bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Program Plan for the Design and Spin Test of Ceramic Blade-Metal Disk Attachments
Authors: Calvert G. S.
Published: April 2015

A current NASA-sponsored contract will develop attachment technology for hybrid turbine rotors having dovetailed ceramic ceramic blades and a wrought metal disk. The approach and sequence of activities are described in detail. The program scope includes design, fabrication, and spin testing of hot-pressed silicon nitride blades for operation at rotor inlet temperatures of 2192 F (1200 C) or greater.
Coupled Bending-Torsion Vibrations of Rotating Blades
Authors: Banerjee S. , Rao J. S.
Published: April 2015

This paper presents analytical and experimental investigations to determine the coupled bending-torsion natural frequencies of cantilever blades mounted on a rotating disk. Galerkin method is applied to solve the coupled differential equations of motion for an aerofoil cross-section blade with asymmetry about only one principal axis. The blade is considered to be mounted with the axis of symmetry in the plane of disk rotation. Results obtained are presented in non-dimensional form, showing the effects of rotation, disk radius, and asymmetry on the lowest three-coupled bending and lowest three-coupled torsion frequencies. An experimental rig is designed and fabricated to test rotating blades using piezoelectric crystals to excite the blades and also to pick up the response. The theoretical results are shown to be in good agreement with experimental observations.
Reduction of Gas Turbine Fuel Consumption on Gas Pipelines
Authors: Heard T. C.
Published: April 2015

As the value of natural gas began to rapidly escalate in recent years, a number of old concepts for improved gas turbine pipeline station fuel consumption have been analyzed. These concepts include the use of diesel starting devices, inlet air evaporative coolers, higher effectiveness regenerators, steam injection, combined steam and gas turbine cycles, optimum loading of the gas turbine, and more frequent changing of compressor impellers. This paper reviews these concepts in anticipation of higher fuel costs and offers a brief analysis of economic gains.
A Test Program to Provide an Economic Evaluation of Techniques to Control Corrosion in Gas Turbines
Authors: Knauf C. L. , McCaffrey B. R. , Vitelli J. M.
Published: April 2015

There is an increasing need to eliminate or reduce corrosion of gas turbine parts. Over the years, proposed methods to reduce corrosion have not adequately defined their cost/benefit ratio. This test program will attempt to quantify the benefits of inlet air filters, turbine washing, compressor washing, fuel additive for hot corrosion, and engine standby heating. Fuel and airborne sodium will be continuously monitored on ten engines for correlation with test results.
Primary System Preliminary Design for Gas Turbine HTGR Power Plant
Authors: McDonald C. F. , Fortescue P. , Krase J. M.
Published: April 2015

The Gas Turbine High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (GT-HTGR) power plant combines the existing HTGR core with a closed-cycle helium gas turibne power-conversion system directly in the reactor primary circuit. An integrated design concept in which the reactor core, turbomachinery, heat exchangers, and entire helium inventory are enclosed within the prestressed concrete reactor vessel (PCRV) was selected on the basis of both safety and economic reasons. Th layout of the power-conversion loop (PCL) components, with envelope restraints associated with installation in cavities in the PCRV, and development of the primary system gas flow paths are discussed. This paper outlines the studies which led to the selection of the primary system for an integrated type of plant embodying multiple gas turbine loops. With orientation and configuration of the major components in the PCL forming the basis of these studies, some of the preliminary design considerations for the turbomachinery, heat exchangers, and other components are discussed. The high potential for further improvement in plant efficiency and capacity, for both advanced dry-cooled and waste heat power cycle versions of the direct cycle nuclear gas turbine, is also discussed.
Fault Analysis of a Gas Turbine HTGR
Authors: Chmielewski R. , Vepa K. , Cheng L. , Bowyer J.
Published: April 2015

The Gas Turbine High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor combines a helium-cooled reactor core of established design with a closed-cycle helium turbine power-conversion system. This paper discusses the design considerations which mitigate the consequences of failure of the rotating machinery located within the reactor vessel. The methods of analysis and summary of results are presented for the failure modes of most concern. The spectrum of potential incidents which have been evaluated include turbine blade, rim, and disk failures. The requirements and design methods for rotor containment are discussed. The turbomachine maintains a pressure ratio of about two between the high and low pressure portions of the loop; postulated failures can, therefore, lead to rapid rates of pressure change. The preliminary evaluation of this internal pressure equilibration is presented.
Diffusion of water into permeation barrier layers
Authors: Visweswaran Bhadri , Mandlik Prashant , Mohan Siddharth Harikrishna , Silvernail Jeff A. , Ma Ruiqing , Sturm James C. , Wagner Sigurd
Published: April 2015

