A data model for managing drug therapy within a patient data management system for intensive care units

The major intent of this article was to describe the design principles of the drug-therapy documentation module of the Patient Data Management System (PDMS) ICUData, in routine use at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospital of Giessen, Germany, since February 1999. The new drug management system has been in routine use since March 2000. Until 8 January 2001, 1140 patients have been documented using this approach. It could be demonstrated that it was possible to transform the formerly unstructured text-based documentation into a detailed and structured model. The mediated benefit resulted in the automatic calculation of fluid balance. Further, detailed statistical analyses of therapeutic behavior in drug administration are now possible.     

Factors affecting motion integration

The perceived direction of motion of a featureless contour inside a circular aperture is always perpendicular to the contour's orientation, regardless of its true motion (the aperture problem). This study investigates the circumstances under which unambiguous feature motion (of line terminators, single dots, or truncations of a D6 pattern) in adjacent apertures can alter the perceived direction of such featureless contours. We find that integration mechanisms responsible for motion capture are fairly robust against misorientations and contrast manipulations of individual components, are sensitive to differences in spatial frequencies, and scale with pattern size. Motion capture is not diminished when a D6 profile is substituted for the square-pulse profile of a line and is independent of the visibility of the apertures, indicating that object interpretations and three-dimensional analyses of a scene are less important than has been postulated previously. These results have strong implications for the neuronal hardware underlying the integration of motion signals across space and provide a framework for global motion models.     

Round-Eye: A system for tracking nearest surrounders in moving object environments

This paper presents “Round-Eye”, a system for tracking nearest surrounding objects (or nearest surrounders) in moving object environments. This system provides a platform for surveillance applications. The core part of this system is continuous nearest surrounder (NS) query that maintains views of the nearest objects at distinct angles from query points. This query differs from conventional spatial queries such as range queries and nearest neighbor queries as NS query considers both distance and angular aspects of objects with respect to a query point at the same time. In our system framework, a centralized server is dedicated (1) to collect location updates of both objects and queries, (2) to determine which NS queries are invalidated in presence of object/query location changes and corresponding result changes if any, and (3) to refresh the affected query answers. To enhance the system performance in terms of processing time and network bandwidth consumption, we propose various techniques, namely, safe region, partial query reevaluation, and incremental query result update. Through simulations, we evaluate our system with the proposed techniques over a wide range of settings.     

Experimental Modelling using Low Melting Point Metallic Melts: Relevance for Metallurgical Engineering

This paper describes model experiments with liquid metals of low melting point as an important tool to investigate the flow structure and related transport processes in melt flows being relevant for metallurgical applications. Three examples have been selected to demonstrate the benefit of such experiments, namely the electromagnetic stirring of a metallic melt in a pool, the directional solidification of Al‐Si alloys under the influence of an electromagnetically driven flow and the behaviour of a liquid metal bubble plume if a vertically travelling field is applied. Results of flow measurements are presented and the relevance for metallurgical processes is discussed.     

JavAdaptor—Flexible runtime updates of Java applications

Software is changed frequently during its life cycle. New requirements come, and bugs must be fixed. To update an application, it usually must be stopped, patched, and restarted. This causes time periods of unavailability, which is always a problem for highly available applications. Even for the development of complex applications, restarts to test new program parts can be time consuming and annoying. Thus, we aim at dynamic software updates to update programs at runtime. There is a large body of research on dynamic software updates, but so far, existing approaches have shortcomings either in terms of flexibility or performance. In addition, some of them depend on specific runtime environments and dictate the program's architecture. We present JavAdaptor , the first runtime update approach based on Java that (a) offers flexible dynamic software updates, (b) is platform independent, (c) introduces only minimal performance overhead, and (d) does not dictate the program architecture. JavAdaptor combines schema changing class replacements by class renaming and caller updates with Java HotSwap using containers and proxies. It runs on top of all major standard Java virtual machines. We evaluate our approach's applicability and performance in non‐trivial case studies and compare it with existing dynamic software update approaches. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lean NOx Trap Chemistry Under Lean-Gasoline Exhaust Conditions: Impact of High NOx Concentrations and High Temperature

The primary technical barrier to deployment of fuel saving lean gasoline engines is NOx emissions control. We conducted automated flow reactor experiments on a commercial LNT catalyst to identify opportunities and challenges associated with the higher temperatures and higher NOx concentrations expected in lean gasoline applications. Overall NOx conversion was quite high at low to moderate temperatures, but dropped off at high temperatures. The decrease in NOx conversion with temperature was worse for higher inlet NOx concentrations. As expected from equilibrium considerations, the catalyst stored more NOx under higher gas phase NOx concentrations, but that NOx was rapidly released during the rich phase and slipped out of the catalyst before it could be converted to N₂ by incoming reductant. This rich phase NOx release was the primary factor limiting performance of the catalyst at high temperatures, and resulted in significant spikes of NOx that would likely exceed any not-to-exceed regulated emissions levels. N₂O production was also significant, and increased with NOx concentration. The catalyst made very little NH₃ at high temperatures. NH₃ yield was significant at the lowest operating temperature studied, but it decreased with increasing NOx concentration.     

Managing urban/industrial wood fuel supply and demand in africa

This paper develops a strategy for the continuing and improved supply of woodfuels to urban and industrial consumers in Sub-Sahara Africa. It argues that continued use of these fuels is not only a necessity, but is also in the best economic interest of most of the countries in this region. It shows that intensified and more orderly utilization of woodfuels can help to enhance, rather than impinge upon environmental parameters. Some examples are provided that illustrate how such strategies can be put into practice.