Polymerization of 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate and methacrylate <Emphasis Type="Italic">via</Emphasis> Michael-type addition

Summary 2-Hydroxyethyl acrylate was polymerized by use of few basic andlor nucleophilic initiators. The reactions proceeded via Michael-type addition of hydroxyl groups to carbon-carbon double bonds. The resulted polymers have an ether-ester chain structure and M_n values in order of up to 9000. The results were compared with those obtained previously for 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, where just oligomers having M_n of ca 1000 had been achieved.     

Towards the Identification of New Genes Involved in ABA-Dependent Abiotic Stresses Using Arabidopsis Suppressor Mutants of abh1 Hypersensitivity to ABA during Seed Germination

Abscisic acid plays a pivotal role in the abiotic stress response in plants. Although great progress has been achieved explaining the complexity of the stress and ABA signaling cascade, there are still many questions to answer. Mutants are a valuable tool in the identification of new genes or new alleles of already known genes and in elucidating their role in signaling pathways. We applied a suppressor mutation approach in order to find new components of ABA and abiotic stress signaling in Arabidopsis. Using the abh1 (ABA hypersensitive 1) insertional mutant as a parental line for EMS mutagenesis, we selected several mutants with suppressed hypersensitivity to ABA during seed germination. Here, we present the response to ABA and a wide range of abiotic stresses during the seed germination and young seedling development of two suppressor mutants—soa2 (suppressor of abh1 hypersensitivity to ABA 2) and soa3 (suppressor of abh1 hypersensitivity to ABA 3). Generally, both mutants displayed a suppression of the hypersensitivity of abh1 to ABA, NaCl and mannitol during germination. Both mutants showed a higher level of tolerance than Columbia-0 (Col-0—the parental line of abh1) in high concentrations of glucose. Additionally, soa2 exhibited better root growth than Col-0 in the presence of high ABA concentrations. soa2 and soa3 were drought tolerant and both had about 50% fewer stomata per mm² than the wild-type but the same number as their parental line—abh1. Taking into account that suppressor mutants had the same genetic background as their parental line—abh1, it was necessary to backcross abh1 with Landsberg erecta four times for the map-based cloning approach. Mapping populations, derived from the cross of abh1 in the Landsberg erecta background with each suppressor mutant, were created. Map based cloning in order to identify the suppressor genes is in progress.     

Immigration and Construction: The Makeup of the Workforce in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area

There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States. Of this population, research shows that approximately 19% work in the construction industry, comprising around 14% of all construction workforces. The Washington, D.C. metropolitan region has a unique makeup of workforces within the construction industry. Between September 2006 and February 2007, 896 construction workers from several projects in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area participated in a survey. The study targeted the low-skilled, immigrant-saturated trades in construction. The most compelling finding in this study was that illegal immigrants make up a far greater proportion of the construction workers in low-skilled trades than indicated by national averages, 55% as compared to between 20 and 36% nationally. This will increase the impact of immigration and immigration reform substantially for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan.     

Improving generalization capabilities of dynamic neural networks

This work addresses the problem of improving the generalization capabilities of continuous recurrent neural networks. The learning task is transformed into an optimal control framework in which the weights and the initial network state are treated as unknown controls. A new learning algorithm based on a variational formulation of Pontrayagin's maximum principle is proposed. Under reasonable assumptions, its convergence is discussed. Numerical examples are given that demonstrate an essential improvement of generalization capabilities after the learning process of a dynamic network.     

Selection of minimal tripping times for distance protection using fault trees with time dependencies

Correct coordination between protection relays is an essential requirement to maintain stability and integrity of electrical power systems. Time settings of protection relays have to be adapted to time characteristics of electrical power systems and time settings of other protections. In the paper, fault trees with time dependencies (FTTD) are used for selecting time delay settings of remote back-up distance protections. In FTTD, events and gates are characterized by time parameters, which are derived from time characteristics of protection devices and the inherent delays of protection equipment. Two case studies are presented. First, the coordination of protections for the simple transmission line composed of two identical sections is studied. Next, the transmission line that contains two sections of different lengths and transformer between them is analyzed. In both cases, formulae for time delays of protections are derived. According to calculations executed for the first case, our method gives time delays that often are significantly smaller than values suggested by generally recommended and accepted rules.     