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are attractive candidates for flexible display and lighting panels due to their high contrast ratio. However, the materials in an OLED are oxidized by very small quantities of moisture. Therefore, flexible OLEDs require flexible, thin-film, encapsulation. The authors introduce a set of three techniques for measuring the solubility and diffusion coefficient of water in a permeation barrier layer that is a SiO2-silicone hybrid made by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The techniques are secondary ion mass spectrometry, and measurements of electrical capacitance and of film stress. The measurements were carried out on samples exposed to water or steam at temperatures between 65 and 200 °C. From the resulting values of water solubility, diffusion coefficient, and their thermal activation energies, the authors calculate the time one monolayer of water will take to permeate through the bulk of the film. For a 3 μm thick film held at 38 °C and 90% relative humidity, the time is 13 years.
Transfer of nanopantography-defined patterns using highly selective plasma etching
Authors: Tian Siyuan , Donnelly Vincent M. , Economou Demetre J.
Published: April 2015

Nanopantography is a method for massively parallel patterning of nanofeatures over large areas. Transfer of patterns defined by nanopantography using highly selective plasma etching of Si, with the native silicon oxide as hard mask, can improve patterning speed and etch profile. With this method, arrays of high aspect ratio (>5) ∼10 nm-diameter holes, as well as slots, were fabricated in silicon with no mask undercut. The ability to fabricate complex patterns using nanopantography, followed by highly selective plasma etching, was also demonstrated.
Is the third interferon a charm?
Authors: Best Sonja M.
Published: April 2015

IFNλ restores the integrity of the blood brain barrier, which is disrupted by West Nile virus infection, thereby reducing neuroinvasion and increasing survival in a mouse model of the disease.
Evolution in translational science: Whither the CTSAs?
Authors: FitzGerald Garret A.
Published: April 2015

CTSA-funded institutions are naturally equipped to drive research on human phenotyping and, in turn, shape the practice of precision medicine in the clinic of the future.
Supervisor or mentor: is there a difference? Implications for paediatric practice
Authors: Mellon Andrew , Murdoch-Eaton Deborah
Published: April 2015

The formal roles of educational and clinical supervisor focus on education planning and goal setting against required training elements. Assessment of performance is integral to these roles that necessarily involve some elements of developmental support to trainees. Mentoring is increasingly seen as a desirable route to support doctors in training. Definitions vary, but core expectations of mentors are that they encourage personal development and offer psychosocial support to a trainee within a longitudinal relationship. A key question is whether a supervisor is the appropriate individual to act as a mentor to an individual trainee. The supervisor's role as an assessor of performance can pose challenges and potential conflicts when providing support relating to other personal needs of trainees along their career paths. It is apparent from the literature that mentoring is a multifaceted role, with different actions required of mentors and supervisors. There is evidence that mentorship can affect specialty choice, academic output and commitment to organisations. Addressing the challenges posed by an ideal of providing mentoring to all trainees is potentially as important as ensuring supervisors of competence. The potential benefits for the profession are of enhancing the development and retention of trainees of high calibre within the paediatric discipline.
Burden of ocular and visual disorders among pupils in special schools in Nepal
Authors: Puri Sudan , Bhattarai Dipesh , Adhikari Prakash , Shrestha Jyoti Baba , Paudel Nabin
Published: April 2015

Objectives

To determine detailed oculo-visual characteristics of children with intellectual disability studying in special schools and explore the burden of visual impairment.

Design of the study

Detailed ophthalmic examination was carried out in all pupils studying at the seven special needs schools of Kathmandu valley, Nepal. Ophthalmic examination included case history, presenting distance visual acuity, cycloplegic refraction, binocular vision examination, contrast sensitivity and anterior and posterior segment evaluation.

Main outcome measures

Ocular and visual status of children.

Results

Refractive errors (40%) and strabismus (17%) were the commonest visual disorders in our study children. Ninety-five per cent of the children who had clinically significant refractive errors presented without any correction. Visual impairment was present in 25% of the children. Severe visual impairment or worse was present in 3% of the children. Other common ocular findings were conjunctivitis, blepharitis, chalazion and ectropion.

Conclusions

High prevalence of preventable visual impairment in this population requires immediate attention. It is hoped that the formulation of proper vision care guidelines at a national level may help in early detection and management of visual disorders in this special population and enhance their quality of life.
First medical contact in patients with STEMI and its impact on time to diagnosis; an explorative cross-sectional study
Authors: Thylén Ingela , Ericsson Maria , Hellström Ängerud Karin , Isaksson Rose-Marie , Sederholm Lawesson Sofia
Published: April 2015

Objective

It is unknown into what extent patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) utilise a joint service number (Swedish Healthcare Direct, SHD) as first medical contact (FMC) instead of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and how this impact time to diagnosis. We aimed to (1) describe patients’ FMC; (2) find explanatory factors influencing their FMC (ie, EMS and SHD) and (3) explore the time interval from symptom onset to diagnosis.

Setting

Multicentred study, Sweden.

Methods

Cross-sectional, enrolling patients with consecutive STEMI admitted within 24 h from admission.

