bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Optical and structural characterization of quadruplet and quintuplet molybdenum-containing phosphate glasses
Authors: Soheyli Ehsan , Hekmatshoar Mohammad Hossein , Parcham Farshad
Published: June 2016

In this work, vitreous samples were prepared in two series by normal melt-quenching technique and under controlled conditions. The amorphous nature of specimens was confirmed using XRD spectra. To perform FT-IR and UV-vis studies, the thin blown films were also prepared. Different ratios of transition metals are assumed to cause depolymerization of the phosphate glass network. Infrared spectra showed absorption bands related to characteristic bonds of phosphate. The P=O bond at about 1200 cm[Formula: see text] was observed, as a direct consequence of meta-phosphate bond group. The almost unchanged peak position and intensity of P=O bond (in the presence of two transition metal ions) indicated the glass modifying nature of transition metal oxides (TMOs). The spectra of two series are almost identical, except for 890–1100 cm[Formula: see text] range, which can be attributed to presence of second TMO in the first glass series. UV-vis spectra also showed that the absorption edge, optical band gap and Urbach energy of the prepared samples are highly dependent on the kind and percentage of their reagents. The most striking result of UV-vis measurements was increasing and decreasing of optical band gap in the first and the second series with MoO3 content, respectively. The shape of the absorption edge (a plot of [Formula: see text] versus [Formula: see text]) demonstrated the indirect nature of the band gap in the prepared specimens.
Dynamical analysis of memristor-based fractional-order neural networks with time delay
Authors: Cui Xueli , Yu Yongguang , Wang Hu , Hu Wei
Published: June 2016

In this paper, the memristor-based fractional-order neural networks with time delay are analyzed. Based on the theories of set-value maps, differential inclusions and Filippov’s solution, some sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of this neural network model are obtained when the external inputs are constants. Besides, uniform stability condition is derived when the external inputs are time-varying, and its attractive interval is estimated. Finally, numerical examples are given to verify our results.
Fast Circle Detection Using Spatial Decomposition of Hough Transform
Authors: Zhou Bing , He Yang
Published: June 2016

Circles are important patterns in many automatic image inspection applications. The Hough Transform (HT) is a popular method for extracting shapes from original images. It was first introduced for the recognition of straight lines, and later extended to circles. The drawbacks of standard Hough Transform (SHT) for circle detection are the large computational and storage requirements. In this paper, we propose a modified HT called Vector Quantization of Hough Transform (VQHT) to detect circles more efficiently. The basic idea is to first decompose the edge image into many subimages by using Vector Quantization (VQ) algorithm based on their natural spatial relationships. The edge points resided in each subimage are considered as one circle candidate group. Then the VQHT algorithm is applied for fast circle detection. A new paradigm to store potential curve parameters is also proposed, which can exponentially reduce the storage space for HT algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can quickly and accurately detect multiple circles from the noisy background.
A Novel Nonlinear and Adaptive Control of Grid Connected Inverters
Authors: Karabacak Murat
Published: June 2016

In this study, a new nonlinear and adaptive state feedback controller is proposed for the control of grid connected inverters (GCIs). All the other parameters apart from direct current (DC) bus capacitor are considered uncertain in the design of proposed controller, without disadvantages of singularity and over-parametrization. Three-phase source currents, DC bus voltage and load current are supposed to be available for feedback in the closed loop control system. In this respect, the whole control loop, consisting of DC bus voltage and [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] axis current loops, is closed. It is important to highlight that closed loop DC voltage control cannot be achieved by most of nonlinear controllers proposed in literature. In the sense of Lyapunov stability theory, overall control system has the global asymptotic stability. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed controller guarantees to asymptotically drive tracking errors to zero despite all parameter and external disturbance uncertainties. Results also verify that the proposed controller shows high performance and feasibility.
Analysis of Process Factors Affecting Software Quality Based on Design Review Record and Product Metrics
Authors: Sato Takashi , Yamada Shigeru
Published: June 2016

It is important to reliably conduct reviews and tests to assure the quality of software. In particular, reviewing design specifications raises the degree of completion of documents at each process step and leads to securing the quality of the final product. In addition, if review is done sufficiently, it would lead to productivity improvement by reducing backtrack work done to correct defects detected during development. For our quality improvement policy, the standard value of review efforts, which is one of our process metrics, has been implemented, helping the review process to be carried out reliably. However, this does not mean that the more hours spent on review, the higher the quality becomes. Therefore, we considered what factors other than review efforts assure review quality. We also considered ways to measure the product metrics of a review, obtained from the information obtained from the text of a review record, that have an influence on design quality. In a study on past reviews, there were few cases of quality engineering approaches done through human factor analysis and process evaluation and improvement approaches, but there seemed to be few cases of methods using product metrics with review records. In this paper, we analyzed the factors that influence design quality from the metrics obtained from the information of a review record.
Hybrid Software Redundancy Approach for Building Reliable Communication in Multi-BUS Heterogeneous Systems
Authors: Arar Chafik , Khireddine Mohamed Salah
Published: June 2016

