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A Sensor Classification Scheme
Get PDFAbstract-We discuss a flexible and comprehensive categorizing scheme that is useful for describing and comparing sensors
A polynomial-time inexact interior-point method for convex quadratic symmetric cone programming
Get PDFAbstract. In this paper, we design an inexact primal-dual infeasible path-following algorithm for convex quadratic programming over symmetric cones. Our algorithm and its polynomial iteration complexity analysis give a unified treatment for a number of previous algorithms and their complexity analysis. In particular, our algorithm and analysis includes the one designed for linear semidefinite programming in "Math. Prog. 99 (2004), pp. 261-282". Under a mild condition on the inexactness of the search direction at each interior-point iteration, we show that the algorithm can find an ϵ-approximate solution in O(n 2 log(1/ϵ)) iterations, where n is the rank of the underlying Euclidean Jordan algebra
Symbooglix: A Symbolic Execution Engine for Boogie Programs
Get PDFAbstract-We present the design and implementation of Symbooglix, a symbolic execution engine for the Boogie intermediate verification language. Symbooglix aims to find bugs in Boogie programs efficiently, providing bug-finding capabilities for any program analysis framework that uses Boogie as a target language. We discuss the technical challenges associated with handling Boogie, and describe how we optimised Symbooglix using a small training set of benchmarks. This empiricallydriven optimisation approach avoids over-fitting Symbooglix to our benchmarks, enabling a fair comparison with other tools. We present an evaluation across 3749 Boogie programs generated from the SV-COMP suite of C programs using the SMACK frontend, and 579 Boogie programs originating from several OpenCL and CUDA GPU benchmark suites, translated by the GPUVerify front-end. Our results show that Symbooglix significantly outperforms Boogaloo, an existing symbolic execution tool for Boogie, and is competitive with GPUVerify on benchmarks for which GPUVerify is highly optimised. While generally less effective than the Corral and Duality tools on the SV-COMP suite, Symbooglix is complementary to them in terms of bug-finding ability
Bridging The Gap Between Higher Education And The Workforce: A Coach Approach To Teaching
Get PDFAbstract There is debate in the business community around whether new entrants to the labour market are as proficient in essential skills such as communications, collaboration, and critical thinking as were their forbears. At the same time, the demand for executive coaching has increased substantially under both strong and weak economic conditions. Corporations are now using coaching to enhance essential skills within the workplace, which gives rise to questions about college graduates' skills and the positive impact coaching skills could have if embedded within academia. We explore the benefits of using a coach approach in the classroom whereby the instructor engages, enlightens, and empowers students to better prepare graduates for life-long learning and the labour market. The model requires the instructor to embrace authenticity, insight, and innovation by taking a coach approach to teaching with the intent to enhance learning outcomes
Effect of Rhizobium and Phosphate Solubilizing Bacterial Inoculants on Symbiotic Traits, Nodule Leghemoglobin, and Yield of Chickpea Genotypes
Get PDFA field experiment was carried out during the rabi season of 2004-05 to find out the effect of Rhizobium and phosphate solubilizing bacterial (PSB) inoculants on symbiotic traits, nodule leghemoglobin, and yield of five elite genotypes of chickpea. Among the chickpea genotypes, IG-593 performed better in respect of symbiotic parameters including nodule number, nodule fresh weight, nodule dry weight, shoot dry weight, yield attributes and yield. Leghemoglobin content (2.55 mg g −1 of fresh nodule) was also higher under IG-593. Among microbial inoculants, the Rhizobium + PSB was found most effective in terms of nodule number (27.66 nodules plant −1 ), nodule fresh weight (144.90 mg plant −1 ), nodule dry weight (74.30 mg plant −1 ), shoot dry weight (11.76 g plant −1 ), and leghemoglobin content (2.29 mg g −1 of fresh nodule) and also showed its positive effect in enhancing all the yield attributing parameters, grain and straw yields
The Impact of Postoperative Complications on the Administration of Adjuvant Therapy Following Pancreaticoduodenectomy for Adenocarcinoma
Get PDFABSTRACT Background. The impact of postoperative complications on the administration of adjuvant therapy following pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) for adenocarcinoma is still unclear. Methods. A retrospective review of all patients undergoing PD at our institution between 1995 and 2011 was performed. Clinicopathological data, including ClavienDindo complication grade, time to adjuvant therapy (TTA), and survival, were analyzed. Approximately 45,200 cases of pancreatic cancer (PC) are diagnosed yearly in the US, with 38,500-attributable cancer-related deaths. 1 The overall 5-year survival rate for PC is only 6 %, 1 and even for resectable cancers, the 5-year survival rate following pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is less than 20 %. 2-7 Local and systemic recurrence are common following PD, suggesting both systemic and local adjuvant therapy are necessary to improve outcomes
Title: Ex vivo coronary stent implantation evaluated with digital image correlation