Results

We included 109 women and 336 men (mean age 66±11 years). Although 83% arrived by ambulance to the hospital, just half of the patients (51%) called EMS as their FMC. Other utilised SHD (21%), contacted their primary healthcare centre (14%), or went directly to the emergency room (14%). Reasons for not contacting EMS were predominantly; (1) my transport mode was faster (40%), (2) did not consider myself sick enough (30%), and (3) it was easier to be driven or taking a taxi (25%). Predictors associated with contacting SHD as FMC were female gender (OR 1.92), higher education (OR 2.40), history of diabetes (OR 2.10), pain in throat/neck (OR 2.24) and pain intensity (OR 0.85). Predictors associated with contacting EMS as FMC were history of MI (OR 2.18), atrial fibrillation (OR 3.81), abdominal pain (OR 0.35) and believing the symptoms originating from the heart (OR 1.60). Symptom onset to diagnosis time was significantly longer when turning to the SHD instead of the EMS as FMC (1:59 vs 1:21 h, p<0.001).

Conclusions

Using other forms of contacts than EMS, significantly prolong delay times, and could adversely affect patient prognosis. Nevertheless, having the opportunity to call the SHD might also, in some instances, lower the threshold for taking contact with the healthcare system, and thus lowers the number that would otherwise have delayed even longer.
Junior doctors’ views on reporting concerns about patient safety: a qualitative study
Authors: Hooper Patricia , Kocman David , Carr Sue , Tarrant Carolyn
Published: April 2015

Background

Enabling healthcare staff to report concerns is critical for improving patient safety. Junior doctors are one of the groups least likely to engage in incident reporting. This matters both for the present and for the future, as many will eventually be in leadership positions. Little is known about junior doctors’ attitudes towards formally reporting concerns.

Aims

To explore the attitudes and barriers to junior doctors formally reporting concerns about patient safety to the organisations in which they are training.

Methods

A qualitative study comprising three focus groups with 10 junior doctors at an Acute Teaching Hospital Trust in the Midlands, UK, conducted in 2013. Focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a thematic approach, facilitated by NVivo 10.

Results

Participants were supportive of the idea of playing a role in helping healthcare organisations become more aware of risks to patient safety, but identified that existing incident reporting systems could frustrate efforts to report concerns. They described barriers to reporting, including a lack of role modelling and senior leadership, a culture within medicine that was not conducive to reporting concerns, and a lack of feedback providing evidence that formal reporting was worthwhile. They reported a tendency to rely on informal ways of dealing with concerns as an alternative to engaging with formal reporting systems.

Conclusions

If healthcare organisations are to be able to gather and learn from intelligence about risks to patient safety from junior doctors, this will require attention to the features of reporting systems, as well as the implications of hierarchies and the wider cultural context in which junior doctors work.
States of a dispersed nonwetting liquid in a disordered nanoporous medium
Authors: Borman Vladimir D. , Belogorlov Anton A. , Grekhov Alexey M. , Tronin Vladimir N.
Published: April 2015

Three different states of a dispersed nonwetting liquid (water) in the Fluka 100 C8 and Fluka 100 C18 disordered porous media, as well as transitions between these states under variation of the temperature and the degree of filling, have been revealed. It has been shown that the appearance of such states is due to the broadening of the pore size distribution function f(R), fluctuations of configurations of neighbors in the system of pores and fluctuations in the configuration of a pore and its environment consisting of filled and empty pores in the percolation cluster. These states and transitions are caused by the competition between the effective repulsion of the nonwetting liquid from the wall of the pore, which is responsible for the "extrusion" of the liquid from the pore, and the effective collective "multiparticle" attraction of the liquid cluster in the pore to clusters in the neighboring connected pores. The observed difference in the behavior of the Fluka 100 C8/water and Fluka 100 C18/water systems and the previously studied Libersorb-23 (L23)/water system indicates a significant dependence of the state of these systems on the type of disorder in them.
Study of magnetic behavior in ball-milled nanocrystalline Fe-50 at.%Al alloy as a function of milling time
Authors: Rajan S. , Shukla R. , Kumar A. , Vyas A. , Brajpuriya R.
Published: April 2015

Ball milling technique has been extensively used to prepare different metastable states with nanocrystalline microstructures from intermetallic compounds. The present study was made on the identification of the changes in magnetic and electronic properties as a result of high-energy ball milling of Fe -50 at.% Al alloy samples. The phase formation and physical properties of the alloys were determined as a function of milling time by means of Mössbauer and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The Mössbauer results show the formation of nanostructured body-centered cubic (BCC) FeAl alloy only after 5 h of mechanical milling and the same is also confirmed by Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies. Mössbauer studies further confirm that there is magnetic behavior retention in the FeAl alloy samples even after 5 h of milling but magnetization decreases as the milling time increases. The reason for the same is due to the shocks and fracturing of the Al atoms embedded in the sites of Fe and as a result of which Fe – Fe nearest neighbors decreases. Secondly, with the increase in milling time, the particle size and the number density of equiatomic BCC Fe 50 Al 50 grains decrease while the volume of grain boundary containing a solid solution of BCC FeAl and concentration of Al in a solid solution of BCC FeAl at the grain boundary increases as a result of which magnetization decreases. The shift in the binding energy of Fe 2p and Al 2p core level towards higher binding energy also supports the alloy formation after milling.
Temperature effect on strong coupling polaron in a parabolic quantum wire in finite well
Authors: Wang X. Q.
Published: April 2015