The paper proposes a new reliable fault-tolerant scheduling algorithm for real-time embedded systems. The proposed algorithm is based on static scheduling that allows to include the dependencies and the execution cost of tasks and data dependencies in its scheduling decisions. Our scheduling algorithm is dedicated to multi-bus heterogeneous architectures with multiple processors linked by several shared buses. This scheduling algorithm is considering only one bus fault caused by hardware faults and compensated by software redundancy solutions. The proposed algorithm is based on both active and passive backup copies to minimize the scheduling length of data on buses. In the experiments, the proposed methods are evaluated in terms of data scheduling length for a set of DSP benchmarks. The experimental results show the effectiveness of our technique.
A Weighted Saddlepoint Approximation Method for System Reliability Analysis
Authors: Liu Huahan , Jiang Wei
Published: June 2016

The relationship between the reliability probabilities of the component and the system is hard to get. If this relationship can be obtained easily, the reliability of the system can be calculated by using the reliability structures of the components. The common method to express this relationship is using the linear correlation index, which only shows the linear correlation between the components failure rather than the relationship between high nonlinear functions. In order to describe this relationship accurately and calculate the system reliability using the component reliability structures, a Uniform Design (UD)-Saddlepoint Approximation (SA)-based system reliability analysis method is proposed. The system reliability analysis method is decomposed to three simple steps: (1) calculating the weight coefficient which represents the contribution rate of each component to system reliability, (2) approximating Cumulant Generation Function (CGF) of each component, (3) calculating CGF of the system and approximating the system reliability with SA method. The weight coefficient of each component is derived from UD method, and a variable interval selection method is developed to decrease the required number of samples and increase the accuracy of the weight coefficients. First-Order Saddlepoint Approximation (FOSA) method or Mean-Value First-Order Saddlepoint Approximation (MVFOSA) method is used to analyze the CGF of a component performance function. Then the CGF of the system can be obtained by the weighted addition law by combining the CGFs of components performance functions with the weight coefficients. Finally, the system reliability can be approximated by SA method. Four examples are employed to demonstrate that the new method outperforms other methods for system reliability analysis in terms of efficiency and accuracy.
Determination of Hazard Rate Shape for Discrete Lives
Authors: Unnikrishnan Nair N. , Sankaran P. G. , Ramesh Nidhi P.
Published: June 2016

There have been several works aimed at the determination of the shape of the hazard rate when lifetime is treated as continuous. In the present work, we establish some theorems, that enable the identification of the nature of discrete hazard rates. Further, some applications of the results to construct new discrete bathtub-shaped distributions are also proposed.
Reasoning About Policies in Security-Aware Service Discovery Using Answer Set Programming
Authors: Asuncion Vernon , khan Khaled M. , Erradi Abdelkarim , Alhazbi Saleh
Published: June 2016

In order to enable a secure interaction between dynamically discovered software services and the client’s application in a cooperative information system such as service oriented system, one of the pre-requisites is the reconciliation of service-specific security policies of all stakeholders. Existing service discovery research does not address the issue of enormous search space in finding security-aware services based on preferred security policy alternatives of the client of software services. In this paper, we propose an answer set programming (ASP) approach, drawn from the field of artificial intelligence (AI), to explore a viable solution of finding security-aware services for the client. We argue that the ASP approach can significantly reduce the search space and achieve great performance gains. We use ASP to: (i) specify security policies including expressing service-specific security preference weighting and importance scoring in quantifiable terms; and (ii) reason about the compliance between the security policies of the client and the software service.
Symmetric pairs and pseudosymmetries in Hom-Yetter–Drinfeld categories
Authors: Wang Shengxiang , Guo Shuangjian
Published: June 2016

In this paper, we study symmetric pairs and pseudosymmetries in the Hom-Yetter–Drinfeld category [Formula: see text] over a Hom-Hopf algebra [Formula: see text]. We first show that the category [Formula: see text] over a (co)triangular Hom-Hopf algebra [Formula: see text] contains a rich symmetric subcategory. Also we prove that the (co)commutativity and trivial property of [Formula: see text] are determined by some symmetric pairs of objects in [Formula: see text]. Moreover, we find a sufficient and necessary condition for [Formula: see text] to be pseudosymmetric.
Institutions, Dominant Actors, and Financial Markets: The Case of Venture Capital for Biotechnology in Switzerland
Authors: Hasse Raimund , Passarge Eva
Published: June 2016

