PyCSP - controlled concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vinter, Brian; Friborg, Rune Møllegaard; Bjørndalen, John Markus

2010-01-01

Producing readable and correct programs while at the same time taking advantage of multi-core architectures is a challenge. PyCSP is an implementation of Communicating Sequential Processes algebra (CSP) for the Python programming language, that take advantage of CSP's formal and verifiable approach...... to controlling concurrency and the readability of Python source code. We describe PyCSP, demonstrate it through examples and demonstrate how PyCSP compares to Pthreads in a master-worker benchmark....

PyCSP - controlled concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Friborg, Rune Møllegaard; Vinter, Brian; Bjørndalen, John Markus

Producing readable and correct programs while at the same time taking advantage of multi-core architectures is a challenge. PyCSP is an implementation of Communicating Sequential Processes algebra (CSP) for the Python programming language, taking advantage of CSP’s formal and verifiable approach...... to controlling concurrency and the readability of Python source code. We describe PyCSP, demonstrate it through examples and demonstrate how PyCSP compares to Pthreads using a benchmark....

Design and implementation of a nanosecond time-stamping readout system-on-chip for photo-detectors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anvar, Shebli; Château, Frédéric; Le Provost, Hervé; Louis, Frédéric; Manolopoulos, Konstantinos; Moudden, Yassir; Vallage, Bertrand; Zonca, Eric

2014-01-01

A readout system suitable for a large number of synchronized photo-detection units has been designed. Each unit embeds a specifically designed fully integrated communicating system based on Xilinx FPGA SoC technology. It runs the VxWorks real-time OS and a custom data acquisition software designed within the Ice middleware framework, resulting in a highly flexible, controllable and scalable distributed application. Clock distribution and delay calibration over customized fixed latency gigabit Ethernet links enable synchronous time-stamping of events with nanosecond precision. The implementation of this readout system on several data-collecting units as well as its performances are described

Concurrent control system for the JAERI tandem accelerator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hanashima, S.; Shoji, T.; Horie, K.; Tsukihashi, Y.

1992-01-01

Concurrent processing with a multiprocessor system is introduced to the particle accelerator control system region. The control system is a good application in both logical and physical aspects. A renewal plan of the control system for the JAERI tandem accelerator is discussed. (author)

Unifying refinement and hoare-style reasoning in a logic for higher-order concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Turon, Aaron; Dreyer, Derek; Birkedal, Lars

2013-01-01

Modular programming and modular verification go hand in hand, but most existing logics for concurrency ignore two crucial forms of modularity: *higher-order functions*, which are essential for building reusable components, and *granularity abstraction*, a key technique for hiding the intricacies ...

Rethinking serializable multiversion concurrency control

OpenAIRE

Faleiro, Jose M.; Abadi, Daniel J.

2014-01-01

Multi-versioned database systems have the potential to significantly increase the amount of concurrency in transaction processing because they can avoid read-write conflicts. Unfortunately, the increase in concurrency usually comes at the cost of transaction serializability. If a database user requests full serializability, modern multi-versioned systems significantly constrain read-write concurrency among conflicting transactions and employ expensive synchronization patterns in their design....

A Highly Concurrent Replicated Data Structure EAI Endorsed Transactions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mumtaz Ahmad

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Well defined concurrent replicated data structure is very important to design collaborative editing system, particularly, certain properties like out-of-order execution of concurrent operations and data convergence. In this paper, we introduce novel linear data structure based on unique identifier scheme required for indexed communication. These identifiers are real numbers holding specific pattern of precision. Based on the uniqueness and the total order of these identifiers, here, we present two concurrency control techniques to achieve high degree of concurrency according to strong and lazy happened-before relations. Our data structure preserves data convergence, yields better performance and avoids overheads as compared to existing approaches.

23 CFR 751.23 - Concurrent junkyard control and right-of-way projects.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

...-way projects. The State is encouraged to coordinate junkyard control and highway right-of-way projects. Expenses incurred in furtherance of concurrent projects shall be prorated between projects. ... 23 Highways 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Concurrent junkyard control and right-of-way projects...

Concurrent control system for the JAERI tandem accelerator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hanashima, Susumu; Shozi, Tokio; Shiozaki, Yasuo; Saito, Motoi; Oogane, Yasuo; Sekiguchi, Satoshi.

1994-01-01

A new control system for the JAERI tandem accelerator is constructed. The system utilizes concurrent processing technology with multiprocessor. Transputers are used both for central processor and I/O front end processors. (author)

Mechanical verification of concurrency control and recovery protocols

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chkliaev, D.

2001-01-01

The thesis concerns the formal specification and mechanized verification of concurrency control and recovery protocols for distributed databases. Such protocols are needed for many modern application such as banking and are often used in safety-critical applications. Therefore it is very important

Cardiac Vagal Tone and Quality of Parenting Show Concurrent and Time-Ordered Associations That Diverge in Abusive, Neglectful, and Non-Maltreating Mothers

Science.gov (United States)

Skowron, Elizabeth A.; Cipriano-Essel, Elizabeth; Benjamin, Lorna Smith; Pincus, Aaron L.; Van Ryzin, Mark J.

2014-01-01

Concurrent and lagged maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was monitored in the context of parenting. One hundred and forty-one preschooler-mother dyads—involved with child welfare as documented perpetrators of child abuse or neglect, or non-maltreating (non-CM)—were observed completing a resting baseline and joint challenge task. Parenting behaviors were coded using SASB (Benjamin, 1996) and maternal RSA was simultaneously monitored, longitudinally-nested within-person (WP), and subjected to MLM. Abusive and neglectful mothers displayed less positive parenting and more strict/hostile control, relative to non-CM mothers. Non-CM mothers displayed greater WP heterogeneity in variance over time in their RSA scores, and greater consistency over time in their parenting behaviors, relative to abusive or neglectful mothers. CM group also moderated concurrent and lagged WP associations in RSA and positive parenting. When abusive mothers displayed lower RSA in a given epoch, relative to their task average, they showed concurrent increases in positive parenting, and higher subsequent levels of hostile control in the following epoch, suggesting that it is physiologically taxing for abusive mothers to parent in positive ways. In contrast, lagged effects for non-CM mothers were observed in which RSA decreases led to subsequent WP increases in positive parenting and decreases in control. Reversed models were significant only for neglectful mothers: Increases in positive parenting led to subsequent increases in RSA levels, and increases in strict, hostile control led to subsequent RSA decreases. These results provide new evidence that concurrent and time-ordered coupling in maternal physiology and behavior during parenting vary in theoretically meaningful ways across CM and non-CM mothers. Implications for intervention and study limitations are discussed. PMID:24729945

Cardiac Vagal Tone and Quality of Parenting Show Concurrent and Time-Ordered Associations That Diverge in Abusive, Neglectful, and Non-Maltreating Mothers.

Science.gov (United States)

Skowron, Elizabeth A; Cipriano-Essel, Elizabeth; Benjamin, Lorna Smith; Pincus, Aaron L; Van Ryzin, Mark J

2013-06-01

Concurrent and lagged maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was monitored in the context of parenting. One hundred and forty-one preschooler-mother dyads-involved with child welfare as documented perpetrators of child abuse or neglect, or non-maltreating (non-CM)-were observed completing a resting baseline and joint challenge task. Parenting behaviors were coded using SASB (Benjamin, 1996) and maternal RSA was simultaneously monitored, longitudinally-nested within-person (WP), and subjected to MLM. Abusive and neglectful mothers displayed less positive parenting and more strict/hostile control, relative to non-CM mothers. Non-CM mothers displayed greater WP heterogeneity in variance over time in their RSA scores, and greater consistency over time in their parenting behaviors, relative to abusive or neglectful mothers. CM group also moderated concurrent and lagged WP associations in RSA and positive parenting. When abusive mothers displayed lower RSA in a given epoch, relative to their task average, they showed concurrent increases in positive parenting, and higher subsequent levels of hostile control in the following epoch, suggesting that it is physiologically taxing for abusive mothers to parent in positive ways. In contrast, lagged effects for non-CM mothers were observed in which RSA decreases led to subsequent WP increases in positive parenting and decreases in control. Reversed models were significant only for neglectful mothers: Increases in positive parenting led to subsequent increases in RSA levels, and increases in strict, hostile control led to subsequent RSA decreases. These results provide new evidence that concurrent and time-ordered coupling in maternal physiology and behavior during parenting vary in theoretically meaningful ways across CM and non-CM mothers. Implications for intervention and study limitations are discussed.

MLIP: A Concurrent Approach for Clipping Indexing

OpenAIRE

Majoju Ravinder; R.Vijay Prakash

2011-01-01

Multidimensional databases are beginning to be used in a wide range of applications. To meet this fast-growing demand, the R-tree family is being applied to support fast access to multidimensional data, for which the R+-tree exhibits outstanding search performance. In order to support efficient concurrent access in multi-user environments, concurrency control mechanisms for multidimensional indexing have been proposed. However, these mechanisms cannot be directly applied to the R+-tree becaus...

Photon-HDF5: An Open File Format for Timestamp-Based Single-Molecule Fluorescence Experiments

OpenAIRE

Ingargiola, Antonino; Laurence, Ted; Boutelle, Robert; Weiss, Shimon; Michalet, Xavier

2016-01-01

We introduce Photon-HDF5, an open and efficient file format to simplify exchange and long-term accessibility of data from single-molecule fluorescence experiments based on photon-counting detectors such as single-photon avalanche diode, photomultiplier tube, or arrays of such detectors. The format is based on HDF5, a widely used platform- and language-independent hierarchical file format for which user-friendly viewers are available. Photon-HDF5 can store raw photon data (timestamp, channel n...

Reference Capabilities for Concurrency Control

OpenAIRE

Castegren, Elias; Wrigstad, Tobias

2016-01-01

The proliferation of shared mutable state in object-oriented programming complicates software development as two seemingly unrelated operations may interact via an alias and produce unexpected results. In concurrent programming this manifests itself as data-races. Concurrent object-oriented programming further suffers from the fact that code that warrants synchronisation cannot easily be distinguished from code that does not. The burden is placed solely on the programmer to reason ab...

A Concurrent Logical Relation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Birkedal, Lars; Sieczkowski, Filip; Thamsborg, Jacob Junker

2012-01-01

We present a logical relation for showing the correctness of program transformations based on a new type-and-effect system for a concurrent extension of an ML-like language with higher-order functions, higher-order store and dynamic memory allocation. We show how to use our model to verify a number....... To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such result for a concurrent higher-order language with higher-order store and dynamic memory allocation....

Concurrent transition of ferroelectric and magnetic ordering near room temperature.

Science.gov (United States)

Ko, Kyung-Tae; Jung, Min Hwa; He, Qing; Lee, Jin Hong; Woo, Chang Su; Chu, Kanghyun; Seidel, Jan; Jeon, Byung-Gu; Oh, Yoon Seok; Kim, Kee Hoon; Liang, Wen-I; Chen, Hsiang-Jung; Chu, Ying-Hao; Jeong, Yoon Hee; Ramesh, Ramamoorthy; Park, Jae-Hoon; Yang, Chan-Ho

2011-11-29

Strong spin-lattice coupling in condensed matter gives rise to intriguing physical phenomena such as colossal magnetoresistance and giant magnetoelectric effects. The phenomenological hallmark of such a strong spin-lattice coupling is the manifestation of a large anomaly in the crystal structure at the magnetic transition temperature. Here we report that the magnetic Néel temperature of the multiferroic compound BiFeO(3) is suppressed to around room temperature by heteroepitaxial misfit strain. Remarkably, the ferroelectric state undergoes a first-order transition to another ferroelectric state simultaneously with the magnetic transition temperature. Our findings provide a unique example of a concurrent magnetic and ferroelectric transition at the same temperature among proper ferroelectrics, taking a step toward room temperature magnetoelectric applications.

Controlled Owicki-Gries Concurrency: Reasoning about the Preemptible eChronos Embedded Operating System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

June Andronick

2015-11-01

Full Text Available We introduce a controlled concurrency framework, derived from the Owicki-Gries method, for describing a hardware interface in detail sufficient to support the modelling and verification of small, embedded operating systems (OS's whose run-time responsiveness is paramount. Such real-time systems run with interrupts mostly enabled, including during scheduling. That differs from many other successfully modelled and verified OS's that typically reduce the complexity of concurrency by running on uniprocessor platforms and by switching interrupts off as much as possible. Our framework builds on the traditional Owicki-Gries method, for its fine-grained concurrency is needed for high-performance system code. We adapt it to support explicit concurrency control, by providing a simple, faithful representation of the hardware interface that allows software to control the degree of interleaving between user code, OS code, interrupt handlers and a scheduler that controls context switching. We then apply this framework to model the interleaving behavior of the eChronos OS, a preemptible real-time OS for embedded micro-controllers. We discuss the accuracy and usability of our approach when instantiated to model the eChronos OS. Both our framework and the eChronos model are formalised in the Isabelle/HOL theorem prover, taking advantage of the high level of automation in modern reasoning tools.

Concurrency control in distributed database systems

CERN Document Server

Cellary, W; Gelenbe, E

1989-01-01

Distributed Database Systems (DDBS) may be defined as integrated database systems composed of autonomous local databases, geographically distributed and interconnected by a computer network.The purpose of this monograph is to present DDBS concurrency control algorithms and their related performance issues. The most recent results have been taken into consideration. A detailed analysis and selection of these results has been made so as to include those which will promote applications and progress in the field. The application of the methods and algorithms presented is not limited to DDBSs but a

Concurrent Learning of Control in Multi agent Sequential Decision Tasks

Science.gov (United States)

2018-04-17

Concurrent Learning of Control in Multi-agent Sequential Decision Tasks The overall objective of this project was to develop multi-agent reinforcement... learning (MARL) approaches for intelligent agents to autonomously learn distributed control policies in decentral- ized partially observable... learning of policies in Dec-POMDPs, established performance bounds, evaluated these algorithms both theoretically and empirically, The views

Olfactory Performance Can Be Influenced by the Presentation Order, Background Noise, and Positive Concurrent Feedback.

Science.gov (United States)

Walliczek-Dworschak, Ute; Pellegrino, Robert; Lee, Shangwa; Hummel, Cornelia; Hähner, Antje; Hummel, Thomas

2016-10-01

Sniffin' Sticks have become a popular procedure to measure overall olfactory functionality with 3 subtest: phenyl ethyl alcohol threshold test (T), discrimination (D), and identification (I). However, several procedural components specified by the original paper have not been tested nor has the impact of deviations been measured. The aim of the present work was to measure olfactory performance under modified testing procedures. First, the reverse order of subtests (IDT) was compared with more standard practices (TDI). Next, the possible impact of background noise and positive concurrent feedback were assessed. A total of 120 individuals participated in the study where the 3 conditional experiments, each involving 40 participants, were completed. Testing procedures that reversed the presentation order of subtests (I->D->T) scored a significantly lower overall TDI score than standard testing order with the threshold subtest being the most influenced. Additionally, nonverbal background noise lowered overall olfactory performance while concurrent feedback modulated threshold performance. These results emphasize the importance of testing parameters where olfactory perception and tasks may be modulated by adaptation and attentional distraction, respectively. This study helped furthermore to demonstrate that the investigated 3 deviations from the standard procedure revealed a significant impact on the performance outcome in olfactory assessment using the Sniffin' Sticks. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Impredicative concurrent abstract predicates

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svendsen, Kasper; Birkedal, Lars

2014-01-01

We present impredicative concurrent abstract predicates { iCAP { a program logic for modular reasoning about concurrent, higher- order, reentrant, imperative code. Building on earlier work, iCAP uses protocols to reason about shared mutable state. A key novel feature of iCAP is the ability to dene...

The order of exercise during concurrent training for rehabilitation does not alter acute genetic expression, mitochondrial enzyme activity or improvements in muscle function.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lauren G MacNeil

Full Text Available Concurrent exercise combines different modes of exercise (e.g., aerobic and resistance into one training protocol, providing stimuli meant to increase muscle strength, aerobic capacity and mass. As disuse is associated with decrements in strength, aerobic capacity and muscle size concurrent training is an attractive modality for rehabilitation. However, interference between the signaling pathways may result in preferential improvements for one of the exercise modes. We recruited 18 young adults (10 ♂, 8 ♀ to determine if order of exercise mode during concurrent training would differentially affect gene expression, protein content and measures of strength and aerobic capacity after 2 weeks of knee-brace induced disuse. Concurrent exercise sessions were performed 3x/week for 6 weeks at gradually increasing intensities either with endurance exercise preceding (END>RES or following (RES>END resistance exercise. Biopsies were collected from the vastus lateralis before, 3 h after the first exercise bout and 48 h after the end of training. Concurrent exercise altered the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis (PGC-1α, PRC, PPARγ, hypertrophy (PGC-1α4, REDD2, Rheb and atrophy (MuRF-1, Runx1, increased electron transport chain complex protein content, citrate synthase and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase enzyme activity, muscle mass, maximum isometric strength and VO 2peak. However, the order in which exercise was completed (END>RES or RES>END only affected the protein content of mitochondrial complex II subunit. In conclusion, concurrent exercise training is an effective modality for the rehabilitation of the loss of skeletal muscle mass, maximum strength, and peak aerobic capacity resulting from disuse, regardless of the order in which the modes of exercise are performed.

The IceCube data acquisition system: Signal capture, digitization,and timestamping

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The IceCube Collaboration; Matis, Howard

2009-03-02

IceCube is a km-scale neutrino observatory under construction at the South Pole with sensors both in the deep ice (InIce) and on the surface (IceTop). The sensors, called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), detect, digitize and timestamp the signals from optical Cherenkov-radiation photons. The DOM Main Board (MB) data acquisition subsystem is connected to the central DAQ in the IceCube Laboratory (ICL) by a single twisted copper wire-pair and transmits packetized data on demand. Time calibration ismaintained throughout the array by regular transmission to the DOMs of precisely timed analog signals, synchronized to a central GPS-disciplined clock. The design goals and consequent features, functional capabilities, and initial performance of the DOM MB, and the operation of a combined array of DOMs as a system, are described here. Experience with the first InIce strings and the IceTop stations indicates that the system design and performance goals have been achieved.

Performance analysis of a real-time database with optimistic concurrency control

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sassen, S.A.E.; Wal, van der J.

1997-01-01

For a real-time shared-memory database with Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC), an approximation for the transaction response-time distribution and thus for the deadline miss probability is obtained. Transactions arrive at the database according to a Poisson process. There is a limited number of

Performance measurement, modeling, and evaluation of integrated concurrency control and recovery algorithms in distributed data base systems

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jenq, B.C.

1986-01-01

The performance evaluation of integrated concurrency-control and recovery mechanisms for distributed data base systems is studied using a distributed testbed system. In addition, a queueing network model was developed to analyze the two phase locking scheme in the distributed testbed system. The combination of testbed measurement and analytical modeling provides an effective tool for understanding the performance of integrated concurrency control and recovery algorithms in distributed database systems. The design and implementation of the distributed testbed system, CARAT, are presented. The concurrency control and recovery algorithms implemented in CARAT include: a two phase locking scheme with distributed deadlock detection, a distributed version of optimistic approach, before-image and after-image journaling mechanisms for transaction recovery, and a two-phase commit protocol. Many performance measurements were conducted using a variety of workloads. A queueing network model is developed to analyze the performance of the CARAT system using the two-phase locking scheme with before-image journaling. The combination of testbed measurements and analytical modeling provides significant improvements in understanding the performance impacts of the concurrency control and recovery algorithms in distributed database systems.

Semantic-Based Concurrency Control for Object-Oriented Database Systems Supporting Real-Time Applications

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Lee, Juhnyoung; Son, Sang H

1994-01-01

.... This paper investigates major issues in designing semantic-based concurrency control for object-oriented database systems supporting real-time applications, and it describes approaches to solving...

Concurrent design of an RTP chamber and advanced control system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Spence, P. [Sandia National Labs., Livermore, CA (United States); Schaper, C. [Microelectronics Control and Sensing, Inc., Mountain View, CA (United States); Kermani, A. [CVC Products, Inc., Fremont, CA (United States)

1995-12-31

A concurrent-engineering approach is applied to the development of an axisymmetric rapid-thermal-processing (RTP) reactor and its associated temperature controller. Using a detailed finite-element thermal model as a surrogate for actual hardware, the authors have developed and tested a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) controller. Closed-loop simulations are performed by linking the control algorithm with the finite-element code. Simulations show that good temperature uniformity is maintained on the wafer during both steady and transient conditions. A numerical study shows the effect of ramp rate, feedback gain, sensor placement, and wafer-emissivity patterns on system performance.

Stroop proactive control and task conflict are modulated by concurrent working memory load.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalanthroff, Eyal; Avnit, Amir; Henik, Avishai; Davelaar, Eddy J; Usher, Marius

2015-06-01

Performance on the Stroop task reflects two types of conflict-informational (between the incongruent word and font color) and task (between the contextually relevant color-naming task and the irrelevant, but automatic, word-reading task). According to the dual mechanisms of control theory (DMC; Braver, 2012), variability in Stroop performance can result from variability in the deployment of a proactive task-demand control mechanism. Previous research has shown that when proactive control (PC) is diminished, both increased Stroop interference and a reversed Stroop facilitation (RF) are observed. Although the current DMC model accounts for the former effect, it does not predict the observed RF, which is considered to be behavioral evidence for task conflict in the Stroop task. Here we expanded the DMC model to account for Stroop RF. Assuming that a concurrent working memory (WM) task reduces PC, we predicted both increased interference and an RF. Nineteen participants performed a standard Stroop task combined with a concurrent n-back task, which was aimed at reducing available WM resources, and thus overloading PC. Although the results indicated common Stroop interference and facilitation in the low-load condition (zero-back), in the high-load condition (two-back), both increased Stroop interference and RF were observed, consistent with the model's prediction. These findings indicate that PC is modulated by concurrent WM load and serves as a common control mechanism for both informational and task Stroop conflicts.

Photon-HDF5: Open Data Format and Computational Tools for Timestamp-based Single-Molecule Experiments.

Science.gov (United States)

Ingargiola, Antonino; Laurence, Ted; Boutelle, Robert; Weiss, Shimon; Michalet, Xavier

2016-02-13

Archival of experimental data in public databases has increasingly become a requirement for most funding agencies and journals. These data-sharing policies have the potential to maximize data reuse, and to enable confirmatory as well as novel studies. However, the lack of standard data formats can severely hinder data reuse. In photon-counting-based single-molecule fluorescence experiments, data is stored in a variety of vendor-specific or even setup-specific (custom) file formats, making data interchange prohibitively laborious, unless the same hardware-software combination is used. Moreover, the number of available techniques and setup configurations make it difficult to find a common standard. To address this problem, we developed Photon-HDF5 (www.photon-hdf5.org), an open data format for timestamp-based single-molecule fluorescence experiments. Building on the solid foundation of HDF5, Photon-HDF5 provides a platform- and language-independent, easy-to-use file format that is self-describing and supports rich metadata. Photon-HDF5 supports different types of measurements by separating raw data (e.g. photon-timestamps, detectors, etc) from measurement metadata. This approach allows representing several measurement types and setup configurations within the same core structure and makes possible extending the format in backward-compatible way. Complementing the format specifications, we provide open source software to create and convert Photon-HDF5 files, together with code examples in multiple languages showing how to read Photon-HDF5 files. Photon-HDF5 allows sharing data in a format suitable for long term archival, avoiding the effort to document custom binary formats and increasing interoperability with different analysis software. We encourage participation of the single-molecule community to extend interoperability and to help defining future versions of Photon-HDF5.

Data-centric concurrency control on the java programming language

OpenAIRE

Parreira, Daniel Luis Landeiroto

2013-01-01

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática The multi-core paradigm has propelled shared-memory concurrent programming to an important role in software development. Its use is however limited by the constructs that provide a layer of abstraction for synchronizing access to shared resources. Reasoning with these constructs is not trivial due to their concurrent nature. Data-races and deadlocks occur in concurrent programs, encumbering the programmer and furth...

The Effect of Concurrent Visual Feedback on Controlling Swimming Speed

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Szczepan Stefan

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Introduction. Developing the ability to control the speed of swimming is an important part of swimming training. Maintaining a defined constant speed makes it possible for the athlete to swim economically at a low physiological cost. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of concurrent visual feedback transmitted by the Leader device on the control of swimming speed in a single exercise test. Material and methods. The study involved a group of expert swimmers (n = 20. Prior to the experiment, the race time for the 100 m distance was determined for each of the participants. In the experiment, the participants swam the distance of 100 m without feedback and with visual feedback. In both variants, the task of the participants was to swim the test distance in a time as close as possible to the time designated prior to the experiment. In the first version of the experiment (without feedback, the participants swam the test distance without receiving real-time feedback on their swimming speed. In the second version (with visual feedback, the participants followed a beam of light moving across the bottom of the swimming pool, generated by the Leader device. Results. During swimming with visual feedback, the 100 m race time was significantly closer to the time designated. The difference between the pre-determined time and the time obtained was significantly statistically lower during swimming with visual feedback (p = 0.00002. Conclusions. Concurrently transmitting visual feedback to athletes improves their control of swimming speed. The Leader device has proven useful in controlling swimming speed.

True Concurrency can be Traced

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Engberg, Uffe Henrik

1990-01-01

In this paper sets of labelled partial orders are employed as fundamental mathematical entities for modelling nondeterministic and concurrent processes thereby obtaining so-called noninterleaving semantics. Based on closures of sets of labelled partial orders, a simple algebraic language with ref...

The response time distribution in a real-time database with optimistic concurrency control

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sassen, S.A.E.; Wal, van der J.

1996-01-01

For a real-time shared-memory database with optimistic concurrency control, an approximation for the transaction response time distribution is obtained. The model assumes that transactions arrive at the database according to a Poisson process, that every transaction uses an equal number of

Algebraic topology and concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fajstrup, Lisbeth; Raussen, Martin; Goubault, Eric

2006-01-01

We show in this article that some concepts from homotopy theory, in algebraic topology,are relevant for studying concurrent programs. We exhibit a natural semantics of semaphore programs, based on partially ordered topological spaces, which are studied up to “elastic deformation” or homotopy...... differences between ordinary and directed homotopy through examples. We also relate the topological view to a combinatorial view of concurrent programs closer to transition systems, through the notion of a cubical set. Finally we apply some of these concepts to the proof of the safeness of a two...

The Effects of a Concurrent Task on Human Optimization and Self Control

Science.gov (United States)

Reed, Phil; Thompson, Caitlin; Osborne, Lisa A.; McHugh, Louise

2011-01-01

Memory deficits have been shown to hamper decision making in a number of populations. In two experiments, participants were required to select one of three alternatives that varied in reinforcer amount and delay, and the effect of a concurrent task on a behavioral choice task that involved making either an impulsive, self-controlled, or optimal…

Type and Behaviour Reconstruction for Higher-Order Concurrent Programs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Amtoft, T.; Nielson, Flemming; Nielson, Hanne Riis

1997-01-01

The authors develop a sound and complete type and behaviour inference algorithm for a fragment of CML (Standard ML with primitives for concurrency). Behaviours resemble terms of a process algebra and yield a concise representation of the communications taking place during execution; types...... are mostly as usual except that function types and `delayed communication types' are labelled by behaviours expressing the communications that will take place if the function is applied or the delayed action is activated. The development of the paper improves a previously published algorithm in achieving...

Learning from Mistakes --- A Comprehensive Study on Real World Concurrency Bug Characteristics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shan Lu; Soyeon Park; Eunsoo Seo; Yuanyuan Zhou

2008-01-01

The reality of multi-core hardware has made concurrent programs pervasive. Unfortunately, writing correct concurrent programs is difficult. Addressing this challenge requires advances in multiple directions, including concurrency bug detection, concurrent program testing, concurrent programming model design, etc. Designing effective techniques in all these directions will significantly benefit from a deep understanding of real world concurrency bug characteristics. This paper provides the first (to the best of our knowledge) comprehensive real world concurrency bug characteristic study. Specifically, we have carefully examined concurrency bug patterns, manifestation, and fix strategies of 105 randomly selected real world concurrency bugs from 4 representative server and client opensource applications (MySQL, Apache, Mozilla and OpenOffice). Our study reveals several interesting findings and provides useful guidance for concurrency bug detection, testing, and concurrent programming language design. Some of our findings are as follows: (1) Around one third of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs are caused by violation to programmers order intentions, which may not be easily expressed via synchronization primitives like locks and transactional memories; (2) Around 34% of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs involve multiple variables, which are not well addressed by existing bug detection tools; (3) About 92% of the examined concurrency bugs can be reliably triggered by enforcing certain orders among no more than 4 memory accesses. This indicates that testing concurrent programs can target at exploring possible orders among every small groups of memory accesses, instead of among all memory accesses; (4) About 73% of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs were not fixed by simply adding or changing locks, and many of the fixes were not correct at the first try, indicating the difficulty of reasoning concurrent execution by programmers.

Reference Capabilities for Trait Based Reuse and Concurrency Control

OpenAIRE

Castegren, Elias; Wrigstad, Tobias

2016-01-01

The proliferation of shared mutable state in object-orientedprogramming complicates software development as two seeminglyunrelated operations may interact via an alias and produceunexpected results. In concurrent programming this manifestsitself as data-races. Concurrent object-oriented programming further suffers from thefact that code that warrants synchronisation cannot easily bedistinguished from code that does not. The burden is placed solelyon the programmer to reason about alias freedo...

Transactions Concurrency Control in Web Service Environment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alrifai, Mohammad; Dolog, Peter; Nejdl, Wolfgang

2006-01-01

an engineering point of view as it does not change the way consumers or clients of web services have to be programmed. Furthermore, it avoids direct communication between transaction coordinators which preserves security by keeping the information about business transactions restricted to the coordinators which......Business transactions in web service environments run with relaxed isolation and atomicity property. In such environments, transactions can commit and roll back independently on each other. Transaction management has to reflect this issue and address the problems which result for example from...... concurrent access to web service resources and data. In this paper we propose an extension to the WS-Transaction Protocol which ensures the consistency of the data when independent business transactions access the data concurrently under the relaxed transaction properties. Our extension is based...

A Tactical Database for the Low Cost Combat Direction System

Science.gov (United States)

1990-12-01

A Tactical Database for the Low Cost Combat Direction System by Everton G. de Paula Captain, Brazilian Air Force B.S., Instituto Tecnologico de...objects as a unit. The AVANCE object management system [Ref. 29] uses the timestamp 156 model (pessimistic approach) for concurrency control. The Vbase...are no longer used). In AVANCE [Ref. 291, garbage collection is performed on user request. In GemStone [Ref. 25], garbage collection is executed in

Concurrent Collections

OpenAIRE

Budimlić, Zoran; Burke, Michael; Cavé, Vincent; Knobe, Kathleen; Lowney, Geoff; Newton, Ryan; Palsberg, Jens; Peixotto, David; Sarkar, Vivek; Schlimbach, Frank; Taşırlar, Sağnak

2010-01-01

We introduce the Concurrent Collections (CnC) programming model. CnC supports flexible combinations of task and data parallelism while retaining determinism. CnC is implicitly parallel, with the user providing high-level operations along with semantic ordering constraints that together form a CnC graph. We formally describe the execution semantics of CnC and prove that the model guarantees deterministic computation. We evaluate the performance of CnC implementations on several applications an...

Modal abstractions of concurrent behavior

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielson, Flemming; Nanz, Sebastian; Nielson, Hanne Riis

2011-01-01

We present an effective algorithm for the automatic construction of finite modal transition systems as abstractions of potentially infinite concurrent processes. Modal transition systems are recognized as valuable abstractions for model checking because they allow for the validation as well...... as refutation of safety and liveness properties. However, the algorithmic construction of finite abstractions from potentially infinite concurrent processes is a missing link that prevents their more widespread usage for model checking of concurrent systems. Our algorithm is a worklist algorithm using concepts...... from abstract interpretation and operating upon mappings from sets to intervals in order to express simultaneous over- and underapprox-imations of the multisets of process actions available in a particular state. We obtain a finite abstraction that is 3-valued in both states and transitions...

Concurrent LISP and its interpreter

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tabata, K; Sugimoto, S; Ohno, Y

1981-01-01

In the research field of artificial intelligence many languages have been developed based on LISP, such as Planner, Conniver and so on. They have been developed to give users many useful facilities, especially for describing flexible control structures. Backtracking and coroutine facilities are typical ones introduced into these languages. Compared with backtracking and coroutine facilities, multi-process description facilities are considered to be a better alternative for writing well-structured programs. This paper describes concurrent LISP, a new concurrent programming language based on LISP. Concurrent LISP is designed to provide simple and flexible facilities for multi-process description without changing the original language features of LISP. This paper also describes the concurrent LISP interpreter which has been implemented on a FACOM M-200 at the Data Processing Center of Kyoto University. 19 references.

Construction of Time-Stamped Mobility Map for Path Tracking via Smith-Waterman Measurement Matching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mu Zhou

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Path tracking in wireless and mobile environments is a fundamental technology for ubiquitous location-based services (LBSs. In particular, it is very challenging to develop highly accurate and cost-efficient tracking systems applied to the anonymous areas where the floor plans are not available for security and privacy reasons. This paper proposes a novel path tracking approach for large Wi-Fi areas based on the time-stamped unlabeled mobility map which is constructed from Smith-Waterman received signal strength (RSS measurement matching. Instead of conventional location fingerprinting, we construct mobility map with the technique of dimension reduction from the raw measurement space into a low-dimensional embedded manifold. The feasibility of our proposed approach is verified by the real-world experiments in the HKUST campus Wi-Fi networks, sMobileNet. The experimental results prove that our approach is adaptive and capable of achieving an adequate precision level in path tracking.

Raising Test Scores vs. Teaching Higher Order Thinking (HOT): Senior Science Teachers' Views on How Several Concurrent Policies Affect Classroom Practices

Science.gov (United States)

Zohar, Anat; Alboher Agmon, Vered

2018-01-01

Purpose: This study investigates how senior science teachers viewed the effects of a Raising Test Scores policy and its implementation on instruction of higher order thinking (HOT), and on teaching thinking to students with low academic achievements. Background: The study was conducted in the context of three concurrent policies advocating: (a)…

Effects of concurrent and aerobic exercises on postexercise hypotension in elderly hypertensive men.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferrari, Rodrigo; Umpierre, Daniel; Vogel, Guilherme; Vieira, Paulo J C; Santos, Lucas P; de Mello, Renato Bandeira; Tanaka, Hirofumi; Fuchs, Sandra C

2017-11-01

Despite the fact that simultaneous performance of resistance and aerobic exercises (i.e., concurrent exercise) has become a standard exercise prescription for the elderly, no information is available on its effects on post-exercise hypotension (PEH) in elderly men with hypertension. To compare the effects of different types of exercise on PEH in elderly men with hypertension. Twenty elderly men with essential hypertension participated in three crossover interventions, in random order, and on separate days: a non-exercise control session at seated rest, aerobic exercise performed for 45min, and 45min of concurrent resistance and aerobic exercise consisted of 4 sets of 8 repetitions at 70% 1RM of resistance exercise followed by aerobic exercise on treadmill. After each session, blood pressure (BP) was measured continuously for 1h in the laboratory and for 24h under ambulatory conditions. During the first hour in laboratory, diastolic BP was lower after aerobic (-5mmHg) and concurrent exercise (-6mmHg) in comparison with Control. Day-time diastolic BP was significantly lower after aerobic exercise (-7mmHg) when compared to the control. No significant differences were found among the three experimental sessions for night-time and 24-hour diastolic BP, as well as day-time, night-time and 24-hour systolic BP. Concurrent exercise produced acute PEH similar to aerobic exercise but such effect did not last as long as aerobic exercise in elderly patients with essential hypertension. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Applying fractional order PID to design TCSC-based damping controller in coordination with automatic generation control of interconnected multi-source power system

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Javad Morsali

2017-02-01

Full Text Available In this paper, fractional order proportional-integral-differential (FOPID controller is employed in the design of thyristor controlled series capacitor (TCSC-based damping controller in coordination with the secondary integral controller as automatic generation control (AGC loop. In doing so, the contribution of the TCSC in tie-line power exchange is extracted mathematically for small load disturbance. Adjustable parameters of the proposed FOPID-based TCSC damping controller and the AGC loop are optimized concurrently via an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO algorithm which is reinforced by chaotic parameter and crossover operator to obtain a globally optimal solution. The powerful FOMCON toolbox is used along with MATLAB for handling fractional order modeling and control. An interconnected multi-source power system is simulated regarding the physical constraints of generation rate constraint (GRC nonlinearity and governor dead band (GDB effect. Simulation results using FOMCON toolbox demonstrate that the proposed FOPID-based TCSC damping controller achieves the greatest dynamic performance under different load perturbation patterns in comparison with phase lead-lag and classical PID-based TCSC damping controllers, all in coordination with the integral AGC. Moreover, sensitivity analyses are performed to show the robustness of the proposed controller under various uncertainty scenarios.

Concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fu, K.K.

1985-01-01

The principal objective of combining chemotherapy with radiotherapy (XRT) for the treatment of advanced head and neck cancer is to improve the therapeutic ratio through the enhancement of local control and reduction of distant metastases without excessively enhancing normal tissue effects. Improved tumour control can result from sole additivity of either therapy or direct interactions between drug and radiation leading to increased tumour cell kill. Chemotherapy may sensitize the cells to radiation, interfere with repair of sublethal or potentially lethal radiation damage, induce cell synchrony, and reduce tumour mass leading to reoxygenation and decreased fraction of resistant hypoxic cells. Radiation may improve drug accessibility to tumour cells and reduce tumour volume leading to increased cell proliferation and chemosensitivity. If the enhanced effects of combined therapy are purely additive, then the two modalities can be administered either sequentially or concurrently with the same results. However, if the enhanced effects result from the direct interaction between drug and radiation, it is necessary that the two modalities be administered concurrently and in close temporal proximity. This review summarizes the results of clinical studies in which chemotherapy was administered concurrently during the course of radiotherapy for patients with previously untreated advanced squamous cell carcinoma in the head and neck

Domain Theory for Concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nygaard, Mikkel

and associated comonads, it highlights the role of linearity in concurrent computation. Two choices of comonad yield two expressive metalanguages for higher-order processes, both arising from canonical constructions in the model. Their denotational semantics are fully abstract with respect to contextual...... equivalence. One language, called HOPLA for Higher-Order Process LAnguage, derives from an exponential of linear logic. It can be viewed as an extension of the simply-typed lambda calculus with CCS-like nondeterministic sum and prefix operations, in which types express the form of computation path of which...

Concurrent sourcing as a mechanism for safeguarding specific investments from opportunism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mols, Niels Peter

This paper identifies when concurrent sourcing is an effective safeguard. Concurrent sourcing shortens the period that a buyer needs in order to internalize production and thus, it shortens the period in which an external supplier is able to hold-up a buyer. Concurrent sourcing also allows...... for short run expansion of production and reduces costs of lost customers. However, when complementarities and diseconomies of scale make concurrent sourcing an efficient choice for a buyer, the same complementarities and diseconomies of scale also weaken the threat that the internal production unit may...

A Model of Computation for Bit-Level Concurrent Computing and Programming: APEC

Science.gov (United States)

Ajiro, Takashi; Tsuchida, Kensei

A concurrent model of computation and a language based on the model for bit-level operation are useful for developing asynchronous and concurrent programs compositionally, which frequently use bit-level operations. Some examples are programs for video games, hardware emulation (including virtual machines), and signal processing. However, few models and languages are optimized and oriented to bit-level concurrent computation. We previously developed a visual programming language called A-BITS for bit-level concurrent programming. The language is based on a dataflow-like model that computes using processes that provide serial bit-level operations and FIFO buffers connected to them. It can express bit-level computation naturally and develop compositionally. We then devised a concurrent computation model called APEC (Asynchronous Program Elements Connection) for bit-level concurrent computation. This model enables precise and formal expression of the process of computation, and a notion of primitive program elements for controlling and operating can be expressed synthetically. Specifically, the model is based on a notion of uniform primitive processes, called primitives, that have three terminals and four ordered rules at most, as well as on bidirectional communication using vehicles called carriers. A new notion is that a carrier moving between two terminals can briefly express some kinds of computation such as synchronization and bidirectional communication. The model's properties make it most applicable to bit-level computation compositionally, since the uniform computation elements are enough to develop components that have practical functionality. Through future application of the model, our research may enable further research on a base model of fine-grain parallel computer architecture, since the model is suitable for expressing massive concurrency by a network of primitives.

Concurrent credit portfolio losses.

Science.gov (United States)

Sicking, Joachim; Guhr, Thomas; Schäfer, Rudi

2018-01-01

We consider the problem of concurrent portfolio losses in two non-overlapping credit portfolios. In order to explore the full statistical dependence structure of such portfolio losses, we estimate their empirical pairwise copulas. Instead of a Gaussian dependence, we typically find a strong asymmetry in the copulas. Concurrent large portfolio losses are much more likely than small ones. Studying the dependences of these losses as a function of portfolio size, we moreover reveal that not only large portfolios of thousands of contracts, but also medium-sized and small ones with only a few dozens of contracts exhibit notable portfolio loss correlations. Anticipated idiosyncratic effects turn out to be negligible. These are troublesome insights not only for investors in structured fixed-income products, but particularly for the stability of the financial sector. JEL codes: C32, F34, G21, G32, H81.

Dynamic Output Feedback Based Active Decentralized Fault-Tolerant Control for Reconfigurable Manipulator with Concurrent Failures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuanchun Li

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The goal of this paper is to describe an active decentralized fault-tolerant control (ADFTC strategy based on dynamic output feedback for reconfigurable manipulators with concurrent actuator and sensor failures. Consider each joint module of the reconfigurable manipulator as a subsystem, and treat the fault as the unknown input of the subsystem. Firstly, by virtue of linear matrix inequality (LMI technique, the decentralized proportional-integral observer (DPIO is designed to estimate and compensate the sensor fault online; hereafter, the compensated system model could be derived. Then, the actuator fault is estimated similarly by another DPIO using LMI as well, and the sufficient condition of the existence of H∞ fault-tolerant controller in the dynamic output feedback is presented for the compensated system model. Furthermore, the dynamic output feedback controller is presented based on the estimation of actuator fault to realize active fault-tolerant control. Finally, two 3-DOF reconfigurable manipulators with different configurations are employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in simulation. The main advantages of the proposed scheme lie in that it can handle the concurrent faults act on the actuator and sensor on the same joint module, as well as there is no requirement of fault detection and isolation process; moreover, it is more feasible to the modularity of the reconfigurable manipulator.

Measuring and modelling concurrency

Science.gov (United States)

Sawers, Larry

2013-01-01

This article explores three critical topics discussed in the recent debate over concurrency (overlapping sexual partnerships): measurement of the prevalence of concurrency, mathematical modelling of concurrency and HIV epidemic dynamics, and measuring the correlation between HIV and concurrency. The focus of the article is the concurrency hypothesis – the proposition that presumed high prevalence of concurrency explains sub-Saharan Africa's exceptionally high HIV prevalence. Recent surveys using improved questionnaire design show reported concurrency ranging from 0.8% to 7.6% in the region. Even after adjusting for plausible levels of reporting errors, appropriately parameterized sexual network models of HIV epidemics do not generate sustainable epidemic trajectories (avoid epidemic extinction) at levels of concurrency found in recent surveys in sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts to support the concurrency hypothesis with a statistical correlation between HIV incidence and concurrency prevalence are not yet successful. Two decades of efforts to find evidence in support of the concurrency hypothesis have failed to build a convincing case. PMID:23406964

Computational simulation of concurrent engineering for aerospace propulsion systems

Science.gov (United States)

Chamis, C. C.; Singhal, S. N.

1992-01-01

Results are summarized of an investigation to assess the infrastructure available and the technology readiness in order to develop computational simulation methods/software for concurrent engineering. These results demonstrate that development of computational simulations methods for concurrent engineering is timely. Extensive infrastructure, in terms of multi-discipline simulation, component-specific simulation, system simulators, fabrication process simulation, and simulation of uncertainties - fundamental in developing such methods, is available. An approach is recommended which can be used to develop computational simulation methods for concurrent engineering for propulsion systems and systems in general. Benefits and facets needing early attention in the development are outlined.

Computational simulation for concurrent engineering of aerospace propulsion systems

Science.gov (United States)

Chamis, C. C.; Singhal, S. N.

1993-01-01

Results are summarized for an investigation to assess the infrastructure available and the technology readiness in order to develop computational simulation methods/software for concurrent engineering. These results demonstrate that development of computational simulation methods for concurrent engineering is timely. Extensive infrastructure, in terms of multi-discipline simulation, component-specific simulation, system simulators, fabrication process simulation, and simulation of uncertainties--fundamental to develop such methods, is available. An approach is recommended which can be used to develop computational simulation methods for concurrent engineering of propulsion systems and systems in general. Benefits and issues needing early attention in the development are outlined.

Fair packet scheduling in Wireless Mesh Networks

KAUST Repository

Nawab, Faisal

2014-02-01

In this paper we study the interactions of TCP and IEEE 802.11 MAC in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). We use a Markov chain to capture the behavior of TCP sessions, particularly the impact on network throughput due to the effect of queue utilization and packet relaying. A closed form solution is derived to numerically determine the throughput. Based on the developed model, we propose a distributed MAC protocol called Timestamp-ordered MAC (TMAC), aiming to alleviate the unfairness problem in WMNs. TMAC extends CSMA/CA by scheduling data packets based on their age. Prior to transmitting a data packet, a transmitter broadcasts a request control message appended with a timestamp to a selected list of neighbors. It can proceed with the transmission only if it receives a sufficient number of grant control messages from these neighbors. A grant message indicates that the associated data packet has the lowest timestamp of all the packets pending transmission at the local transmit queue. We demonstrate that a loose ordering of timestamps among neighboring nodes is sufficient for enforcing local fairness, subsequently leading to flow rate fairness in a multi-hop WMN. We show that TMAC can be implemented using the control frames in IEEE 802.11, and thus can be easily integrated in existing 802.11-based WMNs. Our simulation results show that TMAC achieves excellent resource allocation fairness while maintaining over 90% of maximum link capacity across a large number of topologies.

Photon-HDF5: An Open File Format for Timestamp-Based Single-Molecule Fluorescence Experiments.

Science.gov (United States)

Ingargiola, Antonino; Laurence, Ted; Boutelle, Robert; Weiss, Shimon; Michalet, Xavier

2016-01-05

We introduce Photon-HDF5, an open and efficient file format to simplify exchange and long-term accessibility of data from single-molecule fluorescence experiments based on photon-counting detectors such as single-photon avalanche diode, photomultiplier tube, or arrays of such detectors. The format is based on HDF5, a widely used platform- and language-independent hierarchical file format for which user-friendly viewers are available. Photon-HDF5 can store raw photon data (timestamp, channel number, etc.) from any acquisition hardware, but also setup and sample description, information on provenance, authorship and other metadata, and is flexible enough to include any kind of custom data. The format specifications are hosted on a public website, which is open to contributions by the biophysics community. As an initial resource, the website provides code examples to read Photon-HDF5 files in several programming languages and a reference Python library (phconvert), to create new Photon-HDF5 files and convert several existing file formats into Photon-HDF5. To encourage adoption by the academic and commercial communities, all software is released under the MIT open source license. Copyright © 2016 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The response-time distribution in a real-time database with optimistic concurrency control and constant execution times

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sassen, S.A.E.; Wal, van der J.

