Performance evaluation of semantic registries: OWLJessKB and instanceStore

Service discovery is a critical task in distributed computing architectures for finding a particular service instance. Semantic annotations of services help to enrich the service discovery process. Semantic registries are an important component for the discovery of services and they allow for semantic interoperability through ontology-based query formulation and dynamic mapping of terminologies between system domains. This paper evaluates two semantic registries—OWLJessKB implementation and instanceStore—to determine the suitability of these with regards to the query response time and the overall scalability for use in mathematical services. Mathematical ontologies from the MONET project are used to undertake comparison. The results demonstrate that the performance of registries may be compared across two axes: (1) time to initialize (i.e. time to load an initial ontology into memory); (2) time to query (i.e. time to reason with an ontology loaded into memory).     

Development and applications of surface-activated chemical ionization

This review regards the recently developed ionization source named surface-activated chemical ionization (SACI) that employs an interaction with a surface placed at low voltage for the activation of the ionization of sample molecules to increase the sensitivity in the analysis of various compounds of biological and clinical interest. These results are due to the strong chemical noise decrease and the increase of ionization efficiency. This ionization source has been employed for the analysis of various compounds of different molecular mass and polarity (addicted and pharmaceutical drugs, amino acids, steroids, peptides, and proteins). The SACI development theoretical mechanism, benefits, disadvantages, applications, and future developments are reported and discussed.     

A semiotic engineering approach to user interface design

Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. By presenting some of the results we have reached with semiotic engineering over the last few years, we suggest that the main contributions of semiotic theory in supporting HCI design are: to provide designers with new perceptions on the process and product of HCI design; to bind together all the stages of software development and use, giving them a unique homogeneous treatment; and to pose innovative questions that extend the frontiers of HCI investigations.     

Syntax-driven Behavior Partitioning for Model-checking of Esterel Programs

We consider the issue of exploiting the structural form of Esterel programs to partition the algorithmic RSS (reachable state space) fix-point construction used in model-checking techniques. The basic idea sounds utterly simple, as seen on the case of sequential composition: in P; Q, first compute entirely the states reached in P, and then only carry on to Q, each time using only the relevant transition relation part. Here a brute-force symbolic breadth-first search would have mixed the exploration of P and Q instead, in case P had different behaviors of various lengths, and that would result in irregular BBD representation of temporary state spaces, a major cause of complexity in symbolic model-checking.Difficulties appear in our decomposition approach when scheduling the different transition parts in presence of parallelism and local signal exchanges. Program blocks (or “Macro-states”) put in parallel can be synchronized in various ways, due to dynamic behaviors, and considering all possibilities may lead to an excessive division complexity. The goal is here to find a satisfactory trade-off between compositional and global approaches. Concretely we use some of the features of the TiGeR BDD library, and heuristic orderings between internal signals, to have the transition relation progress through the program behaviors to get the same effect as a global RSS computation, but with much more localized transition applications. We provide concrete benchmarks showing the usefulness of the approach.     

Treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. 30 years' experience at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

BACKGROUND: Therapy for childhood lymphoblastic leukemia has evolved during the past three decades, but key questions about what are the least toxic, most effective forms of treatment remain unanswered because of the lack of comprehensive follow-up information. METHODS: To assess long-term outcome in the series of clinical trials conducted at St. Jude Hospital, we compared the results of treatment typical of four eras: exploratory combination chemotherapy (era 1, 1962 to 1966; 91 patients), regimens for the control of meningeal leukemia (era 2, 1967 to 1979; 825 patients), limited intensification of therapy (era 3, 1979 to 1983; 428 patients), and extended intensification of therapy (era 4, 1984 to 1988; 358 patients). ("Intensification" refers to strategies of systemic chemotherapy that are more aggressive than conventional ones.) The major end points were survival and event-free survival; we also calculated the relative risk of treatment failure and the rate of relapse or death after treatment ended (post-treatment failure rate). RESULTS: The probability of event-free survival improved significantly in each successive era (P < 0.001 by the log-rank test), reaching 71 percent in era 4. There was a decrease of approximately 50 percent in the risk of treatment failure from one era to the next in each subgroup of patients defined according to different combinations of the leukocyte count, race, age, and sex. Leukemia appeared to be eradicated in patients who remained in complete remission for three years or more after treatment in era 4. The incidence of death due to nonleukemic causes remained 4 to 6 percent despite the trend toward more intensive treatment. An estimated 765 patients (45 percent) are long-term survivors; most of them (80 percent) have no health problems related to leukemia or its treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The development and successful application of preventive therapy for meningeal leukemia, followed by the intensification of systemic chemotherapy, has progressively improved the rate of cure of childhood lymphoblastic leukemia, with relatively few adverse sequelae.     