Since the 1990s, the new economic sociology has directed attention toward markets and, in particular, financial markets. Thus far, neo-institutional theory has not been able to make substantial contribution to this research front. We identify reasons for this shortcoming and aim to expand the scope of institutional analysis by focusing upon the constitution and governance of financial markets. Referring to the case of venture capital markets for biotechnology in Switzerland, it will be shown that the formation of the market has been strongly linked to the big Swiss pharmaceutical companies. Data are presented which indicate that the emerging venture capital market for biotechnology in Switzerland resembles contextual features such as collective arrangements and risk-averse investment strategies. The case illustrates that both the set-up of the market and its characteristic features are only loosely coupled to an abstract worldwide financial market, and, instead, are deeply interwoven with the national and sectoral context.
CAN THE POOR BE TRAINED TO BE ENTREPRENEURS? THE CASE OF THE ACADEMY FOR CREATING ENTERPRISE IN MEXICO
Authors: DYER W GIBB , WEST BARRY , PEACOCK IAN , YAMADA SPENCER , DYER JESSIE
Published: June 2016

Can training improve the entrepreneurial outcomes of those in poverty? Typical training modalities to teach entrepreneurship to the poor are generally one of three: 1) financial literacy training, 2) values training and 3) “rules of thumb” training. In this study we examine the Academy for Creating Enterprise’s (ACE) entrepreneurship training program in Mexico, which uses a variation of all three types of training. We compared those who received ACE training: residential, night-class and regional, with a control group to see if the training would improve ACE participants’ personal income, business employment, gross revenue and relative poverty status. Our study shows that, when compared to the control group, ACE training had a marginal positive impact on income, employment and revenues, and a substantial one on mobility from poverty. However, when making comparisons within the different types of training, the type of training program participants attended had little impact on these same outcomes. Thus, practitioners and researchers interested in training the poor to engage in entrepreneurial activities might explore low-cost, high volume options because there seem to be positive results with these programs when compared to more intensive programs that require more labor and higher costs.
The Politics of Formulation of Environmental Impact Assessment Regulation in India : A Case Study
Authors: Turaga Rama Mohana R.
Published: June 2016

While the extant literature on environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulation in India largely focuses on evaluating implementation, this paper studies the political processes that shape the formulation of EIA regulation. Specifically, the aim of this study is to understand the political actors that participate in the formulation process and their influence on the process. To address this research question, this paper conducts a content analysis of the publicly available documents (e.g. regulatory documents, published news reports and reports of expert committees) related to the process of amending the EIA regulation in 2009. The results show that while the overall balance of power is in favour of the economic growth lobby, the environmental groups also appear to exert some influence at the formulation stage. Extrapolating from the findings, the paper then develops a general model of the formulation process of EIA regulation in India, which shows the influence of various actors at various stages of the process.
Complex dynamic behaviors of a discrete predator–prey model with stage structure and harvesting
Authors: Chen Boshan , Chen Jiejie
Published: June 2016

First, a discrete stage-structured and harvested predator–prey model is established, which is based on a predator–prey model with Type III functional response. Then theoretical methods are used to investigate existence of equilibria and their local properties. Third, it is shown that the system undergoes flip bifurcation and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation in the interior of [Formula: see text], by using the normal form of discrete systems, the center manifold theorem and the bifurcation theory, as varying the model parameters in some range. In particular, the direction and the stability of the flip bifurcation and the Neimark–Sacker bifurcation are showed. Finally, numerical simulations are presented not only to illustrate our results with the theoretical analysis, but also to exhibit the complex dynamical behaviors, such as cascades of period-doubling bifurcation and chaotic sets. These results reveal far richer dynamics of the discrete model compared with the continuous model. The Lyapunov exponents are numerically computed to confirm further the complexity of the dynamical behaviors. In addition, we show also the stabilizing effect of the harvesting by using numerical simulations.
The stability of the positive solution for a fractional SIR model
Authors: Guo Yingjia
Published: June 2016

In order to deal with non-differentiable functions, a modification of the Riemann–Liouville definition is recently proposed which appears to provide a framework for a fractional calculus which is quite parallel with classical calculus. Based on these new results, we study on the fractional SIR model in this paper. First, we give the general solution of the fractional differential equation. And then a unique global positive solution of the SIR model is obtained. Furthermore, we get the Lyapunov stability theory. By using this stability theory, the asymptotic stability of the positive solution is analyzed.
Beam design for voice coil motors used for energy harvesting purpose with low frequency vibrations: A finite element analysis
Authors: Tinoco Hector A.
Published: June 2016