1997-01-01

For a real-time shared-memory database with optimistic concurrency control, an approximation for the transaction response-time distribution is obtained. The model assumes that transactions arrive at the database according to a Poisson process, that every transaction uses an equal number of

The response-time distribution in a real-time database with optimistic concurrency control and exponential execution times

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sassen, S.A.E.; Wal, van der J.

1997-01-01

For a real-time shared-memory database with optimistic concurrency control, an approximation for the transaction response-time distribution is obtained. The model assumes that transactions arrive at the database according to a Poisson process, that every transaction takes an exponential execution

Risk factors for concurrent bacteremia in adult patients with dengue.

Science.gov (United States)

Thein, Tun-Linn; Ng, Ee-Ling; Yeang, Ming S; Leo, Yee-Sin; Lye, David C

2017-06-01

Bacteremia in dengue may occur with common exposure to pathogens in association with severe organ impairment or severe dengue, which may result in death. Cohort studies identifying risk factors for concurrent bacteremia among patients with dengue are rare. We conducted a retrospective case-control study of adult patients with dengue who were admitted to the Department of Infectious Diseases at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore from 2004 to 2008. For each case of dengue with concurrent bacteremia (within the first 72 hours of admission), we selected four controls without bacteremia, who were matched on year of infection and dengue confirmation method. Conditional logistic regression was performed to identify risk factors for concurrent bacteremia. Among 9,553 patients with dengue, 29 (0.3%) had bacteremia. Eighteen of these patients (62.1%) had concurrent bacteremia. The predominant bacteria were Staphylococcus aureus, one of which was a methicillin-resistant strain. Dengue shock syndrome occurred more frequently and hospital stay was longer among cases than among controls. Three cases did not survive, whereas none of the controls died. In multivariate analysis, being critically ill at hospital presentation was independently associated with 15 times the likelihood of a patient with dengue having concurrent bacteremia. Concurrent bacteremia in adult patients with dengue is uncommon but presents atypically and results in more deaths and longer hospital stay. Given the associated mortality, collection of blood cultures and empiric antibiotic therapy may be considered in patients who are critically ill. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automata and concurrency

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Priese, L

1983-07-01

The author presents a precise notion of a realization (or simulation) of one concurrent system by another, and studies the relations of modular concurrent systems and non-persistent (i.e. With conflicts) concurrent systems in an automata theoretical style. He introduces a conception of realization that obeys three requirements: it allows for proper hierarchies in certain classes of concurrent systems; it allows for normal-form theorems, and the standard constructions of the literature remain realizations in formal concept; and it clarifies some counterintuitive examples. Further, although this realization conception is developed to translate the computational aspects of concurrent systems, it also gives a formal tool for the handling of synchronization problems. 38 references.

Fractional order PID controller for load frequency control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sondhi, Swati; Hote, Yogesh V.

2014-01-01

Highlights: • The manuscript shows the design of FOPID controller for the load frequency control. • Performance of FOPID is given for non-reheated, reheated and hydro turbine. • Performance of FOPID is compared to IMC-PID and reduced order IMC-PID design scheme. • Performance of FOPID is better than the existing techniques. - Abstract: Load frequency control (LFC) plays a very important role in providing quality power both in the case of isolated as well as interconnected power systems. In order to maintain good quality power supply, the LFC should possess robustness toward the parametric uncertainty of the system and good disturbance rejection capability. The fractional order controller has the properties such as, eliminating steady state error, robustness toward plant gain variations and also good disturbance rejection. This makes the fractional order PID (FOPID) controller quite suitable for the LFC. Therefore, in this paper a FOPID is designed for single area LFC for all three types of turbines i.e., non-reheated, reheated and hydro turbines. It is observed that the FOPID controller shows better robustness toward ±50% parametric uncertainty and disturbance rejection capability than the existing techniques. Finally, the optimization of controller parameters and robustness evaluation of the control technique is done on the basis of the integral error criterion

Radiation therapy for T2N0 laryngeal cancer: A retrospective analysis for the impact of concurrent chemotherapy on local control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Akimoto, Tetsuo; Nonaka, Tetsuo; Kitamoto, Yoshizumi; Ishikawa, Hitoshi; Ninomiya, Hiroshi; Chikamatsu, Kazuaki; Furuya, Nobuhiko; Hayakawa, Kazushige; Mitsuhashi, Norio; Nakano, Takashi

2006-01-01

Purpose: The impact of concurrent chemotherapy on the local control in patients with T2N0 laryngeal cancer who receive radiation therapy (RT) was evaluated. Methods and Materials: Sixty-three patients with T2N0 laryngeal cancer who were treated by definitive RT were analyzed. The primary site of the cancer was the glottis in 50 patients, the supraglottis in 9 patients, and the subglottis in 4 patients. Thirty-six patients were treated by RT alone and the remaining 27 patients received concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Results: Complete response (CR) was obtained in 92% of the patients who received RT alone and 100% of the patients who received CRT. Voice preservation in the group who received CRT (89%) was significantly higher than that in the group treated by RT alone (61%). The 5-year disease-free survival rates in those who received concurrent CRT was significantly superior to that in the patients who received RT alone, although no significant difference was seen in the cause-specific survival rate between the 2 groups. The multivariate analysis revealed that the treatment method (RT alone vs. CRT) was the most significant risk factor that predicted recurrence after RT. Conclusion: Concurrent CRT had a positive impact on the local control of T2N0 laryngeal cancer

Can historical controls be used in current clinical trials in osteosarcoma. Metastases and survival in a historical and a concurrent group

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brostroem, L.A.; Aparisi, T.; Ingimarsson, S.; Lagergren, C.; Nilsonne, U.; Strander, H.; Soederberg, G.

1980-01-01

A historical group consisting of 35 patients with osteosarcoma was compared to a concurrent group of 23 patients. The treatment for the primary tumors differed only slghtly in the two groups. A more active approach was adopted for treatment of pulmonary metastases in the concurrent group. The percentage of patients not developing metastases and the survival rate in the historical group were approximately one half those for the concurrent group. An analysis of prognostic factors disclosed differences between the two groups as regards the size and histological type of the tumor. The results of the study cast doubt on the suitability of historical controls in current clinical trials conducted to ascertain the effectiveness of adjuvant therapy for osteosarcoma

Design and commissioning of a timestamp-based data acquisition system for the DRAGON recoil mass separator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Christian, G.; Fallis, J.; Hutcheon, D.; Olchanski, K.; Ruiz, C.; Akers, C.; Connolly, D.

2014-01-01

The DRAGON recoil mass separator at TRIUMF exists to study radiative proton and alpha capture reactions, which are important in a variety of astrophysical scenarios. DRAGON experiments require a data acquisition system that can be triggered on either reaction product (γ-ray or heavy ion), with the additional requirement of being able to promptly recognize coincidence events in an online environment. To this end, we have designed and implemented a new data acquisition system for DRAGON, which consists of two independently triggered readouts. Events from both systems are recorded with timestamps from a 20 MHz clock that are used to tag coincidences in the earliest possible stage of the data analysis. Here we report on the design, implementation, and commissioning of the new DRAGON data acquisition system, including the hardware, trigger logic, coincidence reconstruction algorithm, and live time considerations. We also discuss the results of an experiment commissioning the new system, which measured the strength of the E c.m. = 1113 keV resonance in the 20 Ne(p, γ) 21 Na radiative proton capture reaction. (orig.)

Concurrency meets probability: theory and practice (abstract)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Katoen, Joost P.

Treating random phenomena in concurrency theory has a long tradition. Petri nets [18, 10] and process algebras [14] have been extended with probabilities. The same applies to behavioural semantics such as strong and weak (bi)simulation [1], and testing pre-orders [5]. Beautiful connections between

Concurrent weighted logic

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Xue, Bingtian; Larsen, Kim Guldstrand; Mardare, Radu Iulian

2015-01-01

We introduce Concurrent Weighted Logic (CWL), a multimodal logic for concurrent labeled weighted transition systems (LWSs). The synchronization of LWSs is described using dedicated functions that, in various concurrency paradigms, allow us to encode the compositionality of LWSs. To reflect these......-completeness results for this logic. To complete these proofs we involve advanced topological techniques from Model Theory....

Managing Asynchronous Data in ATLAS's Concurrent Framework

CERN Document Server

Baines, John; The ATLAS collaboration

2016-01-01

In order to be able to make effective use of emerging hardware, where the amount of memory available to any CPU is rapidly decreasing as the core count continues to rise, ATLAS has begun a migration to a concurrent, multi-threaded software framework, known as AthenaMT. Significant progress has been made in implementing AthenaMT - we can currently run realistic Geant4 simulations on massively concurrent machines. the migration of realistic prototypes of reconstruction workflows is more difficult, given the large amounts of legacy code and the complexity and challenges of reconstruction software. These types of workflows, however, are the types that will most benefit from the memory reduction features of a multi-threaded framework. One of the challenges that we will report on in this paper is the re-design and implementation of several key asynchronous technologies whose behaviour is radically different in a concurrent environment than in a serial one, namely the management of Conditions data and the Detector D...

Characterizing Distributed Concurrent Engineering Teams: A Descriptive Framework for Aerospace Concurrent Engineering Design Teams

Science.gov (United States)

Chattopadhyay, Debarati; Hihn, Jairus; Warfield, Keith

2011-01-01

As aerospace missions grow larger and more technically complex in the face of ever tighter budgets, it will become increasingly important to use concurrent engineering methods in the development of early conceptual designs because of their ability to facilitate rapid assessments and trades in a cost-efficient manner. To successfully accomplish these complex missions with limited funding, it is also essential to effectively leverage the strengths of individuals and teams across government, industry, academia, and international agencies by increased cooperation between organizations. As a result, the existing concurrent engineering teams will need to increasingly engage in distributed collaborative concurrent design. This paper is an extension of a recent white paper written by the Concurrent Engineering Working Group, which details the unique challenges of distributed collaborative concurrent engineering. This paper includes a short history of aerospace concurrent engineering, and defines the terms 'concurrent', 'collaborative' and 'distributed' in the context of aerospace concurrent engineering. In addition, a model for the levels of complexity of concurrent engineering teams is presented to provide a way to conceptualize information and data flow within these types of teams.

An Ada-based preprocessor language for concurrent object oriented programming

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Almulla, M.; Al-Haddad, M.; Loeper, H.

2001-01-01

In this paper, implementation issues of concurrent-objected programming using Ada 95 are addressed. Ada is not a pure object-oriented language; in order to make it so, a uniform template for structuring object classes is proposed. The template constitutes a basis for an Ada-based preprocessor language that handles concurrent object-oriented programming. The preprocessor accepts Ada-like object-oriented programs (object classes, subclasses and main program) as input and produces Ada 95 concurrent object-oriented program units as output. The preprocessor language has the advantage of adding a new component to the class specification called the protocol, which specifies the order for requesting methods f an object. The preprocessor also touches on the extensibility of object classes issue. It supports defining class hierarchies by inheritance and aggregation. In addition, the preprocessor language supports the re-use of Ada packages, which are not necessarily written according to the object-oriented approach. The paper also investigates the definition of circular dependent object classes and proposes a solution for introducing a collection of classes. (author)

Building Safe Concurrency Abstractions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Ole Lehrmann

2014-01-01

Concurrent object-oriented programming in Beta is based on semaphores and coroutines and the ability to define high-level concurrency abstractions like monitors, and rendezvous-based communication, and their associated schedulers. The coroutine mechanism of SIMULA has been generalized into the no......Concurrent object-oriented programming in Beta is based on semaphores and coroutines and the ability to define high-level concurrency abstractions like monitors, and rendezvous-based communication, and their associated schedulers. The coroutine mechanism of SIMULA has been generalized...

Robust Stabilization of Fractional-Order Systems with Interval Uncertainties via Fractional-Order Controllers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohammadtaghi Hamidi Beheshti

2010-01-01

Full Text Available We propose a fractional-order controller to stabilize unstable fractional-order open-loop systems with interval uncertainty whereas one does not need to change the poles of the closed-loop system in the proposed method. For this, we will use the robust stability theory of Fractional-Order Linear Time Invariant (FO-LTI systems. To determine the control parameters, one needs only a little knowledge about the plant and therefore, the proposed controller is a suitable choice in the control of interval nonlinear systems and especially in fractional-order chaotic systems. Finally numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Robust Stabilization of Fractional-Order Systems with Interval Uncertainties via Fractional-Order Controllers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sayyad Delshad Saleh

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract We propose a fractional-order controller to stabilize unstable fractional-order open-loop systems with interval uncertainty whereas one does not need to change the poles of the closed-loop system in the proposed method. For this, we will use the robust stability theory of Fractional-Order Linear Time Invariant (FO-LTI systems. To determine the control parameters, one needs only a little knowledge about the plant and therefore, the proposed controller is a suitable choice in the control of interval nonlinear systems and especially in fractional-order chaotic systems. Finally numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Precision Time Protocol support hardware for ATCA control and data acquisition system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Correia, Miguel, E-mail: miguelfc@ipfn.ist.utl.pt [Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Sousa, Jorge; Carvalho, Bernardo B.; Santos, Bruno; Carvalho, Paulo F.; Rodrigues, António P.; Combo, Álvaro M.; Pereira, Rita C. [Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal); Correia, Carlos M.B.A. [Centro de Instrumentação, Departamento de Física, Universidade de Coimbra, 3004-516 Coimbra (Portugal); Gonçalves, Bruno [Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa (Portugal)

2015-10-15

Highlights: • ATCA based control and data acquisition subsystem has been developed at IPFN. • PTP and time stamping were implemented with VHDL and PTP daemon (PTPd) codes. • The RTM (…) provides PTP synchronization with an external GMC. • The main advantage is that timestamps are generated closer to the Physical Layer at the GMII. • IPFN's upgrade consistently exhibited jitter values below 25 ns RMS. - Abstract: An in-house, Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) based control and data acquisition (C&DAQ) subsystem has been developed at Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN), aiming for compliance with the ITER Fast Plant System Controller (FPSC). Timing and synchronization for the ATCA modules connects to ITER Control, Data Access and Communication (CODAC) through the Timing Communication Network (TCN), which uses IEEE 1588-2008 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to synchronize devices to a Grand Master Clock (GMC). The TCN infrastructure was tested for an RMS jitter under the limit of 50 ns. Therefore, IPFN's hardware, namely the ATCA-PTSW-AMC4 hub-module, which is in charge of timing and synchronization distribution for all subsystem endpoints, shall also perform within this jitter limit. This paper describes a relevant upgrade, applied to the ATCA-PTSW-AMC4 hardware, to comply with these requirements – in particular, the integration of an add-on module “RMC-TMG-1588” on its Rear Transition Module (RTM). This add-on is based on a commercial FPGA-based module from Trenz Electronic, using the ZHAW “PTP VHDL code for timestamping unit and clock”, which features clock offset and drift correction and hardware-assisted time stamping. The main advantage is that timestamps are generated closer to the Physical Layer, at the Gigabit Ethernet Media Independent Interface (GMII), avoiding the timing uncertainties accumulated through the upper layers. PTP code and user software run in a MicroBlaze™ soft-core CPU with Linux in the

Precision Time Protocol support hardware for ATCA control and data acquisition system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Correia, Miguel; Sousa, Jorge; Carvalho, Bernardo B.; Santos, Bruno; Carvalho, Paulo F.; Rodrigues, António P.; Combo, Álvaro M.; Pereira, Rita C.; Correia, Carlos M.B.A.; Gonçalves, Bruno

2015-01-01

Highlights: • ATCA based control and data acquisition subsystem has been developed at IPFN. • PTP and time stamping were implemented with VHDL and PTP daemon (PTPd) codes. • The RTM (…) provides PTP synchronization with an external GMC. • The main advantage is that timestamps are generated closer to the Physical Layer at the GMII. • IPFN's upgrade consistently exhibited jitter values below 25 ns RMS. - Abstract: An in-house, Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) based control and data acquisition (C&DAQ) subsystem has been developed at Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN), aiming for compliance with the ITER Fast Plant System Controller (FPSC). Timing and synchronization for the ATCA modules connects to ITER Control, Data Access and Communication (CODAC) through the Timing Communication Network (TCN), which uses IEEE 1588-2008 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to synchronize devices to a Grand Master Clock (GMC). The TCN infrastructure was tested for an RMS jitter under the limit of 50 ns. Therefore, IPFN's hardware, namely the ATCA-PTSW-AMC4 hub-module, which is in charge of timing and synchronization distribution for all subsystem endpoints, shall also perform within this jitter limit. This paper describes a relevant upgrade, applied to the ATCA-PTSW-AMC4 hardware, to comply with these requirements – in particular, the integration of an add-on module “RMC-TMG-1588” on its Rear Transition Module (RTM). This add-on is based on a commercial FPGA-based module from Trenz Electronic, using the ZHAW “PTP VHDL code for timestamping unit and clock”, which features clock offset and drift correction and hardware-assisted time stamping. The main advantage is that timestamps are generated closer to the Physical Layer, at the Gigabit Ethernet Media Independent Interface (GMII), avoiding the timing uncertainties accumulated through the upper layers. PTP code and user software run in a MicroBlaze™ soft-core CPU with Linux in the same FPGA

Data refinement for true concurrency

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Brijesh Dongol

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The majority of modern systems exhibit sophisticated concurrent behaviour, where several system components modify and observe the system state with fine-grained atomicity. Many systems (e.g., multi-core processors, real-time controllers also exhibit truly concurrent behaviour, where multiple events can occur simultaneously. This paper presents data refinement defined in terms of an interval-based framework, which includes high-level operators that capture non-deterministic expression evaluation. By modifying the type of an interval, our theory may be specialised to cover data refinement of both discrete and continuous systems. We present an interval-based encoding of forward simulation, then prove that our forward simulation rule is sound with respect to our data refinement definition. A number of rules for decomposing forward simulation proofs over both sequential and parallel composition are developed.

A Reduced-Order Controller Considering High-Order Modal Information of High-Rise Buildings for AMD Control System with Time-Delay

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zuo-Hua Li

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Time-delays of control force calculation, data acquisition, and actuator response will degrade the performance of Active Mass Damper (AMD control systems. To reduce the influence, model reduction method is used to deal with the original controlled structure. However, during the procedure, the related hierarchy information of small eigenvalues will be directly discorded. As a result, the reduced-order model ignores the information of high-order mode, which will reduce the design accuracy of an AMD control system. In this paper, a new reduced-order controller based on the improved Balanced Truncation (BT method is designed to reduce the calculation time and to retain the abandoned high-order modal information. It includes high-order natural frequency, damping ratio, and vibration modal information of the original structure. Then, a control gain design method based on Guaranteed Cost Control (GCC algorithm is presented to eliminate the adverse effects of data acquisition and actuator response time-delays in the design process of the reduced-order controller. To verify its effectiveness, the proposed methodology is applied to a numerical example of a ten-storey frame and an experiment of a single-span four-storey steel frame. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the reduced-order controller with GCC algorithm has an excellent control effect; meanwhile it can compensate time-delays effectively.

Cooperative Planning, Uncertainty, and Managerial Control in Concurrent Design

OpenAIRE

Victoria L. Mitchell; Barrie R. Nault

2007-01-01

We examine whether cooperative planning and uncertainty affect the magnitude of rework in concurrent engineering projects with upstream and downstream operations, and explore the impact of such rework on project delays. Using survey data from a sample of 120 business process (BP) redesign and related information technology (IT) development projects in healthcare and telecommunications, our results indicate that upstream (BP) rework and downstream (IT) rework is mediated and mitigated by coope...

Channel's Concurrence and Quantum Teleportation

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

LING Yin-Sheng

2005-01-01

Concurrence can measure the entanglement property of a system. If the channel is a pure state, positive concurrence state can afford the good performance in the teleportation process. If the channel ia a mixed state, positive concurrence state cannot assure the good performance in the teleportation. The conditions of the positive concurrence and the quantum teleportation in the Heisenberg spin ring is derived.

Service-Oriented Synthesis of Distributed and Concurrent Protocol Specifications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jehad Al Dallal

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Several methods have been proposed for synthesizing computer communication protocol specifications from service specifications. Some protocol synthesis methods based on the finite state machine (FSM model assume that primitives in the service specifications cannot be executed simultaneously. Others either handle only controlled primitive concurrency or have tight restrictions on the applicable FSM topologies. As a result, these synthesis methods are not applicable to an interesting variety of inherently concurrent applications, such as the Internet and mobile communication systems. This paper proposes a concurrent-based protocol synthesis method that eliminates the restrictions imposed by the earlier methods. The proposed method uses a synthesis method to obtain a sequential protocol specification (P-SPEC from a given service specification (S-SPEC. The resulting P-SPEC is then remodeled to consider the concurrency behavior specified in the S-SPEC, while guaranteeing that P-SPEC provides the specified service.

Vertex Stimulation as a Control Site for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Concurrent TMS/fMRI Study

OpenAIRE

Jung, JeYoung; Bungert, Andreas; Bowtell, Richard; Jackson, Stephen R.

2016-01-01

Background A common control condition for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies is to apply stimulation at the vertex. An assumption of vertex stimulation is that it has relatively little influence over on-going brain processes involved in most experimental tasks, however there has been little attempt to measure neural changes linked to vertex TMS. Here we directly test this assumption by using a concurrent TMS/fMRI paradigm in which we investigate fMRI blood-oxygenation-level-depen...

Fractional-Order Control of Pneumatic Position Servosystems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cao Junyi

2011-01-01

Full Text Available A fractional-order control strategy for pneumatic position servosystem is presented in this paper. The idea of the fractional calculus application to control theory was introduced in many works, and its advantages were proved. However, the realization of fractional-order controllers for pneumatic position servosystems has not been investigated. Based on the relationship between the pressure in cylinder and the rate of mass flow into the cylinder, the dynamic model of pneumatic position servo system is established. The fractional-order controller for pneumatic position servo and its implementation in industrial computer is designed. The experiments with fractional-order controller are carried out under various conditions, which include sine position signal with different frequency and amplitude, step position signal, and variety inertial load. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and verify their fine control performance for pneumatic position servo system.

A 20-week program of resistance or concurrent exercise improves symptoms of schizophrenia: results of a blind, randomized controlled trial

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bruna Andrade e Silva

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Objective:To evaluate the effects of 20 weeks of resistance and concurrent training on psychotic and depressive symptoms, quality of life outcomes, and serum IGF-1, IGFBP-3, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF concentrations in patients with schizophrenia.Methods:In this blind, randomized controlled clinical trial, 34 patients with schizophrenia were assigned to one of three groups: control (CTRL, n=13, resistance exercise (RESEX, n=12, or concurrent exercise (CONCEX, n=9. Symptoms, quality of life, strength, and other variables were assessed.Results:A significant time-by-group interaction was found for the RESEX and CONCEX groups on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS total score for disease symptoms (p = 0.007, positive symptoms (p = 0.003, and on the arm extension one-repetition maximum (1RM test (p = 0.016. In addition, significant improvements on negative symptoms (p = 0.027, on the role-physical domain of the Short Form-36 Health Survey (p = 0.019, and on the chest press 1RM test (p = 0.040 were observed in the RESEX group. No changes were observed for the other variables investigated.Conclusions:In this sample of patients with schizophrenia, 20 weeks of resistance or concurrent exercise program improved disease symptoms, strength, and quality of life. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01674543.

Locally-regionally advanced tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Krstevska, Valentina; Stojkovski, Igor

2013-01-01

Purpose: To perform a retrospective review of stage III-IV squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil managed by definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) in order to analyze the patients’ outcome and to evaluate the acute and late toxic effects of this treatment modality. Material and methods: Between January 2005 and December 2010, 36 patients with locally and/or regionally advanced tonsillar cancer underwent three dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3DCRT) with concurrent platinum-based chemotherapy. The dose prescription of the planning target volume for gross tumor and low-risk subclinical disease was 70 Gy and 50 Gy, respectively. Conventional fractionation with a daily dose of 2.0 Gy, 5 times per week was used. Concurrent chemotherapy consisted of cisplatin 30 mg/m2 given on a weekly basis. Acute and late radiotherapy-related toxicities were recorded using European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (EORTC/RTOG) grading system. The 3-year locoregional relapse-free survival (LRRFS), disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS) rates were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: The median follow-up of all patients was 20.5 months (range, 5 to 90 months). The median followup of living patients was 59 months (range, 30 to 90 months). Complete response rates of the primary tumor and of the nodal disease were 72.2% and 64.0%, respectively. A complete composite response was present in 25 patients (69.4%). Treatment failure occurred in 15 out of 25 patients who achieved complete composite response following CCRT. The 3-year LRRFS, DFS, and OS rate was 38.8%, 27.8%, and 27.3%, respectively. Grade 3 mucositis occurred in 58.3% of patients. Xerostomia grade 2 was revealed in 72.2% of patients. Conclusion: Taking into account the low 3-year survival rates observed in our study and the high percentage of grade 2 xerostomia, it can be concluded that in the future, instead of 3DCRT with concurrent

Fair packet scheduling in Wireless Mesh Networks

KAUST Repository

Nawab, Faisal; Jamshaid, Kamran; Shihada, Basem; Ho, Pin Han

2014-01-01

ordering of timestamps among neighboring nodes is sufficient for enforcing local fairness, subsequently leading to flow rate fairness in a multi-hop WMN. We show that TMAC can be implemented using the control frames in IEEE 802.11, and thus can be easily

Apple-CORE: Microgrids of SVP cores: flexible, general-purpose, fine-grained hardware concurrency management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Poss, R.; Lankamp, M.; Yang, Q.; Fu, J.; van Tol, M.W.; Jesshope, C.; Nair, S.

2012-01-01

To harness the potential of CMPs for scalable, energy-efficient performance in general-purpose computers, the Apple-CORE project has co-designed a general machine model and concurrency control interface with dedicated hardware support for concurrency control across multiple cores. Its SVP interface

Chaos control via a simple fractional-order controller

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tavazoei, Mohammad Saleh; Haeri, Mohammad

2008-01-01

In this Letter, we propose a fractional-order controller to stabilize the unstable fixed points of an unstable open-loop system. Also, we show that this controller has strong ability to eliminate chaotic oscillations or reduce them to regular oscillations in the chaotic systems. This controller has simple structure and is designed very easily. To determine the control parameters, one needs only a little knowledge about the plant and therefore, the proposed controller is a suitable choice in the control of uncertain chaotic systems

How Formal Dynamic Verification Tools Facilitate Novel Concurrency Visualizations

Science.gov (United States)

Aananthakrishnan, Sriram; Delisi, Michael; Vakkalanka, Sarvani; Vo, Anh; Gopalakrishnan, Ganesh; Kirby, Robert M.; Thakur, Rajeev

With the exploding scale of concurrency, presenting valuable pieces of information collected by formal verification tools intuitively and graphically can greatly enhance concurrent system debugging. Traditional MPI program debuggers present trace views of MPI program executions. Such views are redundant, often containing equivalent traces that permute independent MPI calls. In our ISP formal dynamic verifier for MPI programs, we present a collection of alternate views made possible by the use of formal dynamic verification. Some of ISP’s views help pinpoint errors, some facilitate discerning errors by eliminating redundancy, while others help understand the program better by displaying concurrent even orderings that must be respected by all MPI implementations, in the form of completes-before graphs. In this paper, we describe ISP’s graphical user interface (GUI) capabilities in all these areas which are currently supported by a portable Java based GUI, a Microsoft Visual Studio GUI, and an Eclipse based GUI whose development is in progress.

Economic explanations for concurrent sourcing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mols, Niels Peter

2010-01-01

Concurrent sourcing is a phenomenon where firms simultaneously make and buy the same good, i.e. they simultaneously use the governance modes of market and hierarchy. Though concurrent sourcing seems to be widespread, few studies of sourcing have focused on this phenomenon. This paper reviews...... different economic explanations for why firms use concurrent sourcing. The distinctive features of the explanations are compared, and it is discussed how they may serve as a springboard for research on concurrent sourcing. Managerial implications are also offered....

Generalization of concurrence vectors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yu Changshui; Song Heshan

2004-01-01

In this Letter, based on the generalization of concurrence vectors for bipartite pure state with respect to employing tensor product of generators of the corresponding rotation groups, we generalize concurrence vectors to the case of mixed states; a new criterion of separability of multipartite pure states is given out, for which we define a concurrence vector; we generalize the vector to the case of multipartite mixed state and give out a good measure of free entanglement

Control and Synchronization of the Fractional-Order Lorenz Chaotic System via Fractional-Order Derivative

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ping Zhou

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The unstable equilibrium points of the fractional-order Lorenz chaotic system can be controlled via fractional-order derivative, and chaos synchronization for the fractional-order Lorenz chaotic system can be achieved via fractional-order derivative. The control and synchronization technique, based on stability theory of fractional-order systems, is simple and theoretically rigorous. The numerical simulations demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed method.

APNEA list mode data acquisition and real-time event processing

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hogle, R.A.; Miller, P. [GE Corporate Research & Development Center, Schenectady, NY (United States); Bramblett, R.L. [Lockheed Martin Specialty Components, Largo, FL (United States)

1997-11-01

The LMSC Active Passive Neutron Examinations and Assay (APNEA) Data Logger is a VME-based data acquisition system using commercial-off-the-shelf hardware with the application-specific software. It receives TTL inputs from eighty-eight {sup 3}He detector tubes and eight timing signals. Two data sets are generated concurrently for each acquisition session: (1) List Mode recording of all detector and timing signals, timestamped to 3 microsecond resolution; (2) Event Accumulations generated in real-time by counting events into short (tens of microseconds) and long (seconds) time bins following repetitive triggers. List Mode data sets can be post-processed to: (1) determine the optimum time bins for TRU assay of waste drums, (2) analyze a given data set in several ways to match different assay requirements and conditions and (3) confirm assay results by examining details of the raw data. Data Logger events are processed and timestamped by an array of 15 TMS320C40 DSPs and delivered to an embedded controller (PowerPC604) for interim disk storage. Three acquisition modes, corresponding to different trigger sources are provided. A standard network interface to a remote host system (Windows NT or SunOS) provides for system control, status, and transfer of previously acquired data. 6 figs.

Nonlinear feedback synchronisation control between fractional-order and integer-order chaotic systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jia Li-Xin; Dai Hao; Hui Meng

2010-01-01

This paper focuses on the synchronisation between fractional-order and integer-order chaotic systems. Based on Lyapunov stability theory and numerical differentiation, a nonlinear feedback controller is obtained to achieve the synchronisation between fractional-order and integer-order chaotic systems. Numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this method

Temporal Concurrent Constraint Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Mogens; Valencia Posso, Frank Dan

2002-01-01

The ntcc calculus is a model of non-deterministic temporal concurrent constraint programming. In this paper we study behavioral notions for this calculus. In the underlying computational model, concurrent constraint processes are executed in discrete time intervals. The behavioral notions studied...... reflect the reactive interactions between concurrent constraint processes and their environment, as well as internal interactions between individual processes. Relationships between the suggested notions are studied, and they are all proved to be decidable for a substantial fragment of the calculus...

The Influence of Concurrent Ascaridia and Heterakis Infections of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Blood samples from the same fowls were also collected and analyzed for PCV (%), RBC, Hb and differential white cell count using established standard procedures. Results from the study reveal a concurrent prevalence of 45.5%. Respective prevalence was in the order Ascaridia numida 56.05% and Heterakis gallinarum ...

Fractional Order Models of Industrial Pneumatic Controllers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abolhassan Razminia

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper addresses a new approach for modeling of versatile controllers in industrial automation and process control systems such as pneumatic controllers. Some fractional order dynamical models are developed for pressure and pneumatic systems with bellows-nozzle-flapper configuration. In the light of fractional calculus, a fractional order derivative-derivative (FrDD controller and integral-derivative (FrID are remodeled. Numerical simulations illustrate the application of the obtained theoretical results in simple examples.

Pointwise second-order necessary optimality conditions and second-order sensitivity relations in optimal control

Science.gov (United States)

Frankowska, Hélène; Hoehener, Daniel

2017-06-01

This paper is devoted to pointwise second-order necessary optimality conditions for the Mayer problem arising in optimal control theory. We first show that with every optimal trajectory it is possible to associate a solution p (ṡ) of the adjoint system (as in the Pontryagin maximum principle) and a matrix solution W (ṡ) of an adjoint matrix differential equation that satisfy a second-order transversality condition and a second-order maximality condition. These conditions seem to be a natural second-order extension of the maximum principle. We then prove a Jacobson like necessary optimality condition for general control systems and measurable optimal controls that may be only ;partially singular; and may take values on the boundary of control constraints. Finally we investigate the second-order sensitivity relations along optimal trajectories involving both p (ṡ) and W (ṡ).

The Development of Gamma Irradiator Control System

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mohd Zaid Hassan; Anwar Abdul Rahman; Azraf Azman; Mohd Rizal Mamat

2015-01-01

This paper presents the preliminary software development for the Gamma irradiator control system using commercial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software. The radiation dose analysis is the study of the relationship between the initial loading source activity (Curie) and concurrent activity in order to perform the irradiation process. The concurrent source activity calculation model is presented. The Human machine interface (HMI) has been developed by using Indusoft Web Studio to solve the mathematical calculation, task and process overview. (author)

The Active Fractional Order Control for Maglev Suspension System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peichang Yu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Maglev suspension system is the core part of maglev train. In the practical application, the load uncertainties, inherent nonlinearity, and misalignment between sensors and actuators are the main issues that should be solved carefully. In order to design a suitable controller, the attention is paid to the fractional order controller. Firstly, the mathematical model of a single electromagnetic suspension unit is derived. Then, considering the limitation of the traditional PD controller adaptation, the fractional order controller is developed to obtain more excellent suspension specifications and robust performance. In reality, the nonlinearity affects the structure and the precision of the model after linearization, which will degrade the dynamic performance. So, a fractional order controller is addressed to eliminate the disturbance by adjusting the parameters which are added by the fractional order controller. Furthermore, the controller based on LQR is employed to compare with the fractional order controller. Finally, the performance of them is discussed by simulation. The results illustrated the validity of the fractional order controller.

Near Optimal Decentralized H-infinity Control: Bounded vs. Unbounded Controller Order

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stoustrup, Jakob; Niemann, H.H.

1997-01-01

It is shown that for a class of decentralized control problems there does not exist a sequence of controllers of bounded order which obtains near optimal control. Neither does there exist an infinite dimensional optimal controller. Using the insight of the line of proof of these results, a heuris......It is shown that for a class of decentralized control problems there does not exist a sequence of controllers of bounded order which obtains near optimal control. Neither does there exist an infinite dimensional optimal controller. Using the insight of the line of proof of these results...

Workload control and order release : A lean solution for make-to-order companies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Thurer, M.; Stevenson, M.; Silva, C.; Land, M.J.; Fredendall, L.D.

2012-01-01

Protecting throughput from variance is the key to achieving lean. Workload control (WLC) accomplishes this in complex make-to-order job shops by controlling lead times, capacity, and work-in-process (WIP). However, the concept has been dismissed by many authors who believe its order release

Temporal Concurrent Constraint Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Mogens; Palamidessi, Catuscia; Valencia, Frank Dan

2002-01-01

The ntcc calculus is a model of non-deterministic temporal concurrent constraint programming. In this paper we study behavioral notions for this calculus. In the underlying computational model, concurrent constraint processes are executed in discrete time intervals. The behavioral notions studied...

Fractional-Order Control of Pneumatic Position Servosystems

OpenAIRE

Junyi, Cao; Binggang, Cao

2011-01-01

A fractional-order control strategy for pneumatic position servosystem is presented in this paper. The idea of the fractional calculus application to control theory was introduced in many works, and its advantages were proved. However, the realization of fractional-order controllers for pneumatic position servosystems has not been investigated. Based on the relationship between the pressure in cylinder and the rate of mass flow into the cylinder, the dynamic model of pneumatic position servo ...

Concurrent engineering: effective deployment strategies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Unny Menon

1996-12-01

Full Text Available This paper provides a comprehensive insight into current trends and developments in Concurrent Engineering for integrated development of products and processes with the goal of completing the entire cycle in a shorter time, at lower overall cost and with fewer engineering design changes after product release. The evolution and definition of Concurrent Engineering are addressed first, followed by a concise review of the following elements of the concurrent engineering approach to product development: Concept Development: The Front-End Process, identifying Customer Needs and Quality Function Deployment, Establishing Product Specifications, Concept Selection, Product Architecture, Design for Manufacturing, Effective Rapid Prototyping, and The Economics of Product Development. An outline of a computer-based tutorial developed by the authors and other graduate students funded by NASA ( accessible via the world-wide-web . is provided in this paper. A brief discussion of teamwork for successful concurrent engineering is included, t'ase histories of concurrent engineering implementation at North American and European companies are outlined with references to textbooks authored by Professor Menon and other writers. A comprehensive bibliography on concurrent engineering is included in the paper.

Towards Cache-Enabled, Order-Aware, Ontology-Based Stream Reasoning Framework

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yan, Rui; Praggastis, Brenda L.; Smith, William P.; McGuinness, Deborah L.

2016-08-16

While streaming data have become increasingly more popular in business and research communities, semantic models and processing software for streaming data have not kept pace. Traditional semantic solutions have not addressed transient data streams. Semantic web languages (e.g., RDF, OWL) have typically addressed static data settings and linked data approaches have predominantly addressed static or growing data repositories. Streaming data settings have some fundamental differences; in particular, data are consumed on the fly and data may expire. Stream reasoning, a combination of stream processing and semantic reasoning, has emerged with the vision of providing "smart" processing of streaming data. C-SPARQL is a prominent stream reasoning system that handles semantic (RDF) data streams. Many stream reasoning systems including C-SPARQL use a sliding window and use data arrival time to evict data. For data streams that include expiration times, a simple arrival time scheme is inadequate if the window size does not match the expiration period. In this paper, we propose a cache-enabled, order-aware, ontology-based stream reasoning framework. This framework consumes RDF streams with expiration timestamps assigned by the streaming source. Our framework utilizes both arrival and expiration timestamps in its cache eviction policies. In addition, we introduce the notion of "semantic importance" which aims to address the relevance of data to the expected reasoning, thus enabling the eviction algorithms to be more context- and reasoning-aware when choosing what data to maintain for question answering. We evaluate this framework by implementing three different prototypes and utilizing five metrics. The trade-offs of deploying the proposed framework are also discussed.

Concurrent alcohol and tobacco use among a middle-aged and elderly population in Mumbai.

Science.gov (United States)

Gupta, Prakash C; Maulik, Pallab K; Pednekar, Mangesh S; Saxena, Shekhar

2005-01-01

The concurrent use of alcohol and tobacco and its deleterious effects have been reported in the western literature. However, studies on the relationship between concurrent alcohol and tobacco use in India are limited. This study outlines the association between concurrent alcohol and tobacco use among a middle-aged and elderly population in a western Indian cohort after controlling for various sociodemographic factors. A total of 35 102 men, 45 years of age and above were interviewed for concurrent alcohol and tobacco use. The sample was part of an earlier cohort drawn from the general population. The data were analysed after controlling for age, education, religion and mother-tongue. Among alcohol users, 51.1% smoked tobacco and 35.6% used smokeless tobacco. The relative risk of alcohol use was highest among those smoking cigarettes or beedis and among those using mishri with betel quid and tobacco. The risk of alcohol use increased with the frequency of tobacco use. The risk also increased with higher amounts of alcohol consumption, but peaked at around 100-150 ml of absolute alcohol use. The study highlights the association between concurrent alcohol and tobacco use among the Indian population. This has important public health implications since concurrent use of these is synergistic for increased risk of oropharyngeal cancers.

Continuous fractional-order Zero Phase Error Tracking Control.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Lu; Tian, Siyuan; Xue, Dingyu; Zhang, Tao; Chen, YangQuan

2018-04-01

A continuous time fractional-order feedforward control algorithm for tracking desired time varying input signals is proposed in this paper. The presented controller cancels the phase shift caused by the zeros and poles of controlled closed-loop fractional-order system, so it is called Fractional-Order Zero Phase Tracking Controller (FZPETC). The controlled systems are divided into two categories i.e. with and without non-cancellable (non-minimum-phase) zeros which stand in unstable region or on stability boundary. Each kinds of systems has a targeted FZPETC design control strategy. The improved tracking performance has been evaluated successfully by applying the proposed controller to three different kinds of fractional-order controlled systems. Besides, a modified quasi-perfect tracking scheme is presented for those systems which may not have available future tracking trajectory information or have problem in high frequency disturbance rejection if the perfect tracking algorithm is applied. A simulation comparison and a hardware-in-the-loop thermal peltier platform are shown to validate the practicality of the proposed quasi-perfect control algorithm. Copyright © 2018 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Measuring coherence with entanglement concurrence

Science.gov (United States)

Qi, Xianfei; Gao, Ting; Yan, Fengli

2017-07-01

Quantum coherence is a fundamental manifestation of the quantum superposition principle. Recently, Baumgratz et al (2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 140401) presented a rigorous framework to quantify coherence from the view of theory of physical resource. Here we propose a new valid quantum coherence measure which is a convex roof measure, for a quantum system of arbitrary dimension, essentially using the generalized Gell-Mann matrices. Rigorous proof shows that the proposed coherence measure, coherence concurrence, fulfills all the requirements dictated by the resource theory of quantum coherence measures. Moreover, strong links between the resource frameworks of coherence concurrence and entanglement concurrence is derived, which shows that any degree of coherence with respect to some reference basis can be converted to entanglement via incoherent operations. Our work provides a clear quantitative and operational connection between coherence and entanglement based on two kinds of concurrence. This new coherence measure, coherence concurrence, may also be beneficial to the study of quantum coherence.

Quantify entanglement by concurrence hierarchy

OpenAIRE

Fan, Heng; Matsumoto, Keiji; Imai, Hiroshi

2002-01-01

We define the concurrence hierarchy as d-1 independent invariants under local unitary transformations in d-level quantum system. The first one is the original concurrence defined by Wootters et al in 2-level quantum system and generalized to d-level pure quantum states case. We propose to use this concurrence hierarchy as measurement of entanglement. This measurement does not increase under local quantum operations and classical communication.

Concurrent Models for Object Execution

OpenAIRE

Diertens, Bob

2012-01-01

In previous work we developed a framework of computational models for the concurrent execution of functions on different levels of abstraction. It shows that the traditional sequential execution of function is just a possible implementation of an abstract computational model that allows for the concurrent execution of functions. We use this framework as base for the development of abstract computational models that allow for the concurrent execution of objects.

Micro-transactions for concurrent data structures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Meawad, Fadi; Iyer, Karthik; Schoeberl, Martin

2013-01-01

implementation of transactional memory that we call micro-transactions. In particular, we argue that hardware support for micro-transactions allows us to efficiently implement certain data structures. Those data structures are difficult to realize with the atomic operations provided by stock hardware and provide......, atomic instructions, and micro-transactions. Our results suggest that transactional memory is an interesting alternative to traditional concurrency control mechanisms....

Fractional order absolute vibration suppression (AVS) controllers

Science.gov (United States)

Halevi, Yoram

2017-04-01

Absolute vibration suppression (AVS) is a control method for flexible structures. The first step is an accurate, infinite dimension, transfer function (TF), from actuation to measurement. This leads to the collocated, rate feedback AVS controller that in some cases completely eliminates the vibration. In case of the 1D wave equation, the TF consists of pure time delays and low order rational terms, and the AVS controller is rational. In all other cases, the TF and consequently the controller are fractional order in both the delays and the "rational parts". The paper considers stability, performance and actual implementation in such cases.

Psychosis and concurrent impulse control disorder in Parkinson's disease: A review based on a case report.

Science.gov (United States)

Guedes, Bruno Fukelmann; Gonçalves, Marcia Rubia; Cury, Rubens Gisbert

2016-01-01

Psychosis, impulse control disorders (e.g., pathological gambling and hypersexuality) and repetitive behaviors such as punding are known psychiatric complications of Parkinson's disease (PD). Impulsive, compulsive and repetitive behaviors are strongly associated with dopamine-replacement therapy. We present the case of a 58-year-old man with PD and a myriad of psychiatric symptoms. Concurrent psychosis, punding and pathological gambling developed more than six years after the introduction of pramipexole and ceased shortly after the addition of quetiapine and discontinuation of pramipexole. This report emphasizes the importance of monitoring for a wide array of psychiatric symptoms in patients on dopamine replacement therapy.

Fractional order control and synchronization of chaotic systems

CERN Document Server

Vaidyanathan, Sundarapandian; Ouannas, Adel

2017-01-01

The book reports on the latest advances in and applications of fractional order control and synchronization of chaotic systems, explaining the concepts involved in a clear, matter-of-fact style. It consists of 30 original contributions written by eminent scientists and active researchers in the field that address theories, methods and applications in a number of research areas related to fractional order control and synchronization of chaotic systems, such as: fractional chaotic systems, hyperchaotic systems, complex systems, fractional order discrete chaotic systems, chaos control, chaos synchronization, jerk circuits, fractional chaotic systems with hidden attractors, neural network, fuzzy logic controllers, behavioral modeling, robust and adaptive control, sliding mode control, different types of synchronization, circuit realization of chaotic systems, etc. In addition to providing readers extensive information on chaos fundamentals, fractional calculus, fractional differential equations, fractional contro...

Travel time and concurrent-schedule choice: retrospective versus prospective control.

OpenAIRE

Davison, M; Elliffe, D

2000-01-01

Six pigeons were trained on concurrent variable-interval schedules in which two different travel times between alternatives, 4.5 and 0.5 s, were randomly arranged. In Part 1, the next travel time was signaled while the subjects were responding on each alternative. Generalized matching analyses of performance in the presence of the two travel-time signals showed significantly higher response and time sensitivity when the longer travel time was signaled compared to when the shorter time was sig...

Nutritional strategies to support concurrent training.

Science.gov (United States)

Perez-Schindler, Joaquin; Hamilton, D Lee; Moore, Daniel R; Baar, Keith; Philp, Andrew

2015-01-01

Concurrent training (the combination of endurance exercise to resistance training) is a common practice for athletes looking to maximise strength and endurance. Over 20 years ago, it was first observed that performing endurance exercise after resistance exercise could have detrimental effects on strength gains. At the cellular level, specific protein candidates have been suggested to mediate this training interference; however, at present, the physiological reason(s) behind the concurrent training effect remain largely unknown. Even less is known regarding the optimal nutritional strategies to support concurrent training and whether unique nutritional approaches are needed to support endurance and resistance exercise during concurrent training approaches. In this review, we will discuss the importance of protein supplementation for both endurance and resistance training adaptation and highlight additional nutritional strategies that may support concurrent training. Finally, we will attempt to synergise current understanding of the interaction between physiological responses and nutritional approaches into practical recommendations for concurrent training.

