Patterns of psoriatic arthritis in Orientals

OBJECTIVE: To determine the clinical features of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in a multiethnic Oriental population and to study the effect of ethnicity on disease patterns. METHODS: A retrospective study of 80 patients with PsA seen at either a rheumatology or dermatology referral center. Patients and case records were reviewed and data abstracted according to a standard protocol. Eighty consecutive patients with psoriasis without PsA seen at the dermatology center were recruited as controls. RESULTS: Asymmetric polyarthritis developing in the 4th decade with an equal male to female ratio was the commonest pattern of arthritis among Chinese, Indians, and Malays. Clinically apparent lumbar spondylitis was significantly more common in Indians than Chinese (10/11 vs 11/20, respectively; p = 0.046), although the prevalence of lumbar spondylitis was similar in all ethnic groups. Eighty-nine percent of subjects required nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and 51% required disease modifying antirheumatic drugs at some time for control of joint disease. PsA was significantly more common among Indians compared to the ethnic distribution of the Singapore population (p < 0.000001). Multiple logistic regression identified Indian ethnicity as a risk factor for the development of PsA (OR 2.39, 95% confidence interval 1.02 to 5.60). CONCLUSION: The commonest pattern of PsA in all ethnic groups was asymmetric polyarthritis. Ethnicity affected the development and presentation of PsA in our series: Indians with psoriasis had double the risk of developing PsA compared to Chinese with psoriasis, and lumbar spondylitis when present in Chinese subjects was asymptomatic in 45%, being detectable only on radiological examination.     

Optimization and evaluation of reduced graphene oxide hydrogel composite as a demulsifier for heavy crude oil-in-water emulsion

The rising production of produced water from oilfields had been proven to bring detrimental environmental effects. In this study, an efficient, recyclable, and environmental-friendly reduced graphene oxide immobilized κ-Carrageenan hydrogel composite(κCa GO) was fabricated as an alternative sorbent for crude oil-in-water demulsification. Polyethyleneimine(PEI) was employed to form a stable hydrogel composite. The conditions for the immobilization of graphene oxide(GO) on PEI-modified κ-Carrageenan(κC) beads were optimized appropriately. An immobilization yield of 77% was attained at 2% PEI, 2 h immobilization activation time, and p H6.5. Moreover, the synthesized κCa GO is capable of demulsification with an average demulsification efficiency of 70%. It was found that the demulsification efficiency increases with salinity and κCa GO dosage, and it deteriorates under alkaline condition. These phenomena can be attributed to the interfacial interactions between κCa GO and the emulsion. Furthermore, the κCa GO can be recycled to use for up to six cycles without significant leaching and degradation. As such, the synthesized κCa GO could be further developed as a potential sorbent substitute for the separation of crude oil from produced water.     

A multilayered Pauli tracking architecture for lattice surgery-based logical qubits

In quantum computing, the use of Pauli frames through software traces of classical computers improves computation efficiency. In previous studies, error correction and Pauli operation tracking have been performed simultaneously using integrated Pauli frames in the physical layer. In such a complex processing structure, the number of simultaneous operations processed in the physical layer exponentially increases as the distance of the surface code encoding logical qubit increases. This study proposes a Pauli frame management architecture partitioned into two layers for a lattice surgery-based surface code and describes its structure and operation rules. To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we generated a random circuit according to the gate ratios constituting the commonly known quantum circuits and compared the generated circuit with the existing Pauli frame and our method. Simulations show a decrease of about 5% over traditional methods. In the case of experiments that only increase the code distance of the logical qubit, it can be seen that the effect of reducing the physical operation through the logical Pauli frame becomes more important.     

梧州市河东区防洪堤总体布置方案初探

介绍了梧州市河东区堤防规模、功能，堤绒布置原则、堤线方案和相应的总体布置以及防洪堤的建筑设计，并从建堤后防洪堤对桂江、浔江、西江行洪的影响，堤防工程投资及效益、环境影响等方面对防洪堤总体布置方案进行探讨．     

工程监理的责任风险调查与分析

在大量问卷调查的基础上,采用风险重要性评分方法识别出10项和国家法律法规、政府执法效果和工程监理自身水平相关的主要责任风险,对主要责任风险产生的原因进行了深入探讨和分析,可供相关政府部门、行业协会及监理行业参考和借鉴.     