In this study, a numerical approach is established to design a beam coupled to a Voice Coil Motor (VCM) with the aim to maximize the displacement in the inductive transducer. A finite element model is developed to simulate a VCM with different beams applying a harmonic analysis. The VCM is extracted from a recycled hard disk drive (HDD) and a parametric modal analysis is performed to identify the material parameters of the HDD and the beam. These parameters are obtained comparing the real vibration modes and natural frequencies (VCM-beam) with those determined from the finite element model. A numerical-experimental case study is carried out to demonstrate that if a beam is designed for a specific low frequency vibration between 0 and [Formula: see text], the displacements are maximized in the VCM. For this purpose, real acceleration measurements taken from three individuals are used to provide the vibration signals in the numerical model. A beam is designed for one of the individuals using the natural frequency values determined from the measured signals. Results show that the displacements are maximized in the model which coincides with the natural frequency of the chosen individual. The main purpose of this research is to establish a design tool for energy harvesting purposes with VCM based on low frequency vibration sources as for example gait motions.
Numerical simulation of swirling flow effect on the first stage vane film cooling distribution
Authors: Yin Hong
Published: June 2016

In advanced gas turbine technology, lean premixed combustion is an effective strategy to reduce peak temperature and thus, NO[Formula: see text] emissions. The swirler is adopted to establish recirculation flow zone, enhancing mixing and stabilizing the flame. Therefore, the swirling flow is dominant in the combustor flow field and has impact on the vane. This paper mainly investigates the swirling flow effect on the turbine first stage vane cooling system by conducting a group of numerical simulations. Firstly, the numerical methods of turbulence modeling using RANS and LES are compared. The computational model of one single swirl flow field is considered. Both the RANS and LES results give reasonable recirculation zone shape. When comparing the velocity distribution, the RANS results generally match the experimental data but fail to at some local area. The LES modeling gives better results and more detailed unsteady flow field. In the second step, the RANS modeling is incorporated to investigate the vane film cooling performance under the swirling inflow boundary condition. According to the numerical results, the leading edge film cooling is largely altered by the swirling flow, especially for the swirl core-leading edge aligned case. Compared to the pressure side, the suction side film cooling is more sensitive to the swirling flow. Locally, the film cooling jet is lifted and turned by the strong swirling flow.
Materializing Heart Regeneration: Biomimicry of Key Observations in Cell Transplantation Therapies and Natural Cardiac Regeneration
Authors: Kong Yen P. , Jongpaiboonkit Leena
Published: June 2016

New regenerative paradigms are needed to address the growing global problem of heart failure as existing interventions are unsatisfactory. Outcomes from the current paradigm of cell transplantation have not been stellar but the mechanistic knowledge learned from them is instructive in the development of future paradigms. An emerging biomaterial-based approach incorporating key mechanisms and additional ones scrutinized from the process of natural heart regeneration in zebrafish may become the next evolution in cardiac repair. We highlight, with examples, tested key concepts and pivotal ones that may be integrated into a successful therapy.
The rise of social bots
Authors: Ferrara Emilio , Varol Onur , Davis Clayton , Menczer Filippo , Flammini Alessandro
Published: June 2016

Today's social bots are sophisticated and sometimes menacing. Indeed, their presence can endanger online ecosystems as well as our society.
Turing's red flag
Authors: Walsh Toby
Published: June 2016

A proposal for a law to prevent artificial intelligence systems from being mistaken for humans.
Inverse privacy
Authors: Gurevich Yuri , Hudis Efim , Wing Jeannette M.
Published: June 2016

Seeking a market-based solution to the problem of a person's unjustified inaccessibility to their private information.
Why Google stores billions of lines of code in a single repository
Authors: Potvin Rachel , Levenberg Josh
Published: June 2016

Google's monolithic repository provides a common source of truth for tens of thousands of developers around the world.
FinPar
Authors: Andreetta Christian , Bégot Vivien , Berthold Jost , Elsman Martin , Henglein Fritz , Henriksen Troels , Nordfang Maj-Britt , Oancea Cosmin E.
Published: June 2016

Commodity many-core hardware is now mainstream, but parallel programming models are still lagging behind in efficiently utilizing the application parallelism. There are (at least) two principal reasons for this. First, real-world programs often take the form of a deeply nested composition of parallel operators, but mapping the available parallelism to the hardware requires a set of transformations that are tedious to do by hand and beyond the capability of the common user. Second, the best optimization strategy, such as what to parallelize and what to efficiently sequentialize, is often sensitive to the input dataset and therefore requires multiple code versions that are optimized differently, which also raises maintainability problems.