Fractional Order PIλDμ Control for Maglev Guiding System

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Qing; Hu, Yuwei

To effectively suppress the external disturbances and parameter perturbation problem of the maglev guiding system, and improve speed and robustness, the electromagnetic guiding system is exactly linearized using state feedback method, Fractional calculus theory is introduced, the order of integer order PID control was extended to the field of fractional, then fractional order PIλDμ Controller was presented, Due to the extra two adjustable parameters compared with traditional PID controller, fractional order PIλDμ controllers were expected to show better control performance. The results of the computer simulation show that the proposed controller suppresses the external disturbances and parameter perturbation of the system effectively; the system response speed was increased; at the same time, it had flexible structure and stronger robustness.

The Application of Concurrent Engineering in Infrastructure Projects

OpenAIRE

Wolden, Sigurd

2017-01-01

The construction industry today is considered to be lagging competitively behind in comparison to other industries. The reason for this is thought of by many researchers to be the fragmented project process, the traditional principles and the, sometimes adversarial environment. In order to solve some of these obstacles and at the same time enhance productivity, the Norwegian infrastructure sector has recently developed an interest towards the project management method Concurrent Engineering (...

Relaxed Operational Semantics of Concurrent Programming Languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gustavo Petri

2012-08-01

Full Text Available We propose a novel, operational framework to formally describe the semantics of concurrent programs running within the context of a relaxed memory model. Our framework features a "temporary store" where the memory operations issued by the threads are recorded, in program order. A memory model then specifies the conditions under which a pending operation from this sequence is allowed to be globally performed, possibly out of order. The memory model also involves a "write grain," accounting for architectures where a thread may read a write that is not yet globally visible. Our formal model is supported by a software simulator, allowing us to run litmus tests in our semantics.

Concurrence of three Jaynes-Cummings systems

Science.gov (United States)

Qiang, Wen-Chao; Sun, Guo-Hua; Dong, Qian; Camacho-Nieto, Oscar; Dong, Shi-Hai

2018-04-01

We apply genuine multipartite concurrence to investigate entanglement properties of three Jaynes-Cummings systems. Three atoms are initially put in GHZ-like state and locally interact with three independent cavities, respectively. We present analytical concurrence expressions for various subsystems including three-atom, three-cavity and some atom-cavity mixed systems. We also examine the global system and illustrate the evolution of its concurrence. Except for the sudden death of entanglement, we find for some initial entanglement parameter θ , the concurrence of the global system may maintain unchanged in some time intervals.

How does concurrent sourcing affect performance?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mols, Niels Peter

2010-01-01

be modelled. The propositions and discussion offer researchers a starting-point for further research. Practical implications – The propositions that are developed suggest that managers should consider using concurrent sourcing when they face problems caused by volume uncertainty, technological uncertainty....../methodology/approach – Based on transaction cost, agency, neoclassical economic, knowledge-based, and resource-based theory, it is proposed to show how concurrent sourcing affects performance. Findings – The paper argues that concurrent sourcing improves performance when firms face a combination of volume uncertainty...... how concurrent sourcing affects performance of the market and the hierarchy....

Higher-order techniques for some problems of nonlinear control

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarychev Andrey V.

2002-01-01

Full Text Available A natural first step when dealing with a nonlinear problem is an application of some version of linearization principle. This includes the well known linearization principles for controllability, observability and stability and also first-order optimality conditions such as Lagrange multipliers rule or Pontryagin's maximum principle. In many interesting and important problems of nonlinear control the linearization principle fails to provide a solution. In the present paper we provide some examples of how higher-order methods of differential geometric control theory can be used for the study nonlinear control systems in such cases. The presentation includes: nonlinear systems with impulsive and distribution-like inputs; second-order optimality conditions for bang–bang extremals of optimal control problems; methods of high-order averaging for studying stability and stabilization of time-variant control systems.

Air Traffic ControL : FAA Order 7110.65K

Science.gov (United States)

1997-07-17

This order prescribes air traffic control procedures and phraseology for use by : personnel providing air traffic control services. Controllers are required to : be familiar with the provisions of this order that pertain to their operational : respon...

Concurrently adjusting interrelated control parameters to achieve optimal engine performance

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Li; Lee, Donghoon; Yilmaz, Hakan; Stefanopoulou, Anna

2015-12-01

Methods and systems for real-time engine control optimization are provided. A value of an engine performance variable is determined, a value of a first operating condition and a value of a second operating condition of a vehicle engine are detected, and initial values for a first engine control parameter and a second engine control parameter are determined based on the detected first operating condition and the detected second operating condition. The initial values for the first engine control parameter and the second engine control parameter are adjusted based on the determined value of the engine performance variable to cause the engine performance variable to approach a target engine performance variable. In order to cause the engine performance variable to approach the target engine performance variable, adjusting the initial value for the first engine control parameter necessitates a corresponding adjustment of the initial value for the second engine control parameter.

Fractional order PID controller for improvement of PMSM speed control in aerospace applications

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Saraji, Ali Motalebi [Young Researchers and Elite Club, AliAbad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, AliAbad Katoul (Iran, Islamic Republic of); Ghanbari, Mahmood [Department of Electrical Engineering, AliAbad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, AliAbad Katoul (Iran, Islamic Republic of)

2014-12-10

Because of the benefits reduced size, cost and maintenance, noise, CO2 emissions and increased control flexibility and precision, to meet these expectations, electrical equipment increasingly utilize in modern aircraft systems and aerospace industry rather than conventional mechanic, hydraulic, and pneumatic power systems. Electric motor drives are capable of converting electrical power to drive actuators, pumps, compressors, and other subsystems at variable speeds. In the past decades, permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) and brushless dc (BLDC) motor were investigated for aerospace applications such as aircraft actuators. In this paper, the fractional-order PID controller is used in the design of speed loop of PMSM speed control system. Having more parameters for tuning fractional order PID controller lead to good performance ratio to integer order. This good performance is shown by comparison fractional order PID controller with the conventional PI and tuned PID controller by Genetic algorithm in MATLAB soft wear.

Fractional order PID controller for improvement of PMSM speed control in aerospace applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saraji, Ali Motalebi; Ghanbari, Mahmood

2014-01-01

Because of the benefits reduced size, cost and maintenance, noise, CO2 emissions and increased control flexibility and precision, to meet these expectations, electrical equipment increasingly utilize in modern aircraft systems and aerospace industry rather than conventional mechanic, hydraulic, and pneumatic power systems. Electric motor drives are capable of converting electrical power to drive actuators, pumps, compressors, and other subsystems at variable speeds. In the past decades, permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) and brushless dc (BLDC) motor were investigated for aerospace applications such as aircraft actuators. In this paper, the fractional-order PID controller is used in the design of speed loop of PMSM speed control system. Having more parameters for tuning fractional order PID controller lead to good performance ratio to integer order. This good performance is shown by comparison fractional order PID controller with the conventional PI and tuned PID controller by Genetic algorithm in MATLAB soft wear

Psychosis and concurrent impulse control disorder in Parkinson's disease: A review based on a case report

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bruno Fukelmann Guedes

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Psychosis, impulse control disorders (e.g., pathological gambling and hypersexuality and repetitive behaviors such as punding are known psychiatric complications of Parkinson's disease (PD. Impulsive, compulsive and repetitive behaviors are strongly associated with dopamine-replacement therapy. We present the case of a 58-year-old man with PD and a myriad of psychiatric symptoms. Concurrent psychosis, punding and pathological gambling developed more than six years after the introduction of pramipexole and ceased shortly after the addition of quetiapine and discontinuation of pramipexole. This report emphasizes the importance of monitoring for a wide array of psychiatric symptoms in patients on dopamine replacement therapy.

Dynamical orders of decentralized H-infinity controllers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stoustrup, Jakob; Niemann, H.H.

1999-01-01

The problem of decentralized control is addressed, i.e. the problem of designing a controller where each control input is allowed to use only some of the measurements. It is shown that, for such problems, there does not always exist a sequence of controllers of bounded order which obtains near-op...

A Reference Framework for Concurrent Engineering

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2001-01-01

Considering the diversity of methods and tools offered to concurrent engineering, the aspects playing important roles in the concurrent engineering c ontext have been pinpointed as being four core elements which are Activity, Meth od, Object and Information. Based on these four elements, a reference framework called AMOI is proposed to be the guideline for the systematic concurrent produc t design. Using the AMOI reference framework, concurrent product development sys tem can be structured into four function models (including the activity model, m ethod model, object model and information model) which are interconnected with e ach other.

The efficacy of protein supplementation during recovery from muscle-damaging concurrent exercise.

Science.gov (United States)

Eddens, Lee; Browne, Sarah; Stevenson, Emma J; Sanderson, Brad; van Someren, Ken; Howatson, Glyn

2017-07-01

This study investigated the effect of protein supplementation on recovery following muscle-damaging exercise, which was induced with a concurrent exercise design. Twenty-four well-trained male cyclists were randomised to 3 independent groups receiving 20 g protein hydrolysate, iso-caloric carbohydrate, or low-calorific placebo supplementation, per serve. Supplement serves were provided twice daily, from the onset of the muscle-damaging exercise, for a total of 4 days and in addition to a controlled diet (6 g·kg -1 ·day -1 carbohydrate, 1.2 g·kg -1 ·day -1 protein, remainder from fat). Following the concurrent exercise session at time-point 0 h, comprising a simulated high-intensity road cycling trial and 100 drop-jumps, recovery of outcome measures was assessed at 24, 48, and 72 h. The concurrent exercise protocol was deemed to have caused exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD), owing to time effects (p 0.05) were observed for any of the outcome measures. The present results indicate that protein supplementation does not attenuate any of the indirect indices of EIMD imposed by concurrent exercise, when employing great rigour around the provision of a quality habitual diet and the provision of appropriate supplemental controls.

Higher-Order Generalized Invexity in Control Problems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. K. Padhan

2011-01-01

Full Text Available We introduce a higher-order duality (Mangasarian type and Mond-Weir type for the control problem. Under the higher-order generalized invexity assumptions on the functions that compose the primal problems, higher-order duality results (weak duality, strong duality, and converse duality are derived for these pair of problems. Also, we establish few examples in support of our investigation.

Concurrence classes for general pure multipartite states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heydari, Hoshang

2005-01-01

We propose concurrence classes for general pure multipartite states based on an orthogonal complement of a positive operator-valued measure on quantum phase. In particular, we construct W m class, GHZ m , and GHZ m-1 class concurrences for general pure m-partite states. We give explicit expressions for W 3 and GHZ 3 class concurrences for general pure three-partite states and for W 4 , GHZ 4 and GHZ 3 class concurrences for general pure four-partite states

WE-D-BRE-04: Modeling Optimal Concurrent Chemotherapy Schedules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jeong, J; Deasy, J O

2014-01-01

Purpose: Concurrent chemo-radiation therapy (CCRT) has become a more common cancer treatment option with a better tumor control rate for several tumor sites, including head and neck and lung cancer. In this work, possible optimal chemotherapy schedules were investigated by implementing chemotherapy cell-kill into a tumor response model of RT. Methods: The chemotherapy effect has been added into a published model (Jeong et al., PMB (2013) 58:4897), in which the tumor response to RT can be simulated with the effects of hypoxia and proliferation. Based on the two-compartment pharmacokinetic model, the temporal concentration of chemotherapy agent was estimated. Log cell-kill was assumed and the cell-kill constant was estimated from the observed increase in local control due to concurrent chemotherapy. For a simplified two cycle CCRT regime, several different starting times and intervals were simulated with conventional RT regime (2Gy/fx, 5fx/wk). The effectiveness of CCRT was evaluated in terms of reduction in radiation dose required for 50% of control to find the optimal chemotherapy schedule. Results: Assuming the typical slope of dose response curve (γ50=2), the observed 10% increase in local control rate was evaluated to be equivalent to an extra RT dose of about 4 Gy, from which the cell-kill rate of chemotherapy was derived to be about 0.35. Best response was obtained when chemotherapy was started at about 3 weeks after RT began. As the interval between two cycles decreases, the efficacy of chemotherapy increases with broader range of optimal starting times. Conclusion: The effect of chemotherapy has been implemented into the resource-conservation tumor response model to investigate CCRT. The results suggest that the concurrent chemotherapy might be more effective when delayed for about 3 weeks, due to lower tumor burden and a larger fraction of proliferating cells after reoxygenation

Steps in Modular Specifications for Concurrent Modules

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Da Rocha Pinto, Pedro; Dinsdale-Young, Thomas; Gardner, Philippa

2015-01-01

The specification of a concurrent program module is a difficult problem. The specifications must be strong enough to enable reasoning about the intended clients without reference to the underlying module implementation. We survey a range of verification techniques for specifying concurrent module......, in particular highlighting four key concepts: auxiliary state, interference abstraction, resource ownership and atomicity. We show how these concepts combine to provide powerful approaches to specifying concurrent modules.......The specification of a concurrent program module is a difficult problem. The specifications must be strong enough to enable reasoning about the intended clients without reference to the underlying module implementation. We survey a range of verification techniques for specifying concurrent modules...

Reliability and concurrent validity of an alternative method of lateral ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

1 University of Northern Iowa, Division of Athletic Training, 003C Human. Performance Center, Cedar ... concurrent validity of the fingertip-to-floor distance test (FFD) ... in these protocols are spinal and extremity range of motion, pelvic control ...

Simple concurrent garbage collection almost without synchronization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hesselink, Wim H.; Lali, M.I.

We present two simple mark and sweep algorithms, A and B, for concurrent garbage collection by a single collector running concurrently with a number of mutators that concurrently modify shared data. Both algorithms are based on the ideas of Ben-Ari's classical algorithm for on-the-fly garbage

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced lung carcinoma: present results and future prospects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Reboul, F.; Vincent, P.; Brewer, Y.; Taulelle, M.

1997-01-01

The prognosis of locally advanced lung cancer is reportedly poor in all histologic types. In non-small cell lung cancer, radiation therapy alone results in disappointing long-term survival. Three recent randomized trials, however, have shown a limited but significant improvement of survival with induction chemotherapy, though local control remained poor in these studies as well as in small-cell lung cancer treated with chemotherapy and late radiotherapy. Tow randomized trials focusing on small-cell lung cancer have recently shown significant benefit due to the combination of early concurrent mediastinal irradiation and chemotherapy, with major improvement in local control and a more than 40% 2-year survival rate. The concept of concurrent chemoradiotherapy has also been studied in non-small cell carcinoma with several pilot studies leading to both encouraging results and improved survival rate (up to 40% at 2 years). Ongoing phase III trials are comparing sequential versus concurrent chemoradiotherapy and will define the role of radical surgery after chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. (authors)

Digital Fractional Order Controllers Realized by PIC Microprocessor: Experimental Results

OpenAIRE

Petras, I.; Grega, S.; Dorcak, L.

2003-01-01

This paper deals with the fractional-order controllers and their possible hardware realization based on PIC microprocessor and numerical algorithm coded in PIC Basic. The mathematical description of the digital fractional -order controllers and approximation in the discrete domain are presented. An example of realization of the particular case of digital fractional-order PID controller is shown and described.

Medium Access Control for Opportunistic Concurrent Transmissions under Shadowing Channels

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seung Min Hur

2009-06-01

Full Text Available We study the problem of how to alleviate the exposed terminal effect in multihop wireless networks in the presence of log-normal shadowing channels. Assuming node location information, we propose an extension of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol that schedules concurrent transmissions in the presence of log-normal shadowing, thus mitigating the exposed terminal problem and improving network throughput and delay performance. We observe considerable improvements in throughput and delay achieved over the IEEE 802.11 MAC under various network topologies and channel conditions in ns-2 simulations, which justify the importance of considering channel randomness in MAC protocol design for multihop wireless networks.

Medium Access Control for Opportunistic Concurrent Transmissions under Shadowing Channels.

Science.gov (United States)

Son, In Keun; Mao, Shiwen; Hur, Seung Min

2009-01-01

We study the problem of how to alleviate the exposed terminal effect in multi-hop wireless networks in the presence of log-normal shadowing channels. Assuming node location information, we propose an extension of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol that sched-ules concurrent transmissions in the presence of log-normal shadowing, thus mitigating the exposed terminal problem and improving network throughput and delay performance. We observe considerable improvements in throughput and delay achieved over the IEEE 802.11 MAC under various network topologies and channel conditions in ns-2 simulations, which justify the importance of considering channel randomness in MAC protocol design for multi-hop wireless networks.

Query and Update Efficient B+-Tree Based Indexing of Moving Objects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Christian Søndergaard; Lin, Dan; Ooi, Beng Chin

2004-01-01

. This motivates the design of a solution that enables the B+-tree to manage moving objects. We represent moving-object locations as vectors that are timestamped based on their update time. By applying a novel linearization technique to these values, it is possible to index the resulting values using a single B...... are streamed to a database. Indexes for moving objects must support queries efficiently, but must also support frequent updates. Indexes based on minimum bounding regions (MBRs) such as the R-tree exhibit high concurrency overheads during node splitting, and each individual update is known to be quite costly......+-tree that partitions values according to their timestamp and otherwise preserves spatial proximity. We develop algorithms for range and k nearest neighbor queries, as well as continuous queries. The proposal can be grafted into existing database systems cost effectively. An extensive experimental study explores...

Concurrent chemo-radiation in the conservative management of breast cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Haffty, Bruce G.; Kim, Janet H.; Yang Qifeng; Higgins, Susan A.

2006-01-01

Purpose: Sequencing of chemotherapy (CTX) with radiation (RT) in the conservative management of breast cancer (CS+RT) remains controversial. We report here the results of a retrospective analysis of all patients treated with CTX and RT, with specific focus on outcome as a function of sequencing of CTX with RT. Methods and Materials: A total of 535 patients treated with CS+RT received CTX as a component of therapy. RT was administered concurrently with CTX in 109 (CONCTX). CTX was administered before RT in 276 patients, after RT in 106 patients, and in 'sandwich' fashion in 44 patients. These three groups comprise the sequential chemotherapy group (SEQCTX). Results: With follow-up of 8.8 years, the 10-year survival rate was 78% and the distant metastasis-free rate was 75%. Despite more adverse factors for local control, patients in the CONCTX group had superior local control rate of 92% at 10 years compared with 83% in the SEQCTX group (p < 0.001). In multivariate analysis, CONCTX was associated with a significant improvement in local control (HR = 0.338, 95% CI = 0.141-0.809, p = 0.015). Cosmetic results, toxicities, and long-term complications were acceptable using this CONCTX regimen. Conclusions: CONCTX was associated with a reduction in local relapse rates, acceptable cosmesis, and toxicities. These data support the use of concurrent RT and CTX in selected patients at high risk for local failure. Future prospective trials should explore the use of concurrent CTX and RT in high-risk patients using currently employed agents

The role of concurrent sexual relationships in the spread of sexually ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The role of concurrent sexual relationships in the spread of sexually transmitted infections in young South Africans. C Kenyon, M Badri. Abstract. We still do not know why the HIV prevalence in southern and eastern Africa is an order of magnitude higher than anywhere else in the world. An article in this journal in 2007 ...

Contrast gain control in first- and second-order motion perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Z L; Sperling, G

1996-12-01

A novel pedestal-plus-test paradigm is used to determine the nonlinear gain-control properties of the first-order (luminance) and the second-order (texture-contrast) motion systems, that is, how these systems' responses to motion stimuli are reduced by pedestals and other masking stimuli. Motion-direction thresholds were measured for test stimuli consisting of drifting luminance and texture-contrast-modulation stimuli superimposed on pedestals of various amplitudes. (A pedestal is a static sine-wave grating of the same type and same spatial frequency as the moving test grating.) It was found that first-order motion-direction thresholds are unaffected by small pedestals, but at pedestal contrasts above 1-2% (5-10 x pedestal threshold), motion thresholds increase proportionally to pedestal amplitude (a Weber law). For first-order stimuli, pedestal masking is specific to the spatial frequency of the test. On the other hand, motion-direction thresholds for texture-contrast stimuli are independent of pedestal amplitude (no gain control whatever) throughout the accessible pedestal amplitude range (from 0 to 40%). However, when baseline carrier contrast increases (with constant pedestal modulation amplitude), motion thresholds increase, showing that gain control in second-order motion is determined not by the modulator (as in first-order motion) but by the carrier. Note that baseline contrast of the carrier is inherently independent of spatial frequency of the modulator. The drastically different gain-control properties of the two motion systems and prior observations of motion masking and motion saturation are all encompassed in a functional theory. The stimulus inputs to both first- and second-order motion process are normalized by feedforward, shunting gain control. The different properties arise because the modulator is used to control the first-order gain and the carrier is used to control the second-order gain.

Model-Based Systems Engineering in Concurrent Engineering Centers

Science.gov (United States)

Iwata, Curtis; Infeld, Samantha; Bracken, Jennifer Medlin; McGuire, Melissa; McQuirk, Christina; Kisdi, Aron; Murphy, Jonathan; Cole, Bjorn; Zarifian, Pezhman

2015-01-01

Concurrent Engineering Centers (CECs) are specialized facilities with a goal of generating and maturing engineering designs by enabling rapid design iterations. This is accomplished by co-locating a team of experts (either physically or virtually) in a room with a narrow design goal and a limited timeline of a week or less. The systems engineer uses a model of the system to capture the relevant interfaces and manage the overall architecture. A single model that integrates other design information and modeling allows the entire team to visualize the concurrent activity and identify conflicts more efficiently, potentially resulting in a systems model that will continue to be used throughout the project lifecycle. Performing systems engineering using such a system model is the definition of model-based systems engineering (MBSE); therefore, CECs evolving their approach to incorporate advances in MBSE are more successful in reducing time and cost needed to meet study goals. This paper surveys space mission CECs that are in the middle of this evolution, and the authors share their experiences in order to promote discussion within the community.

IMC-PID-fractional-order-filter controllers design for integer order systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Maâmar, Bettayeb; Rachid, Mansouri

2014-09-01

One of the reasons of the great success of standard PID controllers is the presence of simple tuning rules, of the automatic tuning feature and of tables that simplify significantly their design. For the fractional order case, some tuning rules have been proposed in the literature. However, they are not general because they are valid only for some model cases. In this paper, a new approach is investigated. The fractional property is not especially imposed by the controller structure but by the closed loop reference model. The resulting controller is fractional but it has a very interesting structure for its implementation. Indeed, the controller can be decomposed into two transfer functions: an integer transfer function which is generally an integer PID controller and a simple fractional filter. Copyright © 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simvastatin dose and acute kidney injury without concurrent serious muscle injury: A nationwide nested case-control study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lianne Parkin

Full Text Available Inconsistent findings from four observational studies suggest that the risk of acute kidney injury (AKI may increase with increasing statin dose or potency, but none of the studies took statin-related severe muscle injury, including rhabdomyolysis, into account. We undertook a nationwide nested case-control study in New Zealand to examine the risk of AKI without concurrent serious muscle injury according to simvastatin dose in two cohorts: people without a history of renal disease and people with non-dialysis dependent chronic kidney disease.A total of 334,710 people aged ≥ 18 years without a history of renal disease (cohort 1 and 5,437 with non-dialysis dependent chronic kidney disease (cohort 2 who initiated simvastatin therapy between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2013 were identified using national pharmaceutical dispensing and hospital discharge data. Patients who developed AKI without concurrent serious muscle injury during follow-up (cases were ascertained using hospital discharge and mortality data (n = 931 from cohort 1, n = 160 from cohort 2. Up to 10 controls per case, matched by date of birth, sex, and cohort entry date were randomly selected from the relevant cohort using risk set sampling.Relative to current use of 20mg simvastatin daily, the adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI in cohort 1 for current use of 40mg and 80mg were 0.9 (95% CI 0.7-1.2 and 1.3 (95% CI 0.7-2.3, respectively. The adjusted odds ratio for 40mg in cohort 2 was 1.1 (95% CI 0.7-1.9; the numbers taking 80mg were very small and the confidence interval was correspondingly wide.The findings of this study suggest that a relationship between statin dose and AKI may not exist independent of serious muscle injury.

S-1 plus cisplatin with concurrent radiotherapy versus cisplatin alone with concurrent radiotherapy for stage III non-small cell lung cancer: a pilot randomized controlled trial

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yao, Lei; Xu, Shidong; Xu, Jianyu; Yang, Chaoyang; Wang, Junfeng; Sun, Dawei

2015-01-01

We investigated the efficacy and safety of S-1 and cisplatin with concurrent thoracic radiation (SCCR) over cisplatin alone plus concurrent thoracic radiation (CCR) for unresectable stage III non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Between January 2009 and November 2011, 40 eligible patients with NSCLC were included and divided randomly into two groups. Twenty patients received SCCR with S-1 (orally at 40 mg/m 2 per dose, b.i.d.) on days 1 through 14, cisplatin (60 mg/m 2 on day 1) every 4 weeks for two cycles, and radiotherapy (60 Gy/30 fractions over 6 weeks) beginning on day 1. Twenty subjects received CCR (cisplatin and radiotherapy, the same as for SCCR). The 3-year overall response rate was 59.3% and 52.4% for the SCCR and CCR groups, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant, while the median overall survival was 33 months (range, 4–41 months) and 24 months (range, 2–37 months), respectively (P = 0.048). The median progression-free survival was 31 months for SCCR (range, 5–39 months), whereas it was 20 months (range, 2–37 months) for CCR (P = 0.037). The toxicity profile was similar in both groups. In summary, we demonstrated that S-1 and cisplatin with concurrent thoracic radiation was more effective than cisplatin plus radiotherapy in NSCLC patients with acceptable toxicity

A controllability test for general first-order representations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

U. Helmke; J. Rosenthal; J.M. Schumacher (Hans)

1995-01-01

textabstractIn this paper we derive a new controllability rank test for general first-order representations. The criterion generalizes the well-known controllability rank test for linear input-state systems as well as a controllability rank test by Mertzios et al. for descriptor systems.

Synchronization in reduced-order of chaotic systems via control approaches based on high-order sliding-mode observer

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Rodriguez, A. [Electrical Engineering Doctoral Program, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Faculty, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, 66450 San Nicolas de los Garza, N.L. (Mexico)], E-mail: angelrdz@gmail.com; De Leon, J. [Electrical Engineering Doctoral Program, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Faculty, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, 66450 San Nicolas de los Garza, N.L. (Mexico)], E-mail: drjleon@gmail.com; Fridman, L. [Department of Control, Division of Electrical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, National Autonomous University of Mexico, 04510 Mexico City (Mexico)], E-mail: lfridman@servidor.unam.mx

2009-12-15

The reduced-order synchronization problem of two chaotic systems (master-slave) with different dimension and relative degree is considered. A control scheme based on a high-order sliding-mode observer-identifier and a feedback state controller is proposed, where the trajectories of slave can be synchronized with a canonical projection of the master. Thus, the reduced-order synchronization is achieved in spite of master/slave mismatches. Simulation results are provided in order to illustrate the performance of the proposed synchronization scheme.

Synchronization in reduced-order of chaotic systems via control approaches based on high-order sliding-mode observer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rodriguez, A.; De Leon, J.; Fridman, L.

2009-01-01

The reduced-order synchronization problem of two chaotic systems (master-slave) with different dimension and relative degree is considered. A control scheme based on a high-order sliding-mode observer-identifier and a feedback state controller is proposed, where the trajectories of slave can be synchronized with a canonical projection of the master. Thus, the reduced-order synchronization is achieved in spite of master/slave mismatches. Simulation results are provided in order to illustrate the performance of the proposed synchronization scheme.

Learning of Temporal and Spatial Movement Aspects: A Comparison of Four Types of Haptic Control and Concurrent Visual Feedback.

Science.gov (United States)

Rauter, Georg; Sigrist, Roland; Riener, Robert; Wolf, Peter

2015-01-01

In literature, the effectiveness of haptics for motor learning is controversially discussed. Haptics is believed to be effective for motor learning in general; however, different types of haptic control enhance different movement aspects. Thus, in dependence on the movement aspects of interest, one type of haptic control may be effective whereas another one is not. Therefore, in the current work, it was investigated if and how different types of haptic controllers affect learning of spatial and temporal movement aspects. In particular, haptic controllers that enforce active participation of the participants were expected to improve spatial aspects. Only haptic controllers that provide feedback about the task's velocity profile were expected to improve temporal aspects. In a study on learning a complex trunk-arm rowing task, the effect of training with four different types of haptic control was investigated: position control, path control, adaptive path control, and reactive path control. A fifth group (control) trained with visual concurrent augmented feedback. As hypothesized, the position controller was most effective for learning of temporal movement aspects, while the path controller was most effective in teaching spatial movement aspects of the rowing task. Visual feedback was also effective for learning temporal and spatial movement aspects.

Cross-domain interference costs during concurrent verbal and spatial serial memory tasks are asymmetric

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Morey, Candice C.; Mall, Jonathan T.

2012-01-01

Some evidence suggests that memory for serial order is domain-general. Evidence also points to asymmetries in interference between verbal and visual-spatial tasks. We confirm that concurrently remembering verbal and spatial serial lists provokes substantial interference compared with remembering a

A general model of concurrency and its implementation as many-core dynamic RISC processors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bernard, T.; Bousias, K.; Guang, L.; Jesshope, C.R.; Lankamp, M.; van Tol, M.W.; Zhang, L.

2008-01-01

This paper presents a concurrent execution model and its micro-architecture based on in-order RISC processors, which schedules instructions from large pools of contextualised threads. The model admits a strategy for programming chip multiprocessors using parallelising compilers based on existing

A Temporal Concurrent Constraint Programming Calculus

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Palamidessi, Catuscia; Valencia Posso, Frank Darwin

2001-01-01

The tcc model is a formalism for reactive concurrent constraint programming. In this paper we propose a model of temporal concurrent constraint programming which adds to tcc the capability of modeling asynchronous and non-deterministic timed behavior. We call this tcc extension the ntcc calculus...

Concurrent Operations of O2-Tree on Shared Memory Multicore Architectures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Ohene-Kwofie

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Modern computer architectures provide high performance computing capability by having multiple CPU cores. Such systems are also typically associated with very large main-memory capacities, thereby allowing them to be used for fast processing of in-memory database applications. However, most of the concurrency control mechanism associated with the index structures of these memory resident databases do not scale well, under high transaction rates. This paper presents the O2-Tree, a fast main memory resident index, which is also highly scalable and tolerant of high transaction rates in a concurrent environment using the relaxed balancing tree algorithm. The O2-Tree is a modified Red-Black tree in which the leaf nodes are formed into blocks that hold key-value pairs, while each internal node stores a single key that results from splitting leaf nodes. Multi-threaded concurrent manipulation of the O2-Tree outperforms popular NoSQL based key-value stores considered in this paper.

Computational issues in alternating projection algorithms for fixed-order control design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beran, Eric Bengt; Grigoriadis, K.

1997-01-01

Alternating projection algorithms have been introduced recently to solve fixed-order controller design problems described by linear matrix inequalities and non-convex coupling rank constraints. In this work, an extensive numerical experimentation using proposed benchmark fixed-order control design...... examples is used to indicate the computational efficiency of the method. These results indicate that the proposed alternating projections are effective in obtaining low-order controllers for small and medium order problems...

Impact of high-intensity concurrent training on cardiovascular risk factors in persons with multiple sclerosis - pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Keytsman, Charly; Hansen, Dominique; Wens, Inez; O Eijnde, Bert

2017-10-27

High-intensity concurrent training positively affects cardiovascular risk factors. Because this was never investigated in multiple sclerosis, the present pilot study explored the impact of this training on cardiovascular risk factors in this population. Before and after 12 weeks of high-intense concurrent training (interval and strength training, 5 sessions per 2 weeks, n = 16) body composition, resting blood pressure and heart rate, 2-h oral glucose tolerance (insulin sensitivity, glycosylated hemoglobin, blood glucose and insulin concentrations), blood lipids (high- and low-density lipoprotein, total cholesterol, triglyceride levels) and C-reactive protein were analyzed. Twelve weeks of high-intense concurrent training significantly improved resting heart rate (-6%), 2-h blood glucose concentrations (-13%) and insulin sensitivity (-24%). Blood pressure, body composition, blood lipids and C-reactive protein did not seem to be affected. Under the conditions of this pilot study, 12 weeks of concurrent high-intense interval and strength training improved resting heart rate, 2-h glucose and insulin sensitivity in multiple sclerosis but did not affect blood C-reactive protein levels, blood pressure, body composition and blood lipid profiles. Further, larger and controlled research investigating the effects of high-intense concurrent training on cardiovascular risk factors in multiple sclerosis is warranted. Implications for rehabilitation High-intensity concurrent training improves cardiovascular fitness. This pilot study explores the impact of this training on cardiovascular risk factors in multiple sclerosis. Despite the lack of a control group, high-intense concurrent training does not seem to improve cardiovascular risk factors in multiple sclerosis.

Concurrent Engineering Working Group White Paper Distributed Collaborative Design: The Next Step in Aerospace Concurrent Engineering

Science.gov (United States)

Hihn, Jairus; Chattopadhyay, Debarati; Karpati, Gabriel; McGuire, Melissa; Panek, John; Warfield, Keith; Borden, Chester

2011-01-01

As aerospace missions grow larger and more technically complex in the face of ever tighter budgets, it will become increasingly important to use concurrent engineering methods in the development of early conceptual designs because of their ability to facilitate rapid assessments and trades of performance, cost and schedule. To successfully accomplish these complex missions with limited funding, it is essential to effectively leverage the strengths of individuals and teams across government, industry, academia, and international agencies by increased cooperation between organizations. As a result, the existing concurrent engineering teams will need to increasingly engage in distributed collaborative concurrent design. The purpose of this white paper is to identify a near-term vision for the future of distributed collaborative concurrent engineering design for aerospace missions as well as discuss the challenges to achieving that vision. The white paper also documents the advantages of creating a working group to investigate how to engage the expertise of different teams in joint design sessions while enabling organizations to maintain their organizations competitive advantage.

Rain VM: Portable Concurrency through Managing Code

OpenAIRE

Brown, Neil C.C.

2006-01-01

A long-running recent trend in computer programming is the growth in popularity of virtual machines. However, few have included good support for concurrency - a natural mechanism in the Rain programming language. This paper details the design and implementation of a secure virtual machine with support for concurrency, which enables portability of concurrent programs. Possible implementation ideas of many-to-many threading models for the virtual machine kernel are discussed, and initial benchm...

On the expressiveness and decidability of higher-order process calculi

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lanese, Ivan; Perez, Jorge A.; Sangiorgi, Davide; Schmitt, Alan

In higher-order process calculi, the values exchanged in communications may contain processes. A core calculus of higher-order concurrency is studied; it has only the operators necessary to express higher-order communications: input prefix, process output, and parallel composition. By exhibiting a

Safety effects of exclusive and concurrent signal phasing for pedestrian crossing.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Yaohua; Mamun, Sha A; Ivan, John N; Ravishanker, Nalini; Haque, Khademul

2015-10-01

This paper describes the estimation of pedestrian crash count and vehicle interaction severity prediction models for a sample of signalized intersections in Connecticut with either concurrent or exclusive pedestrian phasing. With concurrent phasing, pedestrians cross at the same time as motor vehicle traffic in the same direction receives a green phase, while with exclusive phasing, pedestrians cross during their own phase when all motor vehicle traffic on all approaches is stopped. Pedestrians crossing at each intersection were observed and classified according to the severity of interactions with motor vehicles. Observation intersections were selected to represent both types of signal phasing while controlling for other physical characteristics. In the nonlinear mixed models for interaction severity, pedestrians crossing on the walk signal at an exclusive signal experienced lower interaction severity compared to those crossing on the green light with concurrent phasing; however, pedestrians crossing on a green light where an exclusive phase was available experienced higher interaction severity. Intersections with concurrent phasing have fewer total pedestrian crashes than those with exclusive phasing but more crashes at higher severity levels. It is recommended that exclusive pedestrian phasing only be used at locations where pedestrians are more likely to comply. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Outcomes of Concurrent Operations: Results From the American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Jason B; Berian, Julia R; Ban, Kristen A; Liu, Yaoming; Cohen, Mark E; Angelos, Peter; Matthews, Jeffrey B; Hoyt, David B; Hall, Bruce L; Ko, Clifford Y

2017-09-01

To determine whether concurrently performed operations are associated with an increased risk for adverse events. Concurrent operations occur when a surgeon is simultaneously responsible for critical portions of 2 or more operations. How this practice affects patient outcomes is unknown. Using American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program data from 2014 to 2015, operations were considered concurrent if they overlapped by ≥60 minutes or in their entirety. Propensity-score-matched cohorts were constructed to compare death or serious morbidity (DSM), unplanned reoperation, and unplanned readmission in concurrent versus non-concurrent operations. Multilevel hierarchical regression was used to account for the clustered nature of the data while controlling for procedure and case mix. There were 1430 (32.3%) surgeons from 390 (77.7%) hospitals who performed 12,010 (2.3%) concurrent operations. Plastic surgery (n = 393 [13.7%]), otolaryngology (n = 470 [11.2%]), and neurosurgery (n = 2067 [8.4%]) were specialties with the highest proportion of concurrent operations. Spine procedures were the most frequent concurrent procedures overall (n = 2059/12,010 [17.1%]). Unadjusted rates of DSM (9.0% vs 7.1%; P < 0.001), reoperation (3.6% vs 2.7%; P < 0.001), and readmission (6.9% vs 5.1%; P < 0.001) were greater in the concurrent operation cohort versus the non-concurrent. After propensity score matching and risk-adjustment, there was no significant association of concurrence with DSM (odds ratio [OR] 1.08; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.96-1.21), reoperation (OR 1.16; 95% CI 0.96-1.40), or readmission (OR 1.14; 95% CI 0.99-1.29). In these analyses, concurrent operations were not detected to increase the risk for adverse outcomes. These results do not lessen the need for further studies, continuous self-regulation and proactive disclosure to patients.

Postural stability and the influence of concurrent muscle activation--Beneficial effects of jaw and fist clenching.

Science.gov (United States)

Ringhof, Steffen; Leibold, Timo; Hellmann, Daniel; Stein, Thorsten

2015-10-01

Recent studies reported on the potential benefits of submaximum clenching of the jaw on human postural control in upright unperturbed stance. However, it remained unclear whether these effects might also be observed among active controls. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was to comparatively examine the influence of concurrent muscle activation in terms of submaximum clenching of the jaw and submaximum clenching of the fists on postural stability. Posturographic analyses were conducted with 17 healthy young adults on firm and foam surfaces while either clenching the jaw (JAW) or clenching the fists (FIST), whereas habitual standing served as the control condition (CON). Both submaximum tasks were performed at 25% maximum voluntary contraction, assessed, and visualized in real time by means of electromyography. Statistical analyses revealed that center of pressure (COP) displacements were significantly reduced during JAW and FIST, but with no differences between both concurrent clenching activities. Further, a significant increase in COP displacements was observed for the foam as compared to the firm condition. The results showed that concurrent muscle activation significantly improved postural stability compared with habitual standing, and thus emphasize the beneficial effects of jaw and fist clenching for static postural control. It is suggested that concurrent activities contribute to the facilitation of human motor excitability, finally increasing the neural drive to the distal muscles. Future studies should evaluate whether elderly or patients with compromised postural control might benefit from these physiological responses, e.g., in the form of a reduced risk of falling. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of order and sequence of resistance and endurance training on body fat in elementary school-aged girls

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana R. Alves

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of order and sequence of concurrent resistance and endurance training on body fat percentage (BFP in a large sample of elementary school-aged girls. One hundred and twenty-six healthy girls, aged 10-11 years (10.95 ± 0.48 years, were randomly assigned to six groups to perform different training protocols per week for 8 weeks: Resistance-only (R, Endurance-only (E, Concurrent Distinct Endurance-Resistance (CDER, Concurrent Parallel Endurance-Resistance (CPER, Concurrent Parallel Resistance-Endurance (CPRE, and a Control group (C. In R and E, the subjects performed single sessions of resistance or endurance exercises, respectively (two days per week. In CDER, resistance-endurance training was performed on different days each week (four days per week. CPER and CPRE performed single-session combined endurance-resistance training or combined resistance-endurance training, respectively, each week (two days per week. After an 8-week training period, BFP decreased in all experimental groups (CPER: 13.3%, p0.05; and CDER: 5.6%, p>0.05. However, a significant difference was found in CPER and CPRE when compared to CDER, E, and R, indicating that training sequence may influence BFP. All programmes were effective, but CPER and CPRE obtained better results for BFP than CDER, E, or R. The effects of concurrent resistance and endurance training on body fat percentage can be mediated by order and sequence of exercise. These results provide insight into optimization of school-based fat loss exercise programmes in childhood.

Concurrent Engineering with IT-Tools for successful industrial products in a global market

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Conrad, Finn

2003-01-01

The paper presents and discusses research results concerning Concurrent Engineering with IT-Tools for Successful Industrial Products on a Global Market. Concurrent Engineering, often is called just ¿CE¿, that is a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and related...... on the world market and the increasing global public demands, requirements and regulations for protection of the environment are both driving forces and challenges for improving the development of control and engineering design. There has always been an ongoing desire to develop and design systems to improve...... performance of products, productivity and efficiency of process operations. Smart use of simulation and modelling IT tools can improve many enterprises ability to compete and survive on the market. European Enterprises developing, designing and manufacturing hydraulic components and hydraulic systems...

Concurrent chemoradiation for unresectable pancreatic cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Yong Bae; Seong, Jin Sil; Song, Si Young; Park, Seung Woo; Suh, Chang Ok

2002-01-01

To analyze the treatment results of concurrent chemoradiation with oral 5-FU plus Gemcitabine or Paclitaxel for unresectable pancreatic cancer. The patients, who were diagnosed by imaging modalities or by explo-laparotomy were treated with concurrent chemoradiation. Radiotherapy was delivered to primary tumor and regional lymph nodes, and the total dose was 45 Gy. Patients received Gemcitabine 1,000 mg/m 2 or Paclitaxel 50 mg/m 2 weekly and oral 5-FU daily. The total number of cycles of chemotherapy ranged from 1 to 39 (median, 11 cycles). The follow-up period ranged from 6 to 36 months. Survival was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method. Fifty-four patients between Jan. 1999 to Nov. 2001 were included in this study. Forty-two patients who completed the planned treatment were included in this analysis. The patients' age ranged from 37 to 73 years (median, 60 years) and the male to female ratio was 30:12. Treatment was interrupted for 12 patients due to; disease progression for 6 (50%), poor performance status for 4 (33.3%), intercurrent disease for 1 (8.3%), and refusal for 1 (8.3%). Response evaluation was possible for 40 patients. One patient gained complete remission and 24 patients gained partial remission, hence the response rate was 59%. The survival rates were 46.7% and 17.0% at 1 year and 2 years, respectively with a median survival time of 12 months. Patients treated with Paclitaxel showed superior outcomes compared to those patients treated with Gemcitabine, in terms of both response rate and survival rate although this difference was not statistically significant. Grade III or IV hematologic toxicity was shown in 8 patients (19%), while grade III or IV non-hematologic toxicity was shown in 5 patients (12%). Concurrent chemoradiation with oral 5-FU and Gemcitabine or Paclitaxel improves both the response rate and survival rate in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. A prospective study should be investigated in order to improve both the patient

Reversal of the toxic effects of cachectin by concurrent insulin administration.

Science.gov (United States)

Fraker, D L; Merino, M J; Norton, J A

1989-06-01

Rats treated with recombinant human tumor necrosis factor-cachectin, 100 micrograms/kg ip twice daily for 5 consecutive days, had a 56% decrease in food intake, a 54% decrease in nitrogen balance, and a 23-g decrease in body weight gain vs. saline-treated controls. Concurrent neutral protamine hagedorn insulin administration of 2 U/100 g sc twice daily reversed all of these changes to control levels without causing any treatment deaths. The improvement seen with insulin was dose independent. Five days of cachectin treatment caused a severe interstitial pneumonitis, periportal inflammation in the liver, and an increase in wet organ weight in the heart, lungs, kidney, and spleen. Concurrent insulin treatment led to near total reversal of these histopathologic changes. Cachectin treatment did not significantly change blood glucose levels from control values of 130-140 mg/dl, but insulin plus cachectin caused a significant decrease in blood glucose from 1 through 12 h after injection. Administration of high-dose insulin can near totally reverse the nutritional and histopathologic toxicity of sublethal doses of cachectin in rats.

The order and volume fill rates in inventory control systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorstenson, Anders; Larsen, Christian

2014-01-01

This paper differentiates between an order (line) fill rate and a volume fill rate and specifies their performance for different inventory control systems. When the focus is on filling complete customer orders rather than total demanded quantity the order fill rate would be the preferred service...... level measure. The main result shows how the order and volume fill rates are related in magnitude. Earlier results derived for a single-item, single-stage, continuous review inventory system with backordering and constant lead times controlled by a base-stock policy are extended in different directions...... extensions consider more general inventory control review policies with backordering, as well as some relations between service measures. A particularly important result in the paper concerns an alternative service measure, the customer order fill rate, and shows how this measure always exceeds the other two...

Controlling general projective synchronization of fractional order Rossler systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shao Shiquan

2009-01-01

This paper proposed a method to achieve general projective synchronization of two fractional order Rossler systems. First, we construct the fractional order Rossler system's corresponding approximation integer order system. Then, a control method based on a partially linear decomposition and negative feedback of state errors was utilized on the integer order system. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Problems of concurrent radiotherapy with S-1 for T2 glottic carcinoma

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Higashino, Masaaki; Kawata, Ryo; Suzuki, Norio; Ichihara, Takahiro; Terada, Tetsuya

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and problems of concurrent radiotherapy with S-1 for T2 glottic carcinoma. The study included 48 patients (22 patients for radiotherapy alone (RT group), 26 patients for radiotherapy concurrent with S-1 (S-1 group) who underwent initial treatment as outpatients for T2 glottic carcinoma at Osaka Medical College. Six of the 26 patients of the S-1 group were suspected to have local recurrence, but 5 of them had necrosis and one had dysplasia. Three patients suffered bilateral vocal cord paralysis and underwent tracheostomy. On the other hand, 4 of the 22 patients of the RT group suffered local recurrence and one patient suffered unilateral vocal cord paralysis. The local control rate of the S-1 group was significantly higher than that of the RT group. In the S-1 group, 5 patients with laryngeal function disorder tended to develop upper and arytenoid cartilage. The local control rate of radiotherapy for T2 glottic carcinoma was improved by concurrent S-1. In the S-1 group, there was no local recurrence, but some cases suffered laryngeal dysfunction, so efforts should be made to preserve laryngeal function. (author)

Material control and accountability orders

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jewell, D.L.