The ground state energy E0, first excited state energy E1, excitation energy ΔE and oscillating period t of the polaron are calculated by using the linear combination operator and the unitary transformation methods. The variation of the above quantities with the temperature T and the potential well width L, we found that E0, E1and ΔE all increase with increasing T and decrease with increasing L, but t changes with T and L in the opposite.
Experimental Study and Characterization of SEMG Signals for Upper Limbs
Authors: Veer Karan
Published: April 2015

Surface electromyogram (SEMG) is used to measure the activity of superficial muscles and is an essential tool to carry out biomechanical assessments required for prosthetic design. Many previous attempts suggest that, electromyogram (EMG) signals have random nature. Here, dual channel evaluation of EMG signals acquired from the amputed subjects using computational techniques for classification of arm motion are presented. After recording data from four predefined upper arm motions, interpretation of signal was done for six statistical features. The signals are classified by the neural network (NN) and then interpretation was done using statistical technique to extract the effectiveness of recorded signals. The network performances are analyzed by considering the number of input features, hidden layer, learning algorithm and mean square error. From the results, it is observed that there exists calculative difference in amplitude gain across different motions and have great potential to classify arm motions. The outcome indicates that NN algorithm performs significantly better than other algorithms with classification accuracy (CA) of 96.40%. Analysis of variance technique presents the results to validate the effectiveness of recorded data to discriminate SEMG signals. Results are of significant thrust in identifying the operations that can be implemented for classifying upper limb movements suitable for prostheses design.
Enriching Textual Search Results at Query Time Using Entity Mining, Linked Data and Link Analysis
Authors: Fafalios Pavlos , Papadakos Panagiotis , Tzitzikas Yannis
Published: April 2015

The integration of the classical Web (of documents) with the emerging Web of Data is a challenging vision. In this paper we focus on an integration approach during searching which aims at enriching the responses of non-semantic search systems with semantic information, i.e. Linked Open Data (LOD), and exploiting the outcome for offering advanced exploratory search services which provide an overview of the search space and allow the users to explore the related LOD. We use named entities identified in the search results for automatically connecting search hits with LOD and we consider a scenario where this entity-based integration is performed at query time with no human effort and no a-priori indexing which is beneficial in terms of configurability and freshness. However, the number of identified entities can be high and the same is true for the semantic information about these entities that can be fetched from the available LOD. To this end, in this paper we propose a Link Analysis-based method which is used for ranking (and thus selecting to show) the more important semantic information related to the search results. We report the results of a survey regarding the marine domain with promising results, and comparative results that illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed (PageRank-based) ranking scheme. Finally, we report experimental results regarding efficiency showing that the proposed functionality can be offered even at query time.
A novel low-volume two-chamber microfabricated platform for evaluating drug metabolism and toxicity
Authors: Bale Shyam Sundhar , Sridharan Gautham Vivek , Golberg Inna , Prodanov Ljupcho , McCarty William J. , Usta Osman Berk , Jindal Rohit , Yarmush Martin L.
Published: April 2015

To evaluate drug and metabolite efficacy on a target organ, it is essential to include metabolic function of hepatocytes, and to evaluate metabolite influence on both hepatocytes and the target of interest. Herein, we have developed a two-chamber microfabricated device separated by a membrane enabling communication between hepatocytes and cancer cells. The microscale environment created enables cell co-culture in a low media-to-cell ratio leading to higher metabolite formation and rapid accumulation, which is lost in traditional plate cultures or other interconnected models due to higher culture volumes. We demonstrate the efficacy of this system by metabolism of tegafur by hepatocytes resulting in cancer cell toxicity.
On Constrained Implementation of Lattice-Based Cryptographic Primitives and Schemes on Smart Cards
Authors: Boorghany Ahmad , Sarmadi Siavash Bayat , Jalili Rasool
Published: April 2015

Most lattice-based cryptographic schemes with a security proof suffer from large key sizes and heavy computations. This is also true for the simpler case of authentication protocols that are used on smart cards as a very-constrained computing environment. Recent progress on ideal lattices has significantly improved the efficiency and made it possible to implement practical lattice-based cryptography on constrained devices. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous attempts have been made to implement lattice-based schemes on smart cards. In this article, we provide the results of our implementation of several state-of-the-art lattice-based authentication protocols on smart cards and a microcontroller widely used in smart cards. Our results show that only a few of the proposed lattice-based authentication protocols can be implemented using limited resources of such constrained devices; however, cutting-edge ones are suitably efficient to be used practically on smart cards. Moreover, we have implemented fast Fourier transform (FFT) and discrete Gaussian sampling with different typical parameter sets, as well as versatile lattice-based public-key encryptions. These results have noticeable points that help to design or optimize lattice-based schemes for constrained devices.
Finite-State-Machine Overlay Architectures for Fast FPGA Compilation and Application Portability
Authors: Cooke Patrick , Hao Lu , Stitt Greg
Published: April 2015