This article presents three array-based applications from the financial domain that are suitable for
gpgpu
execution. Common benchmark-design practice has been to provide the same code for the sequential and parallel versions that are optimized for only one class of datasets. In comparison, we document (1) all available parallelism via nested map-reduce functional combinators, in a simple Haskell implementation that closely resembles the original code structure, (2) the invariants and code transformations that govern the main trade-offs of a data-sensitive optimization space, and (3) report target
cpu
and multiversion
gpgpu
code together with an evaluation that demonstrates optimization trade-offs and other difficulties. We believe that this work provides useful insight into the language constructs and compiler infrastructure capable of expressing and optimizing such applications, and we report in-progress work in this direction.
Pairwise Comparative Classification for Translator Stylometric Analysis
Authors: El-Fiqi Heba , Petraki Eleni , Abbass Hussein A.
Published: June 2016

In this article, we present a new type of classification problem, which we call
Comparative Classification Problem
(CCP), where we use the term
data record
to refer to a block of instances. Given a single data record with n instances for n classes, the CCP problem is to map each instance to a
unique
class. This problem occurs in a wide range of applications where the independent and identically distributed assumption is broken down. The primary difference between CCP and classical classification is that in the latter, the assignment of a translator to one record is independent of the assignment of a translator to a different record. In CCP, however, the assignment of a translator to one record within a block excludes this translator from further assignments to any other record in that block. The interdependency in the data poses challenges for techniques relying on the independent and identically distributed (iid) assumption.

In the
Pairwise CCP
(PWCCP), a pair of records is grouped together. The key difference between PWCCP and classical binary classification problems is that hidden patterns can only be unmasked by comparing the instances as pairs. In this article, we introduce a new algorithm, PWC4.5, which is based on C4.5, to manage PWCCP. We first show that a simple transformation—that we call Gradient-Based Transformation (GBT)—can fix the problem of iid in C4.5. We then evaluate PWC4.5 using two real-world corpora to distinguish between translators on Arabic-English and French-English translations. While the traditional C4.5 failed to distinguish between different translators, GBT demonstrated better performance. Meanwhile, PWC4.5 consistently provided the best results over C4.5 and GBT.
The small batches principle
Authors: Limoncelli Thomas A.
Published: June 2016

Reducing waste, encouraging experimentation, and making everyone happy.
Progress in computational thinking, and expanding the HPC community
Authors: Wing Jeannette M. , Stanzione Dan
Published: June 2016

The
Communications
Web site, http://cacm.acm.org, features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of
Communications
, we'll publish selected posts or excerpts.

twitter

Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/blogCACM

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm

Jeannette Wing considers the proliferation of computational thinking, while Dan Stanzione hopes to bring more HPC practitioners to SC16.
SMT-Based Context-Bounded Model Checking for Embedded Systems
Authors: Cordeiro Lucas C. , de Lima Filho Eddie B.
Published: June 2016

The dependency on the correct functioning of embedded systems is rapidly growing, mainly due to their wide range of applications, such as micro-grids, automotive device control (e.g., airbag control), health care, surveillance, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Their structures are becoming more and more complex and now require multi-core processors with scalable shared memory, in order to meet increasing computational power demands. As a consequence, reliability of embedded (distributed) software becomes a key issue during system development, which must be carefully addressed and assured. Normally, state-of-the-art verification methodologies for embedded systems generate test vectors (with constraints) and use assertion-based verification and highlevel processor models, during simulation; however, other additional challenges have been raised: the need for meeting time and energy constraints, handling concurrent software, dealing with platform restrictions, evaluating implementation-structure choices, and supporting new software architectures and legacy designs (usually written in low-level languages). The present paper discusses challenges, problems, and recent advances to ensure correctness and timeliness regarding embedded systems. Reliability issues, in the development of micro-grids and cyber-physical systems, are then considered, as a prominent (bounded) model checking application.
Summary of the 3rd International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Testing (RET 2016)
Authors: Unterkalmsteiner Michael , Gay Gregory , Felderer Michael , Bjarnason Elizabeth , Borg Markus , Morandini Mirko
Published: June 2016

The RET (Requirements Engineering and Testing) workshop series provides a meeting point for researchers and practitioners from the two separate fields of Requirements Engineering (RE) and Testing. The goal is to improve the connection and alignment of these two areas through an exchange of ideas, challenges, practices, experiences and results. The long term aim is to build a community and a body of knowledge within the intersection of RE and Testing, i.e. RET. The 3rd workshop was held in co-location with REFSQ 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The workshop continued in the same interactive vein as the predecessors and included a keynote, paper presentations with ample time for discussions, and panels. In order to create an RET knowledge base, this crosscutting area elicits contributions from both RE and Testing, and from both researchers and practitioners. A range of papers were presented from short positions papers to full research papers that cover connections between the two fields.
Big data analytics and revision of the common rule
Authors: Metcalf Jacob
Published: June 2016

Reconsidering traditional research ethics given the emergence of big data analytics.
Probabilistic theorem proving
Authors: Gogate Vibhav , Domingos Pedro
Published: June 2016