1988-01-01

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Material Control and Accountability (MC and A) Orders were revised during this past year. The primary focus of the revision process was to eliminate any policy gaps that existed between current orders and the standards and criteria and to examine current policy where questions of completeness or effectiveness may be of concern. The MC and A Subtask Group identified the following three major areas for change: (1) the need to expand the graded safeguards concept; (2) the need to provide for defense in depth; and (3) the need to include system performance requirements. Operational and cost impacts were of primary consideration in these changes. The subtask group accomplished its goal as directed and within the required time frames. The revision process benefitted tremendously from the earlier works of the numerous standards and criteria committees and the Operation Cerberus Committees

Second Order Sliding Mode Controller Design for Pneumatic Artificial Muscle

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ammar Al-Jodah

2018-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, first and second order sliding mode controllers are designed for a single link robotic arm actuated by two Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs. A new mathematical model for the arm has been developed based on the model of large scale pneumatic muscle actuator model. Uncertainty in parameters has been presented and tested for the two controllers. The simulation results of the second-order sliding mode controller proves to have a low tracking error and chattering effect as compared to the first order one. The verification has been done by using MATLAB and Simulink software.

The order and volume fill rates in inventory control systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorstenson, Anders; Larsen, Christian

2011-01-01

This paper differentiates between an order (line) fill rate and a volume fill rate and specifies their performance for different inventory control systems. When the focus is on filling complete customer orders rather than total quantities the order fill rate would be the preferred service level...... measure. The main result shows how the order and volume fill rates are related in magnitude. Earlier results derived for a single-item, single-stage, continuous review inventory system with backordering and constant lead times controlled by a base-stock policy are extended in different directions...

Verified compilation of Concurrent Managed Languages

Science.gov (United States)

2017-11-01

Communications Division Information Directorate This report is published in the interest of scientific and technical information exchange, and its...271, 2007. [85] Viktor Vafeiadis. Modular fine-grained concurrency verification. Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR- 726, University of Cambridge, Computer...VERIFIED COMPILATION OF CONCURRENT MANAGED LANGUAGES PURDUE UNIVERSITY NOVEMBER 2017 FINAL TECHNICAL REPORT APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

Parametric Control on Fractional-Order Response for Lü Chaotic System

KAUST Repository

Moaddy, K; Radwan, A G; Salama, Khaled N.; Momani, S; Hashim, I

2013-01-01

This paper discusses the influence of the fractional order parameter on conventional chaotic systems. These fractional-order parameters increase the system degree of freedom allowing it to enter new domains and thus it can be used as a control for such dynamical systems. This paper investigates the behaviour of the equally-fractional-order Lü chaotic system when changing the fractional-order parameter and determines the fractional-order ranges for chaotic behaviour. Five different parameter values and six fractional-order cases are discussed through this paper. Unlike the conventional parameters, as the fractional-order increases the system response begins with stability, passing by chaotic behaviour then reaches periodic response. As the system parameter α increases, a shift in the fractional order is required to maintain chaotic response.Therefore, the range of chaotic response can be expanded or minimized by controlling the fractional-order parameter. The non-standard finite difference method is used to solve the fractional-order Lü chaotic system numerically to validate these responses.

Parametric Control on Fractional-Order Response for Lü Chaotic System

KAUST Repository

Moaddy, K

2013-04-10

This paper discusses the influence of the fractional order parameter on conventional chaotic systems. These fractional-order parameters increase the system degree of freedom allowing it to enter new domains and thus it can be used as a control for such dynamical systems. This paper investigates the behaviour of the equally-fractional-order Lü chaotic system when changing the fractional-order parameter and determines the fractional-order ranges for chaotic behaviour. Five different parameter values and six fractional-order cases are discussed through this paper. Unlike the conventional parameters, as the fractional-order increases the system response begins with stability, passing by chaotic behaviour then reaches periodic response. As the system parameter α increases, a shift in the fractional order is required to maintain chaotic response.Therefore, the range of chaotic response can be expanded or minimized by controlling the fractional-order parameter. The non-standard finite difference method is used to solve the fractional-order Lü chaotic system numerically to validate these responses.

Randomized control trial of benzydamine HCl versus sodium bicarbonate for prophylaxis of concurrent chemoradiation-induced oral mucositis.

Science.gov (United States)

Chitapanarux, Imjai; Tungkasamit, Tharatorn; Petsuksiri, Janjira; Kannarunimit, Danita; Katanyoo, Kanyarat; Chakkabat, Chakkapong; Setakornnukul, Jiraporn; Wongsrita, Somying; Jirawatwarakul, Naruemon; Lertbusayanukul, Chawalit; Sripan, Patumrat; Traisathit, Patrinee

2018-03-01

The purpose of the study is to compare the efficacy of benzydamine HCl with sodium bicarbonate in the prevention of concurrent chemoradiation-induced oral mucositis in head and neck cancer patients. Sixty locally advanced head and neck cancer patients treated with high-dose radiotherapy concurrently with platinum-based chemotherapy were randomly assigned to receive either benzydamine HCl or sodium bicarbonate from the first day of treatment to 2 weeks after the completion of treatment. The total score for mucositis, based on the Oral Mucositis Assessment Scale (OMAS), was used for the assessment, conducted weekly during the treatment period and at the fourth week of the follow-up. Pain score, all prescribed medications, and tube feeding needs were also recorded and compared. The median of total OMAS score was statistically significant lower in patients who received benzydamine HCl during concurrent chemo-radiotherapy (CCRT) than in those who received sodium bicarbonate, (p value < 0.001). There was no difference in median pain score, (p value = 0.52). Nineteen percent of patients in sodium bicarbonate arm needed oral antifungal agents whereas none in the benzydamine HCl arm required such medications, (p value = 0.06). Tube feeding needs and the compliance of CCRT were not different between the two study arms. For patients undergoing high-dose radiotherapy concurrently with platinum-based chemotherapy, using benzydamine HCl mouthwash as a preventive approach was superior to basic oral care using sodium bicarbonate mouthwash in terms of reducing the severity of oral mucositis and encouraging trend for the less need of oral antifungal drugs.

Overlay control methodology comparison: field-by-field and high-order methods

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Chun-Yen; Chiu, Chui-Fu; Wu, Wen-Bin; Shih, Chiang-Lin; Huang, Chin-Chou Kevin; Huang, Healthy; Choi, DongSub; Pierson, Bill; Robinson, John C.

2012-03-01

Overlay control in advanced integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing is becoming one of the leading lithographic challenges in the 3x and 2x nm process nodes. Production overlay control can no longer meet the stringent emerging requirements based on linear composite wafer and field models with sampling of 10 to 20 fields and 4 to 5 sites per field, which was the industry standard for many years. Methods that have emerged include overlay metrology in many or all fields, including the high order field model method called high order control (HOC), and field by field control (FxFc) methods also called correction per exposure. The HOC and FxFc methods were initially introduced as relatively infrequent scanner qualification activities meant to supplement linear production schemes. More recently, however, it is clear that production control is also requiring intense sampling, similar high order and FxFc methods. The added control benefits of high order and FxFc overlay methods need to be balanced with the increased metrology requirements, however, without putting material at risk. Of critical importance is the proper control of edge fields, which requires intensive sampling in order to minimize signatures. In this study we compare various methods of overlay control including the performance levels that can be achieved.

Second Order Sliding Mode Control of the Coupled Tanks System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fayiz Abu Khadra

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Four classes of second order sliding mode controllers (2-SMC have been successfully applied to regulate the liquid level in the second tank of a coupled tanks system. The robustness of these classes of 2-SMC is investigated and their performances are compared with a first order controller to show the merits of these controllers. The effectiveness of these controllers is verified through computer simulations. Comparison between the controllers is based on the time domain performance measures such as rise time, settling time, and the integral absolute error. Results showed that controllers are able to regulate the liquid level with small differences in their performance.

Concurrency & Asynchrony in Declarative Workflows

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Debois, Søren; Hildebrandt, Thomas; Slaats, Tijs

2015-01-01

of concurrency in DCR Graphs admits asynchronous execution of declarative workflows both conceptually and by reporting on a prototype implementation of a distributed declarative workflow engine. Both the theoretical development and the implementation is supported by an extended example; moreover, the theoretical....... In this paper, we pro- pose a notion of concurrency for declarative process models, formulated in the context of Dynamic Condition Response (DCR) graphs, and exploiting the so-called “true concurrency” semantics of Labelled Asynchronous Transition Systems. We demonstrate how this semantic underpinning...

Does working memory change with age? The interactions of concurrent articulation with the effects of word length and acoustic confusion.

Science.gov (United States)

Bireta, Tamra J; Fine, Hope C; Vanwormer, Lisa A

2013-01-01

The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.

An Automation-Assisted Empirical Study on Lock Usage for Concurrent Programs

OpenAIRE

Xin Rui; Qi Zhengwei; Huang Shiqiu; Xiang Chengcheng; Zheng Yudi; Wang Yin; Guan Haibing

2013-01-01

Nowadays concurrent programs are becoming more and more important with the development of hardware and network technologies. However it is not easy for programmers to write reliable concurrent programs. Concurrency characteristics such as thread interleaving make it difficult to debug or maintain concurrent programs. Although there are lots of research work on concurrency such as multi thread testing tools concurrent program verification and data race detection all of them leave open problems...

Improving Delay-Margin of Noncollocated Vibration Control of Piezo-Actuated Flexible Beams via a Fractional-Order Controller

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Teerawat Sangpet

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Noncollocated control of flexible structures results in nonminimum-phase systems because the separation between the actuator and the sensor creates an input-output delay. The delay can deteriorate stability of closed-loop systems. This paper presents a simple approach to improve the delay-margin of the noncollocated vibration control of piezo-actuated flexible beams using a fractional-order controller. Results of real life experiments illustrate efficiency of the controller and show that the fractional-order controller has better stability robustness than the integer-order controller.

Ecological association between HIV and concurrency point ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Ecological association between HIV and concurrency point-prevalence in South Africa's ethnic groups. Chris Kenyon. Abstract. HIV prevalence between different ethnic groups within South Africa exhibits considerable variation. Numerous authors believe that elevated sexual partner concurrency rates are important in the ...

The Caltech Concurrent Computation Program - Project description

Science.gov (United States)

Fox, G.; Otto, S.; Lyzenga, G.; Rogstad, D.

1985-01-01

The Caltech Concurrent Computation Program wwhich studies basic issues in computational science is described. The research builds on initial work where novel concurrent hardware, the necessary systems software to use it and twenty significant scientific implementations running on the initial 32, 64, and 128 node hypercube machines have been constructed. A major goal of the program will be to extend this work into new disciplines and more complex algorithms including general packages that decompose arbitrary problems in major application areas. New high-performance concurrent processors with up to 1024-nodes, over a gigabyte of memory and multigigaflop performance are being constructed. The implementations cover a wide range of problems in areas such as high energy and astrophysics, condensed matter, chemical reactions, plasma physics, applied mathematics, geophysics, simulation, CAD for VLSI, graphics and image processing. The products of the research program include the concurrent algorithms, hardware, systems software, and complete program implementations.

Dominant pole placement with fractional order PID controllers: D-decomposition approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Mandić, Petar D; Šekara, Tomislav B; Lazarević, Mihailo P; Bošković, Marko

2017-03-01

Dominant pole placement is a useful technique designed to deal with the problem of controlling a high order or time-delay systems with low order controller such as the PID controller. This paper tries to solve this problem by using D-decomposition method. Straightforward analytic procedure makes this method extremely powerful and easy to apply. This technique is applicable to a wide range of transfer functions: with or without time-delay, rational and non-rational ones, and those describing distributed parameter systems. In order to control as many different processes as possible, a fractional order PID controller is introduced, as a generalization of classical PID controller. As a consequence, it provides additional parameters for better adjusting system performances. The design method presented in this paper tunes the parameters of PID and fractional PID controller in order to obtain good load disturbance response with a constraint on the maximum sensitivity and sensitivity to noise measurement. Good set point response is also one of the design goals of this technique. Numerous examples taken from the process industry are given, and D-decomposition approach is compared with other PID optimization methods to show its effectiveness. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Concurrent malaria and typhoid fever in the tropics: the diagnostic challenges and public health implications.

Science.gov (United States)

Uneke, C J

2008-06-01

Malaria and typhoid fever still remain diseases of major public health importance in the tropics. Individuals in areas endemic for both the diseases are at substantial risk of contracting both these diseases, either concurrently or an acute infection superimposed on a chronic one. The objective of this report was to systematically review scientific data from studies conducted in the tropics on concurrent malaria and typhoid fever within the last two decades (1987-2007), to highlight the diagnostic challenges and the public health implications. Using the MedLine Entrez-PubMed search, relevant publications were identified for the review via the key words Malaria and Typhoid fever, which yielded 287 entries as of January 2008. Most of the studies reviewed expressed concern that poor diagnosis continues to hinder effective control of concurrent malaria and typhoid fever in the tropics due to: non-specific clinical presentation of the diseases; high prevalence of asymptomatic infections; lack of resources and insufficient access to trained health care providers and facilities; and widespread practice of self-treatment for clinically suspected malaria or typhoid fever. There were considerably higher rates of concurrent malaria and typhoid fever by Widal test compared to the bacteriological culture technique. Although culture technique remains the gold standard in typhoid fever diagnosis, Widal test is still of significant diagnostic value provided judicious interpretation of the test is made against a background of pertinent information. Malaria could be controlled through interventions to minimize human-vector contact, while improved personal hygiene, targeted vaccination campaigns and intensive community health education could help to control typhoid fever in the tropics.

Concurrence Measurement for the Two-Qubit Optical and Atomic States

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lan Zhou

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Concurrence provides us an effective approach to quantify entanglement, which is quite important in quantum information processing applications. In the paper, we mainly review some direct concurrence measurement protocols of the two-qubit optical or atomic system. We first introduce the concept of concurrence for a two-qubit system. Second, we explain the approaches of the concurrence measurement in both a linear and a nonlinear optical system. Third, we introduce some protocols for measuring the concurrence of the atomic entanglement system.

Concurrent chemoradiation for vaginal cancer.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David T Miyamoto

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: It is not known whether the addition of chemotherapy to radiation therapy improves outcomes in primary vaginal cancer. Here, we review clinical outcomes in patients with primary vaginal cancer treated with radiation therapy (RT or concurrent chemoradiation therapy (CRT. METHODS: Seventy-one patients with primary vaginal cancer treated with definitive RT with or without concurrent chemotherapy at a single institution were identified and their records reviewed. A total of 51 patients were treated with RT alone; 20 patients were treated with CRT. Recurrences were analyzed. Overall survival (OS and disease-free survival (DFS rates were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Cox regression analysis was performed. RESULTS: The median age at diagnosis was 61 years (range, 18-92 years and the median follow-up time among survivors was 3.0 years. Kaplan-Meier estimates for OS and DFS differed significantly between the RT and CRT groups (3-yr OS = 56% vs. 79%, log-rank p = 0.037; 3-yr DFS = 43% vs. 73%, log-rank p = 0.011. Twenty-three patients (45% in the RT group had a relapse at any site compared to 3 (15% in the CRT group (p = 0.027. With regard to the sites of first relapse, 10 patients (14% had local only, 4 (6% had local and regional, 9 (13% had regional only, 1 (1% had regional and distant, and 2 (3% had distant only relapse. On univariate analysis, the use of concurrent chemotherapy, FIGO stage, tumor size, and date of diagnosis were significant predictors of DFS. On multivariate analysis, the use of concurrent chemotherapy remained a significant predictor of DFS (hazard ratio 0.31 (95% CI, 0.10-0.97; p = 0.04. CONCLUSIONS: Vaginal cancer results in poor outcomes. Adequate radiation dose is essential to ensure curative management. Concurrent chemotherapy should be considered for vaginal cancer patients.

Erlang Programming A Concurrent Approach to Software Development

CERN Document Server

Cesarini, Francesco

2009-01-01

This book offers you an in-depth explanation of Erlang, a programming language ideal for any situation where concurrency, fault-tolerance, and fast response is essential. You'll learn how to write complex concurrent programs in this language, regardless of your programming background or experience. Erlang Programming focuses on the language's syntax and semantics, and explains pattern matching, proper lists, recursion, debugging, networking, and concurrency, with exercises at the end of each chapter.

50 CFR 21.52 - Public health control order for resident Canada geese.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 50 Wildlife and Fisheries 6 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Public health control order for resident... and Otherwise Injurious Birds § 21.52 Public health control order for resident Canada geese. (a) Which... Canada geese, as defined in § 21.3. (b) What is the public health control order for resident Canada geese...

Second order sliding mode control for a quadrotor UAV.

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, En-Hui; Xiong, Jing-Jing; Luo, Ji-Liang

2014-07-01

A method based on second order sliding mode control (2-SMC) is proposed to design controllers for a small quadrotor UAV. For the switching sliding manifold design, the selection of the coefficients of the switching sliding manifold is in general a sophisticated issue because the coefficients are nonlinear. In this work, in order to perform the position and attitude tracking control of the quadrotor perfectly, the dynamical model of the quadrotor is divided into two subsystems, i.e., a fully actuated subsystem and an underactuated subsystem. For the former, a sliding manifold is defined by combining the position and velocity tracking errors of one state variable, i.e., the sliding manifold has two coefficients. For the latter, a sliding manifold is constructed via a linear combination of position and velocity tracking errors of two state variables, i.e., the sliding manifold has four coefficients. In order to further obtain the nonlinear coefficients of the sliding manifold, Hurwitz stability analysis is used to the solving process. In addition, the flight controllers are derived by using Lyapunov theory, which guarantees that all system state trajectories reach and stay on the sliding surfaces. Extensive simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method. Copyright © 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Low-order aeroelastic models of wind turbines for controller design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sønderby, Ivan Bergquist

Wind turbine controllers are used to optimize the performance of wind turbines such as to reduce power variations and fatigue and extreme loads on wind turbine components. Accurate tuning and design of modern controllers must be done using low-order models that accurately captures the aeroelastic...... response of the wind turbine. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the necessary model complexity required in aeroelastic models used for controller design and to analyze and propose methods to design low-order aeroelastic wind turbine models that are suited for model-based control design....... The thesis contains a characterization of the dynamics that influence the open-loop aeroelastic frequency response of a modern wind turbine, based on a high-order aeroelastic wind turbine model. One main finding is that the transfer function from collective pitch to generator speed is affected by two low...

Second Order Sliding Mode Controller Design for Pneumatic Artificial Muscle

OpenAIRE

Ammar Al-Jodah; Laith Khames

2018-01-01

In this paper, first and second order sliding mode controllers are designed for a single link robotic arm actuated by two Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs). A new mathematical model for the arm has been developed based on the model of large scale pneumatic muscle actuator model. Uncertainty in parameters has been presented and tested for the two controllers. The simulation results of the second-order sliding mode controller proves to have a low tracking error and chattering effect as compar...

On decentralized adaptive full-order sliding mode control of multiple UAVs.

Science.gov (United States)

Xiang, Xianbo; Liu, Chao; Su, Housheng; Zhang, Qin

2017-11-01

In this study, a novel decentralized adaptive full-order sliding mode control framework is proposed for the robust synchronized formation motion of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to system uncertainty. First, a full-order sliding mode surface in a decentralized manner is designed to incorporate both the individual position tracking error and the synchronized formation error while the UAV group is engaged in building a certain desired geometric pattern in three dimensional space. Second, a decentralized virtual plant controller is constructed which allows the embedded low-pass filter to attain the chattering free property of the sliding mode controller. In addition, robust adaptive technique is integrated in the decentralized chattering free sliding control design in order to handle unknown bounded uncertainties, without requirements for assuming a priori knowledge of bounds on the system uncertainties as stated in conventional chattering free control methods. Subsequently, system robustness as well as stability of the decentralized full-order sliding mode control of multiple UAVs is synthesized. Numerical simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control framework to achieve robust 3D formation flight of the multi-UAV system. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Concurrent analysis: towards generalisable qualitative research.

Science.gov (United States)

Snowden, Austyn; Martin, Colin R

2011-10-01

This study develops an original method of qualitative analysis coherent with its interpretivist principles. The objective is to increase the likelihood of achieving generalisability and so improve the chance of the findings being translated into practice. Good qualitative research depends on coherent analysis of different types of data. The limitations of existing methodologies are first discussed to justify the need for a novel approach. To illustrate this approach, primary evidence is presented using the new methodology. The primary evidence consists of a constructivist grounded theory of how mental health nurses with prescribing authority integrate prescribing into practice. This theory is built concurrently from interviews, reflective accounts and case study data from the literature. Concurrent analysis. Ten research articles and 13 semi-structured interviews were sampled purposively and then theoretically and analysed concurrently using constructivist grounded theory. A theory of the process of becoming competent in mental health nurse prescribing was generated through this process. This theory was validated by 32 practising mental health nurse prescribers as an accurate representation of their experience. The methodology generated a coherent and generalisable theory. It is therefore claimed that concurrent analysis engenders consistent and iterative treatment of different sources of qualitative data in a manageable manner. This process supports facilitation of the highest standard of qualitative research. Concurrent analysis removes the artificial delineation of relevant literature from other forms of constructed data. This gives researchers clear direction to treat qualitative data consistently raising the chances of generalisability of the findings. Raising the generalisability of qualitative research will increase its chances of informing clinical practice. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Chaos in the fractional order Chen system and its control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Chunguang; Chen Guanrong

2004-01-01

In this letter, we study the chaotic behaviors in the fractional order Chen system. We found that chaos exists in the fractional order Chen system with order less than 3. The lowest order we found to have chaos in this system is 2.1. Linear feedback control of chaos in this system is also studied

Serial recall of rhythms and verbal sequences: Impacts of concurrent tasks and irrelevant sound.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Debbora; Gathercole, Susan E

2011-08-01

Rhythmic grouping enhances verbal serial recall, yet very little is known about memory for rhythmic patterns. The aim of this study was to compare the cognitive processes supporting memory for rhythmic and verbal sequences using a range of concurrent tasks and irrelevant sounds. In Experiment 1, both concurrent articulation and paced finger tapping during presentation and during a retention interval impaired rhythm recall, while letter recall was only impaired by concurrent articulation. In Experiments 2 and 3, irrelevant sound consisted of irrelevant speech or tones, changing-state or steady-state sound, and syncopated or paced sound during presentation and during a retention interval. Irrelevant speech was more damaging to rhythm and letter recall than was irrelevant tone sound, but there was no effect of changing state on rhythm recall, while letter recall accuracy was disrupted by changing-state sound. Pacing of sound did not consistently affect either rhythm or letter recall. There are similarities in the way speech and rhythms are processed that appear to extend beyond reliance on temporal coding mechanisms involved in serial-order recall.

Design of distributed PID-type dynamic matrix controller for fractional-order systems

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Dawei; Zhang, Ridong

2018-01-01

With the continuous requirements for product quality and safety operation in industrial production, it is difficult to describe the complex large-scale processes with integer-order differential equations. However, the fractional differential equations may precisely represent the intrinsic characteristics of such systems. In this paper, a distributed PID-type dynamic matrix control method based on fractional-order systems is proposed. First, the high-order approximate model of integer order is obtained by utilising the Oustaloup method. Then, the step response model vectors of the plant is obtained on the basis of the high-order model, and the online optimisation for multivariable processes is transformed into the optimisation of each small-scale subsystem that is regarded as a sub-plant controlled in the distributed framework. Furthermore, the PID operator is introduced into the performance index of each subsystem and the fractional-order PID-type dynamic matrix controller is designed based on Nash optimisation strategy. The information exchange among the subsystems is realised through the distributed control structure so as to complete the optimisation task of the whole large-scale system. Finally, the control performance of the designed controller in this paper is verified by an example.

Model predictive control based on reduced order models applied to belt conveyor system.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Wei; Li, Xin

2016-11-01

In the paper, a model predictive controller based on reduced order model is proposed to control belt conveyor system, which is an electro-mechanics complex system with long visco-elastic body. Firstly, in order to design low-degree controller, the balanced truncation method is used for belt conveyor model reduction. Secondly, MPC algorithm based on reduced order model for belt conveyor system is presented. Because of the error bound between the full-order model and reduced order model, two Kalman state estimators are applied in the control scheme to achieve better system performance. Finally, the simulation experiments are shown that balanced truncation method can significantly reduce the model order with high-accuracy and model predictive control based on reduced-model performs well in controlling the belt conveyor system. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PET System Synchronization and Timing Resolution Using High-Speed Data Links

OpenAIRE

Aliaga Varea, Ramón José; Monzó Ferrer, José María; SPAGGIARI, MICHELE; Ferrando Jódar, Néstor; Gadea Gironés, Rafael; Colom Palero, Ricardo José

2011-01-01

Current PET systems with fully digital trigger rely on early digitization of detector signals and the use of digital processors, usually FPGAs, for recognition of valid gamma events on single detectors. Timestamps are assigned and later used for coincidence analysis. In order to maintain a decent timing resolution for events detected on different acquisition boards, it is necessary that local timestamps on different FPGAs be synchronized. Sub-nanosecond accuracy is mandatory if we want this e...

A case for evaluating sensor network protocols concurrently

KAUST Repository

Gnawali, Omprakash; Guibas, Leonidas; Levis, Philip

2010-01-01

Researchers typically evaluate and compare protocols on the testbeds by running them one at a time. This methodology ignores the variation in link qualities and wireless environment across these experiments. These variations can introduce significant noise in the results. Evaluating two protocols concurrently, however, suffers from inter-protocol interactions. These interactions can perturb performance even under very light load, especially timing and timing sensitive protocols. We argue that the benefits of running protocols concurrently greatly outweigh the disadvantages. Protocols rarely run in isolation in real networks, and so considering such interactions is valuable. Although the wireless environment is still uncontrolled, concurrent evaluations make comparisons fair and more statistically sound. Through experiments on two testbeds, we make the case for evaluating and comparing low data-rate sensor network protocols by running them concurrently. Copyright 2010 ACM.

Context Aware Concurrent Execution Framework for Web Browser

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Saeed, Aamir; Erbad, Aiman Mahmood; Olsen, Rasmus Løvenstein

Computing hungry multimedia web applications need to efficiently utilize the device resources. HTML5 web workers is a non-sharing concurrency platform that enables multimedia web application to utilize the available multi-core hardware. HTML5 web workers are implemented by major browser vendors...... to facilitate concurrent execution in web clients and enhance the quality of ambitious web applications. The concurrent execution in web workers allows parallel processing using available cores at the expense of communication overhead and extra computation. The benefits of concurrent execution can be maximized...... by balancing load across workers/CPU cores. This work presents load-balancing algorithms between web workers using parameters such as scheduler throughput, computation priority and game entity locality. An award-winning web-based multimedia game (raptjs.com) is used to test the performance of the load balance...

On the fragility of fractional-order PID controllers for FOPDT processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Padula, Fabrizio; Visioli, Antonio

2016-01-01

This paper analyzes the fragility issue of fractional-order proportional-integral-derivative controllers applied to integer first-order plus-dead-time processes. In particular, the effects of the variations of the controller parameters on the achieved control system robustness and performance are investigated. Results show that this kind of controllers is more fragile with respect to the standard proportional-integral-derivative controllers and therefore a significant attention should be paid by the user in their tuning. Copyright © 2015 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A nuclear training simulator implementing a capability for multiple, concurrent-training sessions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Groeneveld, B.J.; Nannister, D.G.; Estes, K.R.; Johnsen, M.R.

1996-01-01

The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Simulator at the Test Reactor Area of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) has recently been upgraded to reflect plant installation of a distributed control system (DCS). The ATR Simulator re-design implements traditional needs for software extensibility and plant installation prototyping, but the driving force behind its new design was an instruction requirement for multiple, concurrent-training sessions. Support is provided for up to three concurrent, independent or interacting, training sessions of reactor, balance of plant, and experiment loop operators. This capability has been achieved by modifying the existing design to consistently apply client-server, parent-child, and peer-to-peer processing technologies, and then to encapsulate concurrency software into all interfaces. When the resulting component-oriented design is linked with build and runtime flexibility in a distributed computing environment, traditional needs for extensibility and parallel software and scenario development are satisfied with minimal additional effort. Sensible configuration management practices coupled with the ability to perform piecewise system builds also greatly facilitate prototyping of plant changes prior to installation

Real-Time Fixed-Order Lateral H2 Controller for Micro Air Vehicle

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Meenakshi M.

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the design and development of a fixed low-order, robust H2 controller for a micro air vehicle (MAV named Sarika-2. The controller synthesis uses strengthened discrete optimal projection equations and frequency-dependent performance index to achieve robust performance and stability. A single fixed gain low-order dynamic controller provides simultaneous stabilization, disturbance rejection, and sensor noise attenuation over the entire flight speed range of 16 m/sec to 26 m/sec. Comparative study indicates that the low-order H2-controller achieves robust performance levels similar to that of full order controller. Subsequently, the controller is implemented on a digital signal processor-based flight computer and is validated through the real time hardware in loop simulation. The responses obtained with hardware in loop simulation compares well with those obtained from the offline simulation.

Low-order feedforward controllers: Optimal performance and practical considerations

OpenAIRE

Hast, Martin; Hägglund, Tore

2014-01-01

Feedforward control from measurable disturbances can significantly improve the performance in control loops. However, tuning rules for such controllers are scarce. In this paper design rules for how to choose optimal low-order feedforward controller parameter are presented. The parameters are chosen so that the integrated squared error, when the system is subject to a step disturbance, is minimized. The approach utilizes a controller structure that decouples the feedforward and the feedback c...

The order and volume fill rates in inventory control systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorstenson, Anders; Larsen, Christian

2011-01-01

This paper differentiates between an order (line) fill rate and a volume fill rate and specifies their performance for different inventory control systems. When the focus is on filling complete customer orders rather than total quantities the order fill rate would be the preferred service level m...

Temporal Concurrent Constraint Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Valencia, Frank Dan

Concurrent constraint programming (ccp) is a formalism for concurrency in which agents interact with one another by telling (adding) and asking (reading) information in a shared medium. Temporal ccp extends ccp by allowing agents to be constrained by time conditions. This dissertation studies...... temporal ccp by developing a process calculus called ntcc. The ntcc calculus generalizes the tcc model, the latter being a temporal ccp model for deterministic and synchronouss timed reactive systems. The calculus is built upon few basic ideas but it captures several aspects of timed systems. As tcc, ntcc...... structures, robotic devises, multi-agent systems and music applications. The calculus is provided with a denotational semantics that captures the reactive computations of processes in the presence of arbitrary environments. The denotation is proven to be fully-abstract for a substantial fragment...

Concurrent chemoradiation therapy in stage III non-small cell lung cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, I. A.; Choi, I. B.; Kang, K. M.; Jang, J. Y.; Song, J. S.; Lee, S. H.; Kuak, M. S.; Shinn, K. S.

1997-01-01

This study was tried to evaluate the potential benefits of concurrent chemoradiation therapy. Between April 1992 and March 1994, 32 patients who had stage III non-small cell lung cancer were treated with concurrent chemoradiation therapy. Historical control group consisted of 32 patients who had stage III non-small cell lung cancer were received conventionally fractionated radiation therapy alone. Total radiation dose ranged from 5580 cGy to 7000 cGy with median of 5940 cGy. Complete response rate was higher in chemoradiation therapy (CRT) group than radiation therapy (RT) group. In subgroup analyses for patients with good performance status, CRT group showed significantly higher overall survival rate compared with RT group. The prognostic factors affecting survival rate were performance status and pathologic subtype in CRT group. In RT alone group, performance status and stage (IIIa vs IIIb) were identified as a prognostic factors. The incidence of RTOG/EORTC grade 3-4 pulmonary toxicity ahd no significant differences in between CRT group and RT group (16% vs. 6%). The incidence of WHO grade 3-4 pulmonary fibrosis also had no significant differences in both group (38% vs. 25%). In analyses for relationship of field size and pulmonary toxicity, the patients who treated with field size beyond 200 cm 2 had significantly higher rates of pulmonary toxicities. The CRT group showed significantly higher local control rate than RT group. There were no significant differences of survival rate in status showed higher overall survival rate in CRT group than RT group. In spite of higher incidence of acute toxicities with concurrent chemoradiation therapy, the survival gain in subgroup of patients with good performance status were encouraging. CRT group showed higher rate of early death within 1 year, higher 2 year survival rate compared with RT group. Therefore, to evaluate the accurate effect on survival of concurrent chemoradiation therapy, systematic follow-up for long term

Second-Order Controllability of Multi-Agent Systems with Multiple Leaders

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liu Bo; Han Xiao; Shi Yun-Tao; Su Hou-Sheng

2016-01-01

This paper proposes a new second-order continuous-time multi-agent model and analyzes the controllability of second-order multi-agent system with multiple leaders based on the asymmetric topology. This paper considers the more general case: velocity coupling topology is different from location coupling topology. Some sufficient and necessary conditions are presented for the controllability of the system with multiple leaders. In addition, the paper studies the controllability of the system with velocity damping gain. Simulation results are given to illustrate the correctness of theoretical results. (paper)

Dynamic behaviours and control of fractional-order memristor-based ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Dynamics of fractional-order memristor circuit system and its control are investigated in this paper. With the help of stability theory of fractional-order systems, stability of its equilibrium points is analysed. Then, the chaotic behaviours are validated using phase portraits, the Lyapunov exponents and bifurcation diagrams with ...

Concurrent applicative implementations of nondeterministic algorithms

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Salter, R

1983-01-01

The author introduces a methodology for utilizing concurrency in place of backtracking in the implementation of nondeterministic algorithms. This is achieved in an applicative setting through the use of the Friedman-Wise multiprogramming primitive frons, and a paradigm which views the action of nondeterministic algorithms as one of data structure construction. The element by element nondeterminism arising from a linearized search is replaced by a control structure which is oriented towards constructing sets of partial computations. This point of view is facilitated by the use of suspensions, which allow control disciplines to be embodied in the form of conceptual data structures that in reality manifest themselves only for purposes of control. He applies this methodology to the class of problems usually solved through the use of simple backtracking (e.g. 'eight queens'), and to a problem presented by Lindstrom (1979) to illustrate the use of coroutine controlled backtracking, to produce backtrack-free solutions. The solution to the latter illustrates the coroutine capability of suspended structures, but also demonstrates a need for further investigations into resolving problems of process communication in applicative languages. 14 references.

Integrated concurrent utilization quality review, Part one.

Science.gov (United States)

Caterinicchio, R P

1987-01-01

This article is the first of a two-part series which argues for the concurrent management of the appropriateness, necessity, and quality of patient care. Intensifying scrutiny by the credentialing groups, the PROs and all third-party payors underscores the vital need to implement cost-effective information systems which integrate the departmentalized functions of patient-physician profiling, DRG case-mix analyses, length of stay monitoring, pre-admission/admission and continued stay review, discharge planning, risk management, incident reporting and quality review. In the domain of physician performance regarding admitting and practice patterns, the ability to exercise concurrent utilization-quality review means early detection and prevention of events which would otherwise result in denials of payment and/or compromised patient care. Concurrent utilization-quality review must, by definition, be managerially invasive and focused; hence, it is integral to maintaining the integrity of the services and product lines offered by the provider. In fact, if PPO status is a marketing agenda, then the institutional objectives of cost-effectiveness, productivity, value, and competitiveness can only be achieved through concurrent utilization-quality review.

Positive polynomials and robust stabilization with fixed-order controllers

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Henrion, Didier; Šebek, M.; Kučera, V.

2003-01-01

Roč. 48, č. 7 (2003), s. 1178-1186 ISSN 0018-9286 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA102/02/0709; GA MŠk ME 496 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z1075907 Keywords : fixed-order control lers * linear matrix inequality * polynomials, robust control Subject RIV: BC - Control Systems Theory Impact factor: 1.896, year: 2003

Chaotic incommensurate fractional order Rössler system: active control and synchronization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Baleanu Dumitru

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract In this article, we present an active control methodology for controlling the chaotic behavior of a fractional order version of Rössler system. The main feature of the designed controller is its simplicity for practical implementation. Although in controlling such complex system several inputs are used in general to actuate the states, in the proposed design, all states of the system are controlled via one input. Active synchronization of two chaotic fractional order Rössler systems is also investigated via a feedback linearization method. In both control and synchronization, numerical simulations show the efficiency of the proposed methods.

Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the International Personality ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the International Personality item Pool (IPIP) Big-five Factor Markers in Nigeria. ... Nigerian Journal of Psychiatry ... Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the internal consistency and concurrent validity ...

An Implementation of the Object-Oriented Concurrent Programming Language SINA

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Triphathi, Anand; Berge, Eric; Aksit, Mehmet

SINA is an object-oriented language for distributed and concurrent programming. The primary focus of this paper is on the object-oriented concurrent programming mechanisms of SINA and their implementation. This paper presents the SINA constructs for concurrent programming and inter-object

Stabilization of third-order bilinear systems using constant controls

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. E. Golubev

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with the zero equilibrium stabilization for dynamical systems that have control input singularities. A dynamical system with scalar control input is called nonregular if the coefficient of input becomes null on a subset of the phase space that contains the origin. One of the classes of nonregular dynamical systems is represented by bilinear systems. In case of second-order bilinear systems the necessary and sufficient conditions for the zero equilibrium stabilizability are known in the literature. However, in general case the stabilization problem in the presence of control input singularities has not been solved yet.In this note we solve the problem of the zero equilibrium stabilization for the third-order bilinear dynamical systems given in a canonical form. The solution is found in the class of constant controls. The necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for the zero equilibrium stabilizability of the bilinear systems in question.The dependence of the zero equilibrium stabilizability on system parameter values is analyzed. The general criteria of stabilizability by means of constant controls are given for the bilinear systems in question. In case when all the system parameters have nonzero values the necessary and sufficient stabilizability conditions are proved. The case when some of the parameters are equal to zero is also considered.Further research can be focused on extending the obtained results to a higher-order case of bilinear and affine dynamical systems. The solution of the considered stabilization problem should also be found not only within constant controls but also in a class of state feedbacks, particularly, in the case when stabilizing constant control does not exist.One of the potential application areas for the obtained theoretical results is automatic control of technical plants like unmanned aerial vehicles and mobile robots.

Linear Parameter Varying Versus Linear Time Invariant Reduced Order Controller Design of Turboprop Aircraft Dynamics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Widowati

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The applicability of parameter varying reduced order controllers to aircraft model is proposed. The generalization of the balanced singular perturbation method of linear time invariant (LTI system is used to reduce the order of linear parameter varying (LPV system. Based on the reduced order model the low-order LPV controller is designed by using synthesis technique. The performance of the reduced order controller is examined by applying it to lateral-directional control of aircraft model having 20th order. Furthermore, the time responses of the closed loop system with reduced order LPV controllers and reduced order LTI controller is compared. From the simulation results, the 8th order LPV controller can maintain stability and to provide the same level of closed-loop systems performance as the full-order LPV controller. It is different with the reduced-order LTI controller that cannot maintain stability and performance for all allowable parameter trajectories.

The LEP RF Trip and Beam Loss Diagnostics System

CERN Document Server

Arnaudon, L; Beetham, G; Ciapala, Edmond; Juillard, J C; Olsen, R

2002-01-01

During the last years of operation the number of operationally independent RF stations distributed around LEP reached a total of 40. A serious difficulty when running at high energy and high beam intensities was to establish cause and effect in beam loss situations, where the trip of any single RF station would result in beam loss, rapidly producing further multiple RF station trips. For the last year of operation a fast post-mortem diagnostics system was developed to allow precise time-stamping of RF unit trips and beam intensity changes. The system was based on eight local DSP controlled fast acquisition and event recording units, one in each RF sector, connected to critical RF control signals and fast beam intensity monitors and synchronised by GPS. The acquisition units were armed and synchronised at the start of each fill. At the end of the fill the local time-stamped RF trip and beam intensity change history tables were recovered, events ordered and the results stored in a database for subsequent analys...

Treatment outcome of radiation therapy and concurrent targeted molecular therapy in spinal metastasis from renal cell carcinoma

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Park, Sang Joon; Kim, Kyung Hwan; Rhee, Woo Joong; Lee, Jeong Shin; Cho, Yeo Na; Koom, Woong Sub [Dept. of Radiation Oncology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

2016-06-15

To evaluate the clinical outcomes of patients who underwent radiation therapy with or without targeted molecular therapy for the treatment of spinal metastasis from renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A total of 28 spinal metastatic lesions from RCC patients treated with radiotherapy between June 2009 and June 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Thirteen lesions were treated concurrently with targeted molecular therapy (concurrent group) and 15 lesions were not (nonconcurrent group). Local control was defined as lack of radiographically evident local progression and neurological deterioration. At a median follow-up of 11 months (range, 2 to 58 months), the 1-year local progression-free rate (LPFR) was 67.0%. The patients with concurrent targeted molecular therapy showed significantly higher LPFR than those without (p = 0.019). After multivariate analysis, use of concurrent targeted molecular therapy showed a tendency towards improved LPFR (hazard ratio, 0.13; 95% confidence interval, 0.01 to 1.16). There was no difference in the incidence of systemic progression between concurrent and nonconcurrent groups. No grade ≥2 toxicities were observed during or after radiotherapy. Our study suggests the possibility that concurrent use of targeted molecular therapy during radiotherapy may improve LPFR. Further study with a large population is required to confirm these results.

Treatment outcome of radiation therapy and concurrent targeted molecular therapy in spinal metastasis from renal cell carcinoma

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Park, Sang Joon; Kim, Kyung Hwan; Rhee, Woo Joong; Lee, Jeong Shin; Cho, Yeo Na; Koom, Woong Sub

2016-01-01

To evaluate the clinical outcomes of patients who underwent radiation therapy with or without targeted molecular therapy for the treatment of spinal metastasis from renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A total of 28 spinal metastatic lesions from RCC patients treated with radiotherapy between June 2009 and June 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Thirteen lesions were treated concurrently with targeted molecular therapy (concurrent group) and 15 lesions were not (nonconcurrent group). Local control was defined as lack of radiographically evident local progression and neurological deterioration. At a median follow-up of 11 months (range, 2 to 58 months), the 1-year local progression-free rate (LPFR) was 67.0%. The patients with concurrent targeted molecular therapy showed significantly higher LPFR than those without (p = 0.019). After multivariate analysis, use of concurrent targeted molecular therapy showed a tendency towards improved LPFR (hazard ratio, 0.13; 95% confidence interval, 0.01 to 1.16). There was no difference in the incidence of systemic progression between concurrent and nonconcurrent groups. No grade ≥2 toxicities were observed during or after radiotherapy. Our study suggests the possibility that concurrent use of targeted molecular therapy during radiotherapy may improve LPFR. Further study with a large population is required to confirm these results

Control and switching synchronization of fractional order chaotic systems using active control technique

KAUST Repository

Radwan, A.G.; Moaddy, K.; Salama, Khaled N.; Momani, S.; Hashim, I.

2013-01-01

This paper discusses the continuous effect of the fractional order parameter of the Lü system where the system response starts stable, passing by chaotic behavior then reaching periodic response as the fractional-order increases. In addition, this paper presents the concept of synchronization of different fractional order chaotic systems using active control technique. Four different synchronization cases are introduced based on the switching parameters. Also, the static and dynamic synchronizations can be obtained when the switching parameters are functions of time. The nonstandard finite difference method is used for the numerical solution of the fractional order master and slave systems. Many numeric simulations are presented to validate the concept for different fractional order parameters.

Control and switching synchronization of fractional order chaotic systems using active control technique

KAUST Repository

Radwan, A.G.

2013-03-13

This paper discusses the continuous effect of the fractional order parameter of the Lü system where the system response starts stable, passing by chaotic behavior then reaching periodic response as the fractional-order increases. In addition, this paper presents the concept of synchronization of different fractional order chaotic systems using active control technique. Four different synchronization cases are introduced based on the switching parameters. Also, the static and dynamic synchronizations can be obtained when the switching parameters are functions of time. The nonstandard finite difference method is used for the numerical solution of the fractional order master and slave systems. Many numeric simulations are presented to validate the concept for different fractional order parameters.

Concurrent progressive-ratio schedules: built-in controls in the study of delayed reward efficacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Jarmolowicz, David P; Hudnall, Jennifer L

2014-08-15

Delayed rewards maintain lower rates of operant responding than immediate rewards, and when given a choice between immediate and delayed rewards, individuals typically choose the immediate reward, even when it is smaller (a phenomenon called delay discounting). The behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying these behavioral patterns, however, are not conclusively understood. The present study developed a method to examine the efficacy of delayed rewards in a way that is suitable for pharmacological manipulation of delayed reward efficacy (while controlling for general changes in reward efficacy). The progressive ratio (PR) paradigm often used to examine reward efficacy was modified such that two PR schedules for lever pressing concurrently yet independently were presented. Across a series of conditions, a range of delays (3-81s) were arranged on one of the levers while the reward on the other lever remained immediate. PR breakpoints (the highest ratio completed on each lever, our measure of reward efficacy) systematically decreased on the delayed, but not on the immediate reward lever, suggesting that delays decreased reward efficacy. This decrease in breakpoint resulted in bias in within-session responding that was accounted for by models that adjusted reward value by the delay to that reward. Unlike the standard PR paradigm, the present arrangement provided the controls needed to differentiate delay specific from general changes in reward efficacy. The present method should be helpful in the study of the behavioral and neural mechanisms of delayed reward efficacy. Modifications of the present paradigm should be useful for pharmacological studies. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Software defined radio (SDR) architecture for concurrent multi-satellite communications

Science.gov (United States)

Maheshwarappa, Mamatha R.

SDRs have emerged as a viable approach for space communications over the last decade by delivering low-cost hardware and flexible software solutions. The flexibility introduced by the SDR concept not only allows the realisation of concurrent multiple standards on one platform, but also promises to ease the implementation of one communication standard on differing SDR platforms by signal porting. This technology would facilitate implementing reconfigurable nodes for parallel satellite reception in Mobile/Deployable Ground Segments and Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS) for amateur radio/university satellite operations. This work outlines the recent advances in embedded technologies that can enable new communication architectures for concurrent multi-satellite or satellite-to-ground missions where multi-link challenges are associated. This research proposes a novel concept to run advanced parallelised SDR back-end technologies in a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) embedded system that can support multi-signal processing for multi-satellite scenarios simultaneously. The initial SDR implementation could support only one receiver chain due to system saturation. However, the design was optimised to facilitate multiple signals within the limited resources available on an embedded system at any given time. This was achieved by providing a VHDL solution to the existing Python and C/C++ programming languages along with parallelisation so as to accelerate performance whilst maintaining the flexibility. The improvement in the performance was validated at every stage through profiling. Various cases of concurrent multiple signals with different standards such as frequency (with Doppler effect) and symbol rates were simulated in order to validate the novel architecture proposed in this research. Also, the architecture allows the system to be reconfigurable by providing the opportunity to change the communication standards in soft real-time. The chosen COTS solution provides a

New concurrent iterative methods with monotonic convergence

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yao, Qingchuan [Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States)

1996-12-31

This paper proposes the new concurrent iterative methods without using any derivatives for finding all zeros of polynomials simultaneously. The new methods are of monotonic convergence for both simple and multiple real-zeros of polynomials and are quadratically convergent. The corresponding accelerated concurrent iterative methods are obtained too. The new methods are good candidates for the application in solving symmetric eigenproblems.

