Priority-based scheduling of mixed-critical jobs

Real-Time Systems - Modern real-time systems tend to be mixed-critical, in the sense that they integrate on the same computational platform applications at different levels of criticality...     

Acute poisoning with pesticides in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

Exposure to pesticides has been the source of many acute and chronic health problems in the rural population, mainly in developing countries. The objective of this study was to characterize the poisonings from acute exposure to agricultural pesticides used in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, from 1992 to 2002, which were reported to the Integrated Center of Toxicological Vigilance of the State Health Department. A total of 1355 involuntary (accidental or occupational) and voluntary (intentional self-poisoning) cases were reported during the period of the study. The majority of the poisonings occurred with men ranging in age from 15 to 49 years of age (55.1%). One hundred seventy-six poisonings lead to death, with a case fatality rate (CFR) three times higher than the average Brazilian CFR. The pesticide poisoning rates, per 100,000 inhabitants living in rural areas, ranged from 25 to 65.7 during the period of the study. In 2000, the micro-region of Campo Grande, where the state capital is located, had the highest rate, with 100.5 exposure/100,000 inhabitants, followed by Dourados, the larger agricultural region of the state. Insecticides were involved in 75.7% of the poisoning cases, followed by herbicides, with 12.2% of the cases. The anticholinestherase insecticides methamidophos, carbofuran and monochrotophos were the primary pesticides involved in the poisonings. The insecticide dimethoate was associated with the highest CFR (30.8%). The high rates of pesticide poisoning in the rural populations of certain regions of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul indicate the need for a more detailed study concerning the risk of pesticide poisoning among these populations.     

Rapid depletion of marbofloxacin residues in rabbit after therapeutic treatment

Although rabbit meat production represents a very small percentage of the world meat market, this percentage has been growing continuously during the last 30 years. Rabbit is considered a minor food species, and therefore no drugs are specifically registered for this animal. This situation encourages rabbit farmers to make off-label use of antibacterial drugs authorized for food-producing animal species other than rabbits. In the present study, the distribution and elimination of the fluoroquinolone antibacterial agent marbofloxacin in rabbit muscle, liver, and kidney was investigated. Marbofloxacin was chosen as a representative of a new generation of antibacterial drugs active against most gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and mycoplasms; it is well tolerated and has short elimination times in bovine and swine species. Rabbits were treated with marbofloxacin at 2 mg kg of body weight(-1) for 5 days. Residual concentrations in liver, kidney, and muscle tissues were determined posttreatment with high-performance liquid chromatography and fluorescence detection. Marbofloxacin was rapidly distributed and eliminated from rabbit tissues. Concentrations were higher in the liver and kidney than in muscle. However, 48 h after the end of treatment, marbofloxacin concentrations dropped below the maximum residue level fixed for this antibacterial drug in cattle and pigs. Considering the efficacy of marbofloxacin for the treatment of the most common rabbit diseases, its tolerability, and its short elimination time as verified in the present study, use of this antibacterial drug could be extended to therapeutic treatment of rabbits.     

Investigation of Flow Distribution in Microchannels Heat Sinks

The thermal efficiency of microchannel-based heat sinks relies on uniform fluid flow distribution between channels. Maldistribution, whether caused by poor manifold design or blockage of individual microchannels, can lead to hotspots and consequent thermal damage. This work considers design of manifolds for even flow distribution and the effect of channel blockage on the flow. An approximate model was used to evaluate the effect of manifold geometry on the flow distribution, and the results were compared with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Various parameters, which influence the flow distribution such as the shape of distributing and collecting manifolds and position of inlet and outlet holes, have been studied for different inlet flow rates. The effect of channel blockage on flow distribution and pressure drop has been investigated. It was found that good agreement between results of the approximate model and results of CFD simulations are shown only for low Reynolds numbers. Results obtained by approximate model and CFD simulations were used to assist design of manifolds for uniform flow distribution between microchannels.     

Development and Validation of a Method for the Determination of Quinolones in Muscle and Eggs by Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

In this study, the development and validation of a multiresidue method for the detection of 11 quinolones (marbofloxacin, norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, danofloxacin, lomefloxacin, enrofloxacin, sarafloxacin, difloxacin, oxolinic acid, nalidixic acid, flumequine) in muscle and eggs were reported. The method involved an extraction with a methanol/metaphosphoric acid mixture and a clean up by Oasis hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) cartridge. The validation was performed according to the Commission Decision 2002/657/EC. Linearity, specificity, decision limit (CCα), detection capability (CCβ), recovery, precision (repeatability and within-laboratory reproducibility), and ruggedness were determined. Depending on the analytes, CCα and CCβ ranged from 113 to 234 μg/kg and from 126 to 282 μg/kg in muscle samples, whereas in eggs, these parameters were between 5.6 and 7.4 μg/kg and between 6.1 and 9.8 μg/kg, respectively. In both the examined matrices, the recovery values were always higher than 90 % and precision, calculated as relative standard deviation, was equal to or lower than 16 % for repeatability and 23 % for within-laboratory reproducibility. The described method can be considered adequate for the simultaneous determination and quantification of quinolones in the tested food matrices.     

Fast parallel polynomial division via reduction to triangular toeplitz matrix inversion and to polynomial inversion modulo a power

It is known that division with a remainder of two polynomials of degree at most s can be performed over an arbitrary field F of constants using uniform arithmetic and Boolean circuits of depth O(log s log log s) and polynomial size. A new algorithm is presented that yields those bounds via reduction to triangular Toeplitz matrix inversion and to polynomial inversion modulo a power. (If|F| > (s?1)² or if P-uniform computation is allowed, then the depth can be reduced to O(log s).) This approach is new and makes the result conceptually simpler.     

Robotics for medical applications

The authors review the most important past and ongoing research projects in macro-robotics, micro-robotics and bio-robotics, three general areas of robotics which have the potential to provide significant improvements to the state of the art of medical technology. A brief analysis of the economic potentialities of robotics in medicine is also provided     

Light source position calibration method for photometric stereo in capsule endoscopy

ABSTRACT

For photometric stereo in capsule endoscopy, calibration of light source is crucial for improving the precision of surface normal estimation. Therefore, this paper presents an improved planar-mirror-based light source position calibration method: from captured images of light source and detected poses of planar mirror, light paths are retraced from camera to light source, and position of light source is triangulated with least square method. The contribution of this paper is that a refraction model of the planar mirror is employed in the retracement of light paths, thus the bias of light paths caused by refraction can be compensated and the position of light source can be estimated more precisely. The results of simulation and experiment show that the proposed method provides higher calibration accuracy than the current planar mirror-based calibration method and can improve the precision of subsequent photometric stereo-based 3D reconstruction.     

Diffractive optical element based sensor for roughness measurement

A roughness sensing system, based on the fringe projection technique, is introduced. Roughness parameters are estimated from the fringe pattern projected on the target. The system employs a new projection unit in which light, coming from a laser diode, is coupled to a fiber optic and then impinges on a diffractive optical element (DOE) to produce sinusoidal fringes. The proposed sensor is simple, small and cheap and its sensitivity is easily adjustable. Fringes generated by the DOE are analyzed by a fast fourier transform (FFT) based algorithm, which can work also on curved surfaces.

Experimental results, obtained on varying spark erosion surface roughness standards, showed the capability of the system to perform roughness measurements with a resolution of about 0.5 μm.