Many representation schemes combining first-order logic and probability have been proposed in recent years. Progress in unifying logical and probabilistic inference has been slower. Existing methods are mainly variants of lifted variable elimination and belief propagation, neither of which take logical structure into account. We propose the first method that has the full power of both graphical model inference and first-order theorem proving (in finite domains with Herbrand interpretations). We first define probabilistic theorem proving (PTP), their generalization, as the problem of computing the probability of a logical formula given the probabilities or weights of a set of formulas. We then show how PTP can be reduced to the problem of lifted weighted model counting, and develop an efficient algorithm for the latter. We prove the correctness of this algorithm, investigate its properties, and show how it generalizes previous approaches. Experiments show that it greatly outperforms lifted variable elimination when logical structure is present. Finally, we propose an algorithm for approximate PTP, and show that it is superior to lifted belief propagation.
Quality of Life, Stress, and Mental Health in Parents of Children with Parentally Diagnosed Food Allergy Compared to Medically Diagnosed and Healthy Controls
Authors: Birdi Gurkiran , Cooke Richard , Knibb Rebecca
Published: June 2016

Background. Food allergy is related to poorer quality of life (QoL) and mental health of caregivers. Many parents diagnose food allergy in their child without seeking medical care and there is limited research on this group. This study investigated parental QoL and mental health in parents of children with parent-diagnosed food allergy (PA), medically diagnosed food allergy (MA), and a control group with no allergy (NA). Methods. One hundred and fifty parents from a general population completed validated measures of QoL, anxiety, depression, and stress. Results. Parents of children with food allergy (PA or MA) reported higher stress, anxiety, and depression than the control group (all p<0.05). Parents of children with MA reported poorer food allergy related QoL compared to parents of children with PA (p<0.05); parents of children with PA reported poorer general QoL compared to parents of children with MA (p<0.05). Conclusion. Parents of children with food allergy have significantly poorer mental health compared to healthy controls, irrespective of whether food allergy is medically diagnosed or not. It is important to encourage parents to have their child medically tested for food allergy and to recognise and refer for psychological support where needed.
From Inflammation to Prostate Cancer: The Role of Inflammasomes
Authors: Karan Dev , Dubey Seema
Published: June 2016

Inflammation-associated studies entice specific attention due to inflammation’s role in multiple stages of prostate cancer development. However, mechanistic regulation of inflammation inciting prostate cancer remains largely uncharacterized. A focused class of inflammatory regulators known as inflammasomes has recently gained attention in cancer development. Inflammasomes are a multiprotein complex that drives a cascade of proinflammatory cytokines regulating various cellular activities. Inflammasomes activation is linked with infection, stress, or danger signals, which are common events within the prostate gland. In this study, we review the potential of inflammasomes in understanding the role of inflammation in prostate cancer.
Missed Opportunities for Nutritional Rehabilitation in Children Admitted to Surgical Wards
Authors: Dave Pooja , Nimbalkar Somashekhar , Phatak Ajay , Desai Rajendra , Srivastava Shirish
Published: June 2016

Background. Malnutrition in children has serious health and economic consequences. We studied documentation of malnutrition, actual prevalence, and treatment given in children admitted to surgical wards.Methods. Retrospective study of 154 patients aged <5 yrs admitted to general surgical, orthopedic, and otorhinolaryngology wards. Records were evaluated for completeness of data, way of documentation, and data quality. Descriptive analysis was done. If malnutrition was not identified and/or proper action was not taken, it was defined as a “missed opportunity.”Results. Of 154 records audited, 100 (64.94%) were males, 108 (70.13%) were from general surgery ward, and 78 (50.65%) were residing in suburban area. The mean (SD) age of the study population was 2.32 (1.16) years whereas mean (SD) duration of stay was 5.84 (6.29) days. Weight and height were mentioned in 116 (75.32%) and 8 (5.19%) records, respectively, mostly by nonsurgical personnel. Documentation and treatment of malnutrition were poor. Out of 106 apparently correct weight records, 19 (17.93%) children were severely undernourished and 30 (28.30%) were moderately undernourished whereas 20 (18.87%) children were not undernourished but required nutritional attention.Conclusion. There is poor documentation of nutritional indicators of children admitted to surgical wards. From data that was available, it is apparent that malnutrition is at high levels. “Identification” and hence management of malnutrition need more attention.
The Effect of Viscosity on Performance of a Low Specific Speed Centrifugal Pump
Authors: Torabi Rouhollah , Nourbakhsh Seyyed Ahmad
Published: June 2016

Centrifugal pump delivery head and flow rate drop effectively during the pumping of viscous fluids. Several methods and correlations have been developed to predict reduction rate in centrifugal pump performance when handling viscous fluids, but their results are not in very good agreement with each other. In this study, a common industrial low specific speed pump, which is extensively used in different applications, is studied. The entire pump, including impeller, volute, pipes, front and rear sidewall gaps, and balance holes, is simulated in Computational Fluid Dynamics and 3D full Navier Stokes equations are solved. CFD results are compared with experimental data such as pump performance curves, static pressure in casing, and disk friction loss. Dimensionless angular velocity and leakage rate are investigated in sidewall gap and efficiency variation due to viscosity is studied. The results demonstrate that the behavior of the fluid in sidewall gap is strictly sensitive to viscosity. Increasing viscosity improves the volumetric efficiency by reducing internal leakage through wear rings and balance holes, causing, however, a significant fall in the disk and overall efficiency. Results lead to some recommendations for designing centrifugal pumps which may be used in transferring viscous fluids.
Novel Gas Barrier SiOC Coating to PET Bottles through a Hot Wire CVD Method
Authors: Nakaya Masaki , Kodama Kenji , Yasuhara Shigeo , Hotta Atsushi
Published: June 2016

