803,173 research outputs found
Analysis of CDC social control measures using an agent-based simulation of an influenza epidemic in a city
Background: the transmission of infectious disease amongst the human population is a complex process which requires advanced, often individual-based, models to capture the space-time details observed in reality.Methods: an Individual Space-Time Activity-based Model (ISTAM) was applied to simulate the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical control measures including: (1) refraining from social activities, (2) school closure and (3) household quarantine, for a hypothetical influenza outbreak in an urban area.Results: amongst the set of control measures tested, refraining from social activities with various compliance levels was relatively ineffective. Household quarantine was very effective, especially for the peak number of cases and total number of cases, with large differences between compliance levels. Household quarantine resulted in a decrease in the peak number of cases from more than 300 to around 158 for a 100% compliance level, a decrease of about 48.7%. The delay in the outbreak peak was about 3 to 17 days. The total number of cases decreased to a range of 3635-5403, that is, 63.7%-94.7% of the baseline value.When coupling control measures, household quarantine together with school closure was the most effective strategy. The resulting space-time distribution of infection in different classes of activity bundles (AB) suggests that the epidemic outbreak is strengthened amongst children and then spread to adults. By sensitivity analysis, this study demonstrated that earlier implementation of control measures leads to greater efficacy. Also, for infectious diseases with larger basic reproduction number, the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical measures was shown to be limited.Conclusions: simulated results showed that household quarantine was the most effective control measure, while school closure and household quarantine implemented together achieved the greatest benefit. Agent-based models should be applied in the future to evaluate the efficacy of control measures for a range of disease outbreaks in a range of settings given sufficient information about the given case and knowledge about the transmission processes at a fine scal
Quench characteristics of a Cu-Stabilized 2G HTS conductor
The prospect of medium/high field superconducting magnets using 2G HTS tapes is approaching to reality with continued enhancement in the performance of these conductors. Direct measurements of 1d adiabatic quench initiation and propagation of a Cu-stabilized 2G conductor have been carried out with spatial-temporal recording of temperature and voltage following the deposition of various local heat pulses to the conductor at different temperatures between 40K and 64K carrying different transport currents. It was found that the stabilizer-free 2G tape maintains the unique characteristics previously measured in non-stabilized tape of increasing MPZ with transport current and higher quench energy at lower temperatures. The minimum quench energy, minimum propagation zone (MPZ) length are determined as a function of temperature and transport current. The change in MPZ size is investigated with measured temperature dependent E-J characteristics. The results add more detail to help understand the unique characteristics of increasing MPZ with transport current and lower temperatures
Differential Acquisition of m-Sequences using Recursive Soft Sequential Estimation
In this contribution a novel sequential estimation method is proposed for the acquisition of -sequences. This sequential estimation method exploits the principle of iterative soft-in-soft-out (SISO) decoding for enhancing the acquisition performance, and that of differential pre-processing for the sake of achieving an enhanced acquisition performance, when communicating over various communication environments. Hence the advocated acquisition arrangement is referred to as the Differential Recursive Soft Sequential Estimation (DRSSE) acquisition scheme. The DRSSE acquisition scheme exhibits a low complexity, which is similar to that of an -sequence generator, while achieving an acquisition time that is linearly dependent on the number of stages in the -sequence generator. A low acquisition time is achieved with the advent of the property that the proposed DRSSE scheme is capable of determining the real-time reliabilities associated with the decision concerning a set of, say , consecutive chips. This set of consecutive chips constitutes the sufficient initial condition for enabling the local -sequence generator to produce a synchronized local despreading -sequence replica. Owing to these attractive characteristics, the DRSSE acquisition scheme constitutes a promising initial synchronization scheme for acquisition of long -sequences, when communicating over various propagation environments
Evolutionary computation in dynamic and uncertain environments
This book can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2007 Springer-Verla
Abstraction Refinement Guided by a Learnt Probabilistic Model
The core challenge in designing an effective static program analysis is to find a good program abstraction -- one that retains only details relevant to a given query. In this paper, we present a new approach for automatically finding such an abstraction. Our approach uses a pessimistic strategy, which can optionally use guidance from a probabilistic model. Our approach applies to parametric static analyses implemented in Datalog, and is based on counterexample-guided abstraction refinement. For each untried abstraction, our probabilistic model provides a probability of success, while the size of the abstraction provides an estimate of its cost in terms of analysis time. Combining these two metrics, probability and cost, our refinement algorithm picks an optimal abstraction. Our probabilistic model is a variant of the Erdos-Renyi random graph model, and it is tunable by what we call hyperparameters. We present a method to learn good values for these hyperparameters, by observing past runs of the analysis on an existing codebase. We evaluate our approach on an object sensitive pointer analysis for Java programs, with two client analyses (PolySite and Downcast)
Non-Coherent Cooperative Communications Dispensing with Channel Estimation Relying on Erasure Insertion Aided Reed-Solomon Coded SFH M-ary FSK Subjected to Partial-Band Interference and Rayleigh Fading
The rationale of our design is that although much of the literature of cooperative systems assumes perfect coherent detection, the assumption of having any channel estimates at the relays imposes an unreasonable burden on the relay station. Hence, non-coherently detected Reed-Solomon (ReS) coded Slow Frequency Hopping (SFH) assisted M -ary Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) is proposed for cooperative wireless networks, subjected to both partial-band interference and Rayleigh fading. Erasure insertion (EI) assisted ReS decoding based on the joint maximum output-ratio threshold test (MO-RTT) is investigated in order to evaluate the attainable system performance. Compared to the conventional error-correction-only decoder, the EI scheme may achieve an Eb/N0 gain of approximately 3dB at the Codeword Error Probability, Pw , of 10-4 , when employing the ReS (31, 20) code combined with 32-FSK modulation. Additionally, we evaluated the system’s performance, when either equal gain combining (EGC) or selection combining (SC) techniques are employed at the destination’s receiver. The results demonstrated that in the presence of one and two assisting relays, the EGC scheme achieves gains of 1.5 dB and 1.0 dB at the Pw of 10-6 , respectively, compared to the SC arrangement. Furthermore, we demonstrated that for the same coding rate and packet size, the ReS (31, 20) code using EI decoding is capable of outperforming convolutional coding, when 32-FSK modulation is considered, whilst LDPC coding had an edge over the above two schemes
Estimation of Methane and Nitrous Oxide Emission from Animal Feeding Sector in Taiwan During 1990 to 2003
Mellin-Transform-Based Performance Analysis of FFH -ary FSK Using Product Combining for Combatting Partial-Band Noise Jamming
Application of local fractional series expansion method to solve Klein-Gordon equations on cantor sets
We use the local fractional series expansion method to solve the Klein-Gordon equations on Cantor sets within the local fractional derivatives. The analytical solutions within the nondifferential terms are discussed. The obtained results show the simplicity and efficiency of the present technique with application to the problems of the liner differential equations on Cantor sets. © 2014 Ai-Min Yang et al
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