Concurrent sexual partners-A predictor of Chlamydia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Marianne Johansson; Olesen, Frede; Maindal, Helle Terkildsen

2013-01-01

, but the significance of this compared with other well-known predictors has only been briefly described. Aim: The aim is to examine if concurrent partners isan independent predictor for C. trachomatis infection in young Danes aged 15-29 years. Methods: Detailed sexual behavior data were collected via a web......:These preliminary results suggest that concurrent sexual partners is an important predictor for C.trachomatis infections among young Danes aged 15-29. A more concise conclusion will be presented at the Ph.D day......Background:Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common sexually transmitted bacterial infection among young Danes and the spread is highly dependent on the population’s sexual behavior. Previous studies have found concurrent partnerships to be a possible predictor for C. trachomatis...

Visualization of independence and dependence for program concurrency

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Belady, L.A.; Hosokawa, K.

1984-01-01

In order to fully utilize the CRT device's dynamic and two dimensional capabilities, a new way of thinking about programs and an associated notation are proposed. The scheme permits the explicit indication of the program's potential for parallel execution. The image created by the programmer on the screen provides the compiler with sequencing and concurrency information, while at the same time serves as a visual feedback to the programmer. So far the way of programming in two dimensions is just an idea and has not yet been tried either on a real life problem or by employing real life programmers. The authors are attempting a quick implementation in the form of a front end to an existing language

Fixed-Order Mixed Norm Designs for Building Vibration Control

Science.gov (United States)

Whorton, Mark S.; Calise, Anthony J.

2000-01-01

This study investigates the use of H2, mu-synthesis, and mixed H2/mu methods to construct full order controllers and optimized controllers of fixed dimensions. The benchmark problem definition is first extended to include uncertainty within the controller bandwidth in the form of parametric uncertainty representative of uncertainty in the natural frequencies of the design model. The sensitivity of H2 design to unmodeled dynamics and parametric uncertainty is evaluated for a range of controller levels of authority. Next, mu-synthesis methods are applied to design full order compensators that are robust to both unmodeled dynamics and to parametric uncertainty. Finally, a set of mixed H2/mu compensators are designed which are optimized for a fixed compensator dimension. These mixed norm designs recover the H2 design performance levels while providing the same levels of robust stability as the mu designs. It is shown that designing with the mixed norm approach permits higher levels of controller authority for which the H2 designs are destabilizing. The benchmark problem is that of an active tendon system. The controller designs are all based on the use of acceleration feedback.

A unified approach to fixed-order controller design via linear matrix inequalities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. Iwasaki

1995-01-01

Full Text Available We consider the design of fixed-order (or low-order linear controllers which meet certain performance and/or robustness specifications. The following three problems are considered; covariance control as a nominal performance problem,-stabilization as a robust stabilization problem, and robust L∞ control problem as a robust performance problem. All three control problems are converted to a single linear algebra problem of solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI of the type BGC+(BGCT+Q<0 for the unknown matrix G. Thus this paper addresses the fixed-order controller design problem in a unified way. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a fixed-order controller which satisfies the design specifications for each problem are derived, and an explicit controller formula is given. In any case, the resulting problem is shown to be a search for a (structured positive definite matrix X such that X∈1 and X−1∈2 where 1 and 2 are convex sets defined by LMIs. Computational aspects of the nonconvex LMI problem are discussed.

Concurrency-Induced Transitions in Epidemic Dynamics on Temporal Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Onaga, Tomokatsu; Gleeson, James P; Masuda, Naoki

2017-09-08

Social contact networks underlying epidemic processes in humans and animals are highly dynamic. The spreading of infections on such temporal networks can differ dramatically from spreading on static networks. We theoretically investigate the effects of concurrency, the number of neighbors that a node has at a given time point, on the epidemic threshold in the stochastic susceptible-infected-susceptible dynamics on temporal network models. We show that network dynamics can suppress epidemics (i.e., yield a higher epidemic threshold) when the node's concurrency is low, but can also enhance epidemics when the concurrency is high. We analytically determine different phases of this concurrency-induced transition, and confirm our results with numerical simulations.

Concurrency-Induced Transitions in Epidemic Dynamics on Temporal Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Onaga, Tomokatsu; Gleeson, James P.; Masuda, Naoki

2017-09-01

Social contact networks underlying epidemic processes in humans and animals are highly dynamic. The spreading of infections on such temporal networks can differ dramatically from spreading on static networks. We theoretically investigate the effects of concurrency, the number of neighbors that a node has at a given time point, on the epidemic threshold in the stochastic susceptible-infected-susceptible dynamics on temporal network models. We show that network dynamics can suppress epidemics (i.e., yield a higher epidemic threshold) when the node's concurrency is low, but can also enhance epidemics when the concurrency is high. We analytically determine different phases of this concurrency-induced transition, and confirm our results with numerical simulations.

Association of HIV prevalence and concurrency of sexual ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Association of HIV prevalence and concurrency of sexual partnerships in South Africa's language groups: An ecological analysis. C Kenyon. Abstract. Background. There is considerable variation in HIV prevalence between different language groups in South Africa (SA). Sexual partner concurrency has been linked to the ...

Chaos control of third-order phase-locked loops using backstepping nonlinear controller

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Harb, Ahmad M.; Harb, Bassam A.

2004-01-01

Previous study showed that a third-order phase-locked loop (PLL) with sinusoidal phase detector characteristics experienced a Hopf bifurcation point as well as chaotic behavior. As a result, this behavior drives the PLL to the out-of-lock (unstable) state. The analysis was based on a modern nonlinear theory such as bifurcation and chaos. The main goal of this paper is to control this chaotic behavior. A nonlinear controller based on the theory of backstepping is designed. The study showed the effectiveness of the designed nonlinear controller in controlling the undesirable unstable behavior and pulling the PLL back to the in-lock state

Time takes space: selective effects of multitasking on concurrent spatial processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Mäntylä, Timo; Coni, Valentina; Kubik, Veit; Todorov, Ivo; Del Missier, Fabio

2017-08-01

Many everyday activities require coordination and monitoring of complex relations of future goals and deadlines. Cognitive offloading may provide an efficient strategy for reducing control demands by representing future goals and deadlines as a pattern of spatial relations. We tested the hypothesis that multiple-task monitoring involves time-to-space transformational processes, and that these spatial effects are selective with greater demands on coordinate (metric) than categorical (nonmetric) spatial relation processing. Participants completed a multitasking session in which they monitored four series of deadlines, running on different time scales, while making concurrent coordinate or categorical spatial judgments. We expected and found that multitasking taxes concurrent coordinate, but not categorical, spatial processing. Furthermore, males showed a better multitasking performance than females. These findings provide novel experimental evidence for the hypothesis that efficient multitasking involves metric relational processing.

Concurrent sexual partnerships among married Zimbabweans – implications for HIV prevention

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mugweni E

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Esther Mugweni,1 Stephen Pearson,2 Mayeh Omar2 1UCL Department of Infection and Population Health, University College London, London, 2The Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Background: Concurrent sexual partnerships play a key role in sustaining the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe. Married couples are at an increased risk of contracting HIV from sexual networks produced by concurrent sexual partnerships. Addressing these partnerships is an international HIV prevention priority. Methods: Our qualitative study presents the socioeconomic factors that contribute to the occurrence of concurrent sexual partnerships among married people in Zimbabwe. We conducted 36 in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions with married men and women in Zimbabwe in 2008 to understand the organizations of concurrent sexual partnerships. Data were analyzed using framework analysis. Results: Our study indicates that relationship dissatisfaction played a key role in the engagement of concurrent sexual partnerships. Depending on the source of the dissatisfaction, there were four possible types of concurrent sexual relationships that were formed: sex worker, casual partner, regular girlfriend or informal polygyny which was referred to as “small house”. These relationships had different levels of intimacy, which had a bearing on practicing safer sex. Participants described three characteristics of hegemonic masculinity that contributed to the sources of dissatisfaction leading to concurrent sexual activity. Similarly, various aspects of emphasized femininity were described as creating opportunities for the occurrence of concurrent sexual relationships. Economic status was also listed as a factor that contributed to the occurrence of concurrent sexual partnerships. Conclusion: Marital dissatisfaction was indicated as a contributing factor to the occurrence of concurrent sexual relationships. There were several

Adaptive suboptimal second-order sliding mode control for microgrids

Science.gov (United States)

Incremona, Gian Paolo; Cucuzzella, Michele; Ferrara, Antonella

2016-09-01

This paper deals with the design of adaptive suboptimal second-order sliding mode (ASSOSM) control laws for grid-connected microgrids. Due to the presence of the inverter, of unpredicted load changes, of switching among different renewable energy sources, and of electrical parameters variations, the microgrid model is usually affected by uncertain terms which are bounded, but with unknown upper bounds. To theoretically frame the control problem, the class of second-order systems in Brunovsky canonical form, characterised by the presence of matched uncertain terms with unknown bounds, is first considered. Four adaptive strategies are designed, analysed and compared to select the most effective ones to be applied to the microgrid case study. In the first two strategies, the control amplitude is continuously adjusted, so as to arrive at dominating the effect of the uncertainty on the controlled system. When a suitable control amplitude is attained, the origin of the state space of the auxiliary system becomes attractive. In the other two strategies, a suitable blend between two components, one mainly working during the reaching phase, the other being the predominant one in a vicinity of the sliding manifold, is generated, so as to reduce the control amplitude in steady state. The microgrid system in a grid-connected operation mode, controlled via the selected ASSOSM control strategies, exhibits appreciable stability properties, as proved theoretically and shown in simulation.

Notes on Timed Concurrent Constraint Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Mogens; Valencia, Frank D.

2004-01-01

and program reactive systems. This note provides a comprehensive introduction to the background for and central notions from the theory of tccp. Furthermore, it surveys recent results on a particular tccp calculus, ntcc, and it provides a classification of the expressive power of various tccp languages.......A constraint is a piece of (partial) information on the values of the variables of a system. Concurrent constraint programming (ccp) is a model of concurrency in which agents (also called processes) interact by telling and asking information (constraints) to and from a shared store (a constraint...

Gender asymmetry in concurrent partnerships and HIV prevalence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leung, Ka Yin; Powers, Kimberly A.; Kretzschmar, Mirjam

The structure of the sexual network of a population plays an essential role in the transmission of HIV. Concurrent partnerships, i.e. partnerships that overlap in time, are important in determining this network structure. Men and women may differ in their concurrent behavior, e.g. in the case of

Gender asymmetry in concurrent partnerships and HIV prevalence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leung, Ka Yin; Powers, Kimberly A.; Kretzschmar, Mirjam

2017-01-01

The structure of the sexual network of a population plays an essential role in the transmission of HIV. Concurrent partnerships, i.e. partnerships that overlap in time, are important in determining this network structure. Men and women may differ in their concurrent behavior, e.g. in the case of

A unified approach to fixed-order controller design via linear matrix inequalities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iwasaki T.

1995-01-01

Full Text Available We consider the design of fixed-order (or low-order linear controllers which meet certain performance and/or robustness specifications. The following three problems are considered; covariance control as a nominal performance problem, 𝒬 -stabilization as a robust stabilization problem, and robust L ∞ control problem as a robust performance problem. All three control problems are converted to a single linear algebra problem of solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI of the type B G C + ( B G C T + Q < 0 for the unknown matrix G . Thus this paper addresses the fixed-order controller design problem in a unified way. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a fixed-order controller which satisfies the design specifications for each problem are derived, and an explicit controller formula is given. In any case, the resulting problem is shown to be a search for a (structured positive definite matrix X such that X ∈ 𝒞 1 and X − 1 ∈ 𝒞 2 where 𝒞 1 and 𝒞 2 are convex sets defined by LMIs. Computational aspects of the nonconvex LMI problem are discussed.

Study on Fuzzy Adaptive Fractional Order PIλDμ Control for Maglev Guiding System

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Qing; Hu, Yuwei

The mathematical model of the linear elevator maglev guiding system is analyzed in this paper. For the linear elevator needs strong stability and robustness to run, the integer order PID was expanded to the fractional order, in order to improve the steady state precision, rapidity and robustness of the system, enhance the accuracy of the parameter in fractional order PIλDμ controller, the fuzzy control is combined with the fractional order PIλDμ control, using the fuzzy logic achieves the parameters online adjustment. The simulations reveal that the system has faster response speed, higher tracking precision, and has stronger robustness to the disturbance.

Orderly recruitment of motor units under optical control in vivo.

Science.gov (United States)

Llewellyn, Michael E; Thompson, Kimberly R; Deisseroth, Karl; Delp, Scott L

2010-10-01

A drawback of electrical stimulation for muscle control is that large, fatigable motor units are preferentially recruited before smaller motor units by the lowest-intensity electrical cuff stimulation. This phenomenon limits therapeutic applications because it is precisely the opposite of the normal physiological (orderly) recruitment pattern; therefore, a mechanism to achieve orderly recruitment has been a long-sought goal in physiology, medicine and engineering. Here we demonstrate a technology for reliable orderly recruitment in vivo. We find that under optical control with microbial opsins, recruitment of motor units proceeds in the physiological recruitment sequence, as indicated by multiple independent measures of motor unit recruitment including conduction latency, contraction and relaxation times, stimulation threshold and fatigue. As a result, we observed enhanced performance and reduced fatigue in vivo. These findings point to an unanticipated new modality of neural control with broad implications for nervous system and neuromuscular physiology, disease research and therapeutic innovation.

OPTICON: Pro-Matlab software for large order controlled structure design

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Lee D.

1989-01-01

A software package for large order controlled structure design is described and demonstrated. The primary program, called OPTICAN, uses both Pro-Matlab M-file routines and selected compiled FORTRAN routines linked into the Pro-Matlab structure. The program accepts structural model information in the form of state-space matrices and performs three basic design functions on the model: (1) open loop analyses; (2) closed loop reduced order controller synthesis; and (3) closed loop stability and performance assessment. The current controller synthesis methods which were implemented in this software are based on the Generalized Linear Quadratic Gaussian theory of Bernstein. In particular, a reduced order Optimal Projection synthesis algorithm based on a homotopy solution method was successfully applied to an experimental truss structure using a 58-state dynamic model. These results are presented and discussed. Current plans to expand the practical size of the design model to several hundred states and the intention to interface Pro-Matlab to a supercomputing environment are discussed.

PID control of second-order systems with hysteresis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jayawardhana, Bayu; Logemann, Hartmut; Ryan, Eugene P.

2008-01-01

The efficacy of proportional, integral and derivative (PID) control for set point regulation and disturbance rejection is investigated in a context of second-order systems with hysteretic components. Two basic structures are studied: in the first, the hysteretic component resides (internally) in the

Multivariable robust adaptive controller using reduced-order model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei Wang

1990-04-01

Full Text Available In this paper a multivariable robust adaptive controller is presented for a plant with bounded disturbances and unmodeled dynamics due to plant-model order mismatches. The robust stability of the closed-loop system is achieved by using the normalization technique and the least squares parameter estimation scheme with dead zones. The weighting polynomial matrices are incorporated into the control law, so that the open-loop unstable or/and nonminimum phase plants can be handled.

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for advanced esophageal cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shimizu, Wakako; Ogino, Takashi; Ishikura, Satoshi; Kawashima, Mitsuhiko; Ikeda, Hiroshi

1997-01-01

To investigate factors influencing response and survival for patients with squamous cell cancer of the esophagus. Forty-nine patients with squamous cell cancer of the esophagus, classified by guidelines for the clinical and pathologic studies on carcinoma of the esophagus published by the Japanese Society for Esophageal Disease, were treated by concurrent chemoradiotherapy using chemotherapy consisting of cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil with definitive irradiation of 60 Gy concurrently. Endoscopic findings and biopsy were used for evaluating the response. Nurse charts recording patient's feeding status were adopted to estimate severity of dysphagia. Complete response (CR) rate was 69.4%, median survival time (MST) was 12.3 months, and median local failure-free survival time 7.3 months. Patients in early stage (= 32.4 months, 20.4 months, 20.4 months, 15.7 months, respectively). Patients in A3 stage were often suffered from severe dysphagia both before and after treatment (81.5%, 70.4%), respectively. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy was effective treatment for esophageal cancer. Degree of dysphagia was considered to be a good prognosticator of patients' survival. (author)

Two-degree-of-freedom fractional order-PID controllers design for fractional order processes with dead-time.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Mingjie; Zhou, Ping; Zhao, Zhicheng; Zhang, Jinggang

2016-03-01

Recently, fractional order (FO) processes with dead-time have attracted more and more attention of many researchers in control field, but FO-PID controllers design techniques available for the FO processes with dead-time suffer from lack of direct systematic approaches. In this paper, a simple design and parameters tuning approach of two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) FO-PID controller based on internal model control (IMC) is proposed for FO processes with dead-time, conventional one-degree-of-freedom control exhibited the shortcoming of coupling of robustness and dynamic response performance. 2-DOF control can overcome the above weakness which means it realizes decoupling of robustness and dynamic performance from each other. The adjustable parameter η2 of FO-PID controller is directly related to the robustness of closed-loop system, and the analytical expression is given between the maximum sensitivity specification Ms and parameters η2. In addition, according to the dynamic performance requirement of the practical system, the parameters η1 can also be selected easily. By approximating the dead-time term of the process model with the first-order Padé or Taylor series, the expressions for 2-DOF FO-PID controller parameters are derived for three classes of FO processes with dead-time. Moreover, compared with other methods, the proposed method is simple and easy to implement. Finally, the simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of this method. Copyright © 2015 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

IMRT reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy in recurrent head and neck cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zwicker, Felix; Roeder, Falk; Thieke, Christian; Timke, Carmen; Huber, Peter E.; Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum; Muenter, Marc W.; Debus, Juergen

2011-01-01

Purpose: In this retrospective investigation, the outcome and toxicity after reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy of recurrent head and neck cancer (HNC) in patients who had contraindications to platinum-based chemotherapy were analyzed. Materials and Methods: Ten patients with locally advanced recurrent HNC were retrospectively evaluated. In 9 cases, histology was squamous cell carcinoma, in one case adenoid cystic carcinoma. External beam radiotherapy was part of the initial treatment in all cases. Reirradiation was carried out using step-and-shoot intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with a median dose of 50.4 Gy. Cetuximab was applied as loading dose (400 mg/m 2 ) 1 week prior to reirradiation and then weekly concurrently with radiotherapy (250 mg/m 2 ). Results: The median overall survival time after initiation of reirradiation was 7 months; the 1-year overall survival (OS) rate was 40%. Local failure was found in 3 patients, resulting in a 1-year local control (LC) rate of 61%. The 1-year locoregional control (LRC) rate was 44%, while the 1-year distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) was 75%. Acute hematological toxicity was not observed in the group. Severe acute toxicity included one fatal infield arterial bleeding and one flap necrosis. Severe late toxicities were noted in 2 patients: fibrosis of the temporomandibular joint in 1 patient and stenosis of the cervical esophagus in another. Conclusions: IMRT reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy in recurrent HNC is feasible with acceptable acute toxicity. Further investigations are necessary to determine the clinical role of this therapy concept. (orig.)

IMRT reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy in recurrent head and neck cancer

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zwicker, Felix; Roeder, Falk; Thieke, Christian; Timke, Carmen; Huber, Peter E. [Heidelberg Univ. (Germany). Dept. of Radiation Oncology; Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ), Heidelberg (Germany). Div. of Radiation Oncology; Muenter, Marc W.; Debus, Juergen [Heidelberg Univ. (Germany). Dept. of Radiation Oncology

2011-01-15

Purpose: In this retrospective investigation, the outcome and toxicity after reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy of recurrent head and neck cancer (HNC) in patients who had contraindications to platinum-based chemotherapy were analyzed. Materials and Methods: Ten patients with locally advanced recurrent HNC were retrospectively evaluated. In 9 cases, histology was squamous cell carcinoma, in one case adenoid cystic carcinoma. External beam radiotherapy was part of the initial treatment in all cases. Reirradiation was carried out using step-and-shoot intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with a median dose of 50.4 Gy. Cetuximab was applied as loading dose (400 mg/m{sup 2}) 1 week prior to reirradiation and then weekly concurrently with radiotherapy (250 mg/m{sup 2}). Results: The median overall survival time after initiation of reirradiation was 7 months; the 1-year overall survival (OS) rate was 40%. Local failure was found in 3 patients, resulting in a 1-year local control (LC) rate of 61%. The 1-year locoregional control (LRC) rate was 44%, while the 1-year distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) was 75%. Acute hematological toxicity was not observed in the group. Severe acute toxicity included one fatal infield arterial bleeding and one flap necrosis. Severe late toxicities were noted in 2 patients: fibrosis of the temporomandibular joint in 1 patient and stenosis of the cervical esophagus in another. Conclusions: IMRT reirradiation with concurrent cetuximab immunotherapy in recurrent HNC is feasible with acceptable acute toxicity. Further investigations are necessary to determine the clinical role of this therapy concept. (orig.)

39 CFR 273.7 - Concurrence of Attorney General.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 39 Postal Service 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Concurrence of Attorney General. 273.7 Section 273... PROGRAM FRAUD CIVIL REMEDIES ACT § 273.7 Concurrence of Attorney General. (a) The Attorney General is... the Attorney General or his designee approves such action in a written statement which specifies: (1...

On Application of Second Order Sliding Mode Control to Electro-Hydraulic Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmidt, Lasse; Andersen, Torben Ole; Pedersen, Henrik C.

2014-01-01

This paper discusses the application of second order mode controls to hydraulic valve-cylinder drives with a special focus on the limitations resulting from nonlinear dynamic effects in flow control valves. Second order sliding mode algorithms appear highly attractive in the successive...

Performance comparison of optimal fractional order hybrid fuzzy PID controllers for handling oscillatory fractional order processes with dead time.

Science.gov (United States)

Das, Saptarshi; Pan, Indranil; Das, Shantanu

2013-07-01

Fuzzy logic based PID controllers have been studied in this paper, considering several combinations of hybrid controllers by grouping the proportional, integral and derivative actions with fuzzy inferencing in different forms. Fractional order (FO) rate of error signal and FO integral of control signal have been used in the design of a family of decomposed hybrid FO fuzzy PID controllers. The input and output scaling factors (SF) along with the integro-differential operators are tuned with real coded genetic algorithm (GA) to produce optimum closed loop performance by simultaneous consideration of the control loop error index and the control signal. Three different classes of fractional order oscillatory processes with various levels of relative dominance between time constant and time delay have been used to test the comparative merits of the proposed family of hybrid fractional order fuzzy PID controllers. Performance comparison of the different FO fuzzy PID controller structures has been done in terms of optimal set-point tracking, load disturbance rejection and minimal variation of manipulated variable or smaller actuator requirement etc. In addition, multi-objective Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) has been used to study the Pareto optimal trade-offs between the set point tracking and control signal, and the set point tracking and load disturbance performance for each of the controller structure to handle the three different types of processes. Copyright © 2013 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

CONCURRENT VALIDITY OF THE STUDENT TEACHER PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY SCALE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Predrag Živković

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The main purpose of study was to examine concurrent validity of the Student Teachers Professional Identity Scale–STPIS (Fisherman and Abbot, 1998 that was for the first time used in Serbia. Indicators of concurrent validity was established by correlation with student teacher self-reported well-being, self-esteem, burnout stress and resilience. Based on the results we can conclude that the STPIS meets the criterion of concurrent validity. The implications of these results are important for researchers and decisions makers in teacher education

Short-term Mobility and Increased Partnership Concurrency among Men in Zimbabwe.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Susan Cassels

Full Text Available Migration has long been understood as an underlying factor for HIV transmission, and sexual partner concurrency has been increasingly studied as an important component of HIV transmission dynamics. However, less work has examined the role of short-term mobility in sexual partner concurrency using a network approach. Short-term mobility may be a risk for HIV for the migrant's partner as well either through the partner's risk behaviors while the migrant is away, such as the partner having additional partners, or via exposure to the return migrant.Using data from the 2010-11 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, weighted generalized linear regression models were used to investigate the associations between short-term mobility and partnership concurrency at the individual and partnership levels.At the individual level, we find strong evidence of an association between short-term mobility and concurrency. Men who traveled were more likely to have concurrent partnerships compared to men who did not travel and the relationship was non-linear: each trip was associated with a 2% higher probability of concurrency, with a diminishing risk at 60 trips (p<0.001. At the partnership level, short-term mobility by the male only or both partners was associated with male concurrency. Couples in which the female only traveled exhibited less male concurrency.Short-term mobility has the ability to impact population-level transmission dynamics by facilitating partnership concurrency and thus onward HIV transmission. Short-term migrants may be an important population to target for HIV testing, treatment, or social and behavioral interventions to prevent the spread of HIV.

Demonstrative fractional order - PID controller based DC motor drive on digital platform.

Science.gov (United States)

Khubalkar, Swapnil W; Junghare, Anjali S; Aware, Mohan V; Chopade, Amit S; Das, Shantanu

2017-09-21

In industrial drives applications, fractional order controllers can exhibit phenomenal impact due to realization through digital implementation. Digital fractional order controllers have created wide scope as it possess the inherent advantages like robustness against the plant parameter variation. This paper provides brief design procedure of fractional order proportional-integral-derivative (FO-PID) controller through the indirect approach of approximation using constant phase technique. The new modified dynamic particle swarm optimization (IdPSO) technique is proposed to find controller parameters. The FO-PID controller is implemented using floating point digital signal processor. The building blocks are designed and assembled with all peripheral components for the 1.5kW industrial DC motor drive. The robust operation for parametric variation is ascertained by testing the controller with two separately excited DC motors with the same rating but different parameters. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Concurrent negotiation and coordination for grid resource coallocation.

Science.gov (United States)

Sim, Kwang Mong; Shi, Benyun

2010-06-01

Bolstering resource coallocation is essential for realizing the Grid vision, because computationally intensive applications often require multiple computing resources from different administrative domains. Given that resource providers and consumers may have different requirements, successfully obtaining commitments through concurrent negotiations with multiple resource providers to simultaneously access several resources is a very challenging task for consumers. The impetus of this paper is that it is one of the earliest works that consider a concurrent negotiation mechanism for Grid resource coallocation. The concurrent negotiation mechanism is designed for 1) managing (de)commitment of contracts through one-to-many negotiations and 2) coordination of multiple concurrent one-to-many negotiations between a consumer and multiple resource providers. The novel contributions of this paper are devising 1) a utility-oriented coordination (UOC) strategy, 2) three classes of commitment management strategies (CMSs) for concurrent negotiation, and 3) the negotiation protocols of consumers and providers. Implementing these ideas in a testbed, three series of experiments were carried out in a variety of settings to compare the following: 1) the CMSs in this paper with the work of others in a single one-to-many negotiation environment for one resource where decommitment is allowed for both provider and consumer agents; 2) the performance of the three classes of CMSs in different resource market types; and 3) the UOC strategy with the work of others [e.g., the patient coordination strategy (PCS )] for coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations. Empirical results show the following: 1) the UOC strategy achieved higher utility, faster negotiation speed, and higher success rates than PCS for different resource market types; and 2) the CMS in this paper achieved higher final utility than the CMS in other works. Additionally, the properties of the three classes of CMSs in

Comparison of Outcomes for Patients With Unresectable, Locally Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Induction Chemotherapy Followed By Concurrent Chemoradiation vs. Concurrent Chemoradiation Alone

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Huang, Eugene H.; Liao Zhongxing; Cox, James D.; Guerrero, Thomas M.; Chang, Joe Y.; Jeter, Melinda; Borghero, Yerko; Wei Xiong; Fossella, Frank; Herbst, Roy S.; Blumenschein, George R.; Moran, Cesar; Allen, Pamela K.; Komaki, Ritsuko

2007-01-01

Purpose: To retrospectively compare outcomes for patients with unresectable locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated at our institution with concurrent chemoradiation with or without induction chemotherapy. Methods and Materials: We retrospectively analyzed 265 consecutive patients who received definitive treatment with three-dimensional conformal radiation and concurrent chemotherapy. Of these, 127 patients received induction chemotherapy before concurrent chemoradiation. Results: The two groups of patients (with induction vs. without induction chemotherapy) were similar in age, performance status, weight loss, histology, grade, and stage. Patients who received induction chemotherapy had better overall survival (median, 1.9 vs. 1.4 years; 5-year rate, 25% vs. 12%; p < 0.001) and distant metastasis-free survival (5-year rate, 42% vs. 23%; p = 0.021). Locoregional control was not significantly different between the two groups. Multivariate analysis showed that induction chemotherapy was the most significant factor affecting overall survival, with a hazard ratio of 0.55 (95% confidence interval 0.40-0.75; p < 0.001). A planned subgroup analysis showed that induction chemotherapy was associated with a significant overall survival benefit for patients with adenocarcinoma or large-cell carcinoma (5-year rate, 24% vs. 8%; p = 0.003) but not for those with squamous cell carcinoma. A multivariate analysis of patients with adenocarcinoma or large-cell carcinoma confirmed that induction chemotherapy was the most significant factor associated with better overall survival, with a hazard ratio of 0.47 (95% confidence interval, 0.28-0.78; p = 0.003). Conclusion: Our retrospective analysis suggests that in combination with concurrent chemoradiation, induction chemotherapy may provide a small but significant survival benefit for patients with unresectable locally advanced adenocarcinoma or large-cell carcinoma of the lung

Cutaneous xanthomas with concurrent demodicosis and dermatophytosis in a cat.

Science.gov (United States)

Vogelnest, L J

2001-07-01

Multiple cutaneous xanthomas, associated with fasting hyperlipidaemia, are described in a 9-month-old domestic long-haired cat. A severely pruritic, papular, and crusting dermatitis affecting the head and neck, initially diagnosed as lesions of the eosinophilic granuloma complex, progressively developed on the head and pinnae. Pruritus was controlled with administration of prednisolone and chlorambucil. Repeat histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of cutaneous xanthoma and concurrent mild demodicosis. Marked fasting hypercholesterolaemia, hypertriglyceridaemia and transient hyperglycaemia were subsequently confirmed. Treatment for hyperlipidaemia and xanthomas with a low-fat diet (Hill's Feline r/d) and the previously unreported treatment for feline demodicosis of daily oral milbemycin were commenced. Multiple pink, alopecic plaques and papules gradually regressed, however pruritus recurred if immunosuppressive treatment was reduced, and well-demarcated areas of alopecia developed on the head, limbs and trunk, despite negative skin scrapings for demodex mites. Fungal culture of hair samples yielded Microsporum canis. All cutaneous lesions resolved with the addition of griseofulvin to the treatment regimen. Concurrent corneal ulceration and keratoconjunctivitis sicca ultimately resolved with treatment, including topical cyclosporin. Diabetes mellitus developed 6 months after resolution of skin lesions. No cutaneous or ocular abnormalities were present 6 months later with continued low-fat diet and insulin administration, although transient recurrence of papules and pruritus occurred after inadvertent access to a fatty meal. An underlying primary hyperlipidaemia was suspected, causing pruritic xanthomas. This may represent the first report of concurrent cutaneous xanthomas, demodicosis and dermatophytosis in a cat.

Adaptive control and synchronization of a fractional-order chaotic ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Fractional order; adaptive scheme; control; synchronization. ... College of Physics and Electronics, Hunan Institute of Science and Technology, ... of Information and Communication Engineering, Hunan Institute of Science and Technology, ...

Gait profile score and movement analysis profile in patients with Parkinson's disease during concurrent cognitive load

Science.gov (United States)

Speciali, Danielli S.; Oliveira, Elaine M.; Cardoso, Jefferson R.; Correa, João C. F.; Baker, Richard; Lucareli, Paulo R. G.

2014-01-01

Background: Gait disorders are common in individuals with Parkinson's Disease (PD) and the concurrent performance of motor and cognitive tasks can have marked effects on gait. The Gait Profile Score (GPS) and the Movement Analysis Profile (MAP) were developed in order to summarize the data of kinematics and facilitate understanding of the results of gait analysis. Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of the GPS and MAP in the quantification of changes in gait during a concurrent cognitive load while walking in adults with and without PD. Method: Fourteen patients with idiopathic PD and nine healthy subjects participated in the study. All subjects performed single and dual walking tasks. The GPS/MAP was computed from three-dimensional gait analysis data. Results: Differences were found between tasks for GPS (PGait Variable Score (GVS) (pelvic rotation, knee flexion-extension and ankle dorsiflexion-plantarflexion) (Pgait impairment during the dual task and suggest that GPS/MAP may be used to evaluate the effects of concurrent cognitive load while walking in patients with PD. PMID:25054382

INTELLIGENT FRACTIONAL ORDER ITERATIVE LEARNING CONTROL USING FEEDBACK LINEARIZATION FOR A SINGLE-LINK ROBOT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iman Ghasemi

2017-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper, iterative learning control (ILC is combined with an optimal fractional order derivative (BBO-Da-type ILC and optimal fractional and proportional-derivative (BBO-PDa-type ILC. In the update law of Arimoto's derivative iterative learning control, a first order derivative of tracking error signal is used. In the proposed method, fractional order derivative of the error signal is stated in term of 'sa' where  to update iterative learning control law. Two types of fractional order iterative learning control namely PDa-type ILC and Da-type ILC are gained for different value of a. In order to improve the performance of closed-loop control system, coefficients of both  and  learning law i.e. proportional , derivative  and  are optimized using Biogeography-Based optimization algorithm (BBO. Outcome of the simulation results are compared with those of the conventional fractional order iterative learning control to verify effectiveness of BBO-Da-type ILC and BBO-PDa-type ILC

A Concurrent Distributed System for Aircraft Tactical Decision Generation

Science.gov (United States)

McManus, John W.

1990-01-01

A research program investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to aid in the development of a Tactical Decision Generator (TDG) for Within Visual Range (WVR) air combat engagements is discussed. The application of AI programming and problem solving methods in the development and implementation of a concurrent version of the Computerized Logic For Air-to-Air Warfare Simulations (CLAWS) program, a second generation TDG, is presented. Concurrent computing environments and programming approaches are discussed and the design and performance of a prototype concurrent TDG system are presented.

Design of a fractional order PID controller using GBMO algorithm for load-frequency control with governor saturation consideration.

Science.gov (United States)

Zamani, Abbasali; Barakati, S Masoud; Yousofi-Darmian, Saeed

2016-09-01

Load-frequency control is one of the most important issues in power system operation. In this paper, a Fractional Order PID (FOPID) controller based on Gases Brownian Motion Optimization (GBMO) is used in order to mitigate frequency and exchanged power deviation in two-area power system with considering governor saturation limit. In a FOPID controller derivative and integrator parts have non-integer orders which should be determined by designer. FOPID controller has more flexibility than PID controller. The GBMO algorithm is a recently introduced search method that has suitable accuracy and convergence rate. Thus, this paper uses the advantages of FOPID controller as well as GBMO algorithm to solve load-frequency control. However, computational load will higher than conventional controllers due to more complexity of design procedure. Also, a GBMO based fuzzy controller is designed and analyzed in detail. The performance of the proposed controller in time domain and its robustness are verified according to comparison with other controllers like GBMO based fuzzy controller and PI controller that used for load-frequency control system in confronting with model parameters variations. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Correctness of concurrent processes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

E.R. Olderog (Ernst-Rüdiger)

1989-01-01

textabstractA new notion of correctness for concurrent processes is introduced and investigated. It is a relationship P sat S between process terms P built up from operators of CCS [Mi 80], CSP [Ho 85] and COSY [LTS 79] and logical formulas S specifying sets of finite communication sequences as in

Concurrent Engineering Approaches for Sustainable Product Development in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment : Proceedings of the 19th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering

CERN Document Server

Rock, Georg; Bil, Cees

2013-01-01

The CE Conference series is organized annually by the International Society for Productivity Enhancement (ISPE) and constitutes an important forum for international scientific exchange on concurrent and collaborative enterprise engineering. These international conferences attract a significant number of researchers, industrialists and students, as well as government representatives, who are interested in the recent advances in concurrent engineering research and applications. Concurrent Engineering Approaches for Sustainable Product Development in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment: Proceedings of the 19th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering contains papers accepted, peer reviewed and presented at the annual conference held  at the University of Applied Sciences in Trier, Germany, from 3rd-7th of September 2012. This covers a wide range of cutting-edge topics including: •Systems Engineering and Innovation •Design for Sustainability •Knowledge Engineering and Management •Managing pro...

Full-order optimal compensators for flow control: the multiple inputs case

Science.gov (United States)

Semeraro, Onofrio; Pralits, Jan O.

2018-03-01

Flow control has been the subject of numerous experimental and theoretical works. We analyze full-order, optimal controllers for large dynamical systems in the presence of multiple actuators and sensors. The full-order controllers do not require any preliminary model reduction or low-order approximation: this feature allows us to assess the optimal performance of an actuated flow without relying on any estimation process or further hypothesis on the disturbances. We start from the original technique proposed by Bewley et al. (Meccanica 51(12):2997-3014, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-016-0547-3), the adjoint of the direct-adjoint (ADA) algorithm. The algorithm is iterative and allows bypassing the solution of the algebraic Riccati equation associated with the optimal control problem, typically infeasible for large systems. In this numerical work, we extend the ADA iteration into a more general framework that includes the design of controllers with multiple, coupled inputs and robust controllers (H_{∞} methods). First, we demonstrate our results by showing the analytical equivalence between the full Riccati solutions and the ADA approximations in the multiple inputs case. In the second part of the article, we analyze the performance of the algorithm in terms of convergence of the solution, by comparing it with analogous techniques. We find an excellent scalability with the number of inputs (actuators), making the method a viable way for full-order control design in complex settings. Finally, the applicability of the algorithm to fluid mechanics problems is shown using the linearized Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation and the Kármán vortex street past a two-dimensional cylinder.

Authentic And Concurrent Evaluation-refining

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eriksson, Carina Ihlström; Åkesson, Maria; Kautz, Karlheinz

2011-01-01

This paper addresses the need for more detailed accounts for evaluation in design science research literature. By revisiting a design project regarding the future e-newspaper we give detailed descriptions of its authentic and concurrent evaluation approach by illustrating the what, why and how...... of all evaluation activities throughout the whole project. The project produced seven different design artifacts that were evaluated. The utility and theoretical outcomes of the evaluation activities clearly influenced design decisions regarding newspaper design, user value and business model design...... as well as decisions on strategic levels. We emphasize a holistic and concurrent approach to evaluation compared to the general design science research thinking and argue that reflecting on how to seek authenticity is important. By authenticity we refer to the notion of how closely an evaluation captures...

Robust Fuzzy Control for Fractional-Order Uncertain Hydroturbine Regulating System with Random Disturbances

OpenAIRE

Fengjiao Wu; Guitao Zhang; Zhengzhong Wang

2016-01-01

The robust fuzzy control for fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system is studied in this paper. First, the more practical fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system with uncertain parameters and random disturbances is presented. Then, on the basis of interval matrix theory and fractional-order stability theorem, a fuzzy control method is proposed for fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system, and the stability condition is expressed as a group of linear matrix inequalities. ...

Concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules in a dynamic choice environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bell, Matthew C; Baum, William M

2017-11-01

Most studies of operant choice have focused on presenting subjects with a fixed pair of schedules across many experimental sessions. Using these methods, studies of concurrent variable- interval variable-ratio schedules helped to evaluate theories of choice. More recently, a growing literature has focused on dynamic choice behavior. Those dynamic choice studies have analyzed behavior on a number of different time scales using concurrent variable-interval schedules. Following the dynamic choice approach, the present experiment examined performance on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules in a rapidly changing environment. Our objectives were to compare performance on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules with extant data on concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules using a dynamic choice procedure and to extend earlier work on concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedules. We analyzed performances at different time scales, finding strong similarities between concurrent variable-interval variable-interval and concurrent variable-interval variable- ratio performance within dynamic choice procedures. Time-based measures revealed almost identical performance in the two procedures compared with response-based measures, supporting the view that choice is best understood as time allocation. Performance at the smaller time scale of visits accorded with the tendency seen in earlier research toward developing a pattern of strong preference for and long visits to the richer alternative paired with brief "samples" at the leaner alternative ("fix and sample"). © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

On the formulation and numerical simulation of distributed-order fractional optimal control problems

Science.gov (United States)

Zaky, M. A.; Machado, J. A. Tenreiro

2017-11-01

In a fractional optimal control problem, the integer order derivative is replaced by a fractional order derivative. The fractional derivative embeds implicitly the time delays in an optimal control process. The order of the fractional derivative can be distributed over the unit interval, to capture delays of distinct sources. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we derive the generalized necessary conditions for optimal control problems with dynamics described by ordinary distributed-order fractional differential equations (DFDEs). Secondly, we propose an efficient numerical scheme for solving an unconstrained convex distributed optimal control problem governed by the DFDE. We convert the problem under consideration into an optimal control problem governed by a system of DFDEs, using the pseudo-spectral method and the Jacobi-Gauss-Lobatto (J-G-L) integration formula. Next, we present the numerical solutions for a class of optimal control problems of systems governed by DFDEs. The convergence of the proposed method is graphically analyzed showing that the proposed scheme is a good tool for the simulation of distributed control problems governed by DFDEs.

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy in the treatment of small-cell lung cancer: current results and future prospects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Reboul, F.; Vincent, P.; Brewer, Y.; Chauvet, B.; Taulelle, M.

1995-01-01

The prognosis of small cell carcinoma of the lung is reportedly poor, even in limited disease. However, new modalities of combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy may actually result in improved survival in these patients. First-line chemotherapy regimens with cisplatin and etoposide are effective and allow early and concurrent administration of thoracic radiotherapy, without overwhelming toxicity. Radiosensitizing properties of cisplatin and etoposide have been demonstrated, and concurrent delivery of radiotherapy results in a high complete response rate on the primary tumor, and improved long-term local control, which is a prerequisite for cure. In addition, a reduction of the irradiated volume, restricted to the macroscopic tumor, appears feasible without compromising local control and results in a reduced long-term complication rate of the combined treatment. Acute toxicities of these concurrent regiments are mainly hematological and esophageal, but are reversible and without late effect in the majority of the patients. The potential benefit of a twice-daily over standard once-daily irradiation has not been conclusively demonstrated in recent trials. However, these trials have demonstrated excellent outcome after short duration chemotherapy (four courses) with early concurrent radiotherapy (45 Gy), resulting in a 40 % survival at 2 years, which appears substantially higher than that obtained with the sequential or alternating regimens. The benefit of prophylactic cranial irradiation has also been confirmed in a large trial in terms of reduction of brain relapses, but with only marginal benefit upon survival. Further improvement of the prognosis of these patients may result form an early intensification of chemotherapy with the support of hematopoietic growth factors and from a dose escalation of radiotherapy with the support of three dimensional computerized dosimetry. (authors). 53 refs., 1 tab

Continuous Activity Monitoring During Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ohri, Nitin; Kabarriti, Rafi; Bodner, William R.; Mehta, Keyur J.; Shankar, Viswanathan; Halmos, Balazs; Haigentz, Missak; Rapkin, Bruce; Guha, Chandan; Kalnicki, Shalom; Garg, Madhur

2017-01-01

Purpose: To perform a prospective trial testing the feasibility and utility of acquiring activity data as a measure of health status during concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Methods and Materials: Ambulatory patients who were planned for treatment with concurrent chemoradiotherapy with curative intent for cancers of the head and neck, lung, or gastrointestinal tract were provided with activity monitors before treatment initiation. Patients were asked to wear the devices continuously throughout the radiation therapy course. Step count data were downloaded weekly during radiation therapy and 2 and 4 weeks after radiation therapy completion. The primary objective was to demonstrate feasibility, defined as collection of step counts for 80% of the days during study subjects' radiation therapy courses. Secondary objectives included establishing step count as a dynamic predictor of unplanned hospitalization risk. Results: Thirty-eight enrolled patients were treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Primary diagnoses included head and neck cancer (n=11), lung cancer (n=13), and a variety of gastrointestinal cancers (n=14). Step data were collected for 1524 of 1613 days (94%) during patients' radiation therapy courses. Fourteen patients were hospitalized during radiation therapy or within 4 weeks of radiation therapy completion. Cox regression modeling demonstrated a significant association between recent step counts (3-day average) and hospitalization risk, with a 38% reduction in the risk of hospitalization for every 1000 steps taken each day (hazard ratio 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.46-0.83, P=.002). Inferior quality of life scores and impaired performance status were not associated with increased hospitalization risk. Conclusion: Continuous activity monitoring during concurrent chemoradiotherapy is feasible and well-tolerated. Step counts may serve as powerful, objective, and dynamic indicators of hospitalization risk.

On the road again: concurrency and condom use among Uganda truck drivers.

Science.gov (United States)

Costenbader, Elizabeth C; Lancaster, Kathryn; Bufumbo, Leonard; Akol, Angela; Guest, Greg

2015-01-01

Long-distance truck drivers have been shown to be a critical population in the spread of HIV in Africa. In 2009, surveys with 385 Ugandan long-distance truck drivers measured concurrency point prevalence with two methods; it ranged from 37.4% (calendar-method) to 50.1% (direct question). The majority (84%) of relationships reported were long-term resulting in a long duration of overlap (average of 58 months) across concurrent partnerships. Only 7% of these men reported using any condoms with their spouses during the past month. Among all non-spousal relationships, duration of relationship was the factor most strongly associated with engaging in unprotected sex in the past month in a multivariable analyses controlling for partner and relationship characteristics. Innovative intervention programs for these men and their partners are needed that address the realities of truck drivers' lifestyles.

Fractional-order integral and derivative controller for temperature ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

ideal transfer function as a reference model, for a temperature profile tracking. ... tant, and in process industry (Tsai & Lu 1998), the most common control task is to ..... be solved for fractional order α using numerical classical approach in MATLAB. ..... discrepancy between simulation and experimental results may be due to ...

Engineering Bereitschaft as an enabler for Concurrent Engineering

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christiansen, Kåre; Vesterager, Johan

1999-01-01

Industrial companies observe a general trend towards more customised products and shorter product life cycles. Furthermore, the market demands shorter lead-time and high-quality products at a competitive price. Concurrent Engineering address these challenges. Product modelling is a key aspect...... of the Concurrent Engineering literature. One problem with the product modelling literature is that it tends to assume that product development is revolutionary. Very often product development is evolutionary and it means that product modelling should have a major emphasis on reuse. In this paper it is suggested...... that industrial companies should develop an engineering development Bereitschaft (preparatory engineering knowledge) as an approach to Concurrent Engineering and product modelling. To develop such an engineering development Bereitschaft, a company must develop company generic product models.This paper...