In an attempt to enhance the gas barrier enhancement of plastic containers such as poly(ethylene terephthalate) bottles, a novel method was found using a hot wire CVD technique, where tantalum wire is heated and exposed to a gas flow of vinyl silane. The resultant SiOC thin film was confirmed to characteristically contain Si-Si bonds in its surface and demonstrate a remarkably and highly practical decrease of the permeation of various gas through poly(ethylene terephthalate) bottles.
c‐kit+AT2R+ Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cell Subset Is a Superior Subset for Cardiac Protection after Myocardial Infarction
Authors: Du Mingjun , Schmull Sebastian , Zhang Wentian , Wang Chenxi , Lian Feng , Chen Yao , Xue Song
Published: June 2016

Although the bone marrow mononuclear cell (BMMNC) is known as an ideal cell type for cell‐based therapy for MI treatment, the effective subpopulation still remains unknown. Our study aimed at identifying the optimal subset of BMMNCs suited for cardiac regeneration. In this study, we observed that MI led to (i) a significant increase of the c‐kit+AT2R+ BMMNC subpopulation in mice and (ii) a modest increase of AT2R+ BMMNCs in humans. c‐kit+AT2R+ and c‐kit+AT2R− BMMNC subpopulations were obtained from mice after MI. Then, we cocultured cardiac H9C2 cells with c‐kit+AT2R+, c‐kit+AT2R−, and unfractionated BMMNCs; finally, we found that the c‐kit+AT2R+ subset is superior to the c‐kit+AT2R− subset in improving cardiomyocyte protection in vitro. Of note, c‐kit+AT2R+ BMMNCs showed a more robust migration capacity than c‐kit+AT2R− and unfractionated BMMNCs in vitro and in vivo. Additionally, compared to c‐kit+AT2R− and unfractionated BMMNCs, intravenous transplantation of c‐kit+AT2R+ BMMNC resulted in smaller infarct size and lower levels of inflammatory reactions in heart tissue, leading to a higher global heart function improvement. In conclusion, our results indicate that the c‐kit+AT2R+ BMMNC subpopulation exerts a protective effect against MI and shows promising therapeutic possibilities with regard to the treatment of ischemic heart disease.
Multilevel Modeling of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Mazur Katarzyna , Ksiezopolski Bogdan , Nielek Radoslaw
Published: June 2016

The growing popularity of wireless sensor networks increases the risk of security attacks. One of the most common and dangerous types of attack that takes place these days in any electronic society is a distributed denial of service attack. Due to the resource constraint nature of mobile sensors, DDoS attacks have become a major threat to its stability. In this paper, we established a model of a structural health monitoring network, being disturbed by one of the most common types of DDoS attacks, the flooding attack. Through a set of simulations, we explore the scope of flood-based DDoS attack problem, assessing the performance and the lifetime of the network under the attack condition. To conduct our research, we utilized the Quality of Protection Modeling Language. With the proposed approach, it was possible to examine numerous network configurations, parameters, attack options, and scenarios. The results of the carefully performed multilevel analysis allowed us to identify a new kind of DDoS attack, the delayed distributed denial of service, by the authors, referred to as DDDoS attack. Multilevel approach to DDoS attack analysis confirmed that, examining endangered environments, it is significant to take into account many characteristics at once, just to not overlook any important aspect.
How Dangerous Are Your Smartphones? App Usage Recommendation with Privacy Preserving
Authors: Zhu Konglin , He Xiaoman , Xiang Bin , Zhang Lin , Pattavina Achille
Published: June 2016

With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, explosive mobile applications (apps) are developed in the past few years. However, the functions of mobile apps are varied and the designs of them are not well understood by end users, especially the activities and functions related to user privacy. Therefore, understanding how much danger of mobile apps with respect to privacy violation to mobile users is becomes a critical issue when people use mobile devices. In this paper, we evaluate the mobile app privacy violation of mobile users by computing the danger coefficient. In order to help people reduce the privacy leakage, we combine both the user preference to mobile apps and the privacy risk of apps and propose a mobile app usage recommendation method named AppURank to recommend the secure apps with the same function as the “dangerous” one for people use. The evaluation results show that our recommendation can reduce the privacy leakage by 50%.
On the Topology Optimization of Elastic Supporting Structures under Thermomechanical Loads
Authors: Hou Jie , Zhu Ji-Hong , Li Qing
Published: June 2016

