Shapes of Submerged Funicular Arches

In this paper, the analytical forms of the shapes of submerged funicular arches are expressed in terms of elliptic integrals. The initial radius of curvature at the apex is related to the water depth at the apex and the axial compressive force. The shape of the submerged funicular arches depends on the ratio between this initial radius of curvature and the water depth at the apex. Using the analytical expressions, the maximum span and height of the submerged funicular arches can be determined explicitly. Besides, the analytical expressions are useful in determining the design parameters for the submerged funicular arches accurately.     

Small bowel transplantation: current progress and clinical application

Total parenteral nutrition (TPN) is used routinely to maintain patients with the Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS). Until recently, TPN has been the only available therapeutic modality for patients with SBS. Currently, it is the treatment of choice for such individuals and occasionally, when the loss of bowel is extensive, it may be the only way of maintaining life. Unfortunately, TPN is expensive and markedly restrains an individual's lifestyle. Despite the overall success of TPN, the numerous risks associated with its use and the many complications of having an intravenous indwelling for years have served as the stimulus for alternative treatments such as small bowel transplantation (SBT). The first attempts at small bowel transplantation in clinical medicine were by Detterling almost 25 years ago. Patient death or graft loss in these early attempts was caused by the failure to control graft rejection and/or the inability to prevent Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). A stimulus for renewed clinical interest in SBT was provided by Starzl et al in 1988 with a report of prolonged graft survival without graft rejection or GVHD in a patient who was the recipient of a multivisceral graft consisting of the entire small bowel and other abdominal organs. Since 1964, 78 Small Bowel transplants have been performed in humans. Several variations of the multivisceral procedure in which the liver and the small bowel constitute the major components of the graft were adopted. The longest survival has been in a child who is still alive with a working graft for more than two years, as reported by Goulet from Paris in 1989. The introduction in SBT of the new immunosuppressive agent FK 506 had provided results which are superior to those achieved with Cyclosporine A (CsA). This latter observation prompted the Pittsburgh group to initiate a large series of isolated and composite intestinal grafts. The remarkable results have demonstrated the clinical utility of intestinal transplantation. This paper will try to summarize the history of the small bowel transplantation until the end of the year 1992, with the current progress in use today.     

Bit error simulation for π/4 DQPSK mobile radio communicationsusing two-ray and measurement-based impulse response models

An accurate software/hardware bit-by-bit error simulator for mobile radio communications is described. Simulation results in indoor and outdoor channels are compared with theoretical results. Bit error rate (BER) results in simulated frequency-selective fading channels generated by several channel models such as two-ray, constant amplitude, and simulated indoor radio channel impulse models (SIRCIMs) are presented. It is shown that BER is not only dependent on the RMS delay spread, but also on the distribution of temporal and spatial multipath components in local areas. An important result is that a two-ray Rayleigh fading model is a poor fit for indoor wireless channels and, if used, can underestimate the BER by orders of magnitude. A real-time bit error simulation of video transmission using the bit-by-bit error simulator is described. The simulator, called BERSIM, is shown to be a useful tool for evaluating emerging data transmission products for digital mobile communications     

Extrapolated galerkin time finite elements

A new time finite-element method based on the extrapolation technique and the Galerkin time finite-element method is presented. In this method, the second-order governing differential equations of motion for dynamic problems are rewritten as a set of first order differential equations in state space. The standard Galerkin method is then employed for the temporal discretization. The algorithm is first-order accurate only. Based on the first-order Galerkin time finite-element formulation, the extrapolation technique is introduced to improve the order of accuracy. It is achieved by expressing the numerical amplification matrix of higher-order algorithm as a linear combination of the basic amplification matrices evaluated at selected instances of time. The matrices are combined with different weighting factors. The pairs of the selected instance of time and the corresponding weighting factors are free parameters. Unconditionally stable higher-order accurate formulations can be derived by properly choosing the free parameters. Algorithms up to fourth-order accurate are presented in this paper. Detailed analyses on stability, numerical dissipation and numerical dispersion are also given. Comparisons of the present algorithms with some well-known time-integration methods are presented to demonstrate the versatility of the present method, in particular its accuracy in the higher-order formulations.     

In utero exchange transfusion in homozygous alpha-thalassaemia: a case report

We report a case of homozygous alpha-thalassaemia with hydrops fetalis presenting at 22 weeks of gestation. In utero exchange transfusion was performed with maternal blood at 23 weeks. 25 weeks and 29 weeks of gestation. The fetus was delivered at 29 weeks of gestation without significant neonatal complication. Post-transfusion haemoglobin pattern after transfusion suggested that a total haematocrit of 0.52 may be the desired post-exchange transfusion haematocrit to aim for and the total haematocrit of haemoglobin A and haemoglobin Portland dropped approximately one percent per day.     

