New perspectives on the optimal placement of detectors for suicide bombers using metaheuristics

Natural Computing - We consider an operational model of suicide bombing attacks—an increasingly prevalent form of terrorism—against specific targets, and the use of protective...     

Environmental risk index: A tool to assess the safety of dams for leachate

Dams for leachate store very toxic substances that contain a large amount of organic material and, probably, heavy metals; they therefore constitute an important threat to the environment. Existing models of environmental risk assessment for landfills do not take into consideration the specific risk that leachate dams may represent for the environment. In this paper a methodology to improve the environmental safety is presented according to the parameters used in their construction and management. In order to do that, the following characteristics of the dam must be known: (1) geotechnical stability, (2) erosion of downstream slope, (3) type of sealing of the dam, (4) overtopping probability, (5) volume of leachate stored inside the dam and (6) pollution load of leachate. Once these parameters have been calculated, they are transformed by means of rating curves into homogeneous units, so as to make it possible to operate between them. From the study and analysis of these parameters an environmental risk index for a dam for leachate can be calculated. If the environmental risk index exceeds an established value then it involves a dam for leachate with high environmental risk, therefore preventive measures in its design, construction and management would be necessary.     

Potency assay of diphtheria antitoxin in Vero cell microcultures

A slowly rising cortical potential shift with negative polarity following the imperative stimulus of a forewarned reaction time task, the 'post-imperative negative variation' (PINV), is regularly observed in schizophrenic patients but not in controls. The topography of the PINV suggests that it may originate in frontal cortical regions. We used a task designed to test two putative prefrontal cortical functions: working memory and processing of ambiguity. Nineteen patients with a chronic schizophrenic disorder and 19 control subjects matched for age, sex, and education participated in two experimental sessions. The EEG was recorded from frontal, central, temporal, and parietal leads over both hemispheres using a DC amplifier. PINV amplitudes were generally larger in patients than in controls. If the result of comparing physical features of the two successively presented stimuli (warning and imperative stimulus) was ambiguous rather than clear, an augmentation of the PINV amplitudes was seen in both groups. If this comparison required high rather than low involvement of working memory functions, PINV amplitudes were augmented in schizophrenic patients only. Scalp distribution of the PINV indicated a left-hemisphere fronto-central PINV maximum in patients, and a right-hemisphere predominance in controls, which was larger following ambiguous stimulus comparisons. These results suggest that ambiguity during the comparison of physical features of successively presented stimuli may be a general factor of the PINV in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Augmented involvement of working memory functions, presumably subserved by the prefrontal cortex, specifically affected the fronto-centrally predominant PINV in schizophrenic patients. This result is compatible with the hypothesis of prefrontal cortical dysfunctions in schizophrenia.     

Virtual reality treatment of flying phobia

Flying phobia (FP) might become a very incapacitating and disturbing problem in a person's social, working, and private areas. Psychological interventions based on exposure therapy have proved to be effective, but given the particular nature of this disorder they bear important limitations. Exposure therapy for FP might be excessively costly in terms of time, money, and efforts. Virtual reality (VR) overcomes these difficulties as different significant environments might be created, where the patient can interact with what he or she fears while in a totally safe and protected environment, the therapist's consulting room. This paper intends, on one hand, to show the different scenarios designed by our team for the VR treatment of FP, and on the other, to present the first results supporting the effectiveness of this new tool for the treatment of FP in a multiple baseline study.     

Application of life cycle assessment to improve the environmental performance of a ceramic tile packaging system

The overall goal of this study was to evaluate the environmental performance of the process currently used to package and palletize ceramic floor and wall tiles, and to propose and analyse improvements from an environmental point of view. After developing a life cycle inventory of the primary and tertiary packaging, the life cycle assessment was applied according to mandatory and optional elements of ISO 14042. The results are presented in three parts: the first quantifies the environmental behaviour of the current packaging system, the second examines strategies focused on minimizing the environmental burdens of such critical elements, and the third quantifies the environmental improvements, compared with the initial situation, that are obtained with the application of each improvement. The simultaneous incorporation of all the proposed improvements into the packaging system can reduce impact within the 18–45% range, depending on the impact method that is applied. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Omissions and ambiguities in CCITT Recommendation Q.921

The data link layer protocol for the integrated services digital network (ISDN) user/network interface, known as link access protocol-D (LAPD), is a protocol that operates at layer 2 of the open systems interconnection (OSI) architecture. Its purpose is to safely convey information between layer 3 entities using the D-channel. The information types that LAPD is intended to transport include call control signaling, packet mode communications, and management information. Observations are made in this article about what are, in the authors' opinion, the most confusing points of CCITT Recommendation Q.921 with comments related to data link layer address field, broadcast connections, terminal endpoint identifier (TEI) management procedures, layer 2 frames exchange, and connection management entity response to MDL-error indication primitives. This article intends solely to clarify the recommendations so that their concepts and procedures become easier to understand and implement, which can lead to significant saving of time for those who must eventually use LAPD procedures or develop the software for handling them     

