1,153 research outputs found
Environmentally Responsible SAA Disposal
No full textThe need to dispose of small arms ammunition (SAA) for short-term stability and security concerns has traditionally outweighed the long-term need for environmentally responsible disposal. The author suggests the international community should change its procedures concerning SAA disposal and promote more environmentally friendly disposal methods
Clinical and histological discrepancies in diagnosis of ENL reactions classified by assessment of acute phase proteins SAA and CRP1
No full textSixteen out of 45 (36%) leprosy patients with clinical features of acute erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL) did not show the characteristic presence of neutrophils (polymorphs) in histology of the ENL lesion. The acute-phase reactants, serum amyloid A (SAA) and C-reactive protein (CRP) which are systemic markers of inflammation, and IgM and IgG antibody to Mycobacterium leprae were determined in these patients in order to understand the differences in histological diagnosis. Both SAA and CRP were elevated in ENL patients, irrespective of the presence of polymorph infiltrates, as compared to nonreactional lepromatous patients, patients with histologically confirmed reversal reactions and endemic controls, indicating that all clinically diagnosed ENL patients had ongoing inflammatory reactions. On the other hand, IgM and IgG antibodies were significantly lower (> 70%) in ENL patients as compared to nonreactional lepromatous patients. When the two ENL groups [ENL-PMN + ve (positive for neutrophils) and ENL-PMN -ve (negative for neutrophils)] were compared, there were no significant differences in the mean SAA, IgM or IgG antibody concentrations, but CRP was eightfold lower in ENL-PMN-ve as compared to the ENL-PMN+ve group. This may indicate that the timing or modulation of the reaction was different in the two ENL groups. Thus, measurement of the acute-phase response and the ratio of SAA/ CRP in particular are helpful in the clinical diagnosis of ENL reactions in leprosy.Peer reviewedfinal article publishe
Drift shell tracing and secular variation of inner radiation environment in the SAA region
No full textThe drift shell tracing method is proposed to investigate the secular variation of trapped particle fluxes in the low Earth orbits (but much higher than the atmospheric cut-off altitude) through NASA standard radiation models. The preliminary results show that over the past three decades fluxes of high-energy particles at the altitudes similar to1000 km in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) significantly increased, the center region of particle SAA apparently moved westward, and the drift shells of trapped particles considerably descended. The relevant physical problems are briefly discussed.Astronomy & AstrophysicsCPCI-S(ISTP)
Optimizing inventory strategy for modular shipbuilding
No full textThe primary drivers for buying a ship from a certain yard are price, delivery time and quality. In order to decrease construction time and costs, shipbuilding companies are exploring the development of product-families to include family wide modularity and cross family standardization. Standardization is the use of identical components across multiple products, while modularity combines parts to create 'building-blocks'. This creates an opportunity for less inventory, a more efficient supply chain and shorter delivery times. Considering a network of suppliers and shipyards, the shipbuilder has to answer the following question: Which components and pre-assembled modules should be available in which inventory? Since the exact ship orders are not known, this can be seen as an optimization problem with uncertainty. To solve it, it is formulated as an integer linear program (ILP), and to handle the uncertainty, the Sampling Average Approximation (SAA) method is used. Several smaller instances are solved to optimality by Gurobi optimization software and the performance of this approach is evaluated along with the convergence of the SAA method. The results show convergence of the SAA method although only relatively small instances can be solved to optimality by the ILP.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Ship Design, Production and OperationsMarine and Transport TechnologyDiscrete Mathematics and Optimizatio
Author reply
No full textThese findings highlight the need to explore SAA in patients with interstitial lung involvement associated with
SSc. SAA can be considered a bioindicator of fibrotic lung disease, isolated IPF as well as that associated with autoimmune systemic disorders such as SSc
Serum Amyloid A Truncations in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus
No full textabstract: Serum Amyloid A (SAA) is an acute phase protein complex consisting of several abundant isoforms. The N- terminus of SAA is critical to its function in amyloid formation. SAA is frequently truncated, either missing an arginine or an arginine-serine dipeptide, resulting in isoforms that may influence the capacity to form amyloid. However, the relative abundance of truncated SAA in diabetes and chronic kidney disease is not known.
Methods
Using mass spectrometric immunoassay, the abundance of SAA truncations relative to the native variants was examined in plasma of 91 participants with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease and 69 participants without diabetes.