Clinical outcome of patients infected with hepatitis C virus infection on survival after primary liver transplantation under tacrolimus

In 1994, as a result of both programme evaluations which identified students' fears and apprehensions about their practical ability, and a review of the literature on skill acquisition, experiential skills teaching was resumed within the faculty. Having invested considerable finance into the reconstruction of a skills centre to teach skills, it is now imperative that its use be formally evaluated. Part of the evaluative process includes a review of the empirical literature on the acquisition of psychomotor skills in nursing. This paper summarizes this review.     

Double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study of oral vancomycin in prevention of necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants

AIMS: To evaluate the effectiveness of oral vancomycin in the prophylaxis of necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants. METHODS: A prospective, double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study in a tertiary referral centre of a university teaching hospital was conducted on 140 very low birthweight infants consecutively admitted to the neonatal unit. The babies were randomly allocated to receive oral vancomycin (15 mg/kg every 8 hours for 7 days) or an equivalent volume of placebo solution. Prophylaxis was started 24 hours before the start of oral feeds. All suspected cases of necrotising enterocolitis were investigated with a full sepsis screen and serial abdominal radiographs. Necrotising enterocolitis was diagnosed and staged according to modified Bell's criteria. RESULTS: Nine of 71 infants receiving oral vancomycin and 19 of 69 infants receiving the placebo solution developed necrotising enterocolitis (p = 0.035). Infants with necrotising enterocolitis were associated with a significant increase in mortality (p = 0.026) and longer duration of hospital stay (p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Prophylactic oral vancomycin conferred protection against necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants and was associated with a 50% reduction in the incidence. However, widespread implementation of this preventive measure is not recommended, as it would only be effective in necrotising enterocolitis caused by Gram positive organisms and could increase the danger of the emergence of vancomycin resistant or dependent organisms. Its use should be restricted to a high prevalence nursery for a short and well defined period in a selected group of high risk patients.     

Consequences of the formation of Cooper-pairs near oxygen-deficient sites

In this investigation we consider the formation of Cooper pairs near the oxygen-deficient sites in Y-Ba-Cu-O ceramic superconductors which would give rise to an energy-dependent potential as seen by conduction charge carriers. It is shown that Cooper pairs could be formed under such conditions, resulting in a supercurrent. We use the Bogoliubov transformation technique to calculate the energy gap, the energy difference, and the transition temperature of the model superconductor using certain data obtained from previous experiments. Numerical analysis shows that the superconducting current can be explained by the presence of such oscillating Cooper pairs.     

Improved Randomized Online Scheduling of Intervals and Jobs

We study the online preemptive scheduling of intervals and jobs (with restarts). Each interval or job has an arrival time, a deadline, a length and a weight. The objective is to maximize the total weight of completed intervals or jobs. While the deterministic case for intervals was settled a long time ago, the randomized case remains open. In this paper we first give a 2-competitive randomized algorithm for the case of equal length intervals. The algorithm is barely random in the sense that it randomly chooses between two deterministic algorithms at the beginning and then sticks with it thereafter. Then we extend the algorithm to cover several other cases of interval scheduling including monotone instances, C-benevolent instances and D-benevolent instances, giving the same competitive ratio. These algorithms are surprisingly simple but have the best competitive ratio against all previous (fully or barely) randomized algorithms. Next we extend the idea to give a 3-competitive algorithm for equal length jobs. Finally, we prove a lower bound of 2 on the competitive ratio of all barely random algorithms that choose between two deterministic algorithms for scheduling equal length intervals (and hence jobs). A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Fung et al. (The 6th International Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithmspp, vol. 5426, pp. 53–66, 2008).     

A fully autonomous kernel-based online learning neural network model and its application to building cooling load prediction

Building cooling load prediction is critical to the success of energy-saving measures. While many of the computational models currently available in the industry have been developed for this purpose, most require extensive computer resources and involve lengthy computational processes. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have recently been adopted for prediction, and pioneering works have confirmed the feasibility of this approach. However, users are required to predetermine an ANN model’s parameters. This hinders the applicability of the ANN approach in actual engineering problems, as most engineers may be unfamiliar with soft computing. This paper proposes a fully autonomous kernel-based neural network (AKNN) model for noisy data regression prediction. No part of the model’s mechanism requires human intervention; rather, it self-organises its structure according to the training samples presented. Unlike the other existing autonomous models, the AKNN model is an online learning model. It is particularly suitable for online steps-ahead prediction. In this paper, we benchmark the AKNN model’s performance according to other ANN models. It is also successfully applied to predicting the cooling load of a commercial building in Hong Kong. The occupancy areas and concentration of carbon dioxide inside the building are successfully adopted to mimic the building’s internal cooling load. Training data was adopted from actual measurements taken inside the building. Its results show reasonable agreement with actual cooling loads.