Get PDFAbstract: Intracoronary stenting (PCI) has become standard revascularization technique to reopen blocked arteries. Although significant progress in stenting technology and implantation techniques has been made a number of problems remain. Specifically, stent sizing and inflation pressures are still a matter of scientific debates. Despite a large number of biomechanical computational simulations experimental data are rare, likely due to technical difficulties to measure dilatation pressures and coronary dimensions in the same settings. Our study shows that valuable data can be obtained by employing digital image correlation for 3D strain measurement during stent inflation ex-vivo that can provide further insight into the stent-artery wall interactions. Keywords: Artery wall-stent interaction; coronary stent; digital image correlation; experimental implantation; strain. 3 Abstract/Introduction Intracoronary stenting (PCI) has become standard revascularization technique to reopen blocked arteries. Although significant progress in stenting technology and implantation techniques has been made a number of problems remain Despite a large number of biomechanical computational simulations [3, Methods Stent and PCI equipment The balloon-expandable CoCr coronary stent Kaname TM (Terumo Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) with nominal diameter 3.5 mm, and length 15 mm (at pressure 0.9 MPa; and diameter 3.73 mm at 1.6 MPa) was used in this study. The stent was premounted on PCI dilatation catheter RX-2 (Terumo Corporation). Sample The sample of the main branch of the left coronary artery was obtained from autopsy. The male donor was 40 years old and atherosclerotic lesions were presented inside the sample. The experiment was performed 70 hours post mortem. Experiment The sample was mounted into the experimental setup ( Displacement measurement was based on 3D digital image correlation (DIC) conducted with commercial system Dantec Q-450 (Dantec Dynamics, Ulm, Germany). 4 DIC is non-contact optical method based on the stereoscopic principle which is becoming more popular especially within the strain measurement of geometrically nonuniform objects. The algorithm identifies material points on the object surface and the correlation between consecutive images allows material point tracking. Detailed description can be found in the literature The artery was recorded with two digital cameras (NanoSens Mk III, Dantec Dynamics; 1MPx CCD chip; lens Sigma EX, 105 mm, 1:2.8 D Macro) during the balloon expansion (sampling rate 25 Hz). In fully expanded state, the object ROI approx. 18*3 mm*mm was projected onto 600*300 px*px (in each camera). RX2 manometer was recorded with another camera to obtain time course of change of the balloon distending pressure (pressure transducer connected with PC was not available at the time of experiment). The stent was deployed within manual pressurization up to 1.6 MPa which spanned approximately 42 seconds. Results DIC revealed significant overloading of the artery by the expanded stent. The results are depicted in Principal strains' distribution (Green-Lagrange strain is considered within this study) shows artery response within maximally expanded stent. Principal vectors are predominantly aligned with the circumferential and longitudinal direction which is supposed to be the consequence of the cylindrical stent expansion. Circumferential deformation attains 0.5 mm/mm at the peak value which is far beyond physiological situation. The circumferential strain concentration appears non-symmetrically with respect to the length of the sample which is supposed to be the result of irregular reference geometry (an asymmetrical partially occluded lumen of the artery). Six points (P1-6) were chosen to illustrate specific strain values resulting from different loading conditions and atherosclerotic specimen in our experiment. Discussion This is a preliminary report concerning a stent implantation in ex-vivo settings employing a human coronary artery harvested from autopsy. The results suggest that 3D DIC is promising tool suitable for the evaluation of ex-vivo stent implantation potentially useful for validation of computational models and clinical considerations. Presented results suggest that overexpansion of a stent during deployment may overstretch the target site potentially resulting in implantation injury associated with restenosis and/or intimal tears associated with dissections. To obtain exact intraluminal dimensions during stent deployment optical coherence tomography or intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) would be required, currently not available in our laboratory. Nevertheless we plan to combine IVUS with 3D DIC in future experiments
ces00-04pdf
No full textAbstract Employment flows in services have greatly exceeded those in manufacturing over the recent decade. We examine these differences and their variation over establishment sizes and types. We test three hypotheses which have been offered to explain these differences: (1) that the difference in behavior of single and multi-unit establishments accounts for much of the difference in the net and gross growth rates of jobs in services and manufacturing; (2) that relative wage differences have a disparate effect on employment growth for services and manufacturing, and (3) that the rates of persistence (or retention) of new jobs are higher in multi-unit establishments than in single unit firms, and similar between the sectors after controlling for this. We find that it is primarily the underlying differences in establishment age and size distributions that account for the substantial differences in the average gross and net job flow rates of the two sectors, and that relative wage differences have a similar effect on employment growth in services and manufacturing