Results
The ratio of SAA 1.1 (missing N-terminal arginine) to native SAA 1.1 was lower in diabetics compared to non-diabetics (p = 0.004), and in males compared to females (p<0.001). This ratio was negatively correlated with glycated hemoglobin (r = −0.32, p<0.001) and triglyceride concentrations (r = −0.37, p<0.001), and positively correlated with HDL cholesterol concentrations (r = 0.32, p<0.001).
Conclusion
The relative abundance of the N-terminal arginine truncation of SAA1.1 is significantly decreased in diabetes and negatively correlates with measures of glycemic and lipid control.The article is published at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.011532
Composite Anderson acceleration method with two window sizes and optimized damping
No full textIn this article, we propose and analyze a set of fully nonstationary Anderson acceleration (AA) algorithms with two window sizes and optimized damping. Although AA has been used for decades to speed up nonlinear solvers in many applications, most authors are simply using and analyzing the stationary version of AA (sAA) with fixed window size and a constant damping factor. The behavior and potential of the nonstationary version of AA methods remain an open question. Most efficient linear solvers however use composable algorithmic components. Similar ideas can be used for AA to solve nonlinear systems. Thus in the present work, to develop nonstationary AA algorithms, we first propose a systematic way to dynamically alternate the window size (Formula presented.) by the multiplicative composite combination, which means we apply sAA((Formula presented.)) in the outer loop and apply sAA((Formula presented.)) in the inner loop. By doing this, significant gains can be achieved. Second, to make AA to be a fully nonstationary algorithm, we need to combine these strategies with our recent work on the nonstationary AA algorithm with optimized damping (AAoptD), which is another important direction of producing nonstationary AA and nice performance gains have been observed. Moreover, we also investigate the rate of convergence of these nonstationary AA methods under suitable assumptions. Finally, our numerical results show that some of these proposed nonstationary AA algorithms converge faster than the stationary sAA method and they may significantly reduce the storage and time to find the solution in many cases.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Numerical Analysi
Phytoseiid Mites (Acari: Mesostigmata) of the Azores Islands
No full text[EN] The fauna of phytoseiid mites (Phytoseiidae) is still scarcely known in the Azores archipelago. A survey was conducted in the islands of Pico, Faial and Flores where phytoseiid mites were collected from native, cultivated and invasive plants. Twenty-two species were collected, nine of which represent new records for the Azores. Five new species, Neoseiulus petraeus Ferragut sp. nov., Phytoseius azorensis Ferragut sp. nov., Typhlodromus (Typhlodromus) atlanticus Ferragut sp. nov., T. (T.) floresiensis Ferragut sp. nov. and Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) septemporosus Ferragut sp. nov., are described and illustrated. We provide complementary morphological information for four known species, additional features for the separation of Typhlodromina tropica (Chant) and T. subtropica (Muma & Denmark) and the redescription of Amblyseius elongatus (Garman). A key to separate the phytoseiid species of the Azores is also included.To the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil, for granting fellowship to the second author D. N.Ferragut Pérez, FJ.; Navia, D. (2017). Phytoseiid Mites (Acari: Mesostigmata) of the Azores Islands. Systematic and Applied Acarology. 22(10):1585-1621. doi:10.11158/saa.22.10.4S15851621221
Development of smart agriculture application to estimate real time crop water requirements in Prince Edward Island
No full textSmart Agriculture Application (SAA) is an innovative tool used for the agriculture sector to
assist growers in various real time crop water demand services. Currently this application
provides services in four use cases. Firstly, it provides top tier live and accurate weather data
across PEI from locally installed weather stations. These weather station data include
temperature, relative humidity, ambient pressure, windspeed and rainfall. These variables
recorded and added in database base every thirty minutes. The second major use of SAA is the
computation of real time reference evapotranspiration to manage generic crop water demands. In
third case, SAA provides the crop specific water requirement based on several factors such as
growing degree days, crop stage and crop season. Currently this application supports the crop
water requirements of wheat and potato crop, however, various other crops will be added in
future. Another major case of SAA is live feed camera assisting general public to assess the
weather parameters visually.
Currently SAA is under development phase and undergoing from various changes. In future, this
application will provide the accurate crop water requirement forecasts align with rainfall for
sustainable water management across Prince Edward Island farms
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