This paper is to present a thermomechanical topology optimization formulation. By designing structures that support specific nondesignable domain, optimization is to suppress the stress level in the nondesignable domain and maintain global stiffness simultaneously. A global stress measure based onp-norm function is then utilized to reduce the number of stress constraints in topology optimization. Sensitivity analysis employs adjoint method to derive the global stress measure with respect to the topological pseudodensity variables. Some particular behaviors in thermomechanical topology optimization of elastic supports, such as the influence of different thermomechanical loads and the existence of intermediate material, are also analyzed numerically. Finally, examples of elastic supports on a cantilever beam and a nozzle flap under different thermomechanical loads are tested with reasonable optimized design obtained.
Classifications for Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy (PVR): An Analysis of Their Use in Publications over the Last 15 Years
Authors: Di Lauro Salvatore , Kadhim Mustafa R. , Charteris David G. , Pastor J. Carlos
Published: June 2016

Purpose. To evaluate the current and suitable use of current proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) classifications in clinical publications related to treatment.Methods. A PubMed search was undertaken using the term “proliferative vitreoretinopathy therapy”. Outcome parameters were the reported PVR classification and PVR grades. The way the classifications were used in comparison to the original description was analyzed. Classification errors were also included. It was also noted whether classifications were used for comparison before and after pharmacological or surgical treatment.Results. 138 papers were included. 35 of them (25.4%) presented no classification reference or did not use any one. 103 publications (74.6%) used a standardized classification. The updated Retina Society Classification, the first Retina Society Classification, and the Silicone Study Classification were cited in 56.3%, 33.9%, and 3.8% papers, respectively. Furthermore, 3 authors (2.9%) used modified-customized classifications and 4 (3.8%) classification errors were identified. When the updated Retina Society Classification was used, only 10.4% of authors used a full C grade description. Finally, only 2 authors reported PVR grade before and after treatment.Conclusions. Our findings suggest that current classifications are of limited value in clinical practice due to the inconsistent and limited use and that it may be of benefit to produce a revised classification.
Spectral Nonlinearly Embedded Clustering Algorithm
Authors: Liu Mingming , Liu Bing , Zhang Chen , Sun Wei
Published: June 2016

As is well known, traditional spectral clustering (SC) methods are developed based on themanifold assumption, namely, that two nearby data points in the high-density region of a low-dimensional data manifold have the same cluster label. But, for some high-dimensional and sparse data, such an assumption might be invalid. Consequently, the clustering performance of SC will be degraded sharply in this case. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a general spectral embedded framework, which embeds the true cluster assignment matrix for high-dimensional data into a nonlinear space by a predefined embedding function. Based on this framework, several algorithms are presented by using different embedding functions, which aim at learning the final cluster assignment matrix and a transformation into a low dimensionality space simultaneously. More importantly, the proposed method can naturally handle the out-of-sample extension problem. The experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing clustering methods.
Potential Properties of Plant Sprout Extracts on Amyloidβ
Authors: Okada Mizue , Okada Yoshinori
Published: June 2016

The aim of this study is to examine the amyloidβ(Aβ) inhibition mechanism of plant sprouts’ aqueous extracts (PSAE). In this study, we screened the effects of five plant sprouts’ extracts on Aβ(1–42) structure modification using gel electrophoresis. In PSAE, no band of Aβmonomer was recognized in Japanese butterbur. Similarly, the Aβmonomer band became light in buckwheat, red cabbage, broccoli, and brussels. The neuroprotective effects of PSAE were evaluated by measuring levels of Aβin mixtures (Aβ  and PSAE) with AβELISA assay. The treatment with PSAE decreased Aβlevels. The results indicated that the levels of red cabbage, Japanese butterbur, and broccoli were 9.6, 28.0, and 44.0%, respectively. The lowest value was observed with buckwheat. Furthermore, we carried out a Congo Red (CR) and Aβbinding experiment of PSAE to confirm the modification mechanism of PSAE. The correlation coefficient for the absorption spectrum peak of CR was found to be bigger than 0.8 (r=0.882) which proved that the Aβlevels could be attributed to the peak of CR. In conclusion, we demonstrated that treatment with PSAE effectively decreases Aβconcentration. Thus, the mechanism that decreased the Aβlevels may be modification by PSAE.
Existence of Optimal Control for a Nonlinear-Viscous Fluid Model
Authors: Baranovskii Evgenii S. , Artemov Mikhail A.
Published: June 2016

We consider the optimal control problem for a mathematical model describing steady flows of a nonlinear-viscous incompressible fluid in a bounded three-dimensional (or a two-dimensional) domain with impermeable solid walls. The control parameter is the surface force at a given part of the flow domain boundary. For a given bounded set of admissible controls, we construct generalized (weak) solutions that minimize a given cost functional.