Depends on Supporting Metal Oxide and Catalytic Reaction Conditions.

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Minato, Taketoshi; Izumi, Yasuo; Aika, Ken-Ichi; Ishiguro, Atsushi; Nakajima, Takayuki; Wakatsuki, Yasuo

2003-08-28

Ruthenium site structures supported on metal oxide surfaces were designed by reacting organometallic Ru cluster [Ru6C(CO)16](2-) or [Ru6(CO)18](2-) with various metal oxides, TiO2, Al2O3, MgO, and SiO2. The surface Ru site structure, formed under various catalyst preparation and reaction conditions, was investigated by the Ru K-edge extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS). Samples of [Ru6C(CO)16](2-)/TiO2(anatase) and [Ru6C(CO)16](2-)/TiO2(rutile) were found to retain the original Ru6C framework when heated in the presence of NO (2.0 kPa) or NO (2.0 kPa) + CO (2.0 kPa) at 423 K, i.e., catalytic reaction conditions for NO decomposition. At 523 K, the Ru-Ru bonds of the Ru6C framework were cleaved by the attack of NO. In contrast, the Ru site became spontaneously dispersed over TiO2 (anatase). When being supported over TiO2 (mesoporous), MgO, or Al2O3, the Ru6C framework split into fragments in gaseous NO or NO + CO even at 423 K. The Ru6 framework of [Ru6(CO)18](2-) was found to break easily into smaller ensembles in the presence of NO and/or CO at 423 K on support. Taking into consideration the realistic environments in which these catalysts will be used, we also examined the effect of water and oxygen. When water was introduced to the sample [Ru6C(CO)16](2-)/TiO2(anatase) at 423 K, it did not have any effects on the stabilized Ru6C framework structure. In the presence of oxygen gas, however, the Ru hexanuclear structure decomposed into isolated Ru cations bound to surface oxygen atoms of TiO2 (anatase).

Mechanistic insights into the dehalogenation reaction of fluoroacetate/fluoroacetic acid

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Miranda-Rojas, Sebastián; Toro-Labbé, Alejandro

2015-05-01

Fluoroacetate is a toxic compound whose environmental accumulation may represent an important contamination problem, its elimination is therefore a challenging issue. Fluoroacetate dehalogenase catalyzes its degradation through a two step process initiated by an SN2 reaction in which the aspartate residue performs a nucleophilic attack on the carbon bonded to the fluorine; the second step is hydrolysis that releases the product as glycolate. In this paper, we present a study based on density functional theory calculations of the SN2 initiation reaction modeled through the interaction between the substrate and the propionate anion as the nucleophile. Results are analyzed within the framework of the reaction force and using the reaction electronic flux to identify and characterize the electronic activity that drives the reaction. Our results reveal that the selective protonation of the substrate catalyzes the reaction by decreasing the resistance of the structural and electronic reorganization needed to reach the transition state. Finally, the reaction energy is modulated by the degree of stabilization of the fluoride anion formed after the SN2 reaction. In this way, a site-induced partial protonation acts as a chemical switch in a key process that determines the output of the reaction.

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN GEOCHEMICAL REACTIONS AND ADVECTION-DISPERSION IN CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT AT A URANIUM MILL TAILINGS SITE

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It is well known that the fate and transport of contaminants in the subsurface are controlled by complex processes including advection, dispersion-diffusion, and chemical reactions. However, the interplay between the physical transport processes and chemical reactions, and their...

Quantum chemical modeling of enzymatic reactions: the case of 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase.

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Sevastik, Robin; Himo, Fahmi

2007-12-01

The reaction mechanism of 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (4-OT) is studied using the density functional theory method B3LYP. This enzyme catalyzes the isomerisation of unconjugated alpha-keto acids to their conjugated isomers. Two different quantum chemical models of the active site are devised and the potential energy curves for the reaction are computed. The calculations support the proposed reaction mechanism in which Pro-1 acts as a base to shuttle a proton from the C3 to the C5 position of the substrate. The first step (proton transfer from C3 to proline) is shown to be the rate-limiting step. The energy of the charge-separated intermediate (protonated proline-deprotonated substrate) is calculated to be quite low, in accordance with measured pKa values. The results of the two models are used to evaluate the methodology employed in modeling enzyme active sites using quantum chemical cluster models.