A framework for developing measurement systems and its industrial evaluation

As in every engineering discipline, metrics play an important role in software development, with the difference that almost all software projects need the customization of metrics used. In other engineering disciplines, the notion of a measurement system (i.e. a tool used to collect, calculate, and report quantitative data) is well known and defined, whereas it is not as widely used in software engineering. In this paper we present a framework for developing custom measurement systems and its industrial evaluation in a software development unit within Ericsson. The results include the framework for designing measurement systems and its evaluation in real life projects at the company. The results show that with the help of ISO/IEC standards, measurement systems can be effectively used in software industry and that the presented framework improves the way of working with metrics. This paper contributes with the presentation of how automation of metrics collection and processing can be successfully introduced into a large organization and shows the benefits of it: increased efficiency of metrics collection, increased adoption of metrics in the organization, independence from individuals and standardized nomenclature for metrics in the organization.     

Predicting weekly defect inflow in large software projects based on project planning and test status

Defects discovered during the testing phase in software projects need to be removed before the software is shipped to the customers. The removal of defects can constitute a significant amount of effort in a project and project managers are faced with a decision whether to continue development or shift some resources to cope with defect removal. The goal of this research is to improve the practice of project management by providing a method for predicting the number of defects reported into the defect database in the project. In this paper we present a method for predicting the number of defects reported into the defect database in a large software project on a weekly basis. The method is based on using project progress data, in particular the information about the test progress, to predict defect inflow in the next three coming weeks. The results show that the prediction accuracy of our models is up to 72% (mean magnitude of relative error for predictions of 1 week in advance is 28%) when used in ongoing large software projects. The method is intended to support project managers in more accurate adjusting resources in the project, since they are notified in advance about the potentially large effort needed to correct defects.     

Large-scale multimedia content delivery over optical networks for interactive TV services

iTVP is a system built for delivery of live TV programming, video-on-demand and audio-on-demand with interactive access over IP networks. It has a nationwide range and is designed to provide service to a high number of concurrent users. Hence, scalability is one of the most important issues. In this paper we described how scalability is achieved in a two-level hierarchical architecture of the delivery system. We present the principles of content caching mechanisms and the management of the resulting distributed content repository. The system is implemented and currently operates in a test installation. Although the range of the test system operations is limited, as far as the number of users and the size of the content repository is concerned, the experience gained with iTVP so far provides an insight into the expected prototype performance. We present a system performance evaluation and describe the experience gained during the iGrid demonstration.     

Reducts of propositional theories,satisfiability relations,and generalizations of semantics of logic programs

Over the years, the stable-model semantics has gained a position of the correct (two-valued) interpretation of default negation in programs. However, for programs with aggregates (constraints), the stable-model semantics, in its broadly accepted generalization stemming from the work by Pearce, Ferraris and Lifschitz, has a competitor: the semantics proposed by Faber, Leone and Pfeifer, which seems to be essentially different. Our goal is to explain the relationship between the two semantics. Pearce, Ferraris and Lifschitz's extension of the stable-model semantics is best viewed in the setting of arbitrary propositional theories. We propose here an extension of the Faber–Leone–Pfeifer semantics, or FLP semantics, for short, to the full propositional language, which reveals both common threads and differences between the FLP and stable-model semantics. We use our characterizations of FLP-stable models to derive corresponding results on strong equivalence and on normal forms of theories under the FLP semantics. We apply a similar approach to define supported models for arbitrary propositional theories, and to study their properties.     

ACTNET: End-to-End Learning of Feature Activations and Multi-stream Aggregation for Effective Instance Image Retrieval

International Journal of Computer Vision - We propose a novel CNN architecture called ACTNET for robust instance image retrieval from large-scale datasets. Our key innovation is a learnable...