Despite significant advantages, wider usage of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has been limited by lengthy compilation and a lack of portability. Virtual-architecture overlays have partially addressed these problems, but previous work focuses mainly on heavily pipelined applications with minimal control requirements. We expand previous work by enabling more flexible control via overlay architectures for finite-state machines. Although not appropriate for control-intensive circuits, the presented architectures reduced compilation times of control changes in a convolution case study from 7 hours to less than 1 second, with no performance overhead and an area overhead of 0.2%.
Instruction-Cache Locking for Improving Embedded Systems Performance
Authors: Anand Kapil , Barua Rajeev
Published: April 2015

Cache memories in embedded systems play an important role in reducing the execution time of applications. Various kinds of extensions have been added to cache hardware to enable software involvement in replacement decisions, improving the runtime over a purely hardware-managed cache. Novel embedded systems, such as Intel’s XScale and ARM Cortex processors, facilitate locking one or more lines in cache; this feature is called
cache locking
. We present a method in for instruction-cache locking that is able to reduce the average-case runtime of a program. We demonstrate that the optimal solution for instruction cache locking can be obtained in polynomial time. However, a fundamental lack of correlation between cache hardware and software program points renders such optimal solutions impractical.

Instead, we propose two practical heuristics-based approaches to achieve cache locking. First, we present a static mechanism for locking the cache, in which the locked contents of the cache are kept fixed over the execution of the program. Next, we present a dynamic mechanism that accounts for changing program requirements at runtime. We devise a cost--benefit model to discover the memory addresses that should be locked in the cache. We implement our scheme inside a binary rewriter, widening the applicability of our scheme to binaries compiled using any compiler.

Results obtained on a suite of MiBench benchmarks show that our static mechanism results in 20% improvement in the instruction-cache miss rate on average and up to 18% improvement in the execution time on average for applications having instruction accesses as a bottleneck, compared to no cache locking. The dynamic mechanism improves the cache miss rate by 35% on average and execution time by 32% on instruction-cache-constrained applications.
Implementing QC-MDPC McEliece Encryption
Authors: Maurich Ingo Von , Oder Tobias , Güneysu Tim
Published: April 2015

With respect to performance, asymmetric code-based cryptography based on binary Goppa codes has been reported as a highly interesting alternative to RSA and ECC. A major drawback is still the large keys in the range between 50 and 100KB that prevented real-world applications of code-based cryptosystems so far. A recent proposal by Misoczki et al. showed that quasi-cyclic moderate-density parity-check (QC-MDPC) codes can be used in McEliece encryption, reducing the public key to just 0.6KB to achieve an 80-bit security level. In this article, we provide optimized decoding techniques for MDPC codes and survey several efficient implementations of the QC-MDPC McEliece cryptosystem. This includes high-speed and lightweight architectures for reconfigurable hardware, efficient coding styles for ARM’s Cortex-M4 microcontroller, and novel high-performance software implementations that fully employ vector instructions. Finally, we conclude that McEliece encryption in combination with QC-MDPC codes not only enables high-performance implementations but also allows for lightweight designs on a wide range of different platforms.
Guaranteed Computational Resprinting via Model-Predictive Control
Authors: Tilli Andrea , Bartolini Andrea , Cacciari Matteo , Benini Luca
Published: April 2015

Today and future many-core systems are facing the
utilization wall
and
dark silicon
problems, for which not all the processing engines can be powered at the same time as this will lead to a power consumption higher than the Total Design Power (TDP) budget. Recently, computational sprinting approaches addressed the problem by exploiting the intrinsic thermal capacitance of the chip and the properties of common applications, which require intense, but temporary, use of resources. The thermal capacitance, possibly augmented with phase change materials, enables the temporary activation of all the resources simultaneously, although they largely exceed the steady-state thermal design power. In this article, we present an innovative and low-overhead hierarchical model-predictive controller for managing thermally safe sprinting with predictable resprinting rate, which ensures the correct execution of mixed-criticality tasks. Well-targeted simulations, also based on real workload benchmarks, show the applicability and the effectiveness of our solution.
Single-Call Mechanisms
Authors: Wilkens Christopher A. , Sivan Balasubramanian
Published: April 2015

Truthfulness is fragile and demanding. It is oftentimes harder to guarantee truthfulness when solving a problem than it is to solve the problem itself. Even worse, truthfulness can be utterly destroyed by small uncertainties in a mechanism’s outcome. One obstacle is that truthful payments depend on outcomes other than the one realized, such as the lengths of non-shortest-paths in a shortest-path auction. Single-call mechanisms are a powerful tool that circumvents this obstacle: they implicitly charge truthful payments, guaranteeing truthfulness in expectation using only the outcome realized by the mechanism. The cost of such truthfulness is a trade-off between the expected quality of the outcome and the risk of large payments.

We study two of the most general domains for truthful mechanisms and largely settle when and to what extent single-call mechanisms are possible. The first single-call construction was discovered by Babaioff et al. [2010] in single-parameter domains. They give a transformation that turns any monotone, single-parameter allocation rule into a truthful-in-expectation single-call mechanism. Our first result is a natural complement to Babaioff et al. [2010]: we give a new transformation that produces a single-call VCG mechanism from any allocation rule for which VCG payments are truthful. Second, in both the single-parameter and VCG settings, we precisely characterize the possible transformations, showing that a wide variety of transformations are possible but that all take a very simple form. Finally, we study the inherent trade-off between the expected quality of the outcome and the risk of large payments. We show that our construction and that of Babaioff et al. [2010] simultaneously optimize a variety of metrics in their respective domains.

