Screening of breast cancer from thermogram images by edge detection aided deep transfer learning model

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Breast cancer, the most common invasive cancer, causes deaths of thousands of women in the world every year. Early detection of the same is a remedy to lessen...     

Implementation of image copyright protection tool using hardware-software co-simulation

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The proposed work presents particulars of a technique for the design and hardware implementation of an information hiding scheme using hardware-software...     

Multi-grid reduced-order topology optimization

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - Additive printing allows the “single step” production of virtually any complex mechanical component. However, the manufacturing process...     

Differential Effects of Human P301L Tau Expression in Young versus Aged Mice

The greatest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is increasing age. Understanding the changes that occur in aging that make an aged brain more susceptible to developing AD could result in novel therapeutic targets. In order to better understand these changes, the current study utilized mice harboring a regulatable mutant P301L human tau transgene (rTg(TauP301L)4510), in which P301L tau expression can be turned off or on by the addition or removal of doxycycline in the drinking water. This regulatable expression allowed for assessment of aging independent of prolonged mutant tau expression. Our results suggest that P301L expression in aged mice enhances memory deficits in the Morris water maze task. These behavioral changes may be due to enhanced late-stage tau pathology, as evidenced by immunoblotting and exacerbated hippocampal dysregulation of glutamate release and uptake measured by the microelectrode array technique. We additionally observed changes in proteins important for the regulation of glutamate and tau phosphorylation that may mediate these age-related changes. Thus, age and P301L tau interact to exacerbate tau-induced detrimental alterations in aged animals.     

Human Peripheral Blood Mononucleocyte Derived Myeloid Committed Progenitor Cells Mitigate H-ARS by Exosomal Paracrine Signal

Radiation-induced loss of the hematopoietic stem cell progenitor population compromises bone marrow regeneration and development of mature blood cells. Failure to rescue bone marrow functions results in fatal consequences from hematopoietic injury, systemic infections, and sepsis. So far, bone marrow transplant is the only effective option, which partially minimizes radiation-induced hematopoietic toxicities. However, a bone marrow transplant will require HLA matching, which will not be feasible in large casualty settings such as a nuclear accident or an act of terrorism. In this study we demonstrated that human peripheral blood mononuclear cell-derived myeloid committed progenitor cells can mitigate radiation-induced bone marrow toxicity and improve survival in mice. These cells can rescue the recipient’s hematopoietic stem cells from radiation toxicity even when administered up to 24 h after radiation exposure and can be subjected to allogenic transplant without GVHD development. Transplanted cells deliver sEVs enriched with regenerative and immune-modulatory paracrine signals to mitigate radiation-induced hematopoietic toxicity. This provides a natural polypharmacy solution against a complex injury process. In summary, myeloid committed progenitor cells can be prepared from blood cells as an off-the-shelf alternative to invasive bone marrow harvesting and can be administered in an allogenic setting to mitigate hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome.     

The Impact of the Phoenix Urban Heat Island on Residential Water Use

One goal of the smart growth movement is a more compact urban form, intended to reduce energy use and the cost of moving materials, products, and people. The benefits of compactness are compromised, however, if higher densities and more intense land use create urban heat islands, which increase water and energy use. This study examines the effects of Phoenix's urban heat island on water use by single-family residences, controlling for relevant population and housing attributes. Our statistical analysis demonstrates that increasing daily low temperatures by 1° Fahrenheit is associated with an average monthly increase in water use of 290 gallons for a typical single-family unit. These results suggest that planners should consider effects on water demand as well as other environmental consequences when they evaluate growth strategies, and use incentives to encourage efficiency and sustainability.     

Substrate bias effect of epitaxial delta-doped channel MOS transistor for low-power applications

Conventional planar transistor shows shrinking substrate bias effect at scaled technology. On the other hand, epitaxial delta-doped channel (EδDC) transistor shows substantial amount of substrate bias effect even at 16-nm channel length. This paper unveils the physics behind the substrate bias effect of an n-channel EδDC transistor through Technology Computer Aided Design simulation with analytical justifications. The depletion width for an EδDC transistor very weakly depends upon the applied substrate bias, and with scaling down of channel length, the depletion width insignificantly gets widened. The substrate control over the channel is high so that significant amount of substrate depletion charge terminates on the gate, instead of on the source and the drain. The degradation of threshold voltage roll off and drain-induced barrier lowering coefficient with the increase of substrate bias, is less for the EδDC transistor, compared to that of a conventional halo free transistor. The dependence of the substrate bias sensitivity on the thickness of the low-doped epitaxial layer and concentration of the high-doped layer is explored. The effects of reverse substrate bias on leakage power dissipation and intrinsic delay of EδDC and conventional transistors are discussed.     