Static output feedback ℋ ∞ control for a fractional-order glucose-insulin system

KAUST Repository

N’Doye, Ibrahima

2015-05-23

This paper presents the ℋ∞ static output feedback control of nonlinear fractional-order systems. Based on the extended bounded real lemma, the ℋ∞ control is formulated and sufficient conditions are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) formulation by using the fractional Lyapunov direct method where the fractional-order α belongs to 0 < α < 1. The control approach is finally applied to the regulation of the glucose level in diabetes type 1 treatment. Therefore, it is attempted to incorporate fractional-order into the mathematical minimal model of glucose-insulin system dynamics and it is still an interesting challenge to show, how the order of a fractional differential system affects the dynamics of the system in the presence of meal disturbance. Numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate our proposed results and show that the nonlinear fractional-order glucose-insulin systems are, at least, as stable as their integer-order counterpart in the presence of exogenous glucose infusion or meal disturbance. © 2015 Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems and The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Vertex Stimulation as a Control Site for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Concurrent TMS/fMRI Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Jung, JeYoung; Bungert, Andreas; Bowtell, Richard; Jackson, Stephen R

2016-01-01

A common control condition for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies is to apply stimulation at the vertex. An assumption of vertex stimulation is that it has relatively little influence over on-going brain processes involved in most experimental tasks, however there has been little attempt to measure neural changes linked to vertex TMS. Here we directly test this assumption by using a concurrent TMS/fMRI paradigm in which we investigate fMRI blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes across the whole brain linked to vertex stimulation. Thirty-two healthy participants to part in this study. Twenty-one were stimulated at the vertex, at 120% of resting motor threshold (RMT), with short bursts of 1 Hz TMS, while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) BOLD images were acquired. As a control condition, we delivered TMS pulses over the left primary motor cortex using identical parameters to 11 other participants. Vertex stimulation did not evoke increased BOLD activation at the stimulated site. By contrast we observed widespread BOLD deactivations across the brain, including regions within the default mode network (DMN). To examine the effects of vertex stimulation a functional connectivity analysis was conducted. The results demonstrated that stimulating the vertex with suprathreshold TMS reduced neural activity in brain regions related to the DMN but did not influence the functional connectivity of this network. Our findings provide brain imaging evidence in support of the use of vertex simulation as a control condition in TMS but confirm that vertex TMS induces regional widespread decreases in BOLD activation. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Barista: A Framework for Concurrent Speech Processing by USC-SAIL

OpenAIRE

Can, Doğan; Gibson, James; Vaz, Colin; Georgiou, Panayiotis G.; Narayanan, Shrikanth S.

2014-01-01

We present Barista, an open-source framework for concurrent speech processing based on the Kaldi speech recognition toolkit and the libcppa actor library. With Barista, we aim to provide an easy-to-use, extensible framework for constructing highly customizable concurrent (and/or distributed) networks for a variety of speech processing tasks. Each Barista network specifies a flow of data between simple actors, concurrent entities communicating by message passing, modeled after Kaldi tools. Lev...

Concurrent sourcing and external supplier opportunism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mols, Niels Peter

costs of opportunism are determined as a product of four factors. The four factors are: likelihood of discovering supplier opportunism, buyer’s internalized quantity as reaction to supplier opportunism, asset specificity of external supplier’s investments, and multiplicator effects. Each......When a firm simultaneously makes and buys the same components then the firm uses concurrent sourcing. This paper presents an agency model for explaining how and when concurrent sourcing reduces the likelihood of external supplier opportunism. In the proposed model, the external supplier’s expected...... of these factors are explained and discussed in the paper. The paper ends by offering a number of theoretical and managerial implications....

Sliding Mode Control of Fractional-Order Delayed Memristive Chaotic System with Uncertainty and Disturbance

Science.gov (United States)

Ding, Da-Wei; Liu, Fang-Fang; Chen, Hui; Wang, Nian; Liang, Dong

2017-12-01

In this paper, a simplest fractional-order delayed memristive chaotic system is proposed in order to control the chaos behaviors via sliding mode control strategy. Firstly, we design a sliding mode control strategy for the fractional-order system with time delay to make the states of the system asymptotically stable. Then, we obtain theoretical analysis results of the control method using Lyapunov stability theorem which guarantees the asymptotic stability of the non-commensurate order and commensurate order system with and without uncertainty and an external disturbance. Finally, numerical simulations are given to verify that the proposed sliding mode control method can eliminate chaos and stabilize the fractional-order delayed memristive system in a finite time. Supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61201227, Funding of China Scholarship Council, the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province under Grant No. 1208085M F93, 211 Innovation Team of Anhui University under Grant Nos. KJTD007A and KJTD001B

Self-ordered, controlled structure nanoporous membranes using constant current anodization.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Kwan; Tang, Yun; Ouyang, Min

2008-12-01

We report a constant current (CC) based anodization technique to fabricate and control structure of mechanically stable anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes with a long-range ordered hexagonal nanopore pattern. For the first time we show that interpore distance (Dint) of a self-ordered nanopore feature can be continuously tuned over a broad range with CC anodization and is uniquely defined by the conductivity of sulfuric acid as electrolyte. We further demonstrate that this technique can offer new degrees of freedom for engineering planar nanopore structures by fine tailoring the CC based anodization process. Our results not only facilitate further understanding of self-ordering mechanism of alumina membranes but also provide a fast, simple (without requirement of prepatterning or preoxide layer), and flexible methodology for controlling complex nanoporous structures, thus offering promising practical applications in nanotechnology.

Least squares reverse time migration of controlled order multiples

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Y.

2016-12-01

Imaging using the reverse time migration of multiples generates inherent crosstalk artifacts due to the interference among different order multiples. Traditionally, least-square fitting has been used to address this issue by seeking the best objective function to measure the amplitude differences between the predicted and observed data. We have developed an alternative objective function by decomposing multiples into different orders to minimize the difference between Born modeling predicted multiples and specific-order multiples from observational data in order to attenuate the crosstalk. This method is denoted as the least-squares reverse time migration of controlled order multiples (LSRTM-CM). Our numerical examples demonstrated that the LSRTM-CM can significantly improve image quality compared with reverse time migration of multiples and least-square reverse time migration of multiples. Acknowledgments This research was funded by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41430321 and 41374138).

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy was associated with a higher severe late toxicity rate in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients compared with radiotherapy alone: a meta-analysis based on randomized controlled trials

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Du, Cheng-run; Ying, Hong-mei; Kong, Fang-fang; Zhai, Rui-ping; Hu, Chao-su

2015-01-01

To investigate the incidence and risk of severe late toxicity with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients. Eligible studies included prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating CCRT versus radiotherapy alone in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma and in which data on severe late toxicities were available. Random effects or fixed effect models were applied to obtain the summary incidence, relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Five RCTs with 1102 patients with NPC were included in this analysis. The summary incidence of overall severe late toxicities in patients receiving CCRT was 30.7% (95% CI, 18–47.2%) and the incidence of radiotherapy alone group was 21.7% (95% CI, 13.3–33.4%). The use of concurrent chemotherapy was associated with an increased risk of severe late toxicities, with a RR of 1.349 (95% CI, 1.108–1.643; P = 0.005). As for specific late toxicity, CCRT significantly increased the risk of ear deafness/otitis (RR = 1.567; 95% CI, 1.192–2.052), but other late toxicities were not significantly different. Patients receiving concurrent chemotherapy regimens with 3-week high-dose cisplatin (HC) have a higher risk of ear deafness/otitis (RR = 1.672; 95% CI, 1.174–2.382; P = 0.026). However, there was no significant increase in the RR of severe ear complication with the addition of non-3-week high-dose cisplatin (nonHC) regimens (RR = 1.433; 95% CI, 0.946–2.171; P = 0.095). With the present evidence, the addition of concurrent chemotherapy seems to increase the risk of severe late toxicities in patients with NPC, especially when using HC regimen for the occurrence of severe ototoxicity

Concurrent image-based visual servoing with adaptive zooming for non-cooperative rendezvous maneuvers

Science.gov (United States)

Pomares, Jorge; Felicetti, Leonard; Pérez, Javier; Emami, M. Reza

2018-02-01

An image-based servo controller for the guidance of a spacecraft during non-cooperative rendezvous is presented in this paper. The controller directly utilizes the visual features from image frames of a target spacecraft for computing both attitude and orbital maneuvers concurrently. The utilization of adaptive optics, such as zooming cameras, is also addressed through developing an invariant-image servo controller. The controller allows for performing rendezvous maneuvers independently from the adjustments of the camera focal length, improving the performance and versatility of maneuvers. The stability of the proposed control scheme is proven analytically in the invariant space, and its viability is explored through numerical simulations.

Second-Order Multiagent Systems with Event-Driven Consensus Control

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiangping Hu

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Event-driven control scheduling strategies for multiagent systems play a key role in future use of embedded microprocessors of limited resources that gather information and actuate the agent control updates. In this paper, a distributed event-driven consensus problem is considered for a multi-agent system with second-order dynamics. Firstly, two kinds of event-driven control laws are, respectively, designed for both leaderless and leader-follower systems. Then, the input-to-state stability of the closed-loop multi-agent system with the proposed event-driven consensus control is analyzed and the bound of the inter-event times is ensured. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to validate the proposed event-driven consensus control.

Fractional order modeling and control of dissimilar redundant actuating system used in large passenger aircraft

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Salman IJAZ

2018-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper, a methodology has been developed to address the issue of force fighting and to achieve precise position tracking of control surface driven by two dissimilar actuators. The nonlinear dynamics of both actuators are first approximated as fractional order models. Based on the identified models, three fractional order controllers are proposed for the whole system. Two Fractional Order PID (FOPID controllers are dedicated to improving transient response and are designed in a position feedback configuration. In order to synchronize the actuator dynamics, a third fractional order PI controller is designed, which feeds the force compensation signal in position feedback loop of both actuators. Nelder-Mead (N-M optimization technique is employed in order to optimally tune controller parameters based on the proposed performance criteria. To test the proposed controllers according to real flight condition, an external disturbance of higher amplitude that acts as airload is applied directly on the control surface. In addition, a disturbance signal function of system states is applied to check the robustness of proposed controller. Simulation results on nonlinear system model validated the performance of the proposed scheme as compared to optimal PID and high gain PID controllers. Keywords: Aerospace, Fractional order control, Model identification, Nelder-Mead optimization, Robustness

Barista: A Framework for Concurrent Speech Processing by USC-SAIL.

Science.gov (United States)

Can, Doğan; Gibson, James; Vaz, Colin; Georgiou, Panayiotis G; Narayanan, Shrikanth S

2014-05-01

We present Barista, an open-source framework for concurrent speech processing based on the Kaldi speech recognition toolkit and the libcppa actor library. With Barista, we aim to provide an easy-to-use, extensible framework for constructing highly customizable concurrent (and/or distributed) networks for a variety of speech processing tasks. Each Barista network specifies a flow of data between simple actors, concurrent entities communicating by message passing, modeled after Kaldi tools. Leveraging the fast and reliable concurrency and distribution mechanisms provided by libcppa, Barista lets demanding speech processing tasks, such as real-time speech recognizers and complex training workflows, to be scheduled and executed on parallel (and/or distributed) hardware. Barista is released under the Apache License v2.0.

Dynamic Frames Based Verification Method for Concurrent Java Programs

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mostowski, Wojciech

2016-01-01

In this paper we discuss a verification method for concurrent Java programs based on the concept of dynamic frames. We build on our earlier work that proposes a new, symbolic permission system for concurrent reasoning and we provide the following new contributions. First, we describe our approach

Impact of providing fee data on laboratory test ordering: a controlled clinical trial.

Science.gov (United States)

Feldman, Leonard S; Shihab, Hasan M; Thiemann, David; Yeh, Hsin-Chieh; Ardolino, Margaret; Mandell, Steven; Brotman, Daniel J

2013-05-27

Inpatient care providers often order laboratory tests without any appreciation for the costs of the tests. To determine whether we could decrease the number of laboratory tests ordered by presenting providers with test fees at the time of order entry in a tertiary care hospital, without adding extra steps to the ordering process. Controlled clinical trial. Tertiary care hospital. All providers, including physicians and nonphysicians, who ordered laboratory tests through the computerized provider order entry system at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. We randomly assigned 61 diagnostic laboratory tests to an "active" arm (fee displayed) or to a control arm (fee not displayed). During a 6-month baseline period (November 10, 2008, through May 9, 2009), we did not display any fee data. During a 6-month intervention period 1 year later (November 10, 2009, through May 9, 2010), we displayed fees, based on the Medicare allowable fee, for active tests only. We examined changes in the total number of orders placed, the frequency of ordered tests (per patient-day), and total charges associated with the orders according to the time period (baseline vs intervention period) and by study group (active test vs control). For the active arm tests, rates of test ordering were reduced from 3.72 tests per patient-day in the baseline period to 3.40 tests per patient-day in the intervention period (8.59% decrease; 95% CI, -8.99% to -8.19%). For control arm tests, ordering increased from 1.15 to 1.22 tests per patient-day from the baseline period to the intervention period (5.64% increase; 95% CI, 4.90% to 6.39%) (P fee data to providers at the time of order entry resulted in a modest decrease in test ordering. Adoption of this intervention may reduce the number of inappropriately ordered diagnostic tests.

Nonsingular Terminal Sliding Mode Control of Uncertain Second-Order Nonlinear Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Minh-Duc Tran

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a high-performance nonsingular terminal sliding mode control method for uncertain second-order nonlinear systems. First, a nonsingular terminal sliding mode surface is introduced to eliminate the singularity problem that exists in conventional terminal sliding mode control. By using this method, the system not only can guarantee that the tracking errors reach the reference value in a finite time with high-precision tracking performance but also can overcome the complex-value and the restrictions of the exponent (the exponent should be fractional number with an odd numerator and an odd denominator in traditional terminal sliding mode. Then, in order to eliminate the chattering phenomenon, a super-twisting higher-order nonsingular terminal sliding mode control method is proposed. The stability of the closed-loop system is established using the Lyapunov theory. Finally, simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Note on specifying and verifying concurrent processes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Holenderski, L.

1984-02-28

To represent sequential processes, sets of finite sequences of symbols from a finite alphabet are used in this approach, alphabet symbols denote events occurring when a process is being executed, a sequence of symbols is a record of one execution of the process, and a set of such sequences represents the process itself by combining all its possible executions together. Although this model turned out adequate for specifying concurrent processes and allows proving their properties, there are two reasons, at least, why this note takes the same subject up again. First, by analogy to shuffle and its closure, which express parallel combination and parallel iteration of non-interacting processes, there is a need for a similar operation describing the behaviour of interaction processes. A new extension of shuffle is proposed as a generalization. The closure of this operation provides a tool for specification of parallelly iterated processes. Moreover, the closure makes mutually recursive specification unnecessary. Second, when this model was used to prove properties of concurrent computations, only flow-of-control schemes were considered (thus, only some general properties were proved). When applied to concrete programs using variables that have values, such schemes had to be interpreted. In contrast to such a schematic approach, the usefulness of the same method for concrete programs is argued. This is shown using an example of a correctness proof of an implementation of unbounded semaphore by binary semaphores. 8 references.

Concurrent and discriminant validity of the Star Excursion Balance Test for military personnel with lateral ankle sprain.

Science.gov (United States)

Bastien, Maude; Moffet, Hélène; Bouyer, Laurent; Perron, Marc; Hébert, Luc J; Leblond, Jean

2014-02-01

The Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) has frequently been used to measure motor control and residual functional deficits at different stages of recovery from lateral ankle sprain (LAS) in various populations. However, the validity of the measure used to characterize performance--the maximal reach distance (MRD) measured by visual estimation--is still unknown. To evaluate the concurrent validity of the MRD in the SEBT estimated visually vs the MRD measured with a 3D motion-capture system and evaluate and compare the discriminant validity of 2 MRD-normalization methods (by height or by lower-limb length) in participants with or without LAS (n = 10 per group). There is a high concurrent validity and a good degree of accuracy between the visual estimation measurement and the MRD gold-standard measurement for both groups and under all conditions. The Cohen d ratios between groups and MANOVA products were higher when computed from MRD data normalized by height. The results support the concurrent validity of visual estimation of the MRD and the use of the SEBT to evaluate motor control. Moreover, normalization of MRD data by height appears to increase the discriminant validity of this test.

Process support for Opticam: a concurrent engineering approach

Science.gov (United States)

Czajkowski, Walter C.; Tipps, Joe D., Jr.

1992-12-01

Although the principles of concurrent engineering and rapid product cycles are not new concepts in the industrial sector, the optics manufacturing industry has witnessed few technological advances since the 1940's. At present the optics industry maintains outdated stand-alone manufacturing equipment and systems that do little to foster integration or communications. 'Islands of Technology', spawned from the latest offerings of CNC controlled equipment, are generally stand alone systems incapable of supporting communication with other process equipment, not to mention the total business enterprise. This approach increases the cost in design and manufacture of optical systems while negatively impacting competitiveness in the global marketplace.

Delayed feedback control of fractional-order chaotic systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gjurchinovski, A; Urumov, V; Sandev, T

2010-01-01

We study the possibility to stabilize unstable steady states and unstable periodic orbits in chaotic fractional-order dynamical systems by the time-delayed feedback method. By performing a linear stability analysis, we establish the parameter ranges for successful stabilization of unstable equilibria in the plane parameterized by the feedback gain and the time delay. An insight into the control mechanism is gained by analyzing the characteristic equation of the controlled system, showing that the control scheme fails to control unstable equilibria having an odd number of positive real eigenvalues. We demonstrate that the method can also stabilize unstable periodic orbits for a suitable choice of the feedback gain, providing that the time delay is chosen to coincide with the period of the target orbit. In addition, it is shown numerically that delayed feedback control with a sinusoidally modulated time delay significantly enlarges the stability region of steady states in comparison to the classical time-delayed feedback scheme with a constant delay.

Concurrent Operations of O2-Tree on Shared Memory Multicore Architectures

OpenAIRE

Daniel Ohene-Kwofie; E. J. Otoo1, Gideon Nimako

2014-01-01

Modern computer architectures provide high performance computing capability by having multiple CPU cores. Such systems are also typically associated with very large main-memory capacities, thereby allowing them to be used for fast processing of in-memory database applications. However, most of the concurrency control mechanism associated with the index structures of these memory resident databases do not scale well, under high transaction rates. This paper presents the O2-Tree, a fast main me...

An AES chip with DPA resistance using hardware-based random order execution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yu Bo; Li Xiangyu; Chen Cong; Sun Yihe; Wu Liji; Zhang Xiangmin

2012-01-01

This paper presents an AES (advanced encryption standard) chip that combats differential power analysis (DPA) side-channel attack through hardware-based random order execution. Both decryption and encryption procedures of an AES are implemented on the chip. A fine-grained dataflow architecture is proposed, which dynamically exploits intrinsic byte-level independence in the algorithm. A novel circuit called an HMF (Hold-Match-Fetch) unit is proposed for random control, which randomly sets execution orders for concurrent operations. The AES chip was manufactured in SMIC 0.18 μm technology. The average energy for encrypting one group of plain texts (128 bits secrete keys) is 19 nJ. The core area is 0.43 mm 2 . A sophisticated experimental setup was built to test the DPA resistance. Measurement-based experimental results show that one byte of a secret key cannot be disclosed from our chip under random mode after 64000 power traces were used in the DPA attack. Compared with the corresponding fixed order execution, the hardware based random order execution is improved by at least 21 times the DPA resistance. (semiconductor integrated circuits)

An AES chip with DPA resistance using hardware-based random order execution

Science.gov (United States)

Bo, Yu; Xiangyu, Li; Cong, Chen; Yihe, Sun; Liji, Wu; Xiangmin, Zhang

2012-06-01

This paper presents an AES (advanced encryption standard) chip that combats differential power analysis (DPA) side-channel attack through hardware-based random order execution. Both decryption and encryption procedures of an AES are implemented on the chip. A fine-grained dataflow architecture is proposed, which dynamically exploits intrinsic byte-level independence in the algorithm. A novel circuit called an HMF (Hold-Match-Fetch) unit is proposed for random control, which randomly sets execution orders for concurrent operations. The AES chip was manufactured in SMIC 0.18 μm technology. The average energy for encrypting one group of plain texts (128 bits secrete keys) is 19 nJ. The core area is 0.43 mm2. A sophisticated experimental setup was built to test the DPA resistance. Measurement-based experimental results show that one byte of a secret key cannot be disclosed from our chip under random mode after 64000 power traces were used in the DPA attack. Compared with the corresponding fixed order execution, the hardware based random order execution is improved by at least 21 times the DPA resistance.

Concurrent eruptions at Etna, Stromboli, and Vulcano: casualty or causality?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. Funiciello

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Anecdotes of concurrent eruptions at Etna, Stromboli, and Vulcano (Southern Italy have persisted for more than 2000 years and volcanologists in recent and past times have hypothesized a causal link among these volcanoes. Here this hypothesis is tested. To introduce the problem and provide examples of the type of expected volcanic phenomena, narratives of the most notable examples of concurrent eruptions are provided. Then the frequency of eruptions at each individual volcano is analysed for about the last 300 years and the expected probability of concurrent eruptions is calculated to compare it to the observed probability. Results show that the occurrence of concurrent eruptions is often more frequent than a random probability, particularly for the Stromboli-Vulcano pair. These results are integrated with a statistical analysis of the earthquake catalogue to find evidence of linked seismicity in the Etnean and Aeolian areas. Results suggest a moderate incidence of non-random concurrent eruptions, but available data are temporally limited and do not allow an unequivocal identification of plausible triggers; our results, however, are the first attempt to quantify a more-than-2000-years-old curious observation and constitute a starting point for more sophisticated analyses of new data in the future. We look forward to our prediction of a moderate incidence of concurrent eruptions being confirmed or refuted with the passage of time and occurrence of new events.

Hardware Transactional Memory Optimization Guidelines, Applied to Ordered Maps

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bonnichsen, Lars Frydendal; Probst, Christian W.; Karlsson, Sven

2015-01-01

efficiently requires reasoning about those differences. In this paper we present 5 guidelines for applying hardware transactional memory efficiently, and apply the guidelines to BT-trees, a concurrent ordered map. Evaluating BT-trees on standard benchmarks shows that they are up to 5.3 times faster than...

Continuous Activity Monitoring During Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ohri, Nitin, E-mail: ohri.nitin@gmail.com [Department of Radiation Oncology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States); Kabarriti, Rafi; Bodner, William R.; Mehta, Keyur J. [Department of Radiation Oncology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States); Shankar, Viswanathan [Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States); Halmos, Balazs; Haigentz, Missak [Department of Oncology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States); Rapkin, Bruce [Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States); Guha, Chandan; Kalnicki, Shalom; Garg, Madhur [Department of Radiation Oncology, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York (United States)

2017-04-01

Purpose: To perform a prospective trial testing the feasibility and utility of acquiring activity data as a measure of health status during concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Methods and Materials: Ambulatory patients who were planned for treatment with concurrent chemoradiotherapy with curative intent for cancers of the head and neck, lung, or gastrointestinal tract were provided with activity monitors before treatment initiation. Patients were asked to wear the devices continuously throughout the radiation therapy course. Step count data were downloaded weekly during radiation therapy and 2 and 4 weeks after radiation therapy completion. The primary objective was to demonstrate feasibility, defined as collection of step counts for 80% of the days during study subjects' radiation therapy courses. Secondary objectives included establishing step count as a dynamic predictor of unplanned hospitalization risk. Results: Thirty-eight enrolled patients were treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Primary diagnoses included head and neck cancer (n=11), lung cancer (n=13), and a variety of gastrointestinal cancers (n=14). Step data were collected for 1524 of 1613 days (94%) during patients' radiation therapy courses. Fourteen patients were hospitalized during radiation therapy or within 4 weeks of radiation therapy completion. Cox regression modeling demonstrated a significant association between recent step counts (3-day average) and hospitalization risk, with a 38% reduction in the risk of hospitalization for every 1000 steps taken each day (hazard ratio 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.46-0.83, P=.002). Inferior quality of life scores and impaired performance status were not associated with increased hospitalization risk. Conclusion: Continuous activity monitoring during concurrent chemoradiotherapy is feasible and well-tolerated. Step counts may serve as powerful, objective, and dynamic indicators of hospitalization risk.

Relationships between models of concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Mogens; Sassone, Vladimiro; Winskel, Glynn

1994-01-01

Models for concurrency can be classified with respect to the three relevant parameters: behaviour/system, interleaving/noninterleaving, linear/branching time. When modelling a process, a choice concerning such parameters corresponds to choosing the level of abstraction of the resulting semantics....

Performance Analysis of Fractional-Order PID Controller for a Parabolic Distributed Solar Collector

KAUST Repository

Elmetennani, Shahrazed

2017-09-01

This paper studies the performance of a fractional-order proportional integral derivative (FOPID) controller designed for parabolic distributed solar collectors. The control problem addressed in concentrated solar collectors aims at forcing the produced heat to follow a desired reference despite the unevenly varying solar irradiance. In addition to the unpredictable variations of the energy source, the parabolic solar collectors are subject to inhomogeneous distributed efficiency parameters affecting the heat production. The FOPID controller is well known for its simplicity with better tuning flexibility along with robustness with respect to disturbances. Thus, we propose a control strategy based on FOPID to achieve the control objectives. First, the FOPID controller is designed based on a linear approximate model describing the system dynamics under nominal working conditions. Then, the FOPID gains and differentiation orders are optimally tuned in order to fulfill the robustness design specifications by solving a nonlinear optimization problem. Numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed FOPID controller. A comparison to the robust integer order PID is also provided. Robustness tests are performed for the nominal model to show the effectiveness of the FOPID. Furthermore, the proposed FOPID is numerically tested to control the distributed solar collector under real working conditions.

Timing is everything: international variations in historical sexual partnership concurrency and HIV prevalence.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martina Morris

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Higher prevalence of concurrent partnerships is one hypothesis for the severity of the HIV epidemic in the countries of Southern Africa. But measures of the prevalence of concurrency alone do not adequately capture the impact concurrency will have on transmission dynamics. The importance of overlap duration and coital exposure are examined here. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We conducted a comparison of data from three studies of sexual behavior carried out in the early 1990s in Uganda, Thailand and the US. Using cumulative concurrency measures, the three countries appeared somewhat similar. Over 50% of both Thai and Ugandan men reported a concurrency within the last three partnerships and over 20% reported a concurrency in the last year, the corresponding rates among US men were nearly 20% for Blacks and Hispanics, and about 10% for other racial/ethnic groups. Concurrency measures that were more sensitive to overlap duration, however, showed large differences. The point prevalence of concurrency on the day of interview was over 10% among Ugandan men compared to 1% for Thai men. Ugandan concurrencies were much longer duration - a median of about two years - than either the Thai (1 day or US concurrencies (4-9 months across all groups, and involved 5-10 times more coital risk exposure with the less frequent partner. In the US, Blacks and Hispanics reported higher prevalence, longer duration and greater coital exposure than Whites, but were lower than Ugandans on nearly every measure. Together, the differences in the prevalence, duration and coital exposure of concurrent partnerships observed align with the HIV prevalence differentials seen in these populations at the time the data were collected. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: There were substantial variations in the patterns of concurrent partnerships within and between populations. More long-term overlapping partnerships, with regular coital exposure, were found in populations with

Concurrent object-oriented programming: The MP-Eiffel approach

OpenAIRE

Silva, Miguel Augusto Mendes Oliveira e

2004-01-01

This article evaluates several possible approaches for integrating concurrency into object-oriented programming languages, presenting afterwards, a new language named MP-Eiffel. MP-Eiffel was designed attempting to include all the essential properties of both concurrent and object-oriented programming with simplicity and safety. A special care was taken to achieve the orthogonality of all the language mechanisms, allowing their joint use without unsafe side-effects (such as inh...

Fractional Order PID Control of Rotor Suspension by Active Magnetic Bearings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Parinya Anantachaisilp

2017-01-01

Full Text Available One of the key issues in control design for Active Magnetic Bearing (AMB systems is the tradeoff between the simplicity of the controller structure and the performance of the closed-loop system. To achieve this tradeoff, this paper proposes the design of a fractional order Proportional-Integral-Derivative (FOPID controller. The FOPID controller consists of only two additional parameters in comparison with a conventional PID controller. The feasibility of FOPID for AMB systems is investigated for rotor suspension in both the radial and axial directions. Tuning methods are developed based on the evolutionary algorithms for searching the optimal values of the controller parameters. The resulting FOPID controllers are then tested and compared with a conventional PID controller, as well as with some advanced controllers such as Linear Quadratic Gausian (LQG and H ∞ controllers. The comparison is made in terms of various stability and robustness specifications, as well as the dimensions of the controllers as implemented. Lastly, to validate the proposed method, experimental testing is carried out on a single-stage centrifugal compressor test rig equipped with magnetic bearings. The results show that, with a proper selection of gains and fractional orders, the performance of the resulting FOPID is similar to those of the advanced controllers.

Salivary gland function after concurrent chemoradiotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ikeda, Kenichiro; Shimane, Toshikazu; Uzuki, Aya; Sugimoto, Akane; Mori, Tomoaki; Akiyama, Rio; Gomibuchi, Hiroshi; Kobayashi, Sei; Sanbe, Takeyuki

2011-01-01

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for cancer of head and neck is becoming more and more prevalent. In fact, it is considered to better maintain quality of life (QOL) of patients than operative treatment in terms of preserving the functions, organs, and structures, but recently I seems that it does not maintain the QOL of patients better than operative treatment because its complications after therapy disturb daily life. We previously conducted a questionnaire survey that investigated the complications experienced by patients who received concurrent chemoradiotherapy, and reported that xerostomia was markedly reduced QOL in these patients. In this study, we divided patients who were exposed to radiation in both major salivary glands into two groups: 20 patients who received a 36 Gy dose of radiation (36 Gy group) and 15 patients who underwent radiation therapy alone at a dose of 40 Gy (radiotherapy (RT) group). The gum test was conducted with the following results (mean volume of saliva): 11.2 ml in the 36 Gy group, 6.0 ml in the RT group. There was no significant difference between the 36 Gy group and RT group. Our findings suggest that there is no significant difference in the extent of salivary gland dysfunction even after chemotherapy is carried out concurrently with radiotherapy. (author)

Functional Programming for Java Developers Tools for Better Concurrency, Abstraction, and Agility

CERN Document Server

Wampler, Dean

2011-01-01

Software development today is embracing functional programming (FP), whether it's for writing concurrent programs or for managing Big Data. Where does that leave Java developers? This concise book offers a pragmatic, approachable introduction to FP for Java developers or anyone who uses an object-oriented language. Dean Wampler, Java expert and author of Programming Scala (O'Reilly), shows you how to apply FP principles such as immutability, avoidance of side-effects, and higher-order functions to your Java code. Each chapter provides exercises to help you practice what you've learned. Once

Generation and control of multi-scroll chaotic attractors in fractional order systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ahmad, Wajdi M.

2005-01-01

The objective of this paper is twofold: on one hand we demonstrate the generation of multi-scroll attractors in fractional order chaotic systems. Then, we design state feedback controllers to eliminate chaos from the system trajectories. It is demonstrated that modifying the underlying nonlinearity of the fractional chaotic system results in the birth of multiple chaotic attractors, thus forming the so called multi-scroll attractors. The presence of chaotic behavior is evidenced by a positive largest Lyapunov exponent computed for the output time series. We investigate generation and control of multi-scroll attractors in two different models, both of which are fractional order and chaotic: an electronic oscillator, and a mechanical 'jerk' model. The current findings extend previously reported results on generation of n-scroll attractors from the domain of integer order to the domain of fractional order chaotic systems, and addresses the issue of controlling such chaotic behaviors. Our investigations are validated through numerical simulations

Forward progress on GPU concurrency

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Donaldson, A.F.; Ketema, J.; Sorensen, T.; Wickerson, J.

2017-01-01

The tutorial at CONCUR will provide a practical overview of work undertaken over the last six years in the Multicore Programming Group at Imperial College London, and with collaborators internationally, related to understanding and reasoning about concurrency in software designed for acceleration on

A Model for Concurrent Objects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Morten U.

1996-01-01

We present a model for concurrent objects where obejcts interact by taking part in common events that are closely matched to form call-response pairs, resulting in resulting in rendez-vous like communications. Objects are built from primitive objects by parallel composition, encapsulation...

Patterns of failure for glioblastoma multiforme following concurrent radiation and temozolomide

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dobelbower, Michael C.; Burnett, Omer L. III; Haytt, Mark D.; Fiveash, John B.; Nordal, Robert A.; Nabors, Louis B.; Markert, James M.

2011-01-01

To analyse patterns of failure in patients with glioblastoma multiforme treated with concurrent radiation and temozolomide. A retrospective review of patients treated with concurrent radiation and temozolomide was performed. Twenty patients treated at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with biopsy-proven disease, documented disease progression after treatment, and adequate radiation dosimetry and imaging records were included in the study. Patients generally received 46 Gy to the primary tumour and surrounding oedema plus 1 cm, and 60 Gy to the enhancing tumour plus 1 cm. MRIs documenting failure after therapy were fused to the original treatment plans. Contours of post-treatment tumour volumes were generated from MRIs showing tumour failure and were overlaid onto the original isodose curves. The recurrent tumours were classified as in-field, marginal or regional. Recurrences were also evaluated for distant failure. Of the 20 documented failures, all patients had some component of failure at the primary site. Eighteen patients (90%) failed in-field, 2 patients (10%) had marginal failures, and no regional failures occurred. Four patients (20%) had a component of distant failure in which an independent satellite lesion was located completely outside of the 95% isodose curve. Radiation concurrent with temozolomide appears to be associated with a moderate risk of distant brain failure in addition to the high rate of local failure. The risk of distant failure was consistent with that observed with radiation alone, suggesting that temozolomide does not act to reduce distant brain failure but to improve local control.

Efficacy and safety of concurrent chemoradiation with weekly cisplatin ± low-dose celecoxib in locally advanced undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a phase II-III clinical trial.

Science.gov (United States)

Mohammadianpanah, Mohammad; Razmjou-Ghalaei, Sasan; Shafizad, Amin; Ashouri-Taziani, Yaghoub; Khademi, Bijan; Ahmadloo, Niloofar; Ansari, Mansour; Omidvari, Shapour; Mosalaei, Ahmad; Mosleh-Shirazi, Mohammad Amin

2011-01-01

This is the first study that aimed to determine the efficacy and safety of concurrent chemoradiation with weekly cisplatin ± celecoxib 100 mg twice daily in locally advanced undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Eligible patients had newly diagnosed locally advanced (T3-T4, and/or N2-N3, M0) undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma, no prior therapy, Karnofsky performance status ≥ 70, and normal organ function. The patients were assigned to receive 7 weeks concurrent chemoradiation (70 Gy) with weekly cisplatin 30 mg/m 2 with either celecoxib 100 mg twice daily, (study group, n = 26) or placebo (control group, n = 27) followed by adjuvant combined chemotherapy with cisplatin 70 mg/m 2 on day 1 plus 5-fluorouracil 750 mg/m 2 /d with 8-h infusion on days 1-3, 3-weekly for 3 cycles. Overall clinical response rate was 100% in both groups. Complete and partial clinical response rates were 64% and 36% in the study group and 44% and 56% in the control group, respectively (P > 0.25). The addition of celecoxib to concurrent chemoradiation was associated with improved 2-year locoregional control rate from 84% to 100% (P = 0.039). The addition of celecoxib 100 mg twice daily to concurrent chemoradiation improved 2-year locoregional control rate.

Concurrent Speech Segregation Problems in Hearing Impaired Children

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Hossein Talebi

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Objective: This study was a basic investigation of the ability of concurrent speech segregation in hearing impaired children. Concurrent segregation is one of the fundamental components of auditory scene analysis and plays an important role in speech perception. In the present study, we compared auditory late responses or ALRs between hearing impaired and normal children. Materials & Methods: Auditory late potentials in response to 12 double vowels were recorded in 10 children with moderate to severe sensory neural hearing loss and 10 normal children. Double vowels (pairs of synthetic vowels were presented concurrently and binaurally. Fundamental frequency (F0 of these vowels and the size of the difference in F0 between vowels was 100 Hz and 0.5 semitones respectively. Results: Comparing N1-P2 amplitude showed statistically significant difference in some stimuli between hearing impaired and normal children (P<0.05. This complex indexing the vowel change detection and reflecting central auditory speech representation without active client participation was decreased in hearing impaired children. Conclusion: This study showed problems in concurrent speech segregation in hearing impaired children evidenced by ALRs. This information indicated deficiencies in bottom-up processing of speech characteristics based on F0 and its differences in these children.

Concurrent Product & Supply Chain Creation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gubi, Ebbe

it is a structural premise. We also know that logistics costs generally are estimated 15-20% of total product costs. Accordingly, it stands to reason that a company can reduce costs, and thereby gain an edge on its competitors, by tailoring the supply chain in question to an individual product or product family; i.......e. by creating Focused Supply Chains. At the same time, customer satisfaction can be increased. As a second means to achieving a better fit between product and supply chain, the firm can deploy Design for Logistics, the discipline of considering the supply chain during product creation. The thesis sets out...... and supply chains should be created concurrently and integrated. The concept of Concurrent Product & Supply Chain Creation is introduced, and the two main components Focused Supply Chains and Design For Logistics are explained and exemplified by use of Bang & Olufsen....

Design and implementation of fixed-order robust controllers for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, Fu-Cheng; Chen, Hsuan-Tsung [Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No.1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, 10617 Taipei (China)

2009-03-15

This paper applies fixed-order multivariable robust control strategies to a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system, and implements the designed controllers on a microchip for system miniaturization. In previous studies, robust control was applied to guarantee system stability and to reduce hydrogen consumption for a PEMFC system. It was noted that for standard robust control design, the order of resulting H{sub {infinity}} controllers is dictated by the plants and weighting functions. However, for hardware implementation, controllers with lower orders are preferable in terms of computing efforts and cost. Therefore, in this paper the PEMFC is modeled as multivariable transfer matrices, then three fixed-order robust control algorithms are applied to design controllers with specified orders for a PEMFC. Finally, the designed controllers are implemented on a microchip to regulate the air and hydrogen flow rates. From the experimental results, fixed-order robust control is deemed effective in supplying steady power and reducing fuel consumption. (author)

A Dynamic Tap Allocation for Concurrent CMA-DD Equalizers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Trindade DiegovonBM

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract This paper proposes a dynamic tap allocation for the concurrent CMA-DD equalizer as a low complexity solution for the blind channel deconvolution problem. The number of taps is a crucial factor which affects the performance and the complexity of most adaptive equalizers. Generally an equalizer requires a large number of taps in order to cope with long delays in the channel multipath profile. Simulations show that the proposed new blind equalizer is able to solve the blind channel deconvolution problem with a specified and reduced number of active taps. As a result, it minimizes the output excess mean square error due to inactive taps during and after the equalizer convergence and the hardware complexity as well.

Concurrent and aerobic exercise training promote similar benefits in body composition and metabolic profiles in obese adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Monteiro, Paula Alves; Chen, Kong Y; Lira, Fabio Santos; Saraiva, Bruna Thamyres Cicotti; Antunes, Barbara Moura Mello; Campos, Eduardo Zapaterra; Freitas, Ismael Forte

2015-11-26

The prevalence of obesity in pediatric population is increasing at an accelerated rate in many countries, and has become a major public health concern. Physical activity, particularly exercise training, remains to be a cornerstone of pediatric obesity interventions. The purpose of our current randomized intervention trial was to compare the effects of two types of training matched for training volume, aerobic and concurrent, on body composition and metabolic profile in obese adolescents. Thus the aim of the study was compare the effects of two types of training matched for training volume, aerobic and concurrent, on body composition and metabolic profile in obese adolescents. 32 obese adolescents participated in two randomized training groups, concurrent or aerobic, for 20 weeks (50 mins x 3 per week, supervised), and were compared to a 16-subject control group. We measured the percentage body fat (%BF, primary outcome), fat-free mass, percentage of android fat by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and others metabolic profiles at baseline and after interventions, and compared them between groups using the Intent-to-treat design. In 20 weeks, both exercise training groups significantly reduced %BF by 2.9-3.6% as compare to no change in the control group (p = 0.042). There were also positive changes in lipid levels in exercise groups. No noticeable changes were found between aerobic and concurrent training groups. The benefits of exercise in reducing body fat and metabolic risk profiles can be achieved by performing either type of training in obese adolescents. RBR-4HN597.

Poverty and sexual concurrency: a case study of STI risk.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsui, Emma K; Leonard, Lori; Lenoir, Chavonne; Ellen, Jonathan M

2008-08-01

This paper is about sexual concurrency, or maintaining multiple sexual partnerships that overlap in time. Sexual concurrency is a concept that is used in the field of public health to explain the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Sexual concurrency has also been proposed as a site of intervention to reduce sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates, particularly among those populations who carry the heaviest STI burden: adolescents and African Americans. In this paper, we use ethnographic data collected from a group of African American adolescents living in Baltimore to examine the socially produced configurations of risks and relationships that are obscured by the term sexual concurrency. The data we present show the limits of this concept, and suggest that structural reforms, including improvements to education, drug treatment, and work opportunities, are necessary to reduce racial disparities in STI rates.

Contemporary considerations in concurrent endoscopic sinus surgery and rhinoplasty.

Science.gov (United States)

Steele, Toby O; Gill, Amarbir; Tollefson, Travis T

2018-06-11

Characterize indications, perioperative considerations, clinical outcomes and complications for concurrent endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) and rhinoplasty. Chronic rhinosinusitis and septal deviation with or without inferior turbinate hypertrophy independently impair patient-reported quality of life. Guidelines implore surgeons to include endoscopy to accurately evaluate patient symptoms. Complication rates parallel those of either surgery (ESS and rhinoplasty) alone and are not increased when performed concurrently. Operative time is generally longer for joint surgeries. Patient satisfaction rates are high. Concurrent functional and/or cosmetic rhinoplasty and ESS is a safe endeavor to perform in a single operative setting and most outcomes data suggest excellent patient outcomes. Additional studies that include patient-reported outcome measures are needed.

Preliminary Proceedings 15th International Workshop on Expressiveness in Concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

The EXPRESS workshops aim at bringing together researchers interested in the relations between various formal systems, particularly in the field of Concurrency. More specifically, they focus on the comparison between programming concepts (such as concurrent, functional, imperative, logic and obje...

Disturbance of food ingestion and swallowing due to late toxicity of concurrent chemoradiotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Komatsu, Masanori; Ishitoya, Junichi; Ikeda, Youichi; Shiono, Osamu; Kawano, Toshirou; Tsukuda, Mamoru

2010-01-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate late disturbance of food ingestion and swallowing in patients with advanced head and neck carcinoma after concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). Patients answered a questionnaire, the Quality of Life Radiation Therapy Instrument (QOL-RTI) for Japanese, and swallowing function was investigated by videoendoscopy (VE) more than 1 year after treatment. The results of patients after CCRT were compared with normal elderly serving as the control group. The total QOL score of the patient group was significantly lower than that of the control group. In terms of the results of the QOL questionnaires, the QOL scores for quantity of saliva, quality of saliva, taste and food swallowing were significantly lower in the patient group. Regarding the VE findings, the control group exhibited almost normal swallowing function, but pooling in the vallecura, laryngeal palsy and pooling in the hypopharynx were observed in the phase of not swallowing. Furthermore, dysfunction of swallowing using the colored water swallowing test was observed in about 40% of the patients. In addition, the factors associated with disturbance of QOL score and swallowing function were analyzed. All factors, id est (i.e.), age, T and N classification, stage, duration after treatment, acute toxicity of chemoradiotherapy and order of chemotherapy, had not influence on food ingestion or swallowing. Patients after CCRT might have potential dysfunction of swallowing. The colored water swallowing test is useful for diagnosis of swallowing dysfunction in head and neck cancer patients after CCRT. (author)

Closed-loop step response for tuning PID-fractional-order-filter controllers.

Science.gov (United States)

Amoura, Karima; Mansouri, Rachid; Bettayeb, Maâmar; Al-Saggaf, Ubaid M

2016-09-01

Analytical methods are usually applied for tuning fractional controllers. The present paper proposes an empirical method for tuning a new type of fractional controller known as PID-Fractional-Order-Filter (FOF-PID). Indeed, the setpoint overshoot method, initially introduced by Shamsuzzoha and Skogestad, has been adapted for tuning FOF-PID controller. Based on simulations for a range of first order with time delay processes, correlations have been derived to obtain PID-FOF controller parameters similar to those obtained by the Internal Model Control (IMC) tuning rule. The setpoint overshoot method requires only one closed-loop step response experiment using a proportional controller (P-controller). To highlight the potential of this method, simulation results have been compared with those obtained with the IMC method as well as other pertinent techniques. Various case studies have also been considered. The comparison has revealed that the proposed tuning method performs as good as the IMC. Moreover, it might offer a number of advantages over the IMC tuning rule. For instance, the parameters of the fractional controller are directly obtained from the setpoint closed-loop response data without the need of any model of the plant to be controlled. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The emotional startle effect is disrupted by a concurrent working memory task.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Rosemary; Schaefer, Alexandre

2011-02-01

Working memory (WM) processes are often thought to play an important role in the cognitive regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about how they influence emotional processing. We report two experiments that tested whether a concurrent working memory task could modulate the emotional startle eyeblink effect, a well-known index of emotional processing. In both experiments, emotionally negative and neutral pictures were viewed in two conditions: a "cognitive load" (CL) condition, in which participants had to actively maintain information in working memory (WM) while viewing the pictures, and a control "no load" (NL) condition. Picture-viewing instructions were identical across CL and NL. In both experiments, results showed a significant reduction of the emotional modulation of the startle eyeblink reflex in the CL condition compared to the NL condition. These findings suggest that a concurrent WM task disrupts emotional processing even when participants are directing visual focus on emotionally relevant information. Copyright © 2010 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

A Fault Detection Filtering for Networked Control Systems Based on Balanced Reduced-Order

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Da-Meng Dai

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Due to the probability of the packet dropout in the networked control systems, a balanced reduced-order fault detection filter is proposed. In this paper, we first analyze the packet dropout effects in the networked control systems. Then, in order to obtain a robust fault detector for the packet dropout, we use the balanced structure to construct a reduced-order model for residual dynamics. Simulation results are provided to testify the proposed method.

Robust Fuzzy Control for Fractional-Order Uncertain Hydroturbine Regulating System with Random Disturbances

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fengjiao Wu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The robust fuzzy control for fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system is studied in this paper. First, the more practical fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system with uncertain parameters and random disturbances is presented. Then, on the basis of interval matrix theory and fractional-order stability theorem, a fuzzy control method is proposed for fractional-order hydroturbine regulating system, and the stability condition is expressed as a group of linear matrix inequalities. Furthermore, the proposed method has good robustness which can process external random disturbances and uncertain parameters. Finally, the validity and superiority are proved by the numerical simulations.