Our study is motivated by settings where uncertainty in a mechanism renders other known techniques untruthful, and we offer a variety of examples where such uncertainty can arise. In particular, we analyze pay-per-click advertising auctions, where the truthfulness of the standard VCG-based auction is easily broken when the auctioneer’s estimated click-through-rates are imprecise.
Cardiovascular control in women with fibromyalgia syndrome: do causal methods provide nonredundant information compared with more traditional approaches?
Authors: Zamunér Antonio Roberto , Porta Alberto , Andrade Carolina Pieroni , Marchi Andrea , Forti Meire , Furlan Raffaello , Barbic Franca , Catai Aparecida Maria , Silva Ester
Published: April 2015

The cardiovascular autonomic control and the baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) have been widely studied in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) patients through the computation of linear indices of spontaneous heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) variabilities. However, there are many methodological difficulties regarding the quantification of BRS by the traditional indices especially in relation to the issue of causality. This difficulty has been directly tackled via a model-based approach describing the closed-loop HP-SAP interactions and the exogenous influences of respiration. Therefore, we aimed to assess whether the BRS assessed by the model-based causal closed-loop approach during supine and active standing in patients with FMS could provide complementary information to those obtained by traditional indices based on time and frequency domains. The findings of this study revealed that, at difference with the traditional methods to quantify BRS, the causality analysis applied to the HP, SAP, and respiratory series, through the model-based closed-loop approach, detected lower BRS in supine position, as well as a blunted response to the orthostatic stimulus in patients with FMS compared with healthy control subjects. Also, the strength of the causal relation from SAP to HP (i.e., along the cardiac baroreflex) increased during the active standing only in the control subjects. The model-based closed-loop approach proved to provide important complementary information about the cardiovascular autonomic control in patients with FMS.
Urinary vimentin mRNA as a potential novel biomarker of renal fibrosis
Authors: Cao Yu-Han , Lv Lin-Li , Zhang Xu , Hu Hong , Ding Li-Hong , Yin Di , Zhang Ying-Zi , Ni Hai-Feng , Chen Ping-Sheng , Liu Bi-Cheng
Published: April 2015

Renal fibrosis is a histological outcome of chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression. However, the noninvasive detection of renal fibrosis remains a challenge. Here we constructed a renal fibrosis target mRNA array and used it to detect urinary mRNAs of CKD patients for investigating potential noninvasive biomarkers of renal fibrosis. We collected urine samples from 39 biopsy-proven CKD patients and 11 healthy controls in the training set. Urinary mRNA profiles of 86 genes showed a total of 21 mRNAs that were differentially expressed between CKD patients and controls ( P < 0.05), and vimentin (VIM) mRNA demonstrated the highest change fold of 9.99 in CKD vs. controls with robust correlations with decline of renal function and severity of tubulointerstitial fibrosis. Additionally, VIM mRNA further differentiated patients with moderate-to-severe fibrosis from none-to-mild fibrosis group with an area of the curve of 0.796 ( P = 0.008). A verification of VIM mRNA in the urine of an additional 96 patients and 20 controls showed that VIM is not only well correlated with renal function parameters but also correlated with proteinuria and renal fibrosis scores. Multiple logistic regression and receiver-operating characteristics analysis further showed that urine VIM mRNA is the best predictive parameter of renal fibrosis compared with estimated glomerular filtration rate, serum creatinine, and blood urea nitrogen. In addition, there is no improved predictive performance for the composite biomarkers to predict renal fibrosis severity compared with a single gene of VIM. Overall, urinary VIM mRNA might serve as a novel independent noninvasive biomarker to monitor the progression of kidney fibrosis.
Involvement of histaminergic inputs in the jaw-closing reflex arc
Authors: Gemba Chikako , Nakayama Kiyomi , Nakamura Shiro , Mochizuki Ayako , Inoue Mitsuko , Inoue Tomio
Published: April 2015

