Identification of spherical virus particles in digitized images of entire electron micrographs

Interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) has the most potent immunomodulatory activity of all the interferons. This phase II-B study was performed to define time- and dose-dependent immunomodulatory effects mediated by IFN-gamma in a subset of patients with melanoma treated in the dose-seeking therapeutic trial conducted by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group E4687 (13). The effects of IFN-gamma (Genentech, San Francisco, CA) were evaluated for phenotype and function of peripheral blood lymphocytes obtained twice prestudy, and on days 2, 9, and 29 of IFN-gamma therapy for 50 patients. Early significant increases in CD4/CD8 ratio (p = 0.001) were noted, largely due to a rise in CD4+ and fall in CD8+ T-cell populations sustained through day 29 at only the lowest dosage. Increased natural killer cell (NK) activity (p = 0.001 on day 9; p = 0.01 on day 29) was accompanied by durable increases in circulating activated NK cells (CD56+DR+% p = 0.001, day 9; p = 0.001, day 29). After initial depression of CD56+ and CD16+ cells on day 2, the total percent of CD56+ and CD16+ cells increased significantly by day 29. Increases in NK cell activity were maximal at doses > or =0.1 mg. Monocyte CD14+ expression of DQ+ rose early (p = 0.011 and 0.001 on days 2 and 9), accompanied by elevation in CD14+DR+ cells that was less significant. Immunomodulatory effects of IFN-gamma reported in this trial have major implications for interpretation of past and current clinical trials, and the design of future trials. This is the first trial in which IFN-gamma has been shown to have significant effects on the T-cell compartment of the immune system.     

Enzymatic degradation of thermoresponsive poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) grafted to carboxymethylcellulose copolymers

The enzymatic degradation of poly(N‐isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) grafted to carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) copolymers with a cellulasic preparation (Trichoderma viride) was studied. The enzymatic activity of the cellulasic preparation against CMC and the grafted copolymers was determined by the Petterson–Porath method, while their reduced viscosity variation in the presence of the same preparation was also followed. It has been shown that the enzymatic degradation behavior depends on the copolymer composition and the reaction temperature. Reducing sugars analysis showed that the experimental values for the grafted copolymers were higher than the calculated ones. At 50°C, the enzymatic reaction is completed in about 20 min for the copolymers, whereas for CMC it takes more than 40 min. It can be concluded that their enzymatic degradation is facilitated by the presence of the PNIPAM grafts. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 87: 1383–1386, 2003     

Robust grid‐oriented control of high voltage DC links embedded in an AC transmission system

Several studies have shown that the way to design controllers for the high‐voltage direct current (HVDC) links impacts the transient behavior of the electric system in which the latter are inserted. This can be exploited to improve the performances of the stability of the power system. In this paper, a robust multivariable control design for the converters of an HVDC link is proposed. It is based on the coordination of the control actions of the HVDC converters and the use of a control model. The latter takes into consideration, in addition to the dynamics that mostly impact the stability of the neighbor zone of the HVDC link, several cases of faulted situations modeled as uncertainties. An H_∞ controller allowed us to achieve robustness against such uncertainties. The new controller is tested in comparison with the standard vector control and an optimal linear quadratic controller using the EUROSTAG simulation software (Tractebel Engineering, Brussels, Belgium and Réseau de Transport d'Electricité (RTE) ‐ France) on both academic and realistic large‐scale power systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating the impact of AND/OR search on 0-1 integer linear programming

AND/OR search spaces accommodate advanced algorithmic schemes for graphical models which can exploit the structure of the model. We extend and evaluate the depth-first and best-first AND/OR search algorithms to solving 0-1 Integer Linear Programs (0-1 ILP) within this framework. We also include a class of dynamic variable ordering heuristics while exploring an AND/OR search tree for 0-1 ILPs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these search algorithms on a variety of benchmarks, including real-world combinatorial auctions, random uncapacitated warehouse location problems and MAX-SAT instances.     