Determining two-step control in heterogeneous catalytic reactions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chakrabarty, T; Silveston, P L; Hudgins, R R

1979-10-01

The data by Thaller and Thodos on the sec.-butanol dehydrogenation to methyl ethyl ketone on brass catalyst indicated that a dual site surface reaction was rate-controlling below 575/sup 0/K and hydrogen desorption was rate-controlling above 616/sup 0/K (Vertical BarAIChE J.

Mechanochemical Association Reaction of Interfacial Molecules Driven by Shear.

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Khajeh, Arash; He, Xin; Yeon, Jejoon; Kim, Seong H; Martini, Ashlie

2018-05-29

Shear-driven chemical reaction mechanisms are poorly understood because the relevant reactions are often hidden between two solid surfaces moving in relative motion. Here, this phenomenon is explored by characterizing shear-induced polymerization reactions that occur during vapor phase lubrication of α-pinene between sliding hydroxylated and dehydroxylated silica surfaces, complemented by reactive molecular dynamics simulations. The results suggest that oxidative chemisorption of the α-pinene molecules at reactive surface sites, which transfers oxygen atoms from the surface to the adsorbate molecule, is the critical activation step. Such activation takes place more readily on the dehydroxylated surface. During this activation, the most strained part of the α-pinene molecules undergoes a partial distortion from its equilibrium geometry, which appears to be related to the critical activation volume for mechanical activation. Once α-pinene molecules are activated, association reactions occur between the newly attached oxygen and one of the carbon atoms in another molecule, forming ether bonds. These findings have general implications for mechanochemistry because they reveal that shear-driven reactions may occur through reaction pathways very different from their thermally induced counterparts and specifically the critical role of molecular distortion in such reactions.

Steady-state isotopic transient kinetic analysis investigation of CO-O2 and CO-NO reactions over a commercial automotive catalyst

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oukaci, R.; Blackmond, D.G.; Goodwin, J.G. Jr.; Gallaher, G.R.

1992-01-01

In this paper, steady-state isotopic transient kinetic analysis (SSITKA) is used to study two model reactions, CO oxidation and CO-NO reactions, on a typical formulation of a three-way auto-catalyst. Under steady-state conditions, abrupt switches in the isotopic composition of CO ( 12 C 16 O/ 13 C 18 O) were carried out to produce isotopic transients in both labeled reactants and products. Along with the determination of the average surface lifetimes and concentrations of reaction intermediates, an analysis of the transient responses along the carbon reaction pathway indicated that the distribution of active sites for the formation of CO 2 was bimodal for both reactions. Furthermore, relatively few surface sites contributed to the overall reaction rate

One-electron reduction reactions with enzymes in solution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bisby, R.H.; Cundall, R.B.; Redpath, J.L.; Adams, G.E.

1976-01-01

At pH 8 and above, hydrated electrons react with ribonuclease lysozyme and α-chymotrypsin to form transient products whose spectra resemble, but are not identical to, those for the RSSR - radical anion already known for simple disulphides. Assuming a value for the extinction coefficient similar to that for RSSR - in simple disulphides, only a fraction of the hydrated electrons are shown to react with the disulphide bridges: the remainder react at other sites in the protein molecule, such as histidine, tyrosine and, in lysozyme, tryptophan residues, giving rise to comparatively weak optical absorptions between 300 and 400 nm. This has been substantiated by studying the reaction of e - sub(aq) with subtilisin Novo (an enzyme which does not contain disulphide bridges), with enzymes in which the sulphur bridges have been oxidised and with some amino acid derivatives. On lowering the pH of the solution the intensity of the RSSR - absorption diminishes as the protonated histidine residues become the favoured reaction sites. In acid solutions (pH 2 to 3) the transient optical absoptions observed are due to reactions of hydrogen atoms with the aromatic amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan and phenylalanine. The CO - 2 radical anion is only observed to transfer an electron to disulphide groups in ribonuclease, although the effect of repeated pulsing shows that some reaction must occur elsewhere in the protein molecule. In acid solutions, protonation of the electron adduct appears to produce the RSSRH. radical, whose spectrum has a maximum at 340 nm. (author)