A photoluminescence study of film structure in CdTe nanoparticle thin films

The layer-by-layer deposition of thin films of CdTe nanoparticles and three different polyelectrolytes has been investigated. Photoluminescence spectra were used to monitor the energy transfer properties within the films. As the number of bilayers in a thin film was increased a decrease in the energy of the light emitted was observed. The wavelength change is a two-stage process. Deposition of the first one to two bi-layers of a thin film produced a sharp energy change (626 nm to 637 nm with the addition of a single bi-layer) whereas deposition of subsequent bi-layers produced a more gradual energy change (642 nm-646 nm with the addition of 5 bi-layers). A space-filling mechanism is suggested to account for these changes; smaller nanoparticles penetrate the earlier levels of a thin film and increase the inter-particle energy transfer opportunities within the layers.     

Proteomic evaluation of myofibrillar carbonylation in chilled fish mince and its inhibition by catechin

The present study investigates the susceptibility of individual myofibrillar proteins from mackerel (Scomber scombrus) mince to undergo carbonylation reactions during chilled storage, and the antioxidant capacity of (+)-catechin to prevent oxidative processes of proteins. The carbonylation of each particular protein was quantified by combining the labelling of protein carbonyls by fluorescein-5-thiosemicarbazide (FTSC) with 1-D or 2-D gel electrophoresis. Alpha skeletal actin, glycogen phosphorylase, unnamed protein product (UNP) similar to enolase, pyruvate kinase, isoforms of creatine kinase, aldolase A and an isoform of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PDH) showed elevated oxidation in chilled non-supplemented mince. Myosin heavy chain (MHC) was not carbonylated in chilled muscle, but an extensive MHC degradation was observed in those samples. The supplementation of catechin reduced protein oxidation and lipid oxidation in a concentration-dependent manner: control > 25 > 100 ≈ 200 ppm. Therefore, the highest catechin concentrations (100 and 200 ppm) exhibited the strongest antioxidant activity. Catechin (200 ppm) reduced significantly carbonylation of protein spots identified as glycogen phosphorylase, pyruvate kinase muscle isozyme, isoforms of creatine kinase. Conversely, catechin was ineffective to inhibit the oxidation of actin and UNP similar to enolase. These results draw attention to the inefficiency of catechin to prevent actin oxidation, in contrast to the extremely high efficiency of catechin in inhibiting oxidation of lipids and other proteins.     

Verification support for ARINC‐653‐based avionics software

Software model checking consists in applying the most powerful results in formal verification research to programming languages such as C. One general technique to implement this approach is producing a reduced model of the software in order to employ existing and efficient tools, such as SPIN . This paper focusses on the application of this approach to the avionics software constructed on top of the Application Executive Software (APEX ) Interface, which is widely employed by manufacturers in the avionics industry. It presents a method to automatically extract PROMELA models from the C source code. In order to close the extracted model during verification, we built a reusable APEX ‐specific environment. This APEX environment models the execution engine (i.e. an APEX compliant real‐time operating system) that implements APEX services. In particular, it explains how to deal with aspects such as real‐time and APEX scheduling. Time is modelled in such a way that the we save time and memory by avoiding the analysis of irrelevant steps. This model of time and the construction of a deterministic scheduler guarantees the scalability of our approach. The paper also presents a tool that can verify realistic applications, and that has been used as a novel testing method to ensure the correctness of our APEX environment. This testing method uses SPIN to execute official APEX test cases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chemical changes during farmed coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) canning: Effect of a preliminary chilled storage

A relevant farmed fish species (coho salmon; Oncorhynchus kisutch) was studied as a raw material for the canning process. The effects of preliminary chilling storage and thermal treatment (cooking and sterilisation) on the chemical constituents (lipids and non-protein nitrogen compounds) of the canned fish were analysed. An increasing previous chilling time led to an important autolysis (K value) development, and to an increasing formation of free fatty acids, and interaction compounds (fluorescence and browning assessments) (p < 0.05) in the canned product. The thermal treatment led to the formation of volatile amines (total and trimethylamine), free fatty acids, secondary lipid oxidation compounds (anisidine and thiobarbituric acid values) and interaction compounds in canned fish. Interaction compound assessment was found the most useful tool to study the lipid oxidation and non-enzymatic browning developments, while the K value showed to be an interesting index for assessing the freshness stage of the raw material employed.