Analytische Berechnung magnetischer Konfigurationen mit starr magnetisierten Permanentmagneten und begrenzt permeablem Eisen

Übersicht Bei der analytischen Behandlung der Magnetfelder von Dauermagneten in Anwesenheit von ferromagnetischen Stoffen wird üblicherweise angenommen, daß die relative Permeabilität der Eisenteile unendlich groß ist. Sind Magnetwerkstoffe mit geringer Permeabilität oder gesättigte Eisenteile im Magnetsystem enthalten, lassen sich bei Anwendung solcher vereinfachter Rechenmodelle u. U. erhebliche Fehler bei der Bestimmung der Feldgrößen und vor allem der Magnetkräfte nicht vermeiden. Für zwei in der Praxis oft vorkommende Magnetkonfigurationen mit starren Dauermagneten und begrenzt permeablem Eisen wird eine analytisch exakte Lösung des Randwertproblems angegeben und die Abhängigkeit der Magnetfeldgrößen von verschiedenen Parametern untersucht. Es wird außerdem ein einfaches magnetladungsmodell aufgestellt, das zur bequemen Behandlung komplizierterer Magnetsysteme angewendet werden kann.

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Analytical calculation of magnetic configurations with rigid permanent magnets and iron with low permeability

Contents For the analytic solution of magnetic field problems with permanent magnets and ferromagnetic materials one usually assumes and infinite realtive permeability of the iron parts. In case magnetic materials with a low permeability or saturated iron parts are contained in the configuration, the application of such simplified models may result in significant errors when calculating the field variables and particularly the magnetic forces. For two magnetic configurations of the above type being frequently met in reality an exact analytic solution of the bounj dary problem is derived and the influence of different parameters on the magnetic field variables assessed. Furthermore, a simple magnetic charge model is constructed, wich can easily be used to analyse more complex magnetic configurations.

     

Robustness and coordination in voltage control of large-scale power systems

In this paper it is shown how the robustness and the coordination of the voltage regulation actions for the transmission grid can be improved. Simpler approaches which ensure higher robustness and performances can be used if the control objectives are pursued at two hierarchical levels of different nature. Also, this is a way to coordinate means of control of different nature with a sufficient time and methodological separation in order to avoid negative mutual influence. At the first level, called the static level, optimal reachable set-points are computed for the second control level, called the dynamic level. The static level can be combined with the shunt reactive power compensation. The system non-linearities are taken into account at the static level while the dynamic level is a linear robust predictive control which takes into account the presence of asynchronous transmission delays. The predictive control strategy is based on the separation property; the output delays are handled using an original steady-state Kalman predictor of order equal to the length of the state of the system without delays. The robustness is improved at the dynamic level against uncertain delays, parametric uncertainties (like, e.g., moderate topological errors and load variations not taken into account in the control model) and unmodelled dynamics. The two-level organisation of the control allows, on one hand, to take into account the important evolutions of the system (like, e.g., large and known topological and load changes) and, on the other hand, a coherent hybrid reactive power control: the switched control of the grid shunt compensation for the reactive power is done at the static level while the reactive power injection provided by the generators is continuously handled at the dynamic level. This is a theoretical analysis of how concepts of automatic control and voltage regulation of power systems can be combined. To be applied as a control scheme, the results presented here should be adapted to a specific context (particularities of the power system and of the organisation of the power industry). They can be used, eventually in conjunction with other improvements, to existing horizontally-organised interconnections (in which all generators of a controlled region can be easily managed since owned by the same utility) or to face specific requirements of moving to the open access in the electric power industry like, e.g., tolerating simplified models in order to cover larger regions, taking into account the interaction between regions, recalibrating set-points, assisting human operator when necessary or facilitating implementation of mechanisms for the management of the reactive power based on price signals.     

Models and algorithms for coscheduling compute-intensive taks on a network of workstations

The problem of using the idle cycles of a number of high performance workstations, interconnected by a high speed network, for solving computationally intensive tasks is discussed. The classes of distributed applications examined require some form of synchronization among the subtasks, hence the need for coscheduling to guarantee that subtasks start at the same time and execute at the same pace on a group of workstations. A model of the system is presented that allows the definition of an objective function to be maximized. Then a quadratic time and linear space algorithm is derived for computing the optimal coschedule, for the given model and class of applications addressed.