What is Driving the Growth of New “Sunbelt” Metropolises? Quality of Life and Urban Regimes in Greater Phoenix and Brisbane-South East Queensland Region

In this paper we explore the conditions leading to the evolution and eventual weakening of urban regimes by comparing two sunbelt metropolitan areas in two continents. While Greater Phoenix is selected to represent the US case, the Brisbane-South East Queensland region provides a similar representative case in Australia. Both Greater Phoenix and Brisbane-SEQ have been the top or close to the top performers in population growth and economic growth compared to other metropolitan regions in their respective countries. In both cases coalitions of development interests and public officials created conditions for increasing rates of population growth and expansion of metropolitan territories. As growth pressures mounted over time leading to a deterioration of quality of life, local politics began to revolve around local issues of congestion, pollution, and better urban services. This paper explores the changing nature of urban growth coalitions and discusses their implications for the respective metropolitan futures.     

A watershed at a watershed: the potential for environmentally sensitive area protection in the upper San Pedro Drainage Basin (Mexico and USA)

The watershed is advocated as an appropriate unit for ecological planning. Watersheds, or river drainage basins, can be understood through an ecological chorography. The upper San Pedro River basin of southern Arizona (USA) and northern Sonora (Mexico) is used as an example. This watershed is currently facing significant growth pressures. Rapid urbanization, cattle ranching, and irrigated agricultural pumping in the drainage basin are having negative environmental consequences, including water quality and supply problems, increased soil erosion, threats to wildlife habitats, and degradation of scenic resources. Copper mining, just outside the watershed, potentially impacts groundwater and the San Pedro riparian system. The protection of environmentally sensitive areas would help to maintain the biological integrity of the region. This paper focuses on the design of a framework for the identification of environmentally sensitive areas in the watershed and an analysis of existing government plans to protect such areas. The proposed framework can coordinate local, state, and federal efforts to achieve their protection objectives.     

A Differential Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Algorithm for real parameter optimization

Hybridization in context to Evolutionary Computation (EC) aims at combining the operators and methodologies from different EC paradigms to form a single algorithm that may enjoy a statistically superior performance on a wide variety of optimization problems. In this article we propose an efficient hybrid evolutionary algorithm that embeds the difference vector-based mutation scheme, the crossover and the selection strategy of Differential Evolution (DE) into another recently developed global optimization algorithm known as Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategy (CMA-ES). CMA-ES is a stochastic method for real parameter (continuous domain) optimization of non-linear, non-convex functions. The algorithm includes adaptation of covariance matrix which is basically an alternative method of traditional Quasi-Newton method for optimization based on gradient method. The hybrid algorithm, referred by us as Differential Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Algorithm (DCMA-EA), turns out to possess a better blending of the explorative and exploitative behaviors as compared to the original DE and original CMA-ES, through empirical simulations. Though CMA-ES has emerged itself as a very efficient global optimizer, its performance deteriorates when it comes to dealing with complicated fitness landscapes, especially landscapes associated with noisy, hybrid composition functions and many real world optimization problems. In order to improve the overall performance of CMA-ES, the mutation, crossover and selection operators of DE have been incorporated into CMA-ES to synthesize the hybrid algorithm DCMA-EA. We compare DCMA-EA with original DE and CMA-EA, two best known DE-variants: SaDE and JADE, and two state-of-the-art real optimizers: IPOP-CMA-ES (Restart Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy with increasing population size) and DMS-PSO (Dynamic Multi Swarm Particle Swarm Optimization) over a test-suite of 20 shifted, rotated, and compositional benchmark functions and also two engineering optimization problems. Our comparative study indicates that although the hybridization scheme does not impose any serious burden on DCMA-EA in terms of number of Function Evaluations (FEs), DCMA-EA still enjoys a statistically superior performance over most of the tested benchmarks and especially over the multi-modal, rotated, and compositional ones in comparison to the other algorithms considered here.