Distributed Management of Concurrent Web Service Transactions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alrifai, Mohammad; Dolog, Peter; Balke, Wolf-Tilo

2009-01-01

Business processes involve dynamic compositions of interleaved tasks. Therefore, ensuring reliable transactional processing of Web services is crucial for the success of Web service-based B2B and B2C applications. But the inherent autonomy and heterogeneity of Web services render the applicability...... of conventional ACID transaction models for Web services far from being straightforward. Current Web service transaction models relax the isolation property and rely on compensation mechanisms to ensure atomicity of business transactions in the presence of service failures. However, ensuring consistency...... in the open and dynamic environment of Web services, where interleaving business transactions enter and exit the system independently, remains an open issue. In this paper, we address this problem and propose an architecture that supports concurrency control on the Web services level. An extension...

Cardiac Vagal Tone and Quality of Parenting Show Concurrent and Time-Ordered Associations That Diverge in Abusive, Neglectful, and Non-Maltreating Mothers

OpenAIRE

Skowron, Elizabeth A.; Cipriano-Essel, Elizabeth; Benjamin, Lorna Smith; Pincus, Aaron L.; Van Ryzin, Mark J.

2013-01-01

Concurrent and lagged maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was monitored in the context of parenting. One hundred and forty-one preschooler-mother dyads—involved with child welfare as documented perpetrators of child abuse or neglect, or non-maltreating (non-CM)—were observed completing a resting baseline and joint challenge task. Parenting behaviors were coded using SASB (Benjamin, 1996) and maternal RSA was simultaneously monitored, longitudinally-nested within-person (WP), and subje...

Acquisition of choice in concurrent chains: Assessing the cumulative decision model.

Science.gov (United States)

Grace, Randolph C

2016-05-01

Concurrent chains is widely used to study pigeons' choice between terminal links that can vary in delay, magnitude, or probability of reinforcement. We review research on the acquisition of choice in this procedure. Acquisition has been studied with a variety of research designs, and some studies have incorporated no-food trials to allow for timing and choice to be observed concurrently. Results show that: Choice can be acquired rapidly within sessions when terminal links change unpredictably; under steady-state conditions, acquisition depends on both initial- and terminal-link schedules; and initial-link responding is mediated by learning about the terminal-link stimulus-reinforcer relations. The cumulative decision model (CDM) proposed by Christensen and Grace (2010) and Grace and McLean (2006, 2015) provides a good description of within-session acquisition, and correctly predicts the effects of initial and terminal-link schedules in steady-state designs (Grace, 2002a). Questions for future research include how abrupt shifts in preference within individual sessions and temporal control of terminal-link responding can be modeled. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

7 CFR 1610.6 - Concurrent Bank and RUS cost-of-money loans.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 11 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Concurrent Bank and RUS cost-of-money loans. 1610.6..., DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE LOAN POLICIES § 1610.6 Concurrent Bank and RUS cost-of-money loans. (a) The Bank makes loans, under section 408 of the Act, concurrently with RUS cost-of-money loans made under section...

A Comparison of Flame Spread Characteristics over Solids in Concurrent Flow Using Two Different Pyrolysis Models

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Ya-Ting Tseng

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Two solid pyrolysis models are employed in a concurrent-flow flame spread model to compare the flame structure and spreading characteristics. The first is a zeroth-order surface pyrolysis, and the second is a first-order in-depth pyrolysis. Comparisons are made for samples when the spread rate reaches a steady value and the flame reaches a constant length. The computed results show (1 the mass burning rate distributions at the solid surface are qualitatively different near the flame (pyrolysis base region, (2 the first-order pyrolysis model shows that the propagating flame leaves unburnt solid fuel, and (3 the flame length and spread rate dependence on sample thickness are different for the two cases.

State-Feedback Control for Fractional-Order Nonlinear Systems Subject to Input Saturation

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Junhai Luo

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We give a state-feedback control method for fractional-order nonlinear systems subject to input saturation. First, a sufficient condition is derived for the asymptotical stability of a class of fractional-order nonlinear systems. Then based on Gronwall-Bellman lemma and a sector bounded condition of the saturation function, a linear state-feed back controller is designed. Finally, two simulation examples are presented to show the validity of the proposed method.

Continuous high order sliding mode controller design for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jie; Zong, Qun; Su, Rui; Tian, Bailing

2014-05-01

This paper investigates the problem of tracking control with uncertainties for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (FAHV). In order to overcome the analytical intractability of this model, an Input-Output linearization model is constructed for the purpose of feedback control design. Then, the continuous finite time convergence high order sliding mode controller is designed for the Input-Output linearization model without uncertainties. In addition, a nonlinear disturbance observer is applied to estimate the uncertainties in order to compensate the controller and disturbance suppression, where disturbance observer and controller synthesis design is obtained. Finally, the synthesis of controller and disturbance observer is used to achieve the tracking for the velocity and altitude of the FAHV and simulations are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control strategies. Copyright © 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High-Order Sliding Mode-Based Synchronous Control of a Novel Stair-Climbing Wheelchair Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juanxiu Liu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available For the attitude control of a novel stair-climbing wheelchair with inertial uncertainties and external disturbance torques, a new synchronous control method is proposed via combing high-order sliding mode control techniques with cross-coupling techniques. For this purpose, a proper controller is designed, which can improve the performance of the system under conditions of uncertainties and torque perturbations and also can guarantee the synchronization of the system. Firstly, a robust high-order sliding mode control law is designed to track the desired position trajectories effectively. Secondly, considering the coordination of the multiple joints, a high-order sliding mode synchronization controller is designed to reduce the synchronization errors and tracking errors based on the controller designed previously. Stability of the closed-loop system is proved by Lyapunov theory. The simulation is performed by MATLAB to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. By comparing the simulation results of two controllers, it is obvious that the proposed scheme has better performance and stronger robustness.

Optimal Trajectory Tracking Control for a Wheeled Mobile Robot Using Fractional Order PID Controller

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ameer L. Saleh

2018-02-01

Full Text Available This paper present an optimal Fractional Order PID (FOPID controller based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO for controlling the trajectory tracking of Wheeled Mobile Robot(WMR.The issue of trajectory tracking with given a desired reference velocity is minimized to get the distance and deviation angle equal to zero, to realize the objective of trajectory tracking a two FOPID controllers are used for velocity control and azimuth control to implement the trajectory tracking control. A path planning and path tracking methodologies are used to give different desired tracking trajectories.  PSO algorithm is using to find the optimal parameters of FOPID controllers. The kinematic and dynamic models of wheeled mobile robot for desired trajectory tracking with PSO algorithm are simulated in Simulink-Matlab. Simulation results show that the optimal FOPID controllers are more effective and has better dynamic performance than the conventional methods.

Paclitaxel and concurrent radiation for gastric cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Safran, Howard; Wanebo, Harry J.; Hesketh, Paul J.; Akerman, Paul; Ianitti, David; Cioffi, William; Di Petrillo, Thomas; Wolf, Brian; Koness, James; McAnaw, Robert; Moore, Todd; Chen, M.-H.; Radie-Keane, Kathy

2000-01-01

Purpose: To determine the activity and toxicity of paclitaxel and concurrent radiation for gastric cancer. Methods and Materials: Twenty-seven patients were studied. Twenty-five had proximal gastric cancers, two had distal cancers. Eight had esophageal extension, 6 had celiac adenopathy, and 7 had retroperitoneal adenopathy. Patients received paclitaxel, 50 mg/m 2 by 3-hour intravenous (IV) infusion, weekly, on days 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29. Radiation was administered concurrently to a total dose of 45.0 Gy, in 1.80 Gy fractions, for 25 treatments. Patients who were medically or surgically inoperable received a sixth week of paclitaxel with a radiation boost to 50.4 Gy. Results: Esophagitis and gastritis were the most important toxicities, Grade 3 in four patients (15%), and Grade 4 in three patients (11%). Five patients (19%) had Grade 3 nausea. The overall response rate was 56%, including three patients (11%) with a complete response. The 2-year progression-free and overall survival rates were 29% and 31%, respectively. Conclusion: Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation demonstrates substantial local-regional activity in gastric cancer. Future investigations combining paclitaxel and radiation with other local-regional and systemic treatments are warranted

A Concurrent Multiple Negotiation Protocol Based on Colored Petri Nets.

Science.gov (United States)

Niu, Lei; Ren, Fenghui; Zhang, Minjie; Bai, Quan

2017-11-01

Concurrent multiple negotiation (CMN) provides a mechanism for an agent to simultaneously conduct more than one negotiation. There may exist different interdependency relationships among these negotiations and these interdependency relationships can impact the outcomes of these negotiations. The outcomes of these concurrent negotiations contribute together for the agent to achieve an overall negotiation goal. Handling a CMN while considering interdependency relationships among multiple negotiations is a challenging research problem. This paper: 1) comprehensively highlights research problems of negotiations at concurrent negotiation level; 2) provides a graph-based CMN model with consideration of the interdependency relationships; and 3) proposes a colored Petri net-based negotiation protocol for conducting CMNs. With the proposed protocol, a CMN can be efficiently and concurrently processed and negotiation agreements can be efficiently achieved. Experimental results indicate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed protocol in terms of the negotiation success rate, the negotiation time and the negotiation outcome.

Robust Control for Microgravity Vibration Isolation using Fixed Order, Mixed H2/Mu Design

Science.gov (United States)

Whorton, Mark

2003-01-01

Many space-science experiments need an active isolation system to provide a sufficiently quiescent microgravity environment. Modern control methods provide the potential for both high-performance and robust stability in the presence of parametric uncertainties that are characteristic of microgravity vibration isolation systems. While H2 and H(infinity) methods are well established, neither provides the levels of attenuation performance and robust stability in a compensator with low order. Mixed H2/H(infinity), controllers provide a means for maximizing robust stability for a given level of mean-square nominal performance while directly optimizing for controller order constraints. This paper demonstrates the benefit of mixed norm design from the perspective of robustness to parametric uncertainties and controller order for microgravity vibration isolation. A nominal performance metric analogous to the mu measure, for robust stability assessment is also introduced in order to define an acceptable trade space from which different control methodologies can be compared.

Mathematical techniques for analyzing concurrent and probabilistic systems

CERN Document Server

Rutten, J J M M; Panangaden, Prakash; Panangaden, Prakash; Breugel, Franck van

2004-01-01

The book consists of two sets of lecture notes devoted to slightly different methods of analysis of concurrent and probabilistic computational systems. The first set of lectures develops a calculus of streams (a generalization of the set of natural numbers) based on the coinduction principle coming from the theory of coalgebras. It is now well understood that the interplay between algebra (for describing structure) and coalgebra (for describing dynamics) is crucial for understanding concurrent systems. There is a striking analogy between streams and formula calculus reminiscent to those appearing in quantum calculus. These lecture notes will appeal to anyone working in concurrency theory but also to algebraists and logicians. The other set of lecture notes focuses on methods for automatically verifying probabilistic systems using techniques of model checking. The unique aspect of these lectures is the coverage of both theory and practice. The authors have been responsible for one of the most successful experi...

Fractional order sliding-mode control based on parameters auto-tuning for velocity control of permanent magnet synchronous motor.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, BiTao; Pi, YouGuo; Luo, Ying

2012-09-01

A fractional order sliding mode control (FROSMC) scheme based on parameters auto-tuning for the velocity control of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is proposed in this paper. The control law of the proposed F(R)OSMC scheme is designed according to Lyapunov stability theorem. Based on the property of transferring energy with adjustable type in F(R)OSMC, this paper analyzes the chattering phenomenon in classic sliding mode control (SMC) is attenuated with F(R)OSMC system. A fuzzy logic inference scheme (FLIS) is utilized to obtain the gain of switching control. Simulations and experiments demonstrate that the proposed FROSMC not only achieve better control performance with smaller chatting than that with integer order sliding mode control, but also is robust to external load disturbance and parameter variations. Copyright © 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On the adaptive sliding mode controller for a hyperchaotic fractional-order financial system

Science.gov (United States)

Hajipour, Ahamad; Hajipour, Mojtaba; Baleanu, Dumitru

2018-05-01

This manuscript mainly focuses on the construction, dynamic analysis and control of a new fractional-order financial system. The basic dynamical behaviors of the proposed system are studied such as the equilibrium points and their stability, Lyapunov exponents, bifurcation diagrams, phase portraits of state variables and the intervals of system parameters. It is shown that the system exhibits hyperchaotic behavior for a number of system parameters and fractional-order values. To stabilize the proposed hyperchaotic fractional system with uncertain dynamics and disturbances, an efficient adaptive sliding mode controller technique is developed. Using the proposed technique, two hyperchaotic fractional-order financial systems are also synchronized. Numerical simulations are presented to verify the successful performance of the designed controllers.

Effects of concurrent respiratory resistance training on health-related quality of life in wheelchair rugby athletes: a pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Litchke, Lyn G; Lloyd, Lisa K; Schmidt, Eric A; Russian, Christopher J; Reardon, Robert F

2012-01-01

To compare the effects of 9 weeks of training with a concurrent flow resistance (CFR) device versus a concurrent pressure threshold resistance (CPTR) device on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in wheelchair rugby (WR) athletes. Twenty-four male WR athletes (22 with tetraplegia, 1 with a spastic cerebral palsy, and 1 with congenital upper and lower limb deformities) were matched by lesion level, completeness of injury, and rugby classification prior to being randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: (1) CPTR (n=8), (2) CFR (n=8), or (3) controls (CON, n=8). Pre/post testing included assessment of HRQoL as measured by the Short-Form Health Survey Version 2.0 (SF-36v2). Manufacturer protocol guidelines for the CFR and CPTR groups were followed for breathing exercises. Sixteen participants completed the study (CPTR=4, CFR=5, CON=7). The Mann-Whitney U rank order revealed significantly greater reductions in bodily pain (P = .038) and improvements in vitality (P = .028) for CFR versus CON. Results from this study suggest that training with a CFR device improves some aspects of HRQoL (eg, vitality and bodily pain) in WR athletes. Further research with a larger sample size is needed to examine the impact of these devices on improving HRQoL for wheelchair athletes.

Enhanced robust fractional order proportional-plus-integral controller based on neural network for velocity control of permanent magnet synchronous motor.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Bitao; Pi, YouGuo

2013-07-01

The traditional integer order proportional-integral-differential (IO-PID) controller is sensitive to the parameter variation or/and external load disturbance of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). And the fractional order proportional-integral-differential (FO-PID) control scheme based on robustness tuning method is proposed to enhance the robustness. But the robustness focuses on the open-loop gain variation of controlled plant. In this paper, an enhanced robust fractional order proportional-plus-integral (ERFOPI) controller based on neural network is proposed. The control law of the ERFOPI controller is acted on a fractional order implement function (FOIF) of tracking error but not tracking error directly, which, according to theory analysis, can enhance the robust performance of system. Tuning rules and approaches, based on phase margin, crossover frequency specification and robustness rejecting gain variation, are introduced to obtain the parameters of ERFOPI controller. And the neural network algorithm is used to adjust the parameter of FOIF. Simulation and experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper not only achieve favorable tracking performance, but also is robust with regard to external load disturbance and parameter variation. Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Weekly paclitaxel with concurrent radiotherapy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy in locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hu Wei; Ding Weijun; Yang Haihua; Shao Minghai; Wang Biyun; Wang Jianhua; Wu Sufang; Wu Shixiu; Jin Lihui; Ma, Charlie C.-M.

2009-01-01

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of weekly paclitaxel with concurrent radiotherapy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) in patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods and materials: Between 2004 and 2007, 54 patients with locally advanced NPC were included in this protocol. Patient characteristics: median age 48; 69% male; 52% World Health Organization (WHO) III; 50% stage III, 50% stage IV. The patients underwent a course of definitive conventional radiotherapy (70 Gy in 7 weeks with 2 Gy/fraction), with concurrent weekly paclitaxel 35 mg/m 2 from the first to the sixth week of radiation. AC was started 4 weeks after the end of the radiotherapy (RT), paclitaxel 135 mg/m 2 on day 1 and cisplatin 30 mg/m 2 on days 1-3 were administered every 4 weeks for two cycles. Results: Median follow-up was 32 months. Eighty-five percentage of complete response and 15% partial response were achieved at the time of one month after AC. The 3-year actuarial rate of local regional control was 86%; distant metastases-free survival, progression-free survival and overall survival at 3 years were 81%, 69% and 76%, respectively. Forty-nine (91%) patients completed six courses of concurrent chemotherapy with weekly paclitaxel, and 4 (7%) patients delayed at the second cycle of AC. No patient developed severe acute toxicities. Conclusions: Weekly paclitaxel with concurrent RT followed by AC is a potentially effective and toxicity tolerable method for locally advanced NPC. Further studies are needed to identify the optimal dose of weekly paclitaxel in this strategy.

Preliminary evidence of improved cognitive performance following vestibular rehabilitation in children with combined ADHD (cADHD) and concurrent vestibular impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Lotfi, Younes; Rezazadeh, Nima; Moossavi, Abdollah; Haghgoo, Hojjat Allah; Rostami, Reza; Bakhshi, Enayatollah; Badfar, Faride; Moghadam, Sedigheh Farokhi; Sadeghi-Firoozabadi, Vahid; Khodabandelou, Yousef

2017-12-01

Balance function has been reported to be worse in ADHD children than in their normal peers. The present study hypothesized that an improvement in balance could result in better cognitive performance in children with ADHD and concurrent vestibular impairment. This study was designed to evaluate the effects of comprehensive vestibular rehabilitation therapy on the cognitive performance of children with combined ADHD and concurrent vestibular impairment. Subject were 54 children with combined ADHD. Those with severe vestibular impairment (n=33) were randomly assigned to two groups that were matched for age. A rehabilitation program comprising overall balance and gate, postural stability, and eye movement exercises was assigned to the intervention group. Subjects in the control group received no intervention for the same time period. Intervention was administered twice weekly for 12 weeks. Choice reaction time (CRT) and spatial working memory (SWM) subtypes of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were completed pre- and post-intervention to determine the effects of vestibular rehabilitation on the cognitive performance of the subjects with ADHD and concurrent vestibular impairment. ANCOVA was used to compare the test results of the intervention and control group post-test. The percentage of correct trial scores for the CRT achieved by the intervention group post-test increased significantly compared to those of the control group (p=0.029). The CRT mean latency scores were significantly prolonged in the intervention group following intervention (p=0.007) compared to the control group. No significant change was found in spatial functioning of the subjects with ADHD following 12 weeks of intervention (p>0.05). The study highlights the effect of vestibular rehabilitation on the cognitive performance of children with combined ADHD and concurrent vestibular disorder. The findings indicate that attention can be affected by early vestibular

Output Feedback Distributed Containment Control for High-Order Nonlinear Multiagent Systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yafeng; Hua, Changchun; Wu, Shuangshuang; Guan, Xinping

2017-01-31

In this paper, we study the problem of output feedback distributed containment control for a class of high-order nonlinear multiagent systems under a fixed undirected graph and a fixed directed graph, respectively. Only the output signals of the systems can be measured. The novel reduced order dynamic gain observer is constructed to estimate the unmeasured state variables of the system with the less conservative condition on nonlinear terms than traditional Lipschitz one. Via the backstepping method, output feedback distributed nonlinear controllers for the followers are designed. By means of the novel first virtual controllers, we separate the estimated state variables of different agents from each other. Consequently, the designed controllers show independence on the estimated state variables of neighbors except outputs information, and the dynamics of each agent can be greatly different, which make the design method have a wider class of applications. Finally, a numerical simulation is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Determinants of overweight with concurrent stunting among Ghanaian children.

Science.gov (United States)

Atsu, Benedicta K; Guure, Chris; Laar, Amos K

2017-07-27

Malnutrition (undernutrition and overnutrition) is a major public health problem in Ghana -affecting growth and development of individuals and the nation. Stunting and overweight are of particular interest, as recent national surveys show a rising trend of overnutrition and stubbornly high burden of stunting among Ghanaian children. There are currently no data on the simultaneous occurrence of overweight and stunting within individuals in Ghana. This paper presents the burden, the individual-level, and contextual determinants of overweight with concurrent stunting among Ghanaian children. This study analyzed data set of the fourth round of the Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS4). Bivariate analyses were used to describe selected characteristics of survey respondents and their children. Hierarchical modelling approach facilitated identification of significant distal, intermediate and proximal factors/determinants of concurrent stunting and overweight. Both crude and adjusted prevalence ratios via a multivariable Poison regression model with their corresponding 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) are reported. Variables with p ≤ 0.25 at the bivariate level were included in the multivariable analysis. An alpha value of 5% was used to indicate significance. Of 7550 cases (children) analyzed, the prevalence of stunting was 27.5%; underweight was 17.3%; and wasting was 7.7%. The prevalence of overweight and concurrent overweight and stunting were respectively 2.4% and 1.2%. Children who belonged to the fourth wealth quintile, were more likely to be overweight and concurrently stunted as against children belonging to the poorest quintile (aPR = 1.010; 95% CI, 1.003-1.017). Compared to religious (Christians/Muslim/Traditionalist) household heads, children whose household heads did not belong to any religion had 2 times the rates of the Overweight with concurrent stunting (PR = 2.024; 95% CI, 1.016-4.034). Children with mothers aged 20-34 and 35-49 had an

Concurrent engineering and product models in seafood companies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jonsdottir, Stella; Vesterager, Johan; Børresen, Torger

1998-01-01

Concurrent Engineering (CE) can provide an improved approach to product development for extending the lines of seafood products. Information technology (IT) support tools based on product models can provide an integrated and simultaneous approach for specifying new recipes. The seafood industry can...... benefit from the CE approach which can support product developers to provide concurrent specifications for raw materials, ingredients, packaging, and production methods. The approach involves the use of product models from which line extensions are more easily generated than by use of customary stepwise...

New Designs of Reduced-Order Observer-Based Controllers for Singularly Perturbed Linear Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Heonjong Yoo

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The slow and fast reduced-order observers and reduced-order observer-based controllers are designed by using the two-stage feedback design technique for slow and fast subsystems. The new designs produce an arbitrary order of accuracy, while the previously known designs produce the accuracy of O(ϵ only where ϵ is a small singular perturbation parameter. Several cases of reduced-order observer designs are considered depending on the measured state space variables: only all slow variables are measured, only all fast variables are measured, and some combinations of the slow and fast variables are measured. Since the two-stage methods have been used to overcome the numerical ill-conditioning problem for Cases (III–(V, they have similar procedures. The numerical ill-conditioning problem is avoided so that independent feedback controllers can be applied to each subsystem. The design allows complete time-scale separation for both the reduced-order observer and controller through the complete and exact decomposition into slow and fast time scales. This method reduces both offline and online computations.

Concurrent cetuximab, cisplatin, and radiation for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck in vitro

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Na; Erjala, Kaisa; Kulmala, Jarmo; Qiu Xueshan; Sundvall, Maria; Elenius, Klaus; Grenman, Reidar

2009-01-01

Background and purpose: For locoregionally advanced HNSCC, chemoradiotherapy with cisplatin or another platinum compound is considered as one of the standard treatment regimes. Cisplatin has improved the loco-regional control, but also increased especially the acute side effects. Cetuximab blocks ligand binding and receptor activation by binding to the extracellular domain of the EGFR. The blockade of EGFR signaling in combination with cytotoxic drugs or with radiotherapy could be a novel effective management with a relatively favourable toxicity for HNSCC. In the present study we have examined in vitro a potentially novel effective management for HNSCC, cetuximab combined with cisplatin and radiotherapy. Materials and methods: Seven head and neck SCC cell lines were studied. Cetuximab concentrations of 0.22-8.20 nM and cisplatin concentrations of 0.038-0.220 μg/ml were used. In order to test the concurrent use of cetuximab, cisplatin and radiation, the cells were treated with the desired drug concentrations immediately after irradiation, plated into 96-well culture plates, and incubated for 4 weeks. The number of positive wells was counted. The PE was calculated and fraction survival data were fitted to the LQ model. AUC value was obtained with numerical integration. The types of interaction were analyzed. Results: Cetuximab and cisplatin constantly induced an additive or supra-additive effect when combined with irradiation in the seven HNSCC cell lines tested. Conclusions: We evaluated concurrent cetuximab, cisplatin, and radiation for HNSCC cell lines. Preliminary efficacy results are encouraging, and further development of this targeted combined modality paradigm is warranted.

Concurrent paclitaxel and radiotherapy. Treatment feasibility studies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vogt, H.G.; Martin, T.; Kolotas, C.; Hey, S.; Schneider, L.; Templin, T.; Zamboglou, N.; Dornoff, W.; Kettner, H.

1997-01-01

Background: The anti-neoplastic effect of paclitaxel has been demonstrated in various clinical studies in different malignant diseases. Clinical studies have also demonstrated a greater efficacy for simultaneous radio-chemotherapy compared with radiotherapy alone when using radiosensitizing drugs. Based on these clinical and in-vitro data we initiated several pilot studies using paclitaxel as a radiosensitizing agent and we now present our initial experience in its use in a combined modality protocol, radiation and simultaneous chemotherapy with paclitaxel. Methods: I. Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation for locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC): In a phase-I-study we applicated paclitaxel (45 to 65 mg/m 2 ) as a 3-hour infusion weekly for 3 to 7 weeks simultaneously with primary radiotherapy in shrinking field technique with 5x1.8 Gy/week up to 59.4 Gy. - II. Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation for breast cancer as neoadjuvant or palliative: 50 mg/m 2 paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion weekly for 6 weeks simultaneous with neoadjuvant or palliative radiotherapy of the breast/chest wall with 5x1.8 Gy/week up to 54.0 Gy. - III./IV. Concurrent paclitaxel/carboplatin and combined radiation (EBRT+brachytherapy) for locally advanced inoperable cancer of the cervix: 50 mg/m 2 paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion weekly for 5 weeks, 50 mg/m 2 carboplatin at day 1 to 5 in week 1 and 5 simultaneously with external beam radiotherapy of the pelvis with 5x1.8 Gy/week up to 54.0 Gy and endocavitary LDR-brachytherapy (4x5 Gy). - V. Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation for locally advanced inoperable cancer of the bladder: 50 mg/m 2 paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion weekly for 5 weeks simultaneous with radiotherapy of the pelvis with 5x1.8 Gy/week up to 50.4 Gy. VI. Concurrent paclitaxel and radiation in locally advanced inoperable head and neck cancer: 50 mg/m 2 paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion weekly for 7 to 8 weeks simultaneous with radiotherapy in shrinking field technique

37 CFR 2.99 - Application to register as concurrent user.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 37 Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Application to register as concurrent user. 2.99 Section 2.99 Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK... Proceedings § 2.99 Application to register as concurrent user. (a) An application for registration as a lawful...

Concurrent hyperthermia estimation schemes based on extended Kalman filtering and reduced-order modelling.

Science.gov (United States)

Potocki, J K; Tharp, H S

1993-01-01

The success of treating cancerous tissue with heat depends on the temperature elevation, the amount of tissue elevated to that temperature, and the length of time that the tissue temperature is elevated. In clinical situations the temperature of most of the treated tissue volume is unknown, because only a small number of temperature sensors can be inserted into the tissue. A state space model based on a finite difference approximation of the bioheat transfer equation (BHTE) is developed for identification purposes. A full-order extended Kalman filter (EKF) is designed to estimate both the unknown blood perfusion parameters and the temperature at unmeasured locations. Two reduced-order estimators are designed as computationally less intensive alternatives to the full-order EKF. Simulation results show that the success of the estimation scheme depends strongly on the number and location of the temperature sensors. Superior results occur when a temperature sensor exists in each unknown blood perfusion zone, and the number of sensors is at least as large as the number of unknown perfusion zones. Unacceptable results occur when there are more unknown perfusion parameters than temperature sensors, or when the sensors are placed in locations that do not sample the unknown perfusion information.

Concurrent sexual partnerships among African American women in Philadelphia: results from a qualitative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Nunn, Amy; Dickman, Samuel; Cornwall, Alexandra; Kwakwa, Helena; Mayer, Kenneth H; Rana, Aadia; Rosengard, Cynthia

2012-07-01

African American women are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Concurrent sexual partnerships may contribute to racial disparities in HIV infection. Little is known about attitudes and practices related to concurrency among African American women, or the social, structural and behavioural factors influencing concurrency. We recruited 19 heterosexual African American women engaging in concurrent sexual partnerships from a public clinic in Philadelphia in 2009. We conducted interviews exploring social norms, attitudes and practices about concurrency, and the structural, social and behavioural factors influencing concurrent sexual partnerships, guided by grounded theory. Seventeen women reported one main and one or more non-main partners; two reported no main partners. Many women used condoms more frequently with non-main than main partners, noting they trust main partners more than non-main partners. Social factors included social normalisation of concurrency, inability to negotiate partners' concurrent partnerships, being unmarried, and not trusting partners. Lack of trust was the most commonly cited reason that women engaged in concurrent partnerships. Structural factors included economic dependence on partners, partners' dependence on women for economic support and incarceration that interrupted partnerships. Behavioural factors included alcohol and cocaine use. Social, structural and behavioural factors strongly influenced these African American women's concurrent sexual partnerships. Many HIV interventions disseminated by the CDC focus largely on behavioural factors and may fail to address the social and structural factors influencing African American women's sexual networks. Novel HIV prevention interventions that address the social determinants of African American women's HIV risks are urgently needed.

Separative power of an optimised concurrent gas centrifuge

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bogovalov, Sergey; Boman, Vladimir [National Research Nuclear University (MEPHI), Moscow (Russian Federation)

2016-06-15

The problem of separation of isotopes in a concurrent gas centrifuge is solved analytically for an arbitrary binary mixture of isotopes. The separative power of the optimised concurrent gas centrifuges for the uranium isotopes equals to δU = 12.7 (V/700 m/s)2(300 K/T)(L/1 m) kg·SWU/yr, where L and V are the length and linear velocity of the rotor of the gas centrifuge and T is the temperature. This equation agrees well with the empirically determined separative power of optimised counter-current gas centrifuges.

Linear Matrix Inequalities for Analysis and Control of Linear Vector Second-Order Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Adegas, Fabiano Daher; Stoustrup, Jakob

2015-01-01

the Lyapunov matrix and the system matrices by introducing matrix multipliers, which potentially reduce conservativeness in hard control problems. Multipliers facilitate the usage of parameter-dependent Lyapunov functions as certificates of stability of uncertain and time-varying vector second-order systems......SUMMARY Many dynamical systems are modeled as vector second-order differential equations. This paper presents analysis and synthesis conditions in terms of LMI with explicit dependence in the coefficient matrices of vector second-order systems. These conditions benefit from the separation between....... The conditions introduced in this work have the potential to increase the practice of analyzing and controlling systems directly in vector second-order form. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd....

Fractional-Order Identification and Control of Heating Processes with Non-Continuous Materials

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Riccardo Caponetto

2016-11-01

Full Text Available The paper presents a fractional order model of a heating process and a comparison of fractional and standard PI controllers in its closed loop system. Preliminarily, an enhanced fractional order model for the heating process on non-continuous materials has been identified through a fitting algorithm on experimental data. Experimentation has been carried out on a finite length beam filled with three non-continuous materials (air, styrofoam, metal buckshots in order to identify a model in the frequency domain and to obtain a relationship between the fractional order of the heating process and the different materials’ properties. A comparison between the experimental model and the theoretical one has been performed, proving a significant enhancement of the fitting performances. Moreover the obtained modelling results confirm the fractional nature of the heating processes when diffusion occurs in non-continuous composite materials, and they show how the model’s fractional order can be used as a characteristic parameter for non-continuous materials with different composition and structure. Finally, three different kinds of controllers have been applied and compared in order to keep constant the beam temperature constant at a fixed length.

Concurrency at work with Go

CERN Document Server

CERN. Geneva

2017-01-01

High Energy and Nuclear Physics (HENP) libraries are now required to be increasingly multi-thread-safe, if not multi-thread-friendly and multi-threaded. This is usually done using the new constructs and library components offered by the C++11 and C++14 standards. These components are however quite low-level (threads, mutexes, locks, ...) and hard to use and compose, or easy to misuse. However, Go -- a somewhat new language -- provides a set of better building blocks for tackling concurrency: goroutines and channels. This language is now used by the cloud industry at large; docker/moby, rkt, Kubernetes, OpenShift, etc... are obvious flagships for Go. It is also used in other interesting places like SpaceX's telemetry monitoring system and in the New York Times', YouTube's or Disney's content delivery infrastructures. In this talk, we will describe the building blocks of Go and see how they are combined to easily create concurrent programs that grow with grace, are fast to compile and deploy, but also easy to...

CONCURRENT CONTACT SENSITIZATION TO METALS IN DENTAL EXPOSURES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maya Lyapina

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Purpose: Sensitization to metals is a significant problem for both dental patients treated with dental materials and for dental professionals in occupational exposures. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the incidence of concurrent contact sensitization to relevant for dental practice metals among students of dental medicine, students from dental technician school, dental professionals and patients. Material and Methods: A total of 128 participants were included in the study. All of them were patch-tested with nickel, cobalt, copper, potassium dichromate, palladium, aluminium, gold and tin. The results were subject to statistical analysis (p < 0.05. Results: For the whole studied population, potassium dichromate exhibited concomitant reactivity most often; copper and tin also often manifested co-reactivity. For the groups, exposed in dental practice, potassium dichromate and tin were outlined as the most often co-reacting metal allergens, but statistical significance concerning the co-sensitization to copper and the other metals was established only for aluminium. An increased incidence and OR for concomitant sensitization to cobalt and nickel was established in the group of dental students; to copper and nickel - in the control group; to palladium and nickel - in the group of dental professionals, the group of students of dental medicine and in the control group; to potassium dichromate and cobalt - in the group of dental students; to copper and palladium - in the control group of dental patients; to potassium dichromate and copper - in the group of dental professionals; to copper and aluminum - in the groups of students from dental technician school and of dental professionals; to copper and gold - in the groups of dental professionals and in the group of dental patients; to potassium dichromate and aluminum - in the group of dental professionals; to potassium dichromate and gold - in the group of dental professionals, and to

PSO Based Optimal Design of Fractional Order Controller for Industrial Application

OpenAIRE

Rohit Gupta; Ruchika

2016-01-01

In this paper, a PSO based fractional order PID (FOPID) controller is proposed for concentration control of an isothermal Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) problem. CSTR is used to carry out chemical reactions in industries, which possesses complex nonlinear dynamic characteristics. Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm technique, which is an evolutionary optimization technique based on the movement and intelligence of swarm is proposed for tuning of the controller for this system. Compa...

Multiobjective Optimization Design of a Fractional Order PID Controller for a Gun Control System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qiang Gao

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Motion control of gun barrels is an ongoing topic for the development of gun control equipments possessing excellent performances. In this paper, a typical fractional order PID control strategy is employed for the gun control system. To obtain optimal parameters of the controller, a multiobjective optimization scheme is developed from the loop-shaping perspective. To solve the specified nonlinear optimization problem, a novel Pareto optimal solution based multiobjective differential evolution algorithm is proposed. To enhance the convergent rate of the optimization process, an opposition based learning method is embedded in the chaotic population initialization process. To enhance the robustness of the algorithm for different problems, an adapting scheme of the mutation operation is further employed. With assistance of the evolutionary algorithm, the optimal solution for the specified problem is selected. The numerical simulation results show that the control system can rapidly follow the demand signal with high accuracy and high robustness, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed controller parameter tuning method.

Preoperative concurrent chemo-radiation in rectal cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Berger, C.; Kirscher, S.; Felix-Faure, C.; Chauvet, B.; Vincent, P.; Brewer, Y.; Reboul, F.

1998-01-01

To evaluate retrospectively treatment-related morbidity of concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy for rectal cancer. Between 1992 and 1995, 38 patients (median age: 60) were treated for locally advanced resectable rectal cancer. Median dose of radiotherapy was 45 Gy/25 fractions/5 weeks. Chemotherapy consisted of two courses of 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin administered during the first and the fifth weeks of radiotherapy. Median dose of 5-fluorouracil was 350 mg/m 2 /day, and median dose of leucovorin was 350 mg/m 2 /day, day 1 to day 5. Surgery was performed 5 weeks after completion of radiotherapy. Before surgery, one patient died of febrile neutropenia and sepsis after two cycles of chemotherapy and 45 Gy. Main pre-operative grade 3-4 toxicities were respectively: neutropenia: 3% ; nausea/vomiting: 3%; diarrhea: 3%; proctitis: 5%; radiation dermatitis: 8%. Twenty-six patients underwent a low anterior resection and 11 an abdomino-perineal resection. A temporary colostomy was performed in 12 patients. Pathologic complete response rate was 27 %. There was one post-operative death due to thrombo-embolic disease. Major post-operative grade 3-4 complications were: pelvic infection: 14 %; abdominal infection : 5%; perineal sepsis: 8%; anastomotic dehiscence: 8%; cardiac failure: 5%. Delayed perineal wound healing was observed in six patients. No significant prognostic factor of post-operative complications has been observed. Median duration of hospitalization was 22 days. With a median follow-up of 24 months, 2-year overall and disease-free survival rates were 82 and 64%. Tolerance of preoperative concurrent chemoradiotherapy was acceptable. Ongoing controlled studies will assess the impact of this combined treatment on survival. (authors)

Performing concurrent operations in academic vascular neurosurgery does not affect patient outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Zygourakis, Corinna C; Lee, Janelle; Barba, Julio; Lobo, Errol; Lawton, Michael T

2017-11-01

OBJECTIVE Concurrent surgeries, also known as "running two rooms" or simultaneous/overlapping operations, have recently come under intense scrutiny. The goal of this study was to evaluate the operative time and outcomes of concurrent versus nonconcurrent vascular neurosurgical procedures. METHODS The authors retrospectively reviewed 1219 procedures performed by 1 vascular neurosurgeon from 2012 to 2015 at the University of California, San Francisco. Data were collected on patient age, sex, severity of illness, risk of mortality, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) status, procedure type, admission type, insurance, transfer source, procedure time, presence of resident or fellow in operating room (OR), number of co-surgeons, estimated blood loss (EBL), concurrent vs nonconcurrent case, severe sepsis, acute respiratory failure, postoperative stroke causing neurological deficit, unplanned return to OR, 30-day mortality, and 30-day unplanned readmission. For aneurysm clipping cases, data were also obtained on intraoperative aneurysm rupture and postoperative residual aneurysm. Chi-square and t-tests were performed to compare concurrent versus nonconcurrent cases, and then mixed-effects models were created to adjust for different procedure types, patient demographics, and clinical indicators between the 2 groups. RESULTS There was a significant difference in procedure type for concurrent (n = 828) versus nonconcurrent (n = 391) cases. Concurrent cases were more likely to be routine/elective admissions (53% vs 35%, p returns to the OR (3.3% vs 6.9%; all p return to the OR and 30-day mortality were significantly lower in concurrent cases (odds ratio 0.55, 95% confidence interval 0.31-0.98, p = 0.0431, and odds ratio 0.81, p fashion. After adjusting for patient demographics, procedure type, and clinical indicators, concurrent cases had longer procedure times, but equivalent patient outcomes, as compared with nonconcurrent vascular neurosurgical procedures.

Design of High-Fidelity Testing Framework for Secure Electric Grid Control

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yoginath, Srikanth B [ORNL; Perumalla, Kalyan S [ORNL

2014-01-01

A solution methodology and implementation components are presented that can uncover unwanted, unintentional or unanticipated effects on electric grids from changes to actual electric grid control software. A new design is presented to leapfrog over the limitations of current modeling and testing techniques for cyber technologies in electric grids. We design a fully virtualized approach in which actual, unmodified operational software under test is enabled to interact with simulated surrogates of electric grids. It enables the software to influence the (simulated) grid operation and vice versa in a controlled, high fidelity environment. Challenges in achieving such capability include achieving low-overhead time control mechanisms in hypervisor schedulers, network capture and time-stamping, translation of network packets emanating from grid software into discrete events of virtual grid models, translation back from virtual sensors/actuators into data packets to control software, and transplanting the entire system onto an accurately and efficiently maintained virtual-time plane.

Declarative interpretations of session-based concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cano, Mauricio; Rueda, Camilo; López-Acosta, Hugo-Andrés

2015-01-01

Session-based concurrency is a type-based approach to the analysis of communication-intensive systems. Correct behavior in these systems may be specified in an operational or declarative style: the former defines how interactions are structured; the latter defines governing conditions...

High Order Sliding Mode Control of Doubly-fed Induction Generator under Unbalanced Grid Faults

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhu, Rongwu; Chen, Zhe; Wu, Xiaojie

2013-01-01

This paper deals with a doubly-fed induction generator-based (DFIG) wind turbine system under grid fault conditions such as: unbalanced grid voltage, three-phase grid fault, using a high order sliding mode control (SMC). A second order sliding mode controller, which is robust with respect...

Exploiting communication concurrency on high performance computing systems

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chaimov, Nicholas [Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, OR (United States); Ibrahim, Khaled Z. [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Williams, Samuel [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Iancu, Costin [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

2015-01-01

Although logically available, applications may not exploit enough instantaneous communication concurrency to maximize hardware utilization on HPC systems. This is exacerbated in hybrid programming models such as SPMD+OpenMP. We present the design of a "multi-threaded" runtime able to transparently increase the instantaneous network concurrency and to provide near saturation bandwidth, independent of the application configuration and dynamic behavior. The runtime forwards communication requests from application level tasks to multiple communication servers. Our techniques alleviate the need for spatial and temporal application level message concurrency optimizations. Experimental results show improved message throughput and bandwidth by as much as 150% for 4KB bytes messages on InfiniBand and by as much as 120% for 4KB byte messages on Cray Aries. For more complex operations such as all-to-all collectives, we observe as much as 30% speedup. This translates into 23% speedup on 12,288 cores for a NAS FT implemented using FFTW. We also observe as much as 76% speedup on 1,500 cores for an already optimized UPC+OpenMP geometric multigrid application using hybrid parallelism.

Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency V

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

submission track of ToPNoC. The 12 papers cover a diverse range of topics including model checking and system verification, synthesis, foundational work on specific classes of Petri nets, and innovative applications of Petri nets and other models of concurrency. Thus, this volume gives a good view of ongoing...... concurrent systems and Petri nets research...

Effectiveness and cost of a transitional care program for heart failure: a prospective study with concurrent controls.

Science.gov (United States)

Stauffer, Brett D; Fullerton, Cliff; Fleming, Neil; Ogola, Gerald; Herrin, Jeph; Stafford, Pamala Martin; Ballard, David J

2011-07-25

Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated the efficacy of nurse-led transitional care programs to reduce readmission rates for patients with heart failure; the effectiveness of these programs in real-world health care systems is less well understood. We performed a prospective study with concurrent controls to test an advanced practice nurse-led transitional care program for patients with heart failure who were 65 years or older and were discharged from Baylor Medical Center Garland (BMCG) from August 24, 2009, through April 30, 2010. We compared the effect of the program on 30-day (from discharge) all-cause readmission rate, length of stay, and 60-day (from admission) direct cost for BMCG with that of other hospitals within the Baylor Health Care System. We also performed a budget impact analysis using costs and reimbursement experience from the intervention. The intervention significantly reduced adjusted 30-day readmission rates to BMCG by 48% during the postintervention period, which was better than the secular reductions seen at all other facilities in the system. The intervention had little effect on length of stay or total 60-day direct costs for BMCG. Under the current payment system, the intervention reduced the hospital financial contribution margin on average $227 for each Medicare patient with heart failure. Preliminary results suggest that transitional care programs reduce 30-day readmission rates for patients with heart failure. This underscores the potential of the intervention to be effective in a real-world setting, but payment reform may be required for the intervention to be financially sustainable by hospitals.

Robust fractional order sliding mode control of doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind turbines.

Science.gov (United States)

Ebrahimkhani, Sadegh

2016-07-01

Wind power plants have nonlinear dynamics and contain many uncertainties such as unknown nonlinear disturbances and parameter uncertainties. Thus, it is a difficult task to design a robust reliable controller for this system. This paper proposes a novel robust fractional-order sliding mode (FOSM) controller for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control of doubly fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind energy conversion system. In order to enhance the robustness of the control system, uncertainties and disturbances are estimated using a fractional order uncertainty estimator. In the proposed method a continuous control strategy is developed to achieve the chattering free fractional order sliding-mode control, and also no knowledge of the uncertainties and disturbances or their bound is assumed. The boundedness and convergence properties of the closed-loop signals are proven using Lyapunov׳s stability theory. Simulation results in the presence of various uncertainties were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control scheme. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Patterns of and motivations for concurrent use of video games and substances.

Science.gov (United States)

Ream, Geoffrey L; Elliott, Luther C; Dunlap, Eloise

2011-10-01

"Behavioral addictions" share biological mechanisms with substance dependence, and "drug interactions" have been observed between certain substances and self-reinforcing behaviors. This study examines correlates of patterns of and motivations for playing video games while using or feeling the effects of a substance (concurrent use). Data were drawn from a nationally-representative survey of adult Americans who "regularly" or "occasionally" played video games and had played for at least one hour in the past seven days (n = 3,380). Only recent concurrent users' data were included in analyses (n = 1,196). Independent variables included demographics, substance use frequency and problems, game genre of concurrent use (identified by looking titles up in an industry database), and general game playing variables including problem video game play (PVP), consumer involvement, enjoyment, duration, and frequency of play. Exploratory factor analysis identified the following dimensions underlying patterns of and motivations for concurrent use: pass time or regulate negative emotion, enhance an already enjoyable or positive experience, and use of video games and substances to remediate each other's undesirable effects. Multivariate regression analyses indicated PVP and hours/day of video game play were associated with most patterns/motivations, as were caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and painkiller use problems. This suggests that concurrent use with some regular situational pattern or effect-seeking motivation is part of the addictive process underlying both PVP and substance dependence. Various demographic, game playing, game genre of concurrent use, and substance use variables were associated with specific motivations/patterns, indicating that all are important in understanding concurrent use.

Concurrent infectious mononucleosis and community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Li Jun; Du, Xiao Qin; Nyirimigabo, Eric; Shou, Song Tao

2014-04-01

It is rare to see a concurrent infection with infectious mononucleosis and community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Tianjin, China. Until now, there is still no any single recorded case of concurrent infectious mononucleosis and community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia.

Incident Trichomonas vaginalis Is Associated With Partnership Concurrency: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Kenyon, Chris R; Buyze, Jozefien; Klebanoff, Mark; Brotman, Rebecca M

2017-11-01

Sexual partner concurrency (PC) has been shown to be a risk factor for a number of sexually transmitted infections but it is unknown if it is a risk factor for Trichomonas vaginalis (TV). We assess if there is an association between PC and incident TV infection. We used mixed effects logistic regression to assess the association between PC and incident TV in the Longitudinal Study of Vaginal Flora, a cohort study of 3620 women followed quarterly for 5 visits. Trichomonas vaginalis was more common in those reporting definite/possible/unknown PC (15.6%/15.0%/18.3%) than those reporting no PC (5.2%; P < 0.001 for all 3 comparisons). After controlling for a range of confounders, incident TV remained associated with reporting that one's partner definitely (adjusted odds ratio, 5.4; 95% confidence interval, 3.7-8.0) and possibly (adjusted odds ratio, 3.4; 95% confidence interval, 2.2-5.1) engaged in PC in the preceding period. Partner concurrency was associated with incident TV infection.