Histamine receptors are densely expressed in the mesencephalic trigeminal nucleus (MesV) and trigeminal motor nucleus. However, little is known about the functional roles of neuronal histamine in controlling oral-motor activity. Thus, using the whole-cell recording technique in brainstem slice preparations from Wistar rats aged between postnatal days 7 and 13, we investigated the effects of histamine on the MesV neurons innervating the masseter muscle spindles and masseter motoneurons (MMNs) that form a reflex arc for the jaw-closing reflex. Bath application of histamine (100 μM) induced membrane depolarization in both MesV neurons and MMNs in the presence of tetrodotoxin, whereas histamine decreased and increased the input resistance in MesV neurons and MMNs, respectively. The effects of histamine on MesV neurons and MMNs were mimicked by an H1 receptor agonist, 2-pyridylethylamine (100 μM). The effects of an H2 receptor agonist, dimaprit (100 μM), on MesV neurons were inconsistent, whereas MMNs were depolarized without changes in the input resistance. An H3 receptor agonist, immethridine (100 μM), also depolarized both MesV neurons and MMNs without changing the input resistance. Histamine reduced the peak amplitude of postsynaptic currents (PSCs) in MMNs evoked by stimulation of the trigeminal motor nerve (5N), which was mimicked by 2-pyridylethylamine but not by dimaprit or immethridine. Moreover, 2-pyridylethylamine increased the failure rate of PSCs evoked by minimal stimulation and the paired-pulse ratio. These results suggest that histaminergic inputs to MesV neurons through H1 receptors are involved in the suppression of the jaw-closing reflex although histamine depolarizes MesV neurons and/or MMNs.
Novel Water Treatment Processes Based on Hybrid Membrane-Ozonation Systems: A Novel Ceramic Membrane Contactor for Bubbleless Ozonation of Emerging Micropollutants
Authors: Stylianou Stylianos K. , Szymanska Katarzyna , Katsoyiannis Ioannis A. , Zouboulis Anastasios I.
Published: April 2015

The aim of this study is the presentation of novel water treatment systems based on ozonation combined with ceramic membranes for the treatment of refractory organic compounds found in natural water sources such as groundwater. This includes, firstly, a short review of possible membrane based hybrid processes for water treatment from various sources. Several practical and theoretical aspects for the application of hybrid membrane-ozonation systems are discussed, along with theoretical background regarding the transformation of target organic pollutants by ozone. Next, a novel ceramic membrane contactor, bringing into contact the gas phase (ozone) and water phase without the creation of bubbles (bubbleless ozonation), is presented. Experimental data showing the membrane contactor efficiency for oxidation of atrazine, endosulfan, and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) are shown and discussed. Almost complete endosulfan degradation was achieved with the use of the ceramic contactor, whereas atrazine degradation higher than 50% could not be achieved even after 60 min of reaction time. Single ozonation of water containing MTBE could not result in a significant MTBE degradation. MTBE mineralization by O3/H2O2combination increased at higher pH values and O3/H2O2molar ratio of 0.2 reaching a maximum of around 65%.
Correlation between the Pharyngeal Airway Space and Head Posture after Surgery for Mandibular Prognathism
Authors: Chen Chun-Ming , Lai Steven , Chen Ker-Kong , Lee Huey-Er
Published: April 2015

Purpose. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between the pharyngeal airway space and head posture after mandibular setback surgery for mandibular prognathism.Materials and Methods. Serial lateral cephalograms of 37 patients with mandibular prognathism who underwent intraoral vertical ramus osteotomy (IVRO) were evaluated before (T1) and immediately (T2), between 6 weeks and 3 months (T3), and more than 1 year (T4) after surgery. Pairedt-tests and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to evaluate the postoperative changes in all cephalometric parameters, including the mandible, hyoid, head posture (craniocervical angle), and pharyngeal airway space.Results. The mandible and hyoid were set back by 12.8 mm and 4.9 mm, respectively, at T2. Furthermore, the hyoid showed significant inferior movement of 10.7 mm, with an 8 mm increase in the tongue depth. The upper oropharyngeal airway (UOP) shortened by 4.1 mm, the lower oropharyngeal airway (LOP) by 1.7 mm, and the laryngopharyngeal airway by 2 mm. The craniocervical angle showed a significant increase of 2.8°. UOP and LOP showed a significant correlation with the craniocervical angle at T2 and T4.Conclusions. Our findings conclude that the oropharyngeal airway space is significantly decreased and correlated with a change in the head posture after mandibular setback surgery.
A Meshless Method Based on the Fundamental Solution and Radial Basis Function for Solving an Inverse Heat Conduction Problem
Authors: Arghand Muhammad , Amirfakhrian Majid
Published: April 2015

We propose a new meshless method to solve a backward inverse heat conduction problem. The numerical scheme, based on the fundamental solution of the heat equation and radial basis functions (RBFs), is used to obtain a numerical solution. Since the coefficients matrix is ill-conditioned, the Tikhonov regularization (TR) method is employed to solve the resulted system of linear equations. Also, the generalized cross-validation (GCV) criterion is applied to choose a regularization parameter. A test problem demonstrates the stability, accuracy, and efficiency of the proposed method.
Malignant Perivascular Epithelioid Cardiac Sarcomas: A Case Report and a Review of the Literature
Authors: Baldeo Candice , Hritani Abdul wahab , Ali Robert , Chaudhry Sana , Khawaja Fawad N.
Published: April 2015

Cardiac tumors, either benign or malignant, are difficult to diagnose due to their rarity, variety, and nonspecific presentation. Since primary cardiac sarcoma remains an unusual diagnosis, the literature on its presentation, diagnosis, and optimal management remains scarce. To our knowledge the following case of cardiac perivascular epithelioid cell tumor is the fourth reported case found in the literature. Although complete surgical resection remains the gold standard for cardiac sarcomas, our case demonstrates that not all of them can be completely resected.
A Software Tool for Assisting Experimentation in Dynamic Environments
Authors: Novoa-Hernández Pavel , Cruz Corona Carlos , Pelta David A.
Published: April 2015