Site-specific dissociation dynamics of H{sub 2}/D{sub 2} on Ag(111) and Co(0001) and the validity of the site-averaging model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hu, Xixi [Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131 (United States); Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 (China); Jiang, Bin [Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131 (United States); Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 (China); Xie, Daiqian, E-mail: dqxie@nju.edu.cn, E-mail: hguo@unm.edu [Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 (China); Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (China); Guo, Hua, E-mail: dqxie@nju.edu.cn, E-mail: hguo@unm.edu [Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131 (United States)

2015-09-21

Dissociative chemisorption of polyatomic molecules on metal surfaces involves high-dimensional dynamics, of which quantum mechanical treatments are computationally challenging. A promising reduced-dimensional approach approximates the full-dimensional dynamics by a weighted average of fixed-site results. To examine the performance of this site-averaging model, we investigate two distinct reactions, namely, hydrogen dissociation on Co(0001) and Ag(111), using accurate first principles potential energy surfaces (PESs). The former has a very low barrier of ∼0.05 eV while the latter is highly activated with a barrier of ∼1.15 eV. These two systems allow the investigation of not only site-specific dynamical behaviors but also the validity of the site-averaging model. It is found that the reactivity is not only controlled by the barrier height but also by the topography of the PES. Moreover, the agreement between the site-averaged and full-dimensional results is much better on Ag(111), though quantitative in neither system. Further quasi-classical trajectory calculations showed that the deviations can be attributed to dynamical steering effects, which are present in both reactions at all energies.

Using Physical Organic Chemistry To Shape the Course of Electrochemical Reactions.

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Moeller, Kevin D

2018-05-09

While organic electrochemistry can look quite different to a chemist not familiar with the technique, the reactions are at their core organic reactions. As such, they are developed and optimized using the same physical organic chemistry principles employed during the development of any other organic reaction. Certainly, the electron transfer that triggers the reactions can require a consideration of new "wrinkles" to those principles, but those considerations are typically minimal relative to the more traditional approaches needed to manipulate the pathways available to the reactive intermediates formed downstream of that electron transfer. In this review, three very different synthetic challenges-the generation and trapping of radical cations, the development of site-selective reactions on microelectrode arrays, and the optimization of current in a paired electrolysis-are used to illustrate this point.

Modification of quinone electrochemistry by the proteins in the biological electron transfer chains: examples from photosynthetic reaction centers

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Gunner, M. R.; Madeo, Jennifer; Zhu, Zhenyu

2009-01-01

Quinones such as ubiquinone are the lipid soluble electron and proton carriers in the membranes of mitochondria, chloroplasts and oxygenic bacteria. Quinones undergo controlled redox reactions bound to specific sites in integral membrane proteins such as the cytochrome bc1 oxidoreductase. The quinone reactions in bacterial photosynthesis are amongst the best characterized, presenting a model to understand how proteins modulate cofactor chemistry. The free energy of ubiquinone redox reactions in aqueous solution and in the QA and QB sites of the bacterial photosynthetic reaction centers (RCs) are compared. In the primary QA site ubiquinone is reduced only to the anionic semiquinone (Q•−) while in the secondary QB site the product is the doubly reduced, doubly protonated quinol (QH2). The ways in which the protein modifies the relative energy of each reduced and protonated intermediate are described. For example, the protein stabilizes Q•− while destabilizing Q= relative to aqueous solution through electrostatic interactions. In addition, kinetic and thermodynamic mechanisms for stabilizing the intermediate semiquinones are compared. Evidence for the protein sequestering anionic compounds by slowing both on and off rates as well as by binding the anion more tightly is reviewed. PMID:18979192

Role of hydrogen bonds in the reaction mechanism of chalcone isomerase.