Resource-Bounded Measure and Learnability

We consider the resource-bounded measure of polynomial-time learnable subclasses of polynomial-size circuits. We show that if EXP ≠ MA, then every PAC-learnable subclass of P/poly has EXP-measure zero. We introduce a nonuniformly computable variant of resource-bounded measure and show that, for every fixed polynomial q , any polynomial-time learnable subclass of circuits of size q has measure zero with respect to P/poly. We relate our results to the question of whether the class of Boolean circuits is polynomial-time learnable. Received July 15, 1998, and in final form September 9, 1999.     

Multi-product economic lot scheduling problem with manufacturing and remanufacturing using a basic period policy

In this research we study the multi-product Economic Lot Scheduling Problem (ELSP) with manufacturing and remanufacturing opportunities. Manufacturing and remanufacturing operations are performed on the same production line. Both manufactured and remanufactured products have the same quality thus they fulfil the same demand stream. Tang and Teunter (2006) firstly studied this type of Economic Lot Scheduling Problem with Returns (ELSPR) and presented a complex algorithm for the optimal solution. More recently Teunter, Tang, and Kaparis (2009) proposed several heuristics to deal with the same problem using more computational efficient approaches. However, both studies have limited the attention to the common cycle policy with the assumption that a single (re)manufacturing lot is used for each item in each cycle. Relaxing the constraint of common cycle time and a single (re)manufacturing lot for each item in each cycle, we propose a simple, easy to implement algorithm, based on Segerstedt (1999), to solve the model using a basic period policy. Several numerical examples show the applicability of the algorithm and the cost savings.     

Is cheating a human function? The roles of presence,state hostility,and enjoyment in an unfair video game

In sports and board games, when an opponent cheats, the other players typically greet it with disdain, anger, and disengagement. However, work has yet to fully address the role of the computer cheating in video games. In this study, participants played either a cheating or a non-cheating version of a modified open-source tower-defense game. Results indicate that when a computer competitor cheats, players perceive the opponent as being more human. Cheating also increases player aggravation and presence, but does not affect enjoyment of the experience. Additionally, players that firmly believed that their opponent was controlled by the computer exhibited significantly less state hostility compared to players that were less certain of the nature of their competitor. Game designers can integrate subtle levels of cheating into computer opponents without any real negative responses from the players. The results indicate that minor levels of cheating might also increase player engagement with video games.     

Fine structure of the male accessory glands of Triatoma rubrofasciata (De Geer, 1773) (Hemiptera, Triatominae)

Male of Triatoma rubrofasciata has four elongated sac-like reproductive mesodermic accessory glands, lined by an inner single layer of secretory cells, with basal plasma membrane infolds and short apical microvilli, and externally enveloped by a thin visceral muscle layer. The secretory cells have a well-developed rough endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi complex, mitochondria, and secretory granules. In one day old adult the gland cells are poorly developed, presenting small, electron-transparent secretory granules scattered among the rough endoplasmatic reticulum, whereas in three days old adult these cells have the cisternae of the rough endoplasmatic reticulum varing size degree, filled with granular electrondense content. In five days old males the secretory granules increase in diameter, being released to the gland lumen. Therefore, there is an increase of the secretory activity according to male maturation.     

Intra- and interspecific mineral composition variability of commercial instant coffees and coffee substitutes: Contribution to mineral intake

The present paper reports the amount and estimated daily mineral intake of nine elements (Ca, Mg, K, Na, P, Fe, Mn, Cr and Ni) in commercial instant coffees and coffee substitutes (n = 49). Elements were quantified by high-resolution continuum source flame (HR-CS-FAAS) and graphite furnace (HR-CS-GFAAS) atomic absorption spectrometry, while phosphorous was evaluated by a standard vanadomolybdophosphoric acid colorimetric method.Instant coffees and coffee substitutes are rich in K, Mg and P (>100 mg/100 g dw), contain Na, Ca and Fe in moderate amounts (>1 mg/100 g), and trace levels of Cr and Ni. Among the samples analysed, plain instant coffees are richer in minerals (p < 0.001), except for Na and Cr. Blends of coffee substitutes (barley, malt, chicory and rye) with coffee (20–66%) present intermediate amounts, while lower quantities are found in substitutes without coffee, particularly in barley.From a nutritional point of view the results indicate that the mean ingestion of two instant beverages per day (total of 4 g instant powder), either with or without coffee, cannot be regarded as important sources of minerals to the human diet, although providing a supplementation of some minerals, particularly Mg and Mn in instant coffees. Additionally, and for authentication purposes, the correlations observed between some elements and the coffee percentage in the blends, with particular significance for Mg amounts, provides a potential tool for the estimation of coffee in substitute blends.