In real world, many optimization problems are dynamic, which means that their model elements vary with time. These problems have received increasing attention over time, especially from the viewpoint of metaheuristics methods. In this context, experimentation is a crucial task because of the stochastic nature of both algorithms and problems. Currently, there are several technologies whose methods, problems, and performance measures can be implemented. However, in most of them, certain features that make the experimentation process easy are not present. Examples of such features are the statistical analysis of the results and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows an easy management of the experimentation process. Bearing in mind these limitations, in the present work, we present DynOptLab, a software tool for experimental analysis in dynamic environments. DynOptLab has two main components: (1) an object-oriented framework to facilitate the implementation of new proposals and (2) a graphical user interface for the experiment management and the statistical analysis of the results. With the aim of verifying the benefits of DynOptLab’s main features, a typical case study on experimentation in dynamic environments was carried out.
Differential Mucin Expression by Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Human Metapneumovirus Infection in Human Epithelial Cells
Authors: Baños-Lara Ma. Del Rocío , Piao Boyang , Guerrero-Plata Antonieta
Published: April 2015

Mucins (MUC) constitute an important component of the inflammatory and innate immune response. However, the expression of these molecules by respiratory viral infections is still largely unknown. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and human metapneumovirus (hMPV) are two close‐related paramyxoviruses that can cause severe low respiratory tract disease in infants and young children worldwide. Currently, there is not vaccine available for neither virus. In this work, we explored the differential expression of MUC by RSV and hMPV in human epithelial cells. Our data indicate that the MUC expression by RSV and hMPV differs significantly, as we observed a stronger induction of MUC8, MUC15, MUC20, MUC21, and MUC22 by RSV infection while the expression of MUC1, MUC2, and MUC5B was dominated by the infection with hMPV. These results may contribute to the different immune response induced by these two respiratory viruses.
Sustained Interleukin‐1β Exposure Modulates Multiple Steps in Glucocorticoid Receptor Signaling, Promoting Split‐Resistance to the Transactivation of Prominent Anti‐Inflammatory Genes by Glucocorticoids
Authors: Escoll Pedro , Ranz Ismael , Muñoz-Antón Norman , van-den-Rym Ana , Alvarez-Mon Melchor , Martínez-Alonso Carlos , Sanz Eva , de-la-Hera Antonio
Published: April 2015

Clinical treatment with glucocorticoids (GC) can be complicated by cytokine‐induced glucocorticoid low‐responsiveness (GC‐resistance, GCR), a condition associated with a homogeneous reduction in the expression of GC‐receptor‐ (GR‐) driven anti‐inflammatory genes. However, GR level and phosphorylation changes modify the expression of individual GR‐responsive genes differently. As sustained IL‐1β exposure is key in the pathogenesis of several major diseases with prevalent GCR, we examined GR signaling and the mRNA expression of six GR‐driven genes in cells cultured in IL‐1β and afterwards challenged with GC. After a GC challenge, sustained IL‐1β exposure reduced the cytoplasmic GR level, GRSer203 and GRSer211 phosphorylation, and GR nuclear translocation and led to selective GCR in the expression of the studied genes. Compared to GC alone, in a broad range of GC doses plus sustained IL‐1β, FKBP51 mRNA expression was reduced by 1/3, TTP by 2/3, and IRF8 was completely knocked down. In contrast, high GC doses did not change the expression of GILZ and DUSP1, while IGFBP1 was increased by 5‐fold. These effects were cytokine‐selective, IL‐1β dose‐ and IL‐1R1‐dependent. The integrated gain and loss of gene functions in the “split GCR” model may provide target cells with a survival advantage by conferring resistance to apoptosis, chemotherapy, and GC.
Automatic Extraction of Blood Vessels in the Retinal Vascular Tree Using Multiscale Medialness
Authors: Ben Abdallah Mariem , Malek Jihene , Azar Ahmad Taher , Montesinos Philippe , Belmabrouk Hafedh , Esclarín Monreal Julio , Krissian Karl
Published: April 2015

We propose an algorithm for vessel extraction in retinal images. The first step consists of applying anisotropic diffusion filtering in the initial vessel network in order to restore disconnected vessel lines and eliminate noisy lines. In the second step, a multiscale line-tracking procedure allows detecting all vessels having similar dimensions at a chosen scale. Computing the individual image maps requires different steps. First, a number of points are preselected using the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix. These points are expected to be near to a vessel axis. Then, for each preselected point, the response map is computed from gradient information of the image at the current scale. Finally, the multiscale image map is derived after combining the individual image maps at different scales (sizes). Two publicly available datasets have been used to test the performance of the suggested method. The main dataset is the STARE project’s dataset and the second one is the DRIVE dataset. The experimental results, applied on the STARE dataset, show a maximum accuracy average of around 94.02%. Also, when performed on the DRIVE database, the maximum accuracy average reaches 91.55%.