Who owns enterprise information? Data ownership rights in Europe and the U.S.

U.S. legislation provides protection to database contents by intellectual property rights (IPRs) only if “a minimal degree of creativity” was involved in their creation. Although data collection may involve significant investments, factual content is not protected.     

When consensus meets self-stabilization

This paper presents a shared-memory self-stabilizing failure detector, asynchronous consensus and replicated state-machine algorithm suite, the components of which can be started in an arbitrary state and converge to act as a virtual state-machine. Self-stabilizing algorithms can cope with transient faults. Transient faults can alter the system state to an arbitrary state and hence, cause a temporary violation of the safety property of the consensus. Started in an arbitrary state, the long lived, memory bounded and self-stabilizing failure detector, asynchronous consensus, and replicated state-machine suite, presented in the paper, recovers to satisfy eventual safety and eventual liveness requirements. Several new techniques and paradigms are introduced. The bounded memory failure detector abstracts away synchronization assumptions using bounded heartbeat counters combined with a balance–unbalance mechanism. The practically infinite paradigm is introduced in the scope of self-stabilization, where an execution of, say, 2⁶⁴ sequential steps is regarded as (practically) infinite. Finally, we present the first self-stabilizing wait-free reset mechanism that ensures eventual safety and can be used to implement efficient self-stabilizing timestamps that are of independent interest.     

Prediction of the resonant frequency of piezoelectric tube scanners through three-dimensional finite element modeling of a tube assembly

In this paper, we study the resonant behavior of a piezoelectric tube scanner used in scanning probe microscopes. In particular, we use a finite element model to allow the inclusion of boundary effects, i.e., nonrigid bonding layers and elastic tip holder, on the dynamic response of the scanner. We show that although existing analytical models provide a good estimation of the axial resonant frequency, their predictions of the first bending resonance may have up to a 100% error. In addition, a simple procedure is proposed that combines some precalculated factors to predict the lowest resonant frequency for a wide range of typical scanner dimensions. An experiment is carried out to illustrate the procedure and validate the prediction.     

Flow reversal reactor for the catalytic combustion of lean methane mixtures

This paper describes an experimental investigation of a pilot scale reverse flow reactor for the catalytic destruction of lean mixtures of methane in air. It was found that using reverse flow it was possible maintain elevated reactor temperatures which were capable of achieving high methane conversion of methane in air streams at methane concentrations as low as 0.19% by volume. The space velocity, cycle time and feed concentration are all important parameters that govern the operation of the reactor. Control of these parameters is important to prevent the trapping of the thermal energy within the catalyst bed, which can limit the amount of energy that can be usefully extracted from the reactor.     

Chronic graft-versus-host disease treated with UVB phototherapy

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a major complication of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Immunosuppressive treatment regimens carry the potential of causing severe morbidity and mortality, so that additional modes of therapy with fewer side-effects are clearly needed. Five cGVHD patients (sclerodermoid cGVHD in two patients, lichenoid cGVHD in one patient and intraoral cGVHD in two patients), who had not responded to standard immunosuppressive drugs, were treated with adjuvant UVB phototherapy. The patient with lichenoid cGVHD experienced complete clearing of cutaneous lesions, whereas both patients with sclerodermoid cGVHD experienced significant relief of pruritus, but showed no change of the sclerodermoid skin lesions. Intraoral lesions cleared in one patient. The effects of UVB phototherapy were furthermore documented by measurement of skin viscoelasticity and mouth opening. No side-effects were encountered. This preliminary study suggests that UVB phototherapy is useful as an adjuvant therapeutic modality in intraoral and cutaneous lichenoid cGVHD.     

Catalytic Urbanism: The Role of Customised Design Solutions in Delivering Transformational Urban Change

Elad Eisenstein is a Director at Arup, leading the firm's urban design and masterplanning practice from London. Here he describes how through a highly customised approach, ‘catalytic urbanism’, Arup is working internationally in cities undergoing rapid change in a manner that is tailored to both global and local forces – accounting for climate change, macroeconomics and mobility. This bespoke method is illustrated in three diverse contexts: in North London, Pretoria in South Africa and Wanzhuang in China.     

Risk assessment of malicious biocontamination of food

Throughout the last decades of the 20th century, the biological threat evolved from primarily a government-controlled weapon to a tool of terrorism. One of the consequences of this trend is the near impossibility of foreseeing when and how an act of bioterrorism will occur. The suitability of food products for such an act stems from the multitude of microorganisms that may be used for contamination and the vulnerability of the products during and after processing. Tests that would enable the detection of a large variety of microorganisms quickly, reliably, and economically should also provide satisfactory means to prevent acts of malicious biocontamination of food products. Until such means become available, a priority-based approach to the problem is probably the most practical. Priorities should be determined based on a systematic risk assessment to define the relative likelihood of a certain microorganism being used in an act of malicious food contamination. Criteria to be evaluated are availability, weaponization processes, delivery of an effective dose, probability of early detection, and the microorganism's resistance to the conditions to which it will be exposed. Because the results of such an assessment may vary according to prevailing conditions, the assessment must be based on the existing circumstances. The results of the assessment should then be applied to the various procedures of food processing, which should further reduce the number of potential microbial threats. Existing methods of screening food for contaminating microorganisms and existing food safety and security procedures such as hazard analysis and critical control point programs may have to be modified to become suitable for the detection of acts of bioterrorism.     

The promotion of carbon monoxide oxidation by hydrogen on supported platinum catalyst

This paper reports the results of a study of the combined oxidation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide on a platinum diesel oxidation catalyst. Experimental results for the light-off curves obtained in a monolith supported catalyst are shown for different concentrations. The presence of hydrogen is shown to promote the oxidation of CO, with the largest effect shown for the first small addition of hydrogen, then a progressively decreasing effect as the hydrogen concentration is increased. The enhancement effect can be successfully simulated using a kinetic model in which the activation energy for the desorption of CO is decreased as a function of hydrogen adsorption. Hydrogen is allowed to adsorb on sites only accessible to hydrogen and not CO or oxygen.     

Dynamic model of the bronchial tree

Neuromyositis is a very rare type of polymyositis where, beside the usual muscular manifestations, there are signs of peripheral neuropathy which can be found at clinical, electromyographic and/or pathological examination. We have seen between 1983 and 1990 four cases of neuromyositis. The neurological disorder was an axonopathy in two cases which is usual in neuromyositis; in the other two cases, there was a polyradiculoneuritis which seems to be very rare in this syndrome. In the four patients the disease was particularly severe and unresponsive to treatment. One of our patients had HTLV-I infection diagnosed by polymerase chain reaction amplification and in situ hybridization, while the serological test was negative. To our knowledge only three cases of HTLV-I associated neuromyositis have been reported in the literature.