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Jez, Joseph M; Bowman, Marianne E; Noel, Joseph P

2002-04-23

In flavonoid, isoflavonoid, and anthocyanin biosynthesis, chalcone isomerase (CHI) catalyzes the intramolecular cyclization of chalcones into (S)-flavanones with a second-order rate constant that approaches the diffusion-controlled limit. The three-dimensional structures of alfalfa CHI complexed with different flavanones indicate that two sets of hydrogen bonds may possess critical roles in catalysis. The first set of interactions includes two conserved amino acids (Thr48 and Tyr106) that mediate a hydrogen bond network with two active site water molecules. The second set of hydrogen bonds occurs between the flavanone 7-hydroxyl group and two active site residues (Asn113 and Thr190). Comparison of the steady-state kinetic parameters of wild-type and mutant CHIs demonstrates that efficient cyclization of various chalcones into their respective flavanones requires both sets of contacts. For example, the T48A, T48S, Y106F, N113A, and T190A mutants exhibit 1550-, 3-, 30-, 7-, and 6-fold reductions in k(cat) and 2-3-fold changes in K(m) with 4,2',4'-trihydroxychalcone as a substrate. Kinetic comparisons of the pH-dependence of the reactions catalyzed by wild-type and mutant enzymes indicate that the active site hydrogen bonds contributed by these four residues do not significantly alter the pK(a) of the intramolecular cyclization reaction. Determinations of solvent kinetic isotope and solvent viscosity effects for wild-type and mutant enzymes reveal a change from a diffusion-controlled reaction to one limited by chemistry in the T48A and Y106F mutants. The X-ray crystal structures of the T48A and Y106F mutants support the assertion that the observed kinetic effects result from the loss of key hydrogen bonds at the CHI active site. Our results are consistent with a reaction mechanism for CHI in which Thr48 polarizes the ketone of the substrate and Tyr106 stabilizes a key catalytic water molecule. Hydrogen bonds contributed by Asn113 and Thr190 provide additional

Differences in cognitive performance, level of dependency and quality of life (QoL), related to age and cognitive status in a sample of Spanish old adults under and over 80 years of age.

Science.gov (United States)

Calero, Dolores; Navarro, Elena

2011-01-01

The main objective of this study was to analyze the similarities and differences in cognitive performance, level of dependency, cognitive plasticity and QoL in a sample of young-old adults and old-old adults, bearing in mind both the age-group (under or over 80 years) and the cognitive status of the participants. The study population consisted of 220 people living in sheltered accommodation for elderly people in the South of Spain, with an average age of 80.75 years. Participants were evaluated by means of cognitive performance tests, a QoL questionnaire, a depression scale and a dependency assessment scale. The results indicate that the main differences in the variables analyzed are due to the cognitive status of the sample and not to the fact that the participants are under or over 80 years of age. The findings show that major inter-individual differences in this stage of life depend not only on age but also on cognitive status, which is thus an important factor to take into account when working with this sector of the population. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Divalent metal ion differentially regulates the sequential nicking reactions of the GIY-YIG homing endonuclease I-BmoI.

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Benjamin P Kleinstiver

Full Text Available Homing endonucleases are site-specific DNA endonucleases that function as mobile genetic elements by introducing double-strand breaks or nicks at defined locations. Of the major families of homing endonucleases, the modular GIY-YIG endonucleases are least understood in terms of mechanism. The GIY-YIG homing endonuclease I-BmoI generates a double-strand break by sequential nicking reactions during which the single active site of the GIY-YIG nuclease domain must undergo a substantial reorganization. Here, we show that divalent metal ion plays a significant role in regulating the two independent nicking reactions by I-BmoI. Rate constant determination for each nicking reaction revealed that limiting divalent metal ion has a greater impact on the second strand than the first strand nicking reaction. We also show that substrate mutations within the I-BmoI cleavage site can modulate the first strand nicking reaction over a 314-fold range. Additionally, in-gel DNA footprinting with mutant substrates and modeling of an I-BmoI-substrate complex suggest that amino acid contacts to a critical GC-2 base pair are required to induce a bottom-strand distortion that likely directs conformational changes for reaction progress. Collectively, our data implies mechanistic roles for divalent metal ion and substrate bases, suggesting that divalent metal ion facilitates the re-positioning of the GIY-YIG nuclease domain between sequential nicking reactions.

Quantum Calculations of Electron Tunneling in Respiratory Complex III.

Science.gov (United States)

Hagras, Muhammad A; Hayashi, Tomoyuki; Stuchebrukhov, Alexei A

2015-11-19

The most detailed and comprehensive to date study of electron transfer reactions in the respiratory complex III of aerobic cells, also known as bc1 complex, is reported. In the framework of the tunneling current theory, electron tunneling rates and atomistic tunneling pathways between different redox centers were investigated for all electron transfer reactions comprising different stages of the proton-motive Q-cycle. The calculations reveal that complex III is a smart nanomachine, which under certain conditions undergoes conformational changes gating electron transfer, or channeling electrons to specific pathways. One-electron tunneling approximation was adopted in the tunneling calculations, which were performed using hybrid Broken-Symmetry (BS) unrestricted DFT/ZINDO levels of theory. The tunneling orbitals were determined using an exact biorthogonalization scheme that uniquely separates pairs of tunneling orbitals with small overlaps out of the remaining Franck-Condon orbitals with significant overlap. Electron transfer rates in different redox pairs show exponential distance dependence, in agreement with the reported experimental data; some reactions involve coupled proton transfer. Proper treatment of a concerted two-electron bifurcated tunneling reaction at the Q(o) site is given.

Inusual riqueza, composición y estructura arbórea en el bosque de tierra firme del Pongo Qoñec, Sur Oriente peruano

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Isau Huamantupa-Chuquimaco

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Se estableció una parcela de 1 ha, en bosque de tierra firme en el Pongo de Qoñec, valle Kosñipata (Cusco, dentro de la Reserva Biósfera del Manú, a 710 m; 12°53'53"S y 72°22'25"W. Se registró 56 familias, 153 géneros, 249 especies con 813 individuos con Dap ≥ 10 cm. Las familias, más ricas fueron: Fabaceae (32 especies, Moraceae (24, Rubiaceae (17 y Lauraceae (12; los géneros más ricos, Inga (17, Neea (7, Miconia (5; se halló un área basal total de 40,50 m2, de ellas Iriartea deltoidea con 6,58 m2, Socratea salazarii 2,28 m2, y Endlicheria sp 1,65 m2, obtuvieron mayor ab; la especie con mayor valor de importancia fue: I. deltoidea, cor- roborando estudios anteriores en bosques de tierra firme. El análisis estructural muestra que clases diamétricas 10-20 cm, abarcan 71,3% del total de fustes. Al comparar nuestros resultados, el Pongo de Qoñec, sorpren- dentemente supera en riqueza a parcelas adyacentes dentro del sur peruano y muestra un patrón de riqueza de familias y géneros similar a parcelas peruanas diversas como Yanamono 300 especies y Mishana (289, en Loreto. Consideramos que esta inusual riqueza se debe en gran medida a factores ambientales únicos que se dan en este Pongo, como son la alta precipitación, dinámica de vientos y la variabilidad de suelos en áreas pequeñas. Por tanto estos resultados difieren considerablemente de enunciados conocidos, que consideran a la amazonia sur peruana con moderada a baja riqueza arbórea.

Work performance evaluation and QoL of adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD).

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Katz, Noomi; Dejak, Ifat; Gal, Eynat

2015-01-01

Studies suggest that adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD) are reliant on others for support in functioning in everyday life and employment. This study followed a work placement program for people with HFASD over a nine months period. It aimed to measure the trajectory of their work performance and Quality of life on jobs in the open market. Twenty-six participants with HFASD ages 18-40 underwent extensive evaluation and based on it were placed in various jobs on the open market. Participants were followed for nine months at their work place at four different time points. QoL was self-assessed in addition to work performance (WPE) which was assessed both by first-hand and team member's accounts. Team members are health professional who accompany and support the participants in the transition to their jobs. All 26 participants were able to maintain their jobs during the nine months of follow-up. WPE was perceived as high to start with, and its scores slightly improved by both people with HFASD and team members. Self-report suggests a significant change in the quality of life of the participants, specifically in their evaluations of self-competency. This study enhances the importance of providing people with HFASD with work placing programs and following up during actual work performance.

Structural features of single-stranded integron cassette attC sites and their role in strand selection.

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Marie Bouvier

2009-09-01

Full Text Available We recently showed that cassette integration and deletion in integron platforms were occurring through unconventional site-specific recombination reactions involving only the bottom strand of attC sites. The lack of sequence conservation among attC sites led us to hypothesize that sequence-independent structural recognition determinants must exist within attC sites. The structural data obtained from a synaptic complex of the Vibrio cholerae integrase with the bottom strand of an attC site has shown the importance of extra helical bases (EHB inside the stem-loop structure formed from the bottom strand. Here, we systematically determined the contribution of three structural elements common to all known single-stranded attC site recombination substrates (the EHBs, the unpaired central spacer (UCS, and the variable terminal structure (VTS to strand choice and recombination. Their roles have been evaluated in vivo in the attIxattC reaction context using the suicide conjugation assay we previously developed, but also in an attCxattC reaction using a deletion assay. Conjugation was used to deliver the attC sites in single-stranded form. Our results show that strand choice is primarily directed by the first EHB, but the presence of the two other EHBs also serves to increase this strand selection. We found that the structure of the central spacer is essential to achieve high level recombination of the bottom strand, suggesting a dual role for this structure in active site exclusion and for hindering the reverse reaction after the first strand exchange. Moreover, we have shown that the VTS has apparently no role in strand selectivity.

Exploring a QoS Driven Scheduling Approach for Peer-to-Peer Live Streaming Systems with Network Coding

Science.gov (United States)

Cui, Laizhong; Lu, Nan; Chen, Fu

2014-01-01

Most large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) live streaming systems use mesh to organize peers and leverage pull scheduling to transmit packets for providing robustness in dynamic environment. The pull scheduling brings large packet delay. Network coding makes the push scheduling feasible in mesh P2P live streaming and improves the efficiency. However, it may also introduce some extra delays and coding computational overhead. To improve the packet delay, streaming quality, and coding overhead, in this paper are as follows. we propose a QoS driven push scheduling approach. The main contributions of this paper are: (i) We introduce a new network coding method to increase the content diversity and reduce the complexity of scheduling; (ii) we formulate the push scheduling as an optimization problem and transform it to a min-cost flow problem for solving it in polynomial time; (iii) we propose a push scheduling algorithm to reduce the coding overhead and do extensive experiments to validate the effectiveness of our approach. Compared with previous approaches, the simulation results demonstrate that packet delay, continuity index, and coding ratio of our system can be significantly improved, especially in dynamic environments. PMID:25114968

Multi-Objective Resource Allocation Scheme for D2D Multicast with QoS Guarantees in Cellular Networks

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Fangmin Li

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Device-to-device (D2D multicast communication can greatly improve the spectrum utilization in a content delivery scenario. However, the co-channel interference and power consumption brought by D2D bring new challenges. All the D2D multicast groups expect to achieve a higher system capacity with less extra energy cost. In this paper, we investigate the uplink resource allocation issue when D2D multicast groups share the resources with other cellular uses (CUs, while guaranteeing a certain level of quality of service (QoS to CUs and D2D users. Firstly we address a flexible tradeoff framework in which the system power consumption and the system capacity (i.e., the number of admitted D2D links are assigned with different weight factors so that these two objectives are jointly considered. Then we propose an efficient resource optimization scheme, which comprises sub-channel allocation and signal-to-interference- plus-noise ratio (SINR assignment. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, and demonstrate the advantages in dealing with the proposed multi-objective optimization problem.

Cosmogenic Be-7 in grass of Maamora site

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

El-khoukhi, T.; Fidah, M.; Oublaid, B.

1994-01-01

Be-7 is one of the radionuclides produced by the nuclear reactions of protons and alpha particulates of galactic and solar cosmic rays as well as the secondary neutrons produced during those reactions. it is submitted, as soon as it is produced, to the physical and chemical laws of the environment, such as air motions or the fixing to the atmospheric aerosols. In the framework of environmental radioactivity monitoring programme of Maamora site (Morocco), samples of grass were collected, prepared and analyzed using gamma spectrometry. The preparation consists of drying and ashing the grass. The detector used is coaxial Ge HP with 20% efficiency. Samples were counted for more than 50000 s. The activity of Be-7 calculated for samples collected in 10 km around Maamora site varies between 4 and 20 Bq/g of ashed grass. 3 refs. (author)

Development of Bioorthogonal Reactions and Their Applications in Bioconjugation

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Mengmeng Zheng

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Biomolecule labeling using chemical probes with specific biological activities has played important roles for the elucidation of complicated biological processes. Selective bioconjugation strategies are highly-demanded in the construction of various small-molecule probes to explore complex biological systems. Bioorthogonal reactions that undergo fast and selective ligation under bio-compatible conditions have found diverse applications in the development of new bioconjugation strategies. The development of new bioorthogonal reactions in the past decade has been summarized with comments on their potentials as bioconjugation method in the construction of various biological probes for investigating their target biomolecules. For the applications of bioorthogonal reactions in the site-selective biomolecule conjugation, examples have been presented on the bioconjugation of protein, glycan, nucleic acids and lipids.

Laboratory testing of ozone oxidation of Hanford site waste

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Delegard, C.H.; Stubbs, A.M.; Bolling, S.D.; Colby, S.A.

1994-01-01

Organic constituents in radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site provoke safety concerns arising from their low-temperature reactions with nitrate and nitrite oxidants. Destruction of the organics would eliminate both safety problems. Oxone oxidation was investigated to destroy organic species present in simulated and genuine waste from Hanford Site Tank 241-SY-101. Bench-scale tests showed high-shear mixing apparatus achieved efficient gas-to-solution mass transfer and utilization of the ozone reagent. Oxidations of nitrite (to form nitrate) and organic species were observed. The organics formed carbonate and oxalate as well as nitrate and nitrogen gas from organic nitrogen. Formate, acetate and oxalate were present both in source waste and as reaction intermediates. Metal species oxidations also were observed directly or inferred by solubilities. Chemical precipitations of metal ions such as strontium and americium occurred as the organic species were destroyed by ozone. Reaction stoichiometries were consistent with the reduction of one oxygen atom per ozone molecule

Mechanistic insights into the dehalogenation reaction of fluoroacetate/fluoroacetic acid

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Miranda-Rojas, Sebastián; Toro-Labbé, Alejandro

2015-01-01

Fluoroacetate is a toxic compound whose environmental accumulation may represent an important contamination problem, its elimination is therefore a challenging issue. Fluoroacetate dehalogenase catalyzes its degradation through a two step process initiated by an S N 2 reaction in which the aspartate residue performs a nucleophilic attack on the carbon bonded to the fluorine; the second step is hydrolysis that releases the product as glycolate. In this paper, we present a study based on density functional theory calculations of the S N 2 initiation reaction modeled through the interaction between the substrate and the propionate anion as the nucleophile. Results are analyzed within the framework of the reaction force and using the reaction electronic flux to identify and characterize the electronic activity that drives the reaction. Our results reveal that the selective protonation of the substrate catalyzes the reaction by decreasing the resistance of the structural and electronic reorganization needed to reach the transition state. Finally, the reaction energy is modulated by the degree of stabilization of the fluoride anion formed after the S N 2 reaction. In this way, a site-induced partial protonation acts as a chemical switch in a key process that determines the output of the reaction

Mechanistic insights into the dehalogenation reaction of fluoroacetate/fluoroacetic acid

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Miranda-Rojas, Sebastián, E-mail: sebastian.miranda@unab.cl [Chemical Processes and Catalysis (CPC), Departamento de Ciencias Químicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Andres Bello, Avenida República 275, Santiago (Chile); Toro-Labbé, Alejandro [Laboratorio de Química Teórica Computacional (QTC), Facultad de Química, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avenida Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago (Chile)

2015-05-21