Lyme disease--on the basis of our observations

We biologically assessed functions of several reconstituted surfactants with the same minimum surface tension (2-3 mN/m) as "complete" porcine pulmonary surfactant (natural surfactant) but with longer surface adsorption times. Administration of natural surfactant (adsorption time 0.29 s) into the lungs of surfactant-deficient immature rabbits brought a tidal volume of 16.1 +/- 4.4 (SD) ml/kg during mechanical ventilation with 40 breaths/min and 20 cmH2O insufflation pressure. In static pressure-volume recordings, these animals showed a lung volume of 62.4 +/- 9.7 ml/kg at 30 cmH2O airway pressure and maintained 55% of this volume when the pressure decreased to 5 cmH2O. With two reconstituted surfactants consisting of synthetic lipids or isolated lipids from porcine lungs plus surfactant-associated hydrophobic proteins (adsorption times 0.57 and 0.78 s, respectively), tidal volumes were < 38% of that with natural surfactant (P < 0.05), but static pressure-volume recordings were not different. Care is therefore needed in estimating the in vivo function of surfactant preparations from minimum surface tension or static pressure-volume measurements.     

Flexible multibody approach in forward dynamic simulation of locomotive strains in human skeleton with flexible lower body bones

A method for bone strain estimation is examined in this article. The flexibility of a single bone in an otherwise rigid human skeleton model has been studied previously by various authors. However, in the previous studies, the effect of the flexibility of multiple bones on the musculoskeletal model behavior was ignored. This study describes a simulation method that can be used to estimate the bone strains at both tibias and femurs of a 65-year-old Caucasian male subject. The verification of the method is performed by the comparison of the results with other studies available in literature. The results of the study show good correlation with the results of previous empirical studies. A damping effect of the flexible bones on the model is also studied in this paper.     

Makespan minimization of multi-slot just-in-time scheduling on single and parallel machines

The paper addresses the problem of multi-slot just-in-time scheduling. Unlike the existing literature on this subject, it studies a more general criterion—the minimization of the schedule makespan rather than the minimization of the number of slots used by schedule. It gives an O(nlog ² n)-time optimization algorithm for the single machine problem. For arbitrary number of m>1 identical parallel machines it presents an O(nlog n)-time optimization algorithm for the case when the processing time of each job does not exceed its due date. For the general case on m>1 machines, it proposes a polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm.     

Is Evolution Algorithmic?

In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett claims that evolution is algorithmic. On Dennett’s analysis, evolutionary processes are trivially algorithmic because he assumes that all natural processes are algorithmic. I will argue that there are more robust ways to understand algorithmic processes that make the claim that evolution is algorithmic empirical and not conceptual. While laws of nature can be seen as compression algorithms of information about the world, it does not follow logically that they are implemented as algorithms by physical processes. For that to be true, the processes have to be part of computational systems. The basic difference between mere simulation and real computing is having proper causal structure. I will show what kind of requirements this poses for natural evolutionary processes if they are to be computational.     

TSV constraints related to temperature excursion, pressure during molding, materials used and handling loads

The current paper focuses on several mechanical aspects of a waferlevel packaging approach using a direct face-to-face Chip-to-Wafer (C2W) bonding of a MEMS device on an ASIC substrate wafer. Requirements of minimized inherent stress from packaging and good decoupling from forces applied in manufacturing and application are discussed with particular attention to the presence of through-silicon vias (TSV) in the substrate wafer. The paper deals with FEM analysis of temperature excursion, pressure during molding, materials used and handling load influence on mechanical stress within the TSV system and on wafer level, which can be large enough to disintegrate the system.     

A learning-based colour image segmentation with extended and compact structural tensor feature representation

In this paper a novel Tensor-Based Image Segmentation Algorithm (TBISA) is presented, which is dedicated for segmentation of colour images. A purpose of TBISA is to distinguish specific objects based on their characteristics, i.e. shape, colour, texture, or a mixture of these features. All of those information are available in colour channel data. Nonetheless, performing image analysis on the pixel level using RGB values, does not allow to access information on texture which is hidden in relation between neighbouring pixels. Therefore, to take full advantage of all available information, we propose to incorporate the Structural Tensors as a feature extraction method. It forms enriched feature set which, apart from colour and intensity, conveys also information of texture. This set is next processed by different classification algorithms for image segmentation. Quality of TBISA is evaluated in a series of experiments carried on benchmark images. Obtained results prove that the proposed method allows accurate and fast image segmentation.