Fractional-order positive position feedback compensator for active vibration control of a smart composite plate

Science.gov (United States)

Marinangeli, L.; Alijani, F.; HosseinNia, S. Hassan

2018-01-01

In this paper, Active Vibration Control (AVC) of a rectangular carbon fibre composite plate with free edges is presented. The plate is subjected to out-of-plane excitation by a modal vibration exciter and controlled by Macro Fibre Composite (MFC) transducers. Vibration measurements are performed by using a Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) system. A fractional-order Positive Position Feedback (PPF) compensator is proposed, implemented and compared to the standard integer-order PPF. MFC actuator and sensor are positioned on the plate based on maximal modal strain criterion, so as to control the second natural mode of the plate. Both integer and fractional-order PPF allowed for the effective control of the second mode of vibration. However, the newly proposed fractional-order controller is found to be more efficient in achieving the same performance with less actuation voltage. Moreover, it shows promising performance in reducing spillover effect due to uncontrolled modes.

A 3D Fractional-Order Chaotic System with Only One Stable Equilibrium and Controlling Chaos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shiyun Shen

2017-01-01

Full Text Available One 3D fractional-order chaotic system with only one locally asymptotically stable equilibrium is reported. To verify the chaoticity, the maximum Lyapunov exponent (MAXLE with respect to the fractional-order and chaotic attractors are obtained by numerical calculation for this system. Furthermore, by linear scalar controller consisting of a single state variable, one control scheme for stabilization of the 3D fractional-order chaotic system is suggested. The numerical simulations show the feasibility of the control scheme.

Application of Bf-EVALPSN to Real-time Process Order Control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nakamatsu, Kazumi; Akama, Seiki; Abe, Jair M.

2009-01-01

We have already proposed a paraconsistent annotated logic program called EVALPSN. In this paper, EVALPSN is developed to deal with before-after relations between two processes (time intervals), and its application to real-time process order control based on logical safety verification.

Distributed Ship Navigation Control System Based on Dual Network

Science.gov (United States)

Yao, Ying; Lv, Wu

2017-10-01

Navigation system is very important for ship’s normal running. There are a lot of devices and sensors in the navigation system to guarantee ship’s regular work. In the past, these devices and sensors were usually connected via CAN bus for high performance and reliability. However, as the development of related devices and sensors, the navigation system also needs the ability of high information throughput and remote data sharing. To meet these new requirements, we propose the communication method based on dual network which contains CAN bus and industrial Ethernet. Also, we import multiple distributed control terminals with cooperative strategy based on the idea of synchronizing the status by multicasting UDP message contained operation timestamp to make the system more efficient and reliable.

Time concurrency/phase-time synchronization in digital communications networks

Science.gov (United States)

Kihara, Masami; Imaoka, Atsushi

1990-01-01

Digital communications networks have the intrinsic capability of time synchronization which makes it possible for networks to supply time signals to some applications and services. A practical estimation method for the time concurrency on terrestrial networks is presented. By using this method, time concurrency capability of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) digital communications network is estimated to be better than 300 ns rms at an advanced level, and 20 ns rms at final level.

Dynamic Analysis and Adaptive Sliding Mode Controller for a Chaotic Fractional Incommensurate Order Financial System

Science.gov (United States)

Hajipour, Ahmad; Tavakoli, Hamidreza

2017-12-01

In this study, the dynamic behavior and chaos control of a chaotic fractional incommensurate-order financial system are investigated. Using well-known tools of nonlinear theory, i.e. Lyapunov exponents, phase diagrams and bifurcation diagrams, we observe some interesting phenomena, e.g. antimonotonicity, crisis phenomena and route to chaos through a period doubling sequence. Adopting largest Lyapunov exponent criteria, we find that the system yields chaos at the lowest order of 2.15. Next, in order to globally stabilize the chaotic fractional incommensurate order financial system with uncertain dynamics, an adaptive fractional sliding mode controller is designed. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.

Time-optimal control of infinite order distributed parabolic systems involving time lags

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G.M. Bahaa

2014-06-01

Full Text Available A time-optimal control problem for linear infinite order distributed parabolic systems involving constant time lags appear both in the state equation and in the boundary condition is presented. Some particular properties of the optimal control are discussed.

Four-concurrence in the transverse X Y spin-1/2 chain

Science.gov (United States)

Osterloh, Andreas; Schützhold, Ralf

2017-07-01

We analyze the entanglement measure C4 for specific mixed states in general and for the ground state of the transverse X Y spin-1/2 chain. We find that its factorizing property for pure states does not easily extend to mixed states. For cases where the density matrix is a tensor product, C4 is definitely upper bounded by the product of the corresponding concurrences. In transverse X Y chains, we find that for large distances this condition goes conform with the working hypotheses of a factorizing property of density matrices in this limit. Additionally, we find that C4 together with the genuine multipartite negativity makes it impossible to decide—at the present state of knowledge—which type of entanglement prevails in the system. In particular, this is true for all entanglement measures that detect SL-invariant genuine n -partite entanglement for different n . Further measures of SL-invariant genuine multipartite entanglement have to be considered here. C4 is, however, of the same order of magnitude as the genuine multipartite negativity in Phys. Rev. B 89, 134101 (2014), 10.1103/PhysRevB.89.134101 and shows the same functional behavior, which we read as a hint towards the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) type of entanglement. Furthermore, we observe an interesting feature in the C4 values that resembles a destructive interference with the underlying concurrence.

The Challenges of Career and Technical Education Concurrent Enrollment: An Administrative Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Haag, Patricia W.

2015-01-01

Career and technical education concurrent enrollment may pose unique challenges in programming and enrollment for program administrators, and this chapter describes the experiences and challenges of a CTE concurrent enrollment administrator.

Double Trouble: Concurrent Sigmoid Volvulus and Gastric Volvulus in Alzheimer’s Disease.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ngo Choon Woon

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Background: Volvulus is the rotation of a hollow viscus either on its mesentery or upwards against its own body. Multiple gastrointestinal volvuli occurring in a single individual is extremely rare. Several reports have suggested sequential dilatation of the proximal sigmoid as the triggering factor for the development of the gastric volvulus. This is only the 4th case of concurrent sigmoid and gastric volvulus to be reported in the world and the first in Asia, making it a rare and unique learning opportunity for surgeons of all ages with varying levels of experience. Case Report: We discuss an acute presentation of concurrent sigmoid and gastric volvulus in an elderly individual with underlying Alzheimer’s disease. Despite initial endoscopic treatment, he eventually succumbed as a result of septic shock with multi-organ failure secondary to bowel ischemia. Discussion and Conclusion: The increased morbidity and mortality risk associated with the dual pathology warrants high index of suspicion and prompt management. Clinical symptoms and radiological imaging are often sufficient to reach a diagnosis. Decision to treat the patient conservatively, endoscopically or surgically would depend on the manner of presentation. The relative vascularity of all affected organs should be taken into consideration when prioritizing the order of organs to undergo de-torsion and decompression.

Modular specification and verification for higher-order languages with state

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svendsen, Kasper

The overall topic of this thesis is modular reasoning for higher-order languages with state. The thesis consists of four mostly independent chapters that each deal with a different aspect of reasoning about higher-order languages with state. The unifying theme throughout all four chapters is higher....... The third chapter of the thesis is a case study of the C# joins library. What makes this library interesting as a case study is that it combines a lot of advanced features (higher-order code with effects, concurrency, recursion through the store, shared mutable state, and fine-grained synchronization...

Synchronization of Different Fractional Order Time-Delay Chaotic Systems Using Active Control

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianeng Tang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Chaos synchronization of different fractional order time-delay chaotic systems is considered. Based on the Laplace transform theory, the conditions for achieving synchronization of different fractional order time-delay chaotic systems are analyzed by use of active control technique. Then numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the developed method. At last, effects of the fraction order and the time delay on synchronization are further researched.

Patterns of and Motivations for Concurrent Use of Video Games and Substances

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Geoffrey L. Ream

2011-10-01

Full Text Available “Behavioral addictions” share biological mechanisms with substance dependence, and “drug interactions” have been observed between certain substances and self-reinforcing behaviors. This study examines correlates of patterns of and motivations for playing video games while using or feeling the effects of a substance (concurrent use. Data were drawn from a nationally-representative survey of adult Americans who “regularly” or “occasionally” played video games and had played for at least one hour in the past seven days (n = 3,380. Only recent concurrent users’ data were included in analyses (n = 1,196. Independent variables included demographics, substance use frequency and problems, game genre of concurrent use (identified by looking titles up in an industry database, and general game playing variables including problem video game play (PVP, consumer involvement, enjoyment, duration, and frequency of play. Exploratory factor analysis identified the following dimensions underlying patterns of and motivations for concurrent use: pass time or regulate negative emotion, enhance an already enjoyable or positive experience, and use of video games and substances to remediate each other’s undesirable effects. Multivariate regression analyses indicated PVP and hours/day of video game play were associated with most patterns/motivations, as were caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and painkiller use problems. This suggests that concurrent use with some regular situational pattern or effect-seeking motivation is part of the addictive process underlying both PVP and substance dependence. Various demographic, game playing, game genre of concurrent use, and substance use variables were associated with specific motivations/patterns, indicating that all are important in understanding concurrent use.

Concurrent sexual partnerships among men who have sex with men in Shenzhen, China.

Science.gov (United States)

Ha, Toan H; Liu, Hongjie; Liu, Hui; Cai, Yumao; Feng, Tiejian

2010-08-01

The HIV epidemic spreads among men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. The objective of this study was to examine and compare HIV/AIDS knowledge and sexual risk for HIV between MSM who engaged in concurrent sexual partnerships and MSM who did not. A cross-sectional study using respondent driven sampling was conducted among 351 MSM in Shenzhen, China. About half (49%) of respondents reported having concurrent sexual partnerships during the past 6 months. Among MSM with concurrent sexual partnerships, 62% had only male partners and 38% had both male and female partners. The proportion of inconsistent condom use was 42% among MSM with concurrent partners and 30% among MSM without. These 2 groups reported a similar level of self-perceived risk for HIV. Compared to MSM without concurrent sexual partners, those with such partners were more likely to work in entertainment venues and had a lower level of HIV/AIDS knowledge. The large number of MSM engaging in concurrent sexual partnerships and the high prevalence of bisexuality could accelerate the spread of HIV to the general population unless effective HIV interventions for MSM are implemented in China.

On run-time exploitation of concurrency

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Holzenspies, P.K.F.

2010-01-01

The `free' speed-up stemming from ever increasing processor speed is over. Performance increase in computer systems can now only be achieved through parallelism. One of the biggest challenges in computer science is how to map applications onto parallel computers. Concurrency, seen as the set of

29 CFR 502.17 - Concurrent actions.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 29 Labor 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Concurrent actions. 502.17 Section 502.17 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REGULATIONS ENFORCEMENT OF CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS FOR TEMPORARY ALIEN AGRICULTURAL WORKERS ADMITTED UNDER SECTION 218 OF THE IMMIGRATION...

29 CFR 501.17 - Concurrent actions.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 29 Labor 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Concurrent actions. 501.17 Section 501.17 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REGULATIONS ENFORCEMENT OF CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS FOR TEMPORARY ALIEN AGRICULTURAL WORKERS ADMITTED UNDER SECTION 218 OF THE IMMIGRATION...

Patients survey after concurrent chemoradiotherapy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shimane, Toshikazku; Egawa, Syunya; Mori, Tomoaki; Ono, Tomohiro; Monden, Tetsuya; Kobayashi, Sei; Sanbe, Takeyuki; Suzaki, Harumi

2010-01-01

Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for cancer of head and neck is becoming more popular as the treatment of choice. It is considered to maintain the quality of life (QOL) of patients better than operative treatments in terms of preserving the functions, organs, and figure, but recently we cannot necessarily say that it maintains the QOL of patients better than operative treatments because its complications after therapy disturb daily life. We report the results of a questionnaire survey about complications after therapy, problems during therapy, improvements, and satisfaction level directed at patients with cancer of the head and neck who received Concurrent chemoradiotherapy for the purpose of ascertaining if patients can actually maintain their QOL after therapy. As a result, the most controversial problem was mouth dryness, but the symptom improved as the follow-up duration got longer. As for the satisfaction level, 'very-satisfied' and 'almost-satisfied' were more than 90%, so we concluded that the QOL of patients is maintained after therapy, while there are still improvements to be made. We also concluded that we should continue to make improvement and try to improve the QOL of patients during and after therapy. (author)

Laser beam pointing and stabilization by fractional-order PID control: Tuning rule and experiments

KAUST Repository

Al-Alwan, Asem Ibrahim Alwan; Guo, Xingang; Ndoye, Ibrahima; Laleg-Kirati, Taous-Meriem

2017-01-01

This paper studies the problem of high-precision positioning of laser beams by using a robust Fractional-Order Proportional-Integral-Derivative (FOPID) controller. The control problem addressed in laser beams aims to maintain the position of the laser beam on a Position Sensing Device (PSD) despite the effects of noise and active disturbances. The FOPID controller is well known for its simplicity with better tuning flexibility along with robustness to noise and output disturbance rejections. Thus, a control strategy based on FOPID to achieve the control objectives has been proposed. The FOPID gains and differentiation orders are optimally tuned in order to fulfill the robustness design specifications by solving a nonlinear optimization problem. A comparison to the conventional Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and robust PID is also provided from simulation and experiment set-up. Due to sensor noise, practical PID controllers that filter the position signal before taking the derivative have been also proposed. Experimental results show that the requirements are totally met for the laser beam platform to be stabilized.

Laser beam pointing and stabilization by fractional-order PID control: Tuning rule and experiments

KAUST Repository

Al-Alwan, Asem Ibrahim Alwan

2017-10-24

This paper studies the problem of high-precision positioning of laser beams by using a robust Fractional-Order Proportional-Integral-Derivative (FOPID) controller. The control problem addressed in laser beams aims to maintain the position of the laser beam on a Position Sensing Device (PSD) despite the effects of noise and active disturbances. The FOPID controller is well known for its simplicity with better tuning flexibility along with robustness to noise and output disturbance rejections. Thus, a control strategy based on FOPID to achieve the control objectives has been proposed. The FOPID gains and differentiation orders are optimally tuned in order to fulfill the robustness design specifications by solving a nonlinear optimization problem. A comparison to the conventional Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and robust PID is also provided from simulation and experiment set-up. Due to sensor noise, practical PID controllers that filter the position signal before taking the derivative have been also proposed. Experimental results show that the requirements are totally met for the laser beam platform to be stabilized.

The effects of aging on postural control and selective attention when stepping down while performing a concurrent auditory response task.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsang, William W N; Lam, Nazca K Y; Lau, Kit N L; Leung, Harry C H; Tsang, Crystal M S; Lu, Xi

2013-12-01

To investigate the effects of aging on postural control and cognitive performance in single- and dual-tasking. A cross-sectional comparative design was conducted in a university motion analysis laboratory. Young adults (n = 30; age 21.9 ± 2.4 years) and older adults (n = 30; age 71.9 ± 6.4 years) were recruited. Postural control after stepping down was measured with and without performing a concurrent auditory response task. Measurement included: (1) reaction time and (2) error rate in performing the cognitive task; (3) total sway path and (4) total sway area after stepping down. Our findings showed that the older adults had significantly longer reaction times and higher error rates than the younger subjects in both the single-tasking and dual-tasking conditions. The older adults had significantly longer reaction times and higher error rates when dual-tasking compared with single-tasking, but the younger adults did not. The older adults demonstrated significantly less total sway path, but larger total sway area in single-leg stance after stepping down than the young adults. The older adults showed no significant change in total sway path and area between the dual-tasking and when compared with single-tasking conditions, while the younger adults showed significant decreases in sway. Older adults prioritize postural control by sacrificing cognitive performance when faced with dual-tasking.

Machine Learning Control For Highly Reconfigurable High-Order Systems

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-02

calibration and applications,” Mechatronics and Embedded Systems and Applications (MESA), 2010 IEEE/ASME International Conference on, IEEE, 2010, pp. 38–43...AFRL-OSR-VA-TR-2015-0012 MACHINE LEARNING CONTROL FOR HIGHLY RECONFIGURABLE HIGH-ORDER SYSTEMS John Valasek TEXAS ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT STATION...DIMENSIONAL RECONFIGURABLE SYSTEMS FA9550-11-1-0302 Period of Performance 1 July 2011 – 29 September 2014 John Valasek Aerospace Engineering

An approach for second order control with finite time convergence for electro-hydraulic drives

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmidt, Lasse; Andersen, Torben Ole; Pedersen, Henrik C.

2013-01-01

algorithm parameters. However a discontinuous term internally in the control structure may excite pressures of transmission lines in hydraulic drives as the control structure strives to maintain the control error and its derivative equal to zero. In this paper a modified version of a controller based......Being a second order sliding algorithm, the super twisting algorithm is highly attractive for application in control of hydraulic drives and mechanical systems in general, as it utilizes only the control error while driving the control error as well as its derivative to zero for properly chosen...... on the super twisting algorithm is proposed, with the focus of eliminating the discontinuous term in order to achieve a more smooth control operation. The convergence properties of the proposed controller are analyzed via a conservative phase plane analysis. Furthermore, homogeneity considerations imply finite...

Diversity Controlling Genetic Algorithm for Order Acceptance and Scheduling Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheng Chen

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Selection and scheduling are an important topic in production systems. To tackle the order acceptance and scheduling problem on a single machine with release dates, tardiness penalty, and sequence-dependent setup times, in this paper a diversity controlling genetic algorithm (DCGA is proposed, in which a diversified population is maintained during the whole search process through survival selection considering both the fitness and the diversity of individuals. To measure the similarity between individuals, a modified Hamming distance without considering the unaccepted orders in the chromosome is adopted. The proposed DCGA was validated on 1500 benchmark instances with up to 100 orders. Compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms, the experimental results show that DCGA improves the solution quality obtained significantly, in terms of the deviation from upper bound.

23 CFR 635.114 - Award of contract and concurrence in award.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... TRAFFIC OPERATIONS CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE Contract Procedures § 635.114 Award of contract and concurrence in award. (a) Federal-aid contracts shall be awarded only on the basis of the lowest responsive... 23 Highways 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Award of contract and concurrence in award. 635.114...

Performance Analysis of Fractional-Order PID Controller for a Parabolic Distributed Solar Collector

KAUST Repository

Elmetennani, Shahrazed; N'Doye, Ibrahima; Salama, Khaled N.; Laleg-Kirati, Taous-Meriem

2017-01-01

This paper studies the performance of a fractional-order proportional integral derivative (FOPID) controller designed for parabolic distributed solar collectors. The control problem addressed in concentrated solar collectors aims at forcing

Universal block diagram based modeling and simulation schemes for fractional-order control systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Bai, Lu; Xue, Dingyü

2017-05-08

Universal block diagram based schemes are proposed for modeling and simulating the fractional-order control systems in this paper. A fractional operator block in Simulink is designed to evaluate the fractional-order derivative and integral. Based on the block, the fractional-order control systems with zero initial conditions can be modeled conveniently. For modeling the system with nonzero initial conditions, the auxiliary signal is constructed in the compensation scheme. Since the compensation scheme is very complicated, therefore the integrator chain scheme is further proposed to simplify the modeling procedures. The accuracy and effectiveness of the schemes are assessed in the examples, the computation results testify the block diagram scheme is efficient for all Caputo fractional-order ordinary differential equations (FODEs) of any complexity, including the implicit Caputo FODEs. Copyright © 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Integrated System-Level Optimization for Concurrent Engineering With Parametric Subsystem Modeling

Science.gov (United States)

Schuman, Todd; DeWeck, Oliver L.; Sobieski, Jaroslaw

2005-01-01

The introduction of concurrent design practices to the aerospace industry has greatly increased the productivity of engineers and teams during design sessions as demonstrated by JPL's Team X. Simultaneously, advances in computing power have given rise to a host of potent numerical optimization methods capable of solving complex multidisciplinary optimization problems containing hundreds of variables, constraints, and governing equations. Unfortunately, such methods are tedious to set up and require significant amounts of time and processor power to execute, thus making them unsuitable for rapid concurrent engineering use. This paper proposes a framework for Integration of System-Level Optimization with Concurrent Engineering (ISLOCE). It uses parametric neural-network approximations of the subsystem models. These approximations are then linked to a system-level optimizer that is capable of reaching a solution quickly due to the reduced complexity of the approximations. The integration structure is described in detail and applied to the multiobjective design of a simplified Space Shuttle external fuel tank model. Further, a comparison is made between the new framework and traditional concurrent engineering (without system optimization) through an experimental trial with two groups of engineers. Each method is evaluated in terms of optimizer accuracy, time to solution, and ease of use. The results suggest that system-level optimization, running as a background process during integrated concurrent engineering sessions, is potentially advantageous as long as it is judiciously implemented.

Influence of time delay on fractional-order PI-controlled system for a second-order oscillatory plant model with time delay

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sadalla Talar

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The paper aims at presenting the influence of an open-loop time delay on the stability and tracking performance of a second-order open-loop system and continuoustime fractional-order PI controller. The tuning method of this controller is based on Hermite- Biehler and Pontryagin theorems, and the tracking performance is evaluated on the basis of two integral performance indices, namely IAE and ISE. The paper extends the results and methodology presented in previous work of the authors to analysis of the influence of time delay on the closed-loop system taking its destabilizing properties into account, as well as concerning possible application of the presented results and used models.

Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy With Concurrent Chemotherapy as Preoperative Treatment for Localized Gastric Adenocarcinoma

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chakravarty, Twisha; Crane, Christopher H. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States); Ajani, Jaffer A. [Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States); Mansfield, Paul F. [Department of Surgical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States); Briere, Tina M.; Beddar, A. Sam [Department of Radiation Physics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States); Mok, Henry; Reed, Valerie K.; Krishnan, Sunil; Delclos, Marc E. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States); Das, Prajnan, E-mail: PrajDas@mdanderson.org [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX (United States)

2012-06-01

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate dosimetric parameters, acute toxicity, pathologic response, and local control in patients treated with preoperative intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and concurrent chemotherapy for localized gastric adenocarcinoma. Methods: Between November 2007 and April 2010, 25 patients with localized gastric adenocarcinoma were treated with induction chemotherapy, followed by preoperative IMRT and concurrent chemotherapy and, finally, surgical resection. The median radiation therapy dose was 45 Gy. Concurrent chemotherapy was 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin in 18 patients, capecitabine in 3, and other regimens in 4. Subsequently, resection was performed with total gastrectomy in 13 patients, subtotal gastrectomy in 7, and other surgeries in 5. Results: Target coverage, expressed as the ratio of the minimum dose received by 99% of the planning target volume to the prescribed dose, was a median of 0.97 (range, 0.92-1.01). The median V{sub 30} (percentage of volume receiving at least 30 Gy) for the liver was 26%; the median V{sub 20} (percentage of volume receiving at least 20 Gy) for the right and left kidneys was 14% and 24%, respectively; and the median V{sub 40} (percentage of volume receiving at least 40 Gy) for the heart was 18%. Grade 3 acute toxicity developed in 14 patients (56%), including dehydration in 10, nausea in 8, and anorexia in 5. Grade 4 acute toxicity did not develop in any patient. There were no significant differences in the rates of acute toxicity, hospitalization, or feeding tube use in comparison to those in a group of 50 patients treated with preoperative three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy with concurrent chemotherapy. R0 resection was obtained in 20 patients (80%), and pathologic complete response occurred in 5 (20%). Conclusions: Preoperative IMRT for gastric adenocarcinoma was well tolerated, accomplished excellent target coverage and normal structure sparing, and led to appropriate

Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy With Concurrent Chemotherapy as Preoperative Treatment for Localized Gastric Adenocarcinoma

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chakravarty, Twisha; Crane, Christopher H.; Ajani, Jaffer A.; Mansfield, Paul F.; Briere, Tina M.; Beddar, A. Sam; Mok, Henry; Reed, Valerie K.; Krishnan, Sunil; Delclos, Marc E.; Das, Prajnan

2012-01-01

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate dosimetric parameters, acute toxicity, pathologic response, and local control in patients treated with preoperative intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and concurrent chemotherapy for localized gastric adenocarcinoma. Methods: Between November 2007 and April 2010, 25 patients with localized gastric adenocarcinoma were treated with induction chemotherapy, followed by preoperative IMRT and concurrent chemotherapy and, finally, surgical resection. The median radiation therapy dose was 45 Gy. Concurrent chemotherapy was 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin in 18 patients, capecitabine in 3, and other regimens in 4. Subsequently, resection was performed with total gastrectomy in 13 patients, subtotal gastrectomy in 7, and other surgeries in 5. Results: Target coverage, expressed as the ratio of the minimum dose received by 99% of the planning target volume to the prescribed dose, was a median of 0.97 (range, 0.92–1.01). The median V 30 (percentage of volume receiving at least 30 Gy) for the liver was 26%; the median V 20 (percentage of volume receiving at least 20 Gy) for the right and left kidneys was 14% and 24%, respectively; and the median V 40 (percentage of volume receiving at least 40 Gy) for the heart was 18%. Grade 3 acute toxicity developed in 14 patients (56%), including dehydration in 10, nausea in 8, and anorexia in 5. Grade 4 acute toxicity did not develop in any patient. There were no significant differences in the rates of acute toxicity, hospitalization, or feeding tube use in comparison to those in a group of 50 patients treated with preoperative three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy with concurrent chemotherapy. R0 resection was obtained in 20 patients (80%), and pathologic complete response occurred in 5 (20%). Conclusions: Preoperative IMRT for gastric adenocarcinoma was well tolerated, accomplished excellent target coverage and normal structure sparing, and led to appropriate pathologic

Order release strategies to control outsourced operations in a supply chain

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boulaksil, Y.; Fransoo, J.C.

2007-01-01

In this paper, we propose and compare three different order release strategies to plan and control outsourced operations in a supply chian where the contract manfacturer is producing different variants of a certain product.

Detecting a Multi-Homed Device Using Clock Skew

Science.gov (United States)

2016-09-01

15]. The TCP timestamp value is determined by a virtual “timestamp clock” that is based on the frequency of operation of the device’s system clock...received [16]. Figure 8. TCP Timestamp Options Field. Source: [16]. The value of the timestamp comes from a virtual internal clock that is known as...Testing 18 One of the Raspberry Pis had an added USB 2.0 Gigabit LAN adapter that was used as its second connection to the network. The connections for

The Concert system - Compiler and runtime technology for efficient concurrent object-oriented programming

Science.gov (United States)

Chien, Andrew A.; Karamcheti, Vijay; Plevyak, John; Sahrawat, Deepak

1993-01-01

Concurrent object-oriented languages, particularly fine-grained approaches, reduce the difficulty of large scale concurrent programming by providing modularity through encapsulation while exposing large degrees of concurrency. Despite these programmability advantages, such languages have historically suffered from poor efficiency. This paper describes the Concert project whose goal is to develop portable, efficient implementations of fine-grained concurrent object-oriented languages. Our approach incorporates aggressive program analysis and program transformation with careful information management at every stage from the compiler to the runtime system. The paper discusses the basic elements of the Concert approach along with a description of the potential payoffs. Initial performance results and specific plans for system development are also detailed.

Optimal Control Surface Layout for an Aeroservoelastic Wingbox

Science.gov (United States)

Stanford, Bret K.

2017-01-01

This paper demonstrates a technique for locating the optimal control surface layout of an aeroservoelastic Common Research Model wingbox, in the context of maneuver load alleviation and active utter suppression. The combinatorial actuator layout design is solved using ideas borrowed from topology optimization, where the effectiveness of a given control surface is tied to a layout design variable, which varies from zero (the actuator is removed) to one (the actuator is retained). These layout design variables are optimized concurrently with a large number of structural wingbox sizing variables and control surface actuation variables, in order to minimize the sum of structural weight and actuator weight. Results are presented that demonstrate interdependencies between structural sizing patterns and optimal control surface layouts, for both static and dynamic aeroelastic physics.

Partnership duration, concurrency, and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

Science.gov (United States)

Sawers, Larry; Isaac, Alan

2017-07-01

A widely accepted explanation for the exceptionally high HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa is the practice of long-term overlapping heterosexual partnering. This article shows that long-duration concurrent partnering can be protective against HIV transmission rather than promoting it. Monogamous partnering prevents sexual transmission to anyone outside the partnership and, in an initially concordant-seronegative partnership, prevents sexual acquisition of HIV by either partner. Those protections against transmission and acquisition last as long as the partnership persists without new outside partnerships. Correspondingly, these two protective effects characterise polygynous partnerships, whether or not the polygyny is formal or informal, until a partner initiates a new partnership. Stable and exclusive unions of any size protect against HIV transmission, and more durable unions provide a longer protective effect. Survey research provides little information on partnership duration in sub-Saharan Africa and sheds no light on the interaction of duration, concurrency, and HIV. This article shows how assumptions about partnership duration in individual-based sexual-network models affect the contours of simulated HIV epidemics. Longer mean partnership duration slows the pace at which simulated epidemics grow. With plausible assumptions about partnership duration and at levels of concurrency found in the region, simulated HIV epidemics grow slowly or not at all. Those results are consistent with the hypothesis that long-duration partnering is protective against HIV and inconsistent with the hypothesis that long-term concurrency drives the HIV epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.

Compelled attention: the effects of viewing trauma-related stimuli on concurrent task performance in posttraumatic stress disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Chemtob, C M; Roitblat, H L; Hamada, R S; Muraoka, M Y; Carlson, J G; Bauer, G B

1999-04-01

We examined the ability of Vietnam veterans with PTSD to focus attention on a primary digit detection task while concurrently viewing neutral or Vietnam-related picture and word distractors. Controlling for combat exposure, military service, and psychopathology, veterans with PTSD took longer to detect the target when Vietnam-related pictures were distractors. There were no reaction time differences when word stimuli were distractors. The latency effect was specific to trials with trauma-related pictures and did not spread to neutral trials interleaved within a mixed block of trauma and neutral pictures. Individuals with PTSD recalled proportionally more Vietnam-related words than other groups, implying differential attention to Vietnam-related words. Attending to trauma-related pictures interferes with performance of a concurrent task by individuals with PTSD.

Neonatal diabetes mellitus and congenital diaphragmatic hernia: coincidence or concurrent etiology?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Topiol Emmanuelle S

2012-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Neonatal diabetes mellitus (NDM is a rare metabolic disorder, affecting approximately 1 in 500,000 live births. The management of NDM is challenging, as the benefits of controlling hyperglycemia must be balanced with the risks of iatrogenic hypoglycemia. NDM occurs in both permanent and transient forms, which have been genetically and phenotypically well characterized. Herein, we present the previously unreported combination of transient NDM (TNDM and congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH. In addition to reviewing the management and genetics of NDM we discuss the potential for overlapping genetic or embryologic abnormalities to explain the concurrence of CDH and NDM.

Effects of language dominance on item and order memory in free recall, serial recall and order reconstruction.

Science.gov (United States)

Francis, Wendy S; Baca, Yuzeth

2014-01-01

Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 144) performed free recall, serial recall and order reconstruction tasks in both English and Spanish. Long-term memory for both item and order information was worse in the less fluent language (L2) than in the more fluent language (L1). Item scores exhibited a stronger disadvantage for the L2 in serial recall than in free recall. Relative order scores were lower in the L2 for all three tasks, but adjusted scores for free and serial recall were equivalent across languages. Performance of English-speaking monolinguals (N = 72) was comparable to bilingual performance in the L1, except that monolinguals had higher adjusted order scores in free recall. Bilingual performance patterns in the L2 were consistent with the established effects of concurrent task performance on these memory tests, suggesting that the cognitive resources required for processing words in the L2 encroach on resources needed to commit item and order information to memory. These findings are also consistent with a model in which item memory is connected to the language system, order information is processed by separate mechanisms and attention can be allocated differentially to these two systems.

Multiple Homicide as a Function of Prisonization and Concurrent Instrumental Violence: Testing an Interactive Model--A Research Note

Science.gov (United States)

DeLisi, Matt; Walters, Glenn D.

2011-01-01

Prisonization (as measured by number of prior incarcerations) and concurrent instrumental offending (as measured by contemporaneous kidnapping, rape, robbery, and burglary offenses) were found to interact in 160 multiple-homicide offenders and 494 single-homicide offenders. Controlling for age, gender, race, criminal history, prior incarcerations,…

Performance analysis of two-degree of freedom fractional order PID controllers for robotic manipulator with payload.

Science.gov (United States)

Sharma, Richa; Gaur, Prerna; Mittal, A P

2015-09-01

The robotic manipulators are multi-input multi-output (MIMO), coupled and highly nonlinear systems. The presence of external disturbances and time-varying parameters adversely affects the performance of these systems. Therefore, the controller designed for these systems should effectively deal with such complexities, and it is an intriguing task for control engineers. This paper presents two-degree of freedom fractional order proportional-integral-derivative (2-DOF FOPID) controller scheme for a two-link planar rigid robotic manipulator with payload for trajectory tracking task. The tuning of all controller parameters is done using cuckoo search algorithm (CSA). The performance of proposed 2-DOF FOPID controllers is compared with those of their integer order designs, i.e., 2-DOF PID controllers, and with the traditional PID controllers. In order to show effectiveness of proposed scheme, the robustness testing is carried out for model uncertainties, payload variations with time, external disturbance and random noise. Numerical simulation results indicate that the 2-DOF FOPID controllers are superior to their integer order counterparts and the traditional PID controllers. Copyright © 2015 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Tutorial on Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell

Science.gov (United States)

Peyton Jones, Simon; Singh, Satnam

This practical tutorial introduces the features available in Haskell for writing parallel and concurrent programs. We first describe how to write semi-explicit parallel programs by using annotations to express opportunities for parallelism and to help control the granularity of parallelism for effective execution on modern operating systems and processors. We then describe the mechanisms provided by Haskell for writing explicitly parallel programs with a focus on the use of software transactional memory to help share information between threads. Finally, we show how nested data parallelism can be used to write deterministically parallel programs which allows programmers to use rich data types in data parallel programs which are automatically transformed into flat data parallel versions for efficient execution on multi-core processors.

Effect of 8 weeks of concurrent plyometric and running training on spatiotemporal and physiological variables of novice runners.

Science.gov (United States)

Gómez-Molina, Josué; Ogueta-Alday, Ana; Camara, Jesus; Stickley, Christopher; García-López, Juan

2018-03-01

Concurrent plyometric and running training has the potential to improve running economy (RE) and performance through increasing muscle strength and power, but the possible effect on spatiotemporal parameters of running has not been studied yet. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of 8 weeks of concurrent plyometric and running training on spatiotemporal parameters and physiological variables of novice runners. Twenty-five male participants were randomly assigned into two training groups; running group (RG) (n = 11) and running + plyometric group (RPG) (n = 14). Both groups performed 8 weeks of running training programme, and only the RPG performed a concurrent plyometric training programme (two sessions per week). Anthropometric, physiological (VO 2max , heart rate and RE) and spatiotemporal variables (contact and flight times, step rate and length) were registered before and after the intervention. In comparison to RG, the RPG reduced step rate and increased flight times at the same running speeds (P running training entails a reduction in step rate, as well as increases in VT speed, RCT speed, peak speed and VO 2max . Athletes could benefit from plyometric training in order to improve their strength, which would contribute to them attaining higher running speeds.

Concurrency in product realization

Science.gov (United States)

Kelly, Michael J.

1994-03-01

Technology per se does not provide a competitive advantage. Timely exploitation of technology is what gives the competitive edge, and this demands a major shift in the product development process and management of the industrial enterprise. `Teaming to win' is more than a management theme; it is the disciplined engineering practice that is essential to success in today's global marketplace. Teaming supports the concurrent engineering practices required to integrate the activities of people responsible for product realization through achievement of shorter development cycles, lower costs, and defect-free products.

Mastering concurrency in Go

CERN Document Server

Kozyra, Nathan

2014-01-01

A practical approach covering everything you need to know to get up and running with Go, starting with the basics and imparting increasingly more detail as the examples and topics become more complicated. The book utilizes a casual, conversational style, rife with actual code and historical anecdotes for perspective, as well as usable and extensible example applications. This book is intended for systems developers and programmers with some experience in either Go and/or concurrent programming who wish to become fluent in building high-performance applications that scale by leveraging single-c

Morse Theory and Concurrency

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wisniewski, Rafal

2003-01-01

The work is intended to provide some insight about concurrency theory using ideas from geometry and algebraic topology. We define a topological space containing all traces of execution of the computer program and the information about how time flows. This is the main difference with standard...... topological reasoning in which there is no information about relation "in time" among points. The main task is to define equivalence of paths reflecting execution of a program. We use the notion of homotopy history equivalence relation. The model space considered in this work is a differentiable manifold...

A study of pedestrian compliance with traffic signals for exclusive and concurrent phasing.

Science.gov (United States)

Ivan, John N; McKernan, Kevin; Zhang, Yaohua; Ravishanker, Nalini; Mamun, Sha A

2017-01-01

This paper describes a comparison of pedestrian compliance at traffic signals with two types of pedestrian phasing: concurrent, where both pedestrians and vehicular traffic are directed to move in the same directions at the same time, and exclusive, where pedestrians are directed to move during their own dedicated phase while all vehicular traffic is stopped. Exclusive phasing is usually perceived to be safer, especially by senior and disabled advocacy groups, although these safety benefits depend upon pedestrians waiting for the walk signal. This paper investigates whether or not there are differences between pedestrian compliance at signals with exclusive pedestrian phasing and those with concurrent phasing and whether these differences continue to exist when compliance at exclusive phasing signals is evaluated as if they had concurrent phasing. Pedestrian behavior was observed at 42 signalized intersections in central Connecticut with both concurrent and exclusive pedestrian phasing. Binary regression models were estimated to predict pedestrian compliance as a function of the pedestrian phasing type and other intersection characteristics, such as vehicular and pedestrian volume, crossing distance and speed limit. We found that pedestrian compliance is significantly higher at intersections with concurrent pedestrian phasing than at those with exclusive pedestrian phasing, but this difference is not significant when compliance at exclusive phase intersections is evaluated as if it had concurrent phasing. This suggests that pedestrians treat exclusive phase intersections as though they have concurrent phasing, rendering the safety benefits of exclusive pedestrian phasing elusive. No differences were observed for senior or non-senior pedestrians. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Adding Concurrency to Smart Contracts

OpenAIRE

Dickerson, Thomas; Gazzillo, Paul; Herlihy, Maurice; Koskinen, Eric

2017-01-01

Modern cryptocurrency systems, such as Ethereum, permit complex financial transactions through scripts called smart contracts. These smart contracts are executed many, many times, always without real concurrency. First, all smart contracts are serially executed by miners before appending them to the blockchain. Later, those contracts are serially re-executed by validators to verify that the smart contracts were executed correctly by miners. Serial execution limits system throughput and fails ...

Evaluation of concurrent peak responses

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, P.C.; Curreri, J.; Reich, M.

1983-01-01

This report deals with the problem of combining two or more concurrent responses which are induced by dynamic loads acting on nuclear power plant structures. Specifically, the acceptability of using the square root of the sum of the squares (SRSS) value of peak values as the combined response is investigated. Emphasis is placed on the establishment of a simplified criterion that is convenient and relatively easy to use by design engineers

Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with concurrent chemotherapy as definitive treatment of locally advanced esophageal cancer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Roeder, Falk; Nicolay, Nils H; Nguyen, Tam; Saleh-Ebrahimi, Ladan; Askoxylakis, Vasilis; Bostel, Tilman; Zwicker, Felix; Debus, Juergen; Timke, Carmen; Huber, Peter E

2014-01-01

To report our experience with increased dose intensity-modulated radiation and concurrent systemic chemotherapy as definitive treatment of locally advanced esophageal cancer. We analyzed 27 consecutive patients with histologically proven esophageal cancer, who were treated with increased-dose IMRT as part of their definitive therapy. The majority of patients had T3/4 and/or N1 disease (93%). Squamous cell carcinoma was the dominating histology (81%). IMRT was delivered in step-and-shoot technique in all patients using an integrated boost concept. The boost volume was covered with total doses of 56-60 Gy (single dose 2-2.14 Gy), while regional nodal regions received 50.4 Gy (single dose 1.8 Gy) in 28 fractions. Concurrent systemic therapy was scheduled in all patients and administered in 26 (96%). 17 patients received additional adjuvant systemic therapy. Loco-regional control, progression-free and overall survival as well as acute and late toxicities were retrospectively analyzed. In addition, quality of life was prospectively assessed according to the EORTC QLQs (QLQ-OG25, QLQ-H&N35 and QLQ-C30). Radiotherapy was completed as planned in all but one patient (96%), and 21 patients received more than 80% of the planned concurrent systemic therapy. We observed ten locoregional failures, transferring into actuarial 1-, 2- and 3-year-locoregional control rates of 77%, 65% and 48%. Seven patients developed distant metastases, mainly to the lung (71%). The actuarial 1-, 2- and 3-year-disease free survival rates were 58%, 48% and 36%, and overall survival rates were 82%, 61% and 56%. The concept was well tolerated, both in the clinical objective examination and also according to the subjective answers to the QLQ questionnaire. 14 patients (52%) suffered from at least one acute CTC grade 3/4 toxicity, mostly hematological side effects or dysphagia. Severe late toxicities were reported in 6 patients (22%), mostly esophageal strictures and ulcerations. Severe side effects to

75 FR 14152 - Executive Order 13508; Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Section 502; Guidance for...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-24

... concurrent Federal Leadership Committee and public review, both as required by the Executive Order. Note that... disk or CD-ROM you submit. If your comment cannot be read due to technical difficulties and we are...

Oligopolistic concurrence and investment: application to electricity markets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Meunier, G.

2008-12-01

This research aims at analysing investment strategies of firms which are in an oligopolistic situation. After a brief description of the physical characteristics of an electric system, the author describes the reforms and defines the problematic of an investment in electricity production within markets in imperfect concurrence. In a first part, the author analyses the heterogeneity (either exogenous or endogenous) and technology choices of oligopolistic firms. In case of an exogenous heterogeneity, he studies the impact of the number of firms on investment decisions. In the second part, the author examines the regulations introduced in industries in imperfect concurrence: electricity production by a public firm and interaction between emission allowance market and investment

Non-Blocking Concurrent Imperative Programming with Session Types

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miguel Silva

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Concurrent C0 is an imperative programming language in the C family with session-typed message-passing concurrency. The previously proposed semantics implements asynchronous (non-blocking output; we extend it here with non-blocking input. A key idea is to postpone message reception as much as possible by interpreting receive commands as a request for a message. We implemented our ideas as a translation from a blocking intermediate language to a non-blocking language. Finally, we evaluated our techniques with several benchmark programs and show the results obtained. While the abstract measure of span always decreases (or remains unchanged, only a few of the examples reap a practical benefit.

Concurrent Training for Sports Performance: The Two Sides of the Medal.

Science.gov (United States)

Berryman, Nicolas; Mujika, Inigo; Bosquet, Laurent

2018-05-29

The classical work by Robert C. Hickson showed in 1980 that the addition of a resistance training protocol to a predominantly aerobic program could lead to impaired leg strength adaptations in comparison to a resistance-only training regimen. This interference phenomenon was later highlighted in many reports, including a meta-analysis. However, it seems that the interference effect has not been consistently reported, probably because of the complex interactions between training variables and methodological issues. On the other side of the medal, Dr Hickson and colleagues subsequently (1986) reported that a strength training mesocycle could be beneficial for endurance performance in running and cycling. In recent meta-analyses and review articles, it was demonstrated that such a training strategy could improve middle- and long-distance performance in many disciplines (running, cycling, cross-country skiing and swimming). Interestingly, it appears that improvements in the energy cost of locomotion could be associated with these performance enhancements. Despite these benefits, it was also reported that strength training could represent a detrimental stimulus for endurance performance if an inappropriate training plan has been prepared. Taken together, these observations suggest that coaches and athletes should be careful when concurrent training seems imperative in order to meet the complex physiological requirements of their sport. Therefore, this brief review will present a practical appraisal of concurrent training for sports performance. In addition, recommendations will be provided so that practitioners could adapt their interventions based on the training objectives.

Epidemiological considerations in the surveillance and control of FMD in Southeast Asia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sanson, R.L.; Morris, R.S.

2000-01-01

If control and ultimately eradication of FMD is going to be achieved in Southeast Asia, regional co-operation between the various countries that share common borders will be required. Control programmes need to be flexible so that they can target the issues that are likely to give the greatest improvements in control with the available resources. In order to design these dynamic control programmes, communications must be strengthened, epidemiologically sound information needs to be routinely collected and analyses must be conducted. Control effectiveness should be monitored so that weaknesses in present programmes can be identified. Short-term and long-term strategies must be developed concurrently so that control programmes can readily proceed from one stage to the next. (author)

Fractional-order sliding mode control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems based on LQR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dong Zhang

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This article presents a new fractional-order sliding mode control (FOSMC strategy based on a linear-quadratic regulator (LQR for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems. First, input/output feedback linearization is used to linearize the nonlinear system and decouple tracking error dynamics. Second, LQR is designed to ensure that the tracking error dynamics converges to the equilibrium point as soon as possible. Based on LQR, a novel fractional-order sliding surface is introduced. Subsequently, the FOSMC is designed to reject system uncertainties and reduce the magnitude of control chattering. Then, the global stability of the closed-loop control system is analytically proved using Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, a typical single-input single-output system and a typical multi-input multi-output system are simulated to illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed control strategy. The results of the simulation indicate that the proposed control strategy exhibits excellent performance and robustness with system uncertainties. Compared to conventional integer-order sliding mode control, the high-frequency chattering of the control input is drastically depressed.

A concurrent multiscale micromorphic molecular dynamics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Shaofan; Tong, Qi

2015-01-01

In this work, we have derived a multiscale micromorphic molecular dynamics (MMMD) from first principle to extend the (Andersen)-Parrinello-Rahman molecular dynamics to mesoscale and continuum scale. The multiscale micromorphic molecular dynamics is a con-current three-scale dynamics that couples a fine scale molecular dynamics, a mesoscale micromorphic dynamics, and a macroscale nonlocal particle dynamics together. By choosing proper statistical closure conditions, we have shown that the original Andersen-Parrinello-Rahman molecular dynamics is the homogeneous and equilibrium case of the proposed multiscale micromorphic molecular dynamics. In specific, we have shown that the Andersen-Parrinello-Rahman molecular dynamics can be rigorously formulated and justified from first principle, and its general inhomogeneous case, i.e., the three scale con-current multiscale micromorphic molecular dynamics can take into account of macroscale continuum mechanics boundary condition without the limitation of atomistic boundary condition or periodic boundary conditions. The discovered multiscale scale structure and the corresponding multiscale dynamics reveal a seamless transition from atomistic scale to continuum scale and the intrinsic coupling mechanism among them based on first principle formulation

[Efficacy of MVP chemotherapy combined with concurrent radiotherapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer].

Science.gov (United States)