Composite beam composed of steel and precast concrete (Modularized Hybrid System,MHS). Part I: experimental investigation

An experimental investigation of composite beams composed of wide flange steel and precast concrete is presented. The bottom flange of the steel section is encased in precast concrete. Utilizing the merits of both steel and concrete material, the size of the steel beams can be reduced without sacrificing performance. The bottom flange of the steel beam is reinforced with concrete at a manufacturing plant, eliminating the use of temporary pour forms. The composite beams were tested to investigate how the size of the wide flange steel and how the top and bottom reinforcements influence the behaviour of the beams. Flexural load carrying capacity, load displacement relationships and failure modes were examined. The test specimens were T‐shaped composite beams with slabs, each measuring 10‐m long. The flexural moment strength of all of the composite beams—at both the yield limit state and the maximum load limit state—was measured and compared with the analytical flexural capacity. The stiffness degradation, ductility and dissipating energy capabilities of the composite beams were investigated based on the hysteresis curves. The composite beams tested in this study successfully reduced both the floor height of the building and the size of the steel beams needed to meet code requirements. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generalized squirming motion of a sphere

A number of swimming microorganisms, such as ciliates (Opalina) and multicellular colonies of flagellates (Volvox), are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering their surfaces. Their physical actuation on the fluid may be mathematically modeled as the generation of surface velocities on a continuous spherical surface—a model known in the literature as squirming, which has been used to address various aspects of the biological physics of locomotion. Previous analyses of squirming assumed axisymmetric fluid motion and hence required all swimming kinematics to take place along a line. In this paper we generalize squirming to three spatial dimensions. We derive analytically the flow field surrounding a spherical squirmer with arbitrary surface motion and use it to derive its three-dimensional translational and rotational swimming kinematics. We then use our results to physically interpret the flow field induced by the swimmer in terms of fundamental flow singularities up to terms decaying spatially as \({\sim } 1/r^3\) . Our results will make it possible to develop new models in biological physics, in particular in the area of hydrodynamic interactions and collective locomotion.     

Spectral analysis of the Crab Pulsar and Nebula with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

The Crab Pulsar is a relatively young neutron star. The Pulsar is the central star in the Crab Nebula, a remnant of the supernova SN 1054, which was observed on Earth in the year 1054. The Crab Pulsar has been extensively observed in the gamma-ray energy band by the Large Area Telescope (LAT), the main instrument onboard the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, during its first months of data taking. The LAT data have been used to reconstruct the fluxes and the energy spectra of the pulsed gamma-ray component and of the gamma-rays from the Nebula. The results on the pulsed component are in good agreement with the previous measurement from EGRET, while the results on the Nebula are consistent with the observations from Earth based telescopes.     

Dynamical cognitive network - an extension of fuzzy cognitive map

We present the dynamic cognitive network (DCN) which is an extension of the fuzzy cognitive map (FCM). Each concept in the DCNs can have its own value set, depending on how precisely it needs to be described in the network. This enables the DCN to describe the strength of causes and the degree of effects that are crucial to conducting meaningful inferences. The arcs in the DCN define dynamic, causal relationships between concepts. Structurally, DNCs are scalable and more flexible as compared to FCMs. A DCN can be as simple as a cognitive map and FCM, or as complex as a nonlinear dynamic system. To demonstrate the potential applications of DCNs, we present some simulation results. This paper represents our first attempt to develop a dynamic fuzzy inference system using causal relationships. There are many interesting and challenging theoretical and practical issues in DCNs open to further research     

Audio signal separation via a combination procedure of time-reversal and deconvolution process

Time-reversal method (TRM) is based on principle of reciprocity of sound by propagating of a reversal signal in time series to compensate distortion due to path effect in propagation and to focus the signal at the original source location. In recent years, the technique has been applied in optics, ultrasound and underwater acoustic communication. In the present study, a procedure for audio signal separation is developed by applying time-reversal and deconvolution process. The procedure separates sources from audio signal in time domain. The advantages of this procedure are to separate a specific source from a combination signal of multiple sources and to reduce reverberation effectively. Finally, a deconvolution process of finding impulse response function (IRF) is developed where single value decomposition (SVD) and Tikhonov regularization process are used to solve ill-conditioned and singular linear systems. In addition, the effect of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and number